Page 14 of Savage Surrender

“That’s not true.Isuspect she’s up to something. But I can’t tell what.”

“How does she act suspiciously around you?” Rurik asked.

“Just little things I picked up on.” Nothing I could pinpoint accurately, but small quirks I noticed. She had the inner workings of a spy. She people watched, even when she tried to make it less obvious. She always sat with her back to the wall and had a vantage point that would allow her to see everything happening in a room. She had that quiet, perceptive nature, slow to engage or participate until she got a good feeling for the room or group. That wasn’t a paranoid kind of behavior, but rather, soldier-like behavior.

“I wouldn’t discount the idea of her being a spy,” Lev warned. “Even though it would make more sense to have a soldier carry out the task of spying on anything Petrov is plotting, women have been used for surveillance. Think about some of the women you’ve caught at the whorehouses, wired or recording clients.”

I nodded in reluctant agreement. That had happened, but it was usually a matter of a greedy and overzealous whore trying to get ahead for herself, not acting as an agent for a crime family.

“I heard some of the rumors about what the Boss sent you to Moscow to look into,” Lev added. “The rumors that Sonya could have been used as a spy when she disappeared.”

Again, he was right. The theory that Sonya hadn’t run away with her mother floated out there, and it came with the detail that Sonya had been expected to be a spy outside of and perhaps against the Baranov organization.

“But she was so young when she disappeared.” That happened years ago. “Per the lack of answers and clues I found over there, I’m more inclined to think Sonya and her mother are dead.”

Neither of them replied, not agreeing or arguing with me on that point.

“Irina has to be defiant against whatever Igor is plotting or trying to do,” Lev reasoned.

“Because she helped Eva escape and save you?” They had told me about that already. “That does make it sound like she would be a friend, not a foe.”

“She saved Eva. If it weren’t for Irina stepping up and helping her, I don’t know how that day would’ve turned out,” Lev said. “Above all else, I owe hermythanks for helping Eva, whatever her motivations were.”

“But what would her ulterior motive be?” Rurik asked, like he was wondering aloud. “From what I saw of Eva’s semester there, she and Irina didn’t befriend each other. For a while, we were operating under the assumption that Irina was behind the rumors that spread about Eva, that Eva was the reason more drugs were showing up on campus.”

Lev nodded. “True.”

“She had to have an ulterior motive to help Eva escape, though,” I said. “And one way or another, I’ll find a way to get close to her and get her to open up to me.” I looked them in the eye, one at a time, serious. “I’ll get her to spill her secrets to me.”

“I’m surprised a ladies’ man like you hasn’t already,” Lev teased.

Rurik grinned. “Yeah. What’s taking so long?”

“I haven’t gotten close to her yet.” I shrugged.

“Yet? You’re assuming you can?” Lev asked, brows raised.

They were having way too much fun with this, poking fun at me.

“She seems a bit standoffish,” I admitted. Too cool and collected. Hiding her thoughts too damn well.

“Ifyoucan’t get a woman to talk…” Rurik shook his head. “There’s no hope.”

“At the brothel, sure. In a club, yes.” I was a dominant in those cases. “But at a college campus where I’m supposed to be her professor to get in and spy?”

Lev shrugged. “I doubt where you get her to open up matters.”

“But if you’re implying I could use my, um, former skills to manipulate her…”

“To seduce her?” Rurik guessed.

He and Lev both nodded.

“I’m surprised you haven’t tried that already,” Lev admitted.

From the first sight of her, the thought had entered my mind. I’d spent the last two weeks talking myself out of directly confronting her and trying to seduce her. My excuse for this delay was wanting to get a feeling for what I was working against. To observe, then act. But like Rurik and Lev were explaining, it wasn’t clear what I was facing. It wasn’t obvious what secret Irina was hiding.

“Getting too old?” Rurik teased.

---