“Right.” Sergey glared right at Colleen and then glanced toward the door to the main part of the restaurant. “I do not like how long Svetlana is taking. You say she was in bathroom with you?”
Colleen chewed the buckwheat pancakes slowly, grinding the salty caviar between her molars and pointing to her full mouth to explain why she was not answering that Russian-mafia-kingpin asshole about where his teenage sex slave was.
When she glanced at Tristan, she saw his brilliant blue eyes had gone slightly wider and more wary, and he’d turned his face just a bit away so that he was looking at her sideways.
Colleen swallowed with an exaggerated gulp. “Svetlana said she was going to be right behind me. She just needed to deal with some girl stuff.” She leaned over her plate conspiratorially. “You know, girl stuff. Womanly matters. Female problems.”
Usually, that was enough to make any guy immediately cease his line of questioning, but Sergey was still staring at her. He turned his head slightly toward the other men at the table but didn’t break eye contact with Colleen as he said, “Alexi, go look for Svetlana.”
Colleen stared back at him, smiling. She didn’t know what she was going to do when they figured out that Svetlana wasn’t in there, but Colleen was going to maintain this charade every second she could to give that poor girl a head start.
Sergey hadn’t stopped staring at Colleen. “She won’t get far. I like my playthings. She has no money or phone or credit card.”
Which was why Colleen had given Svetlana all the cash that had been in her purse, the cash that Tristan had given her for rent and everything else. She’d also called her a rideshare cab from the app on her phone before pushing Svetlana out of the ladies’ bathroom window set high up near the ceiling. “She’s just in the bathroom. Why would she need money or a phone?”
“If she is in toilet, then everything will be fine. Alexi will check to see if she is in there.”
Colleen gasped and made her eyes big and startled. “You didn’t send that guy into a women’s bathroom, did you? Assuming he doesn’t get the crap beaten out of him by the masc lesbian who was shining her brass knuckles at the sink, if someone screams, that guy is going to be charged with all sorts of sex crimes. You don’t barge into women’s restrooms in California.”
“I think all will be fine with Alexi looking in women’s toilet. The owner of this restaurant knows me. I do much business here.”
Dammit. “It’s not up to the owner. The other managers and the maître d’ are mandatory reporters,” she ad-libbed, remembering back to when she had been a resident assistant in college. “They have to report it, legally, and right away. If they don’t report it, they can be charged or sued if someone else was in there and felt threatened. If your guy goes in the ladies’ room, there’s going to be police all over this restaurant. You need to tell him to come back.”
The door opened, and Alexi barged back in. “Svetlana is not in bathroom. Frank did not see her exit out the front, and Sarkis said she did not go through kitchen.”
Sergey’s eyes closed to angry slits, and he leaned over his plate as he bared his teeth at Colleen. “What did you do with my girl?”
Colleen concentrated on looking as surprised as the rest of them. “She was just in there. I can go in and check the stalls for you. Since there wasn’t any screaming or arresting, I can only surmise that Alexi didn’t really go in there.”
With his honor impugned, Alexi began arguing in Russian.
However, when Sergey looked at Colleen, there was just enough doubt in his frown that she thought maybe she could waste just a little bit more time. “Look, I’m the only girl here. If you want someone to go in there and talk to her, I’m really your only choice.”
As she scooted to get up from her chair, she caught a glimpse of the lit screen of Tristan’s phone under the table and him deftly sliding his thumb over the glass without looking at it, typing Red flag.
Colleen paused, but a SWAT team didn’t break into the room, so he must not be signaling police.
Ugh, that would’ve been too easy.
She announced to the room, “I’ll just be right back. It’ll just take a minute to check on her. I’m sure she’s fine.” Then she flounced through the doorway and out into the restaurant.
She was outside the private room.
Colleen had done it. She’d gotten out again.
Which had been her plan for the first time except that Svetlana had needed rescuing far more than herself and Tristan.
If she could get them a car, she could call or text Tristan and have him get out somehow, maybe tell him that he needed to bring her something in the bathroom, and then they’d be free.
