Page 52 of Shielded Secrets

“Come on.” He shook his head at the guard he’d shot, seeming annoyed and frustrated more than anything. “We’ve got to?—”

I struggled to stand, still so shaky from the violence. “I… Why…?” Now I shook my head too, as if that gesture could make my thoughts settle rationally in my head. “Why did he have to push like that and…”

“Some people are just assholes like that,” he growled. He held my hand, keeping me back almost comically. As if he feared that guard coming back from the dead to attack me. It seemed symbolic, like he wanted to always stand between me and any danger, but it was already done.

Nothing could protect me from the turmoil of my life now. I’d well and truly invited this kind of chaos just by wanting a man like Rurik, by befriending a woman like Eva. But it was still such a shock to the system that I couldn’t move past how suddenly things could spiral into death and gore.

I clung to Rurik’s hand as he got his phone out. All the while he called the Baranovs here on campus to hide this body and deal with the evidence, he scanned the walls and the ceilings, no doubt looking for evidence of a camera or anyone being able to see what happened here.

“I didn’t see any cameras,” I told him when he disconnected the call and made another one.

He huffed out a breath and arched a brow at me. “You knew to look?”

I swallowed, not wanting to explain where I’d gotten that part of my street smarts from. Yes, I knew to always make sure there wouldn’t be incriminating evidence to damn me later. Ihad my first lesson with that when I fought back against Officer O’Malley.

“Lev,” he said into the phone instead of waiting for me to reply. “We’ll be on our way.”

Unlike the last time Rurik whisked me away from danger on campus and took me to the Baranov mansion, I was glad for his rescue and help now. The further I could get from this dead guard, the more distance I could put between me and the waste of time that my spying attempt had been, the better.

Rurik looked at the stairwell as two Baranov men filed down, ready to clean up and handle this. I hadn’t enjoyed the benefit of a cleanup crew when I took someone’s life, and I cringed at how morbid of a thought that had to be.

What is happening to me? What is my life becoming?

I didn’t have an answer, but as I held on to Rurik’s warm, big hand, I prayed that he’d help me find my way.

22

RURIK

Kelly didn’t protest moving in with me after her “debut” of working for Oleg. The Boss hadn’t been disappointed in how little intel she’d actually gotten from wearing that wire in the offices while she worked. And that pissed me off more.

“Were you just testing her to see where her loyalty lies?” I asked him when he reassured her that he was thankful for her trying to get information at the admin offices.

“No.” He shook his head, studying me. “I don’t need to test her. I simply saw this as another alternative way of getting more information about the Bensons.”

He was still after clues about Sonya’s death. I wasn’t sure at this point whether he cared about whatever Igor Petrov or the Ilyins were trying to accomplish on campus anymore. He didn’t need to worry about the drug distribution. We had other and more lucrative avenues of income.

It wasn’t my call to make, though, whether Kelly would be expected to spy again. Her one and only time of working for the family hadn’t ended smoothly.

“If that fucking guard hadn’t been such a dick…” Lev muttered as we headed inside the mansion.

I nodded. “Fucker would’ve been put in his place sooner or later,” I said.

“Yes. But it wasn’t convenient for him to be a hassle for us, right now,” he replied.

We jogged up the steps to enter the mansion together, just coming back from following up with the crew on campus who’d been there to manage another new issue that impacted Kelly.

“Nothing is convenient about this,” I told him, pausing him from entering the house for a second. “I was so fucking happy to have a reason to be near Kelly again. You understand that, right?”

He nodded.

“But it’s one thing after another.”

Last night, via the camera we hid at the entrance to her apartment, cops had shown up to talk with her. It looked like Jerome had planted drugs in a locker that she still had a rental on in the gym. The assholes hadn’t even waited for her to answer the door and broke in to search.

There were no damn drugs there, just as I suspected that she’d never had drugs in any locker on campus. She wasn’t the kind of woman to do drugs. She had yet to even drink at dinners with us. Kelly was square.

“It always seems like that,” Lev agreed. “But all we need to focus on right now is why those drugs were planted now.”

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