Page 65 of Meet Cute or Your Money Back

“Yes, yes,” the man says in Russian. “Finally. Sorry about that, boss.”

Boss. Does that mean he’s on the phone with Drakon right now? It isn’t until my lungs start burning that I realize I’m holding my breath.

“The shipment arrived Sunday,” he continues. “Mostly good, mostly good. We had to take care of the not-so-good stock, of course.”

Shipment. Drugs, most likely. Drakon had been dealing in drugs for years. In his family business, he handled the drugs and his brother ran the guns. Granted, since we took down his brother several years ago, intel tells us Drakon likely took over for the gun running, too.

“I assure you, Drakon, it won’t happen again.”

“Drakon,” I whisper sharply, my eyes not leaving the mysterious figure. The name tastes like danger on my tongue, and the familiar surge of adrenaline floods my veins. I haven’t felt that jolt of excitement in years. Not since our mission ended six years ago. But this is it—the break in the case we’ve been grinding our gears over for months…years, even. Since my wife’s death.

“RS527.” The man’s voice cuts through the silence with the precision of a sniper’s shot. “Thirteen hundred hours.”

“RS527 at thirteen hundred hours,” I repeat. “What’s that?”

Hunter shakes his head, almost imperceptibly. “Dunno,” he replies, fingers flying across the keyboard. “Code?”

“No shit, but code for what?”

His gaze doesn’t waver but the air between us crackles with tension. RS527 at thirteen hundred hours. “Check flight numbers out ofRussia,” I say.

Hunter doesn’t respond to me, but I know he’s heard me based on the fast movement of his fingers typing. “Nothing with that code going in or out of Russia.”

Dammit. “What about flights out of Turkey or Georgia?”

This time, Hunter acknowledges me with one single nod of his head. A minute passes when Hunter says, “Bingo. Flight out of Kazakhstan at 13:05 next Monday with the flight code RS527. It lands in JFK the following morning.”

I clamp my hand onto Hunter’s shoulder. Fuck yes. This. This is the kind of intel that can turn a stakeout into a full-blown operation.

“We need the flight manifest for that flight. I doubt Drakon is flying under his real name.”

“Already on it.”

With each beat of my heart, the burden of responsibility settles deeper on my shoulders. For Jenna, for Duke, for justice—failure isn’t an option.

And we’re closer than we’ve ever been before. In one week, Drakon will be back in the States and we can get him. No, wewillget him.

“Poka,” the man says into the phone. “Do skorogo.”

“Do Skorogo… See you soon,” I whisper as the man hangs up the phone.

“We got him,” Hunter whispers as a small smile splays on his mouth.

“Not yet, we don’t. But soon.”

The door to the house flies open with a vengeance moments after the man hangs up. A hulking figure storms out. “Oh shit,” Hunter whispers.

It’s Drakon’s right-hand man, a lump of muscle and menace known to us only as Ispolnitel…the Enforcer.

Hunter and I don’t need to speak; our eyes meet for asplit-second—his icy calm a stark contrast to the burning urgency in mine—and then we are both ducking, our heads barely visible above the dashboard; just enough that we can both still see a little of what’s going on. His laptop, still recording their conversation.

“Inside, you fucking maggot!” he bellows in Russian, his voice a guttural growl that sends shivers down the darkest alleyways. Our unknowing informant, a slip of a man in comparison, recoils as if slapped by the sound alone.

The informant, a jittery shadow against the faint glow of a streetlight, tries to placate the Enforcer with frantic gestures, his words tripping over one another in haste. But the Enforcer’s having none of it, closing in on the smaller man with the measured steps of a predator.

My fingers flex involuntarily and I put a hand on the handle of my gun, sheathed around my hip. Years of training screams at me to do something, yet I know that here, there’s nothing I can do. We’re playing the most dangerous game of hide-and-seek imaginable and we don’t even have our credentials anymore to act on it if things do go south.

The silence is a live wire, snapping with tension so thick I can practically taste it. We’ve seen the Enforcer before. He’s the muscle. The one who carries out all the dirty work for the man who reaps the benefits.

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