“You can’t!” Colleen yelled at Tristan. He could barely hear her feminine voice above the helicopter engines, even though the pitch of their whine was falling as they wound down. She kept yelling at him, “Those mafia bastards are after you!”
Jesus, he gave up. He lifted his hands. “I can draw them away from you. I’ll give them whatever they want so they’ll have no reason to come after you.”
“Tristan, that isn’t what I meant. You shouldn’t do that. Giving crime lords what they want is never the best option.”
Micah had stepped out of the helicopter and approached the two of them. “What the hell is going on with you guys, Twist? Were those guys Russian?”
This was all out of control. Tristan shook his head like a bug was divebombing him. He said to Micah, “I was trying to raise some capital for a big venture, a lot of capital, and Mayamiko Botha sold me out.”
Micah frowned, confused. “Mayamiko Botha sold you out? Some of the other financial people we deal with, yeah, I could see that. But her?”
He nodded. “Botha stated that GrazBank couldn’t finance me, and then they all walked out of the room, just like that, no conversation about finances or anything. And then a bunch of Russian mobsters came in and started demanding to give me money, laundered money, and said they were from the Butorin bratva.”
Micah rocked back on his heels, and his eyebrows rose. “The Butorins? Like Tatiana and Dima Butorin?”
“Yeah, but this guy was one of the other Butorins. I don’t remember him from high school at all. I don’t think he was at Le Rosey. They want a piece of software I wrote, and they were willing to finance my deal. But the cost was my eternal soul, you know? Once you do business with a bratva, they own you forever.”
“Right,” Micah said, now also frowning.
Colleen had crossed her arms over her chest where her wet dress was clinging to her figure, and she was glaring at the two of them. “You cannot just give in to them. I mean, jeez, Tristan. They essentially kidnapped us, and they’re threatening you. You shouldn’t do business with people like that.”
Tristan sighed again. His suit was soaked from the sprinkler system at the restaurant, too, and the soggy fabric was beginning to chill his skin in the breeze blowing from the sea. “They goddamned kidnapped us because they wanted my virus.”
Micah peered more closely at him. “Virus? You’re writing malware now, Twist?”
He shrugged, but as a dismissive gesture, not resignation. “Not that kind of malware. It’s not ransomware or destructive. It trolls the internet. To be specific, it’s not so much of a virus as a worm, but I know what you would’ve said if I’d told you that the Butorins want my worm.”
Micah snorted.
“But they’re after me, Micah. If I don’t give it to them, they threatened to kill us. I mean, they need me to get it, but they specifically threatened Colleen to make me do what they want.”
“And she doesn’t have anything to do with it,” Micah said, the dryness in his voice laced with skepticism.
Tristan shook his head again, frustrated with Micah. “I just met her a few days ago. She’s an innocent bystander, but they know who she is now.”
Micah turned and asked her, “You’re sure they know who you are?”
Colleen nodded. “They knew my name and that I’m from Phoenix, and that I used to go to Southwestern State. They probably have my address, too.”
Micah turned back to him. “Then they’ll find her if she goes off somewhere. She has to stay with you.”
Tristan insisted, “I have to handle this alone. I can’t involve her anymore.”
“It’s too late for that lone wolf shit, Twist. She’s involved, and she’ll be safer with you than walking around with no one to protect her.”
“Bullshit, Micah. She needs to go somewhere and hide. Colleen, can you go to your parents’ place for a few days until this blows over?”
Colleen shook her head, the delicate skin between her brows crumpling. “No.”
Micah gestured at her. “It isn’t going to blow over, Twist. If the Butorins have decided to recruit you, you’re either recruited or you’re dead. And if they’ve decided Colleen is your weak spot, she is. Where are your parents, doll?”
Micah referring to Colleen as doll annoyed Tristan. Micah meant something entirely different by doll.
She said, “They live outside of Winslow, but I can’t go back there.”
Tristan glanced at her.
“They won’t have me,” she said, staring at the asphalt beneath their feet. “We’re estranged.”
Yet another thing they had in common. “Right. Well, that’s a conversation for another day,” Tristen said and turned back to Micah. “She could go to your place in San Francisco for a few days. Lie low, as it were.”
Micah said, “You both could, maybe.”
“Or you could take her somewhere,” Tristan said, gesturing at the desert mountains on the landward side of the airport. “Take her back to Phoenix and set her up in a different apartment. Put it under your name. I’ll give her my credit card to pay for it all.”
Micah shook his head. “You know they’ll be looking for both of your credit cards.” He glanced up at the private plane parked a few yards away. “You didn’t rent that with your credit cards, did you? Are they tracking the plane?”
“I used CurieCoin cryptocurrency. It’s supposed to be untraceable. I use a combination of CurieCoin, Bitcoin, and a few others for pretty much everything.”
“Paranoid, much?”
“I’m essentially a hacker, Micah. Hell yeah, I’m paranoid about cybersecurity. I could use crypto to set her up in a safe house.”
“She needs to stay with you, Tristan. She’ll be a sitting duck in some random apartment in Phoenix. They’ll kill her just to get your attention.”
Colleen said to both of them, “Screw this. I’m leaving.”
She turned and stomped off, her wet hemline slapping her ankles.
