Page 4 of Double or Nothing
“There’s another big problem,” Vulcan says. “I don’t have any shovels here to dig a grave. You’ll need to buy some supplies and bring them back here before daylight.”
“I know what to buy,” Leroy says. “I’ll take care of it.”
Vulcan glances over at me, but neither one of us says a word. Things never turn out well when Leroy takes charge.
“Do you have any clothes I can borrow?” Seven asks Vulcan. “The bouncers won’t let me into Platinum looking like this. My suit is covered in dirt where we were rolling around on the ground.”
“Sure,” Vulcan replies. “Go inside and grab something out of my closet. My clothes aren’t your style, but you’re welcome to them.”
“Thanks,” Seven says. He hurries into the RV and comes back out five minutes later wearing Vulcan’s clothes.
“Call us if you find out anything about Jade,” I tell him. “And if you don’t, keep searching for her and send Leroy back here with the shovels.”
“I will,” Seven promises.
2
JADE
“Who the fuck are you, and why are you looking for me?”
I recognize Natasha’s voice immediately.
The sharp tip of her knife digs into the side of my throat directly above my carotid artery, its cold steel burning against my skin. She’s taller than me and her arm has my neck in a tight chokehold, her grip strong and unyielding. My instinct is to fight her, but instead, I consciously relax my body so she’ll realize I’m not a physical threat to her.
“My name is Jade, and I’m here to help you,” I reply.
“Help me? I don’t need your fucking help,” she snarls in my ear, her thick Eastern European accent coming through stronger. “What do you want?”
“I’ll tell you if you move the knife away from my veins,” I reply, my voice shaking slightly. “I’m a hacker. A good one, too. You put out word on the darknet that you need someone to reverse engineer the coding on a slot machine. I can do that for you.”
“I did no such thing,” Natasha replies coldly. “You’re mistaken. Why are you here?”
The elegant lady who escorted me to the office takes a seat on the white leather sofa on the other side of the room. She’s watching us quietly without interfering, her light green eyes calculating and sharp. The faint scent of her expensive perfume lingers in the air. It’s obvious she’s confident Natasha can handle me without her help.
“It’s the truth,” I say, trying to maintain my composure. “I’ve had a tough time tracking you down, and it almost cost me my life. I’ve worked too hard to find you to play games with you now, so I’ll tell you everything. Then it will be up to you if you believe me or not.”
“Start talking then,” Natasha says without moving the knife, the cold steel still pressed against my skin.
“I hack into the computers of evil men and then I blackmail them,” I tell her, ignoring the blade against my throat. “Sometimes other people hire me. A man who is probably dead by now hired me to hack into a computer that belonged to the Russian mob. I translated the files I downloaded from them and that’s how I learned about you. By the way, are you aware they’re desperately trying to find you?”
“Why do you say this?” she asks before relaxing the pressure of the knife against my skin slightly, granting me a slight reprieve.
“The man who hired me ratted me out to them. They kidnapped me and took me onto a boat near where I live in Los Angeles. They tried to kill me when they realized I didn’t have the information they were looking for.”
“What information did they want?”
“The location of a woman named Natasha. A woman who stole a video slot machine from the Russian mafia and now they want it back. But most of all, they want you, Natasha. I know you’re the person I’ve been looking for. They’re coming for you, and I’m here to warn you.”
“I’m not the Natasha you’re searching for,” she says. “You’ve mistaken me for someone else.”
I blow out a long breath. Her behavior is not surprising. I wouldn’t have expected her to greet me warmly with open arms. She’s wary of me and has every reason to be.
“Your suspicions of me are valid,” I say. “I don’t blame you one bit for not trusting me. I don’t trust easily either. The two men who are looking for you are Russians. One is named Ivan. Sorry, I didn’t catch the other man’s name. They were both big, ugly men with blue eyes. Russian is not a language that I speak, so I wasn’t able to pick up most of what they said to each other, only names and places, mostly. They mentioned another man. His name is Dimitri.”
The moment I say Dimitri, I catch a panicked expression cross the woman’s face sitting on the sofa. Her eyes fly to Natasha’s.
Bingo!
