Forty

He waited until he heard the muffled thud of Lark shutting the door to his room before he moved. Standing, he bent and picked up the boy.

Michael carried him up stairs to the room across from his own. He pulled back the covers on the bed and deposited him in it. He was thin. Too thin. Dark shaggy hair lay flat against the skeletal angles of his face. The baggy shirt and sweats practically swallowed him whole. He saw himself as a child, shell-shocked and broken—a half-feral boy no one wanted.

He’d been eight when his smack-addicted mother finally managed to kill herself. He sat, locked in the closet in a puddle of his own urine for three days, waiting to die. Hoping to, really. But the smell of his mother rotting away in the bathroom finally won out over the warm garbage stench that permeated the shitty tenement they lived in.

He’d been pulled out of that closet. Cleaned up and fed. Put in an endless parade of cars and taken from placement to placement. Eight of them in less than a year before he landed on Sophia and Sean’s doorstep. His life with them stuck. Not because he’d finally settled, but because they refused to give up on him. Because they loved him.

Because, finally, someone wanted him.

He looked at the boy. Who are you? Why do both Reyes and Cordova want you dead? What do you know that’s so important? Instead of asking questions he was sure there were no answers for, Michael tugged the covers up to Alex’s chin, over his frail shoulders. “Good night,” he mumbled in Russian before heading for the door. He could’ve sworn he’d heard the kid whisper, “Spasibo,” just before he shut the door behind him.

Spasibo. Thank you.

Michael stopped in his room long enough to change his clothes, exchanging the rumpled suit for a pair of track pants and a faded T-shirt before pulling on a shoulder holster to house his Kimber .45. A lightweight jacket completed his newest disguise.

In his track pants and cross trainers, he looked like a regular guy out for a late-night run.

Nothing could’ve been further from the truth.

He circled the block, his head on a swivel. Scanning the street, the surrounding yards. Cars parked along the curb. All was quiet—for now. It was only a matter of time before the place was crawling with Spanish thugs and Colombian henchmen. This was the calm before the storm. Time to batten down the hatches.

Reapproaching the street that held Miss Ettie’s B&B, he continued on toward Sabrina’s. She wasn’t asleep. She’d be up, pacing and worrying. Figuring out a way to keep the Kotko boy safe. Waiting for the same thing he was—for it all to come crashing down on them.

He stopped as soon as he reached her fence line, allowing the hydrangeas to hide him from view. He stood there for a moment, fighting the urge to climb her stairs and knock. To apologize and smooth things over.

Suddenly the door at the top of her third-floor landing opened and she appeared, a large rust-colored dog at her side. She took the steps quietly and cut across the yard to the street where she’d parked her car. He watched her unlock the door, letting the dog in first before she slid behind the wheel.

He crossed the street at a quick clip, reaching the car seconds before she turned the engine over. Raising his hand, he rapped his knuckles against the passenger side window. The dog in the seat next to her let out a sharp bark, floppy ears flattened against a sleek skull, quivering lips peeled back from large teeth.

Sabrina jumped in her seat, turning to place a hand on the dog’s flank. She looked through the window before she said something he couldn’t hear. The dog’s demeanor changed instantly; it no longer looked poised to attack but rather like it was waiting.

She said something else to the dog just before the window a few inches from his face was powered down. “Do you ever sleep?”

“About as much as you do,” he said with a shrug. “You finally got your own dog.”

“She was a gift,” Sabrina said as if she needed an excuse. “What are you doing here?”

“Funny, I was about to ask you the same thing.”

“I’m hungry. Thought I’d go grab a bite,” she said, the lie flowing smoothly. He could always tell when she was lying because she looked you right in the eye when she did it.

He chuckled and made a point to look at his watch before answering. “Yeah? Me too. Mind if I tag along?” He wasn’t hungry, but it was nearly eleven o’clock at night. She wasn’t going anywhere without him.

Her eyes narrowed slightly. “Yes.”

“Excellent,” he said, reaching through the open window to open the locked door from the inside. The dog shifted in the seat in front of him, letting out a low-level growl. He looked at the woman behind the dog. “You want to tell your bodyguard to relax?”

For a moment it looked like she would do no such thing but then she relented. “Stil en rustig, Avasa,” she said firmly and the dog’s demeanor changed again. Craning her neck around, she gave her mistress a few wipes with her tongue. Sabrina smiled and ran a hand over the dog’s head, ruffling her ears. “Okay, okay—achterbank,” she said, and the dog immediately did as she was told, moving to the back seat.

“Your dog responds to Dutch,” he said, opening the door and easing himself into the seat that had been vacated.

Sabrina started the car and shifted into drive. “Just a few key commands,” she said, pulling away from the curb.

The canines used by FSS were trained to follow Dutch commands. He knew without asking who had given her the dog.

Ben.

It bothered him more than it should. Here was more proof that while he had been busy trying to do the right thing and stay away, his partner had made himself at home in Sabrina’s life. Dwelling on Ben’s motives would prove dangerous, so he pushed the thought from his mind. They traveled in awkward silence for a while before he spoke again. “I’m sorry about earlier—”

She held up a hand, stopping him cold. “Don’t. There’s no need to apologize. I understand perfectly.”

“I don’t think you do,” he said. “Lark is Shaw’s lapdog. Sent here to keep tabs on me—on us. It’s safer if I …” He let his gaze drift out the window. Gone were the affluent homes and wide manicured lawns. In the space of twenty minutes they’d traded St. Francis Wood for the Tenderloin, one of San Francisco’s toughest neighborhoods.

She made a left onto Eddy and parallel parked in front of a Korean restaurant. “Safer if you what?” she said, killing the engine.

He didn’t answer, couldn’t really. Not without tearing down the wall he’d worked so hard to build between them.

Thankfully she let it go. “If you’re coming with me, you’re going to want to leave your gun in the car,” she said before looking over her shoulder. “Blijven en beschermen.”

Stay and protect.

As soon as the words were spoken, she was out of the car and around its front, heading for the Korean restaurant and leaving him little choice but to follow.