Page 9 of Sinner's Secret

“Did you know?” she asked him in a tone designed to entice a listener. “That at least two of the other waitresses at the diner won’t get into a cab after midnight unless you’re driving?”

That had his head turning despite his resolution to stay aloof. “You’re shitting me.”

“Nope. They think you have old-world manners, and it’s funny, but sometimes I can hear a hint of a Russian accent in your voice.”

“My people are from Slovenia, not Russia. I’m a US citizen now.”

“You don’t look old enough to have been married with a kid, then widowed for five years.”

He snorted. “Maybe I succeeded in pickling myself.”

She smiled at him. A sexy little grin that lit a hunger in him so strong it felt like she’d stabbed him in the gut. It took a ridiculous amount of control to keep himself in his seat and his hands, and fangs, to himself.

Fucking coconut.

“I’m no white knight,” he growled. “No hero.”

That smile just got wider. “You just saved me.”

“No woman deserves what they had in mind,” he snapped back. “Believe me, I’m not a nice man.” And for a moment he let the monster he’d become after his wife died peer out of his eyes.

Nika shrank back. It was automatic that reaction, the hindbrain recognizing a predator and a threat. But her tight lips told him without saying a word that she sure as shit didn’t like it.

“I’m an asshole, in case you forgot.” He turned away, unwilling to give her any more information about, or power over, him.

“An asshole with standards?” The question held a note of ironic derision.

“Yeah, I guess.” He looked at her, really looked. She appeared pale, sickly, but she’d put the silent asshole down in almost no time. “Do you really look so shitty? Or, did you use makeup to make yourself look that way.”

“Makeup. I’m trying to look like a victim.” She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, you really are an asshole with standards.”

“Why a victim?” The answer to his own question occurred to him as soon as the words were out of his mouth. “A sting. There’s some kind of illegal operation going on and you’re trying to get caught in it.”

She stared at him with a blank face.

“What are we talking about here?” He asked. What the hell was going on in his neighborhood that he hadn’t noticed? “Prostitution, drugs?”

Nika studied his face for a second or two, then said, “Human trafficking.”

“What?” Of all the disgusting things people did to each other, taking slaves was the worst of them all.

“The targets are very specific, tall, blonde women.”

Baz had to force the rising tide of anger down, put a lid on it, before he did something really stupid. Like let his inner monster out to hunt. “How long has this been going on?”

“Why?”

“This is my neighborhood, my people, and I hadn’t heard a thing, okay? Not a damned thing. Us cabbies, we gossip worse than a bunch of old ladies, and if any of us had noticed something like this, we’d all know about it. So, how long?”

Nika tilted her head to one side slightly, like she was suddenly very interested in what he was saying. His gut tightened into a knot. In his experience, whenever a woman looked at a man like that, she was planning his execution.

It surprised him when, instead of eviscerating him, she nodded. “I’ll tell you,” she said slowly. “But the deal is, you come to me with anything you hear on the street. Yes?” She held out her hand.

He looked at it but didn’t move to shake it. “You’ll share what you know with me too?”

“I’ll share what’s safe for you to know.” She gave him a grim smile. “I’m not going to give you an opportunity to have another one of those lapses in your assholery where you act like a hero for a minute or two and get your...boot shot up again.”

Goddamned cops. “Yeah, fine.” He took her hand and gave it a single shake.

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