Page 54 of Kings of Violence

She hands one of the envelopes to me, and I realize there’s a zipper at the top. It’s lined with aluminum, protecting the prize inside.

Phones.

“Wow,” I say, pulling one of the phones out. “Burners? Or…” I turn it on, surprised to see that it still has any charge at all.

It’s also not simply a burner phone. There are several numbers saved in the address book. The names look generic, like fast food restaurants and other businesses, but I have no doubt they’re more than just that.

Sierra is flipping through the notebook, brow creased in concentration. “This is like…” She shakes her head. “If I can crack this, I’m ineverything.” She barks out a laugh. “God, that was dumb. Though I guess Sean had to hide this somewhere.”

“The feds didn’t find it,” I point out, looking back up to the ceiling. “Do we want to check the other light fixtures too?”

“And help you more?” she retorts, but there’s no venom in her voice. She sighs. “Yeah, may as well. We got lucky that this was in the first one, but there’s no telling what he shoved into the others.”

We end up checking all of the fixtures. We find more phones, a few fake passports, and a whole lot of cash. I count at least 100k in there.

“No guns, though,” I mutter.

“Probably were afraid that much metal would set off detectors,” she says. She stares down at the loot we’ve acquired from the place. “It still doesn’t explain why they felt the need to come all the way out to the middle of nowhere to work, but maybe the feds found something incriminating that we don’t know about out here.”

“Or it’s nothere, but near here.” I peek out the window to the concrete parking lot. “Pretty close to the mountain hiking trails.”

Sierra joins me and scowls. “Or you drive twenty minutes in the other direction to all the old slaughterhouses.” She pauses, then shrugs. “Either way, it might be in this notebook.” She holds it up, saying sardonically, “I doubt the code is anything too sophisticated. Sean had to understand it, after all. I wonder…”

I wait for her to continue, but she only shakes her head.

“Never mind.”

I do another sweep of the place, but I don’t notice anything obvious. If there was more here, the feds really have taken it.

“We take this back to Kotya,” I say, packing up our finds. “I guess we can tell him you aren’t just a hole to be filled.”

I don’t know why I said that, except that I still can’t look at her without my emotions roiling inside me.

Sierra glares at me. “I shouldn’t have told you a fucking thing,” she mutters. “You’re such an asshole. Every time I think you might be halfway decent, you say some shit like that.”

“Good thing I don’t care what you think about me,” I snap back. I don my helmet and storm out to the motorcycle.

She follows me, and I don’t even care that she’s seething.

Even the ride back home doesn’t improve my mood, though.

TWELVE

Konstantin

“Sendsomebody to pick up the shipments,” Roman says over the phone. “The paperwork should all be cleared, but we don’t want to take chances.”

I nod, and I’m glad he can’t see me rolling my eyes.

Roman acts like I haven’t been running our American operations for months.

Even when Petrov was nominally in charge, I did most of the work.

“Yes,” I answer rotely as I tap through my emails. I use VPNs and other methods to prevent any of my browsing and traffic from being discovered, but it still pays to ensure there’s nothing incriminating to be found. “Is Father there? I’d like to speak to him about the whole Winters situation.”

Roman makes a disgruntled noise. “You can tell me.”

If I tell him, he’ll take credit for anything I’ve done. That’s always been the way of it. We’ve never been the kind of family who “prop each other up” or cheer for each others’ success.

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