Page 48 of Wyatt

A town of sixty thousand in the middle of Siberia.

Maybe she’d come here to hide. He’d tried to call her nearly a dozen times, but the calls went to voicemail and he’d nearly done something stupid and called Yanna, his contact with the FSB, to see if she could track her.

Instead, York had gotten lucky.

He’d seen Kat walking toward the vokzal while he was getting a chebureki from a kiosk. Almost didn’t recognize her with her dark hair, especially in the shadow of the hour. But she wore jeans, Converse tennis shoes, and a backpack.

She might be Russian, but she dressed like an American.

Only then did he catch her tail. A woman also, given her slim figure, dressed in black. She wore boots, her hair long. And she walked just far enough behind Kat as to not be obvious.

His gut clenched, and he’d shouted, took off running.

Run, Katya!

Tattoo Tanya took off too, something glinting under the streetlights in her grip.

This wasn’t going to be a clean kill.

Kat had flung her backpack at her, but Tanya batted it away.

It slowed her enough for him to make up those two steps. York practically flew over the curb and tackled Tanya before she could stick the knife into Kat’s neck.

Which left him dodging a lethal slice into his gut as she went down. He grabbed her wrist and slammed it against the ground. She hung on to the weapon, but he hit it again, and it released from her grip.

His tackle had landed them on a grassy area off the sidewalk, and she kicked him off her and rolled to her feet.

He did not want to hit a woman, even one trying to kill him. But she rushed him, and he stepped to the side and gave her a hard push.

She hit the dirt and rolled, coming up with the knife.

“Aw, c’mon.”

She came at him, slashing, and he dodged, narrowly missed a hit, and grabbed her arm.

She kneed him hard. A shot of agony spiked through his head, but he hung on even when she hit him in the face.

“C’mon!” He ducked his shoulder, rammed it into her chest, pulled on her arm, and flipped her over onto her back.

She landed with a whump that should have taken out her breath. But she grabbed him and pulled him down with her. He rolled backward, still holding her wrist, grabbing her other to keep the knife from slicing through him.

The weapon came up between them, he turned to face her, and in a movement he couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted, her body weight slammed down on top of him.

The knife slid between ribs into her body.

She swore at him, lying over him, her blood hot on his body.

He pushed her off onto the grass, the knife protruding from her chest. She gasped for air.

They were hidden beneath a trio of linden trees.

“York?”

Kat’s voice turned him. She stood on the sidewalk, her hand pressed to her mouth. “Is she—”

“Yeah. Or she will be.” He got up, painfully aware of the blood that saturated his shirt. He unbuttoned it, ripped it off, and wadded it into a ball. He turned to her. “Let’s move.”

He grabbed her arm and pulled her into a space between buildings. Gestured to her pack she’d retrieved. “You got a shirt in there?”

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