Micah called after her, “They’ll kill you, and then they’ll kill him.”
She stopped walking, but she didn’t turn back.
Tristan scuffed the loose gravel of the helipad with his soggy dress shoe. The leather was ruined. Jian was going to have a fit.
Micah continued, “It’s suicide for both of you if you split up. Your only chance is to stay together.”
It was just weird that Micah was arguing so hard for them to stay together. He was usually pragmatic to the point of emotionlessness.
“Why the hell are you arguing so hard for this, Micah?” Tristan demanded. “You don’t know they’re going to come after both of us if we go our separate ways. Unless you have inside information?”
“No, but of course, that’s what they’re going to do. That’s what bratvas like the Butorins always do, like when Dima went after Dragoljub junior year? His parents hadn’t signed on with Putin’s organization yet, so Dima made sure Drago and his parents knew that Drago’s life was at stake.”
They both walked toward where Colleen had stopped walking away from them. She stood with her back to them, opening and closing her fists.
“But this isn’t like that,” Tristan argued with him.
“Yeah, it is. And if they take her out, afterward, you’ll be wrecked. I know you, dumbass. Even with therapy, you won’t ever recover from something like that. Like that one time at school when the headmaster thought Arthur was the one who’d inserted malware into the teachers’ grading system and scrambled everybody’s grades, and you went and turned yourself in rather than let him take the fall. You scrubbed toilets for a whole semester for that. If they kill someone because of something you got them into, and especially someone you’re as invested in as her, you’ll go off the deep end. I don’t want you to unalive yourself, asshole. So we have to figure out a way to keep you both safe.”
Invested in? He hadn’t invested anything in Colleen beyond a few days’ time and a couple of rolls in the proverbial hay. Her technical coding knowledge was entirely superfluous, if he had wanted to admit it, considering his own. He’d snatched her up because he’d felt sorry that he’d gotten her fired and she was destitute, and he knew how that felt.
But, invested in?
Nah.
Tristan stared at Micah, then looked at Colleen, who’d turned back to them and was still drenched, the ocean breeze dragging her wet dress against her body.
If those assholes hurt or kidnapped or murdered anyone as a ploy to pressure Tristan, he’d be pissed off beyond measure and would drown himself in guilt, and he would find a way to get back at them to avenge what they’d done.
But Colleen—
Standing out on the nighttime airport tarmac in the glaring floodlights from the hangar, she looked like a half-drowned hamster, angry as hell at being wet and yet freakin’ adorable.
And yeah, if those Butorins hurt Colleen, if they killed her, he’d go rage-crazed and kill as many of them as he could until they took him out. He’d unleash computer viruses on them that he’d created in his mind but never typed because they were too dangerous to exist, things that would recognize VIN numbers on cars, watch the navigation software for when it was driving near a cliff, and disable the brakes while jamming the accelerator. He would become Death for them and everyone associated with them.
He was a damned mess of wanting to shove her away. Getting tied down and dragging another person around with him was stupid because eventually he would come back to an empty house. And yet, he was desperate to throw himself on top of her when the bullets hailed down.
And the bullets were going to hail down. He’d screwed up and made sure of that.
Knowing that Colleen Frost, his funny accidental admin and his little he should protect, was out in the world somewhere, alone, dodging and hiding while organized crime thugs hunted her to do unspeakable things to her before they let her die, would be unbearable.
And if the Butorins found her—dear God, if they found her—he would not be able to live with himself. After he’d destroyed the world with his revenge, he would follow her into the unknown to try to protect her there because he hadn’t in this world.
Invested in was a devastating understatement of how he felt about Colleen Frost.
He turned back to Micah. “Well, shit.”
Micah threw his hands in the air, a sigh of exasperation Tristan had seen more than once in their friendship that had spanned over half their lives. “Yeah, and that’s why the two of you need to stay together. If you let her go off somewhere, they’ll get to her. If she’s with you, you’ve got a chance of either getting away or getting them to back off.”
Colleen yelled at Micah, “Hey, I get a say in this, and I said I’m buying a plane ticket on a different airplane and getting the hell out of here!”
They both looked down at her, a furious little ball of cute.
She flung her arm out from her side while pointing at Micah, and water drops flew off her fingertip and splattered on his shirt.
Micah looked down at the spreading spots on his white dress shirt.
Colleen yelled, “Just because this new guy made something up doesn’t make it true.”
Tristan wanted to take her in his arms and pat her dry, but she might bite his head off. “Yeah, but he’s right. The Butorins are murderous assholes, and I’m sorry I got you involved with them.”
“You don’t know what they’ll do. No one knows that.”
Tristan gestured. “Maybe not, but Micah’s right. You’re safer with me than if you go off alone. Come on. Stay with me. I need my coding consultant. I’ll double my previous salary offer.”
Her sweet brown eyes were huge, and she was panting like she’d already run miles and yet she was desperate to keep running. “You don’t need me, Twist. I heard what those guys were saying about you. You coded two highly advanced pieces of software. I was thinking about the worm that keeps you anonymous. I can think of some ways to do it, but I’d get caught. Mine wouldn’t work because antimalware programs would kill it immediately. You don’t need a junior coder with half of a bachelor’s degree to do anything. This is too much for me. I should leave.”