Colleen started hurrying through the restaurant, grabbing at her phone from her tiny purse and trying to poke the rideshare app with shaking fingers.
Commotion swelled behind her, a door slamming and male shouts.
Colleen trotted faster through the restaurant. Her finger kept slipping on the glass of her phone screen as she tried to tap while she ran, moving the app instead of clicking it.
Footsteps pounded behind her. She glanced back, ready to duck if someone was swinging or grabbing at her.
Tristan was dodging between the dining tables and gaining on her, watching behind himself and then catching her glance with his bright blue eyes.
He darted sideways toward the wall, and Colleen followed. Surely, they were better off together than apart.
On the wall, a small red box stood out from the gold-flecked plaster.
Tristan smashed it with his elbow and yanked the handle within.
Fire alarms blared.
Sprinklers rained water over the dining room and the patrons eating their meals.
Chaos.
Women screamed while men shouted, and everyone held their arms or menus over their heads while they ran in every direction, sometimes in circles, trying to find exits.
Tristan boomed, “Fire!” above the tinny screams and shouts.
Everyone seemed to take up the chant, screaming, “Fire!” as they wove between the tables, knocking some over.
Porcelain plates crashed, and wine glasses shattered on the floor as water showered over everything.
Tristan grabbed her hand and demanded, “Is the girl in the bathroom?”
Colleen shook her head. “No! I pushed her out the window!”
The water streaming over Tristan’s face glistened almost silver in the overhead lights. The dark vest defined his narrow waist and hips, and his wet dress shirt clung to his broad shoulders.
“You got her out? She’s gone?” he asked, his eyes intense as he stared at her.
He was pissed. He was pissed at her that she’d rescued Svetlana from the horrible things that slimeball Sergey had been doing to her after he’d bought her from a guy who’d kidnapped her from a small town in backwater Russia.
Colleen didn’t care. She drew her shoulders back and said, “I watched her get in the car after I pushed her out the window. He bought her, Tristan. He’s been raping her and burning her with cigarettes and other terrible things. You should have seen the way she sobbed in there and the way she thanked me so desperately, over and over, for just doing what a barely halfway-decent human being would do. She’s only sixteen! I couldn’t leave her with him.”
“You did the right thing,” he said as they skirted the edge of the crowd, shoving a fluttering man out of the way.
“But we might have gotten out if I would’ve left her,” Colleen fretted.
“I’ll get us out.”
Near the back of the room, the Russian mafia gang spilled through the door, their heads swiveling as they scanned the main dining hall.
Colleen stepped backward, a cold splash of panic slapping her skin.
Sergey saw the two of them standing along the wall and pointed at them, shouting and gesturing wildly.
She gulped air. “Tristan—”
The bratva men sprinted toward Colleen and Tristan, reaching inside their jackets as they ran.
Tristan glanced back toward them. He gathered Colleen under one arm, protecting her from the spraying water and anything else that might be coming their way.
The cologne he wore on his warm skin seeped through the wet fabric of his dress shirt and vest, spicy cinnamon and wood smoke, like sipping warm apple cider in front of a fire.
His low growl almost emanated from his throat just above her head, “Good girl.”
Colleen almost hopped sideways with the shock of Tristan’s deep voice, at the British intonations in how he said it, at the familiar feel of his body against her side from just a few days before.
Holy shit. No way.
There was no way on God’s green Earth for Tristan King and TwistyTrader of the Devilhouse to be the same—
Gunshots blasted, chipping the wall near her head.
With his enormous form nearly wrapped around her, Tristan half-hurried, half-carried Colleen through the crowd, his other hand stretched in front of him to stiff-arm people out of the way. A fire exit appeared through the spraying water, and he jammed the bar to open it to a short hallway and another door.
Within seconds, they emerged into the darkness outside the restaurant, and Tristan was shouting into his phone in his hand, “Micah, if you’re going to pull a rabbit out of your hat, you’d better do it right now!”
Thunder filled the air around them.
Behind every great fortune lies a great crime, and Tristan "Twist" King is being hunted by two Russian bratvas who want him to commit his.