Page 66 of Shielded Secrets

“The last I heard, they’re calling him Ben Warner.”

I shrugged and shook my head. “Never heard of him before.”

He nodded as he folded papers to be name cards for the guests’ tables. “Me neither. It’s got to be an alias.”

“But who are you even talking about?”

Lev joined us, jumping right into the conversation. Since Maxim, Irina’s brother, had come to live here, we’d all been getting a crash course in reading lips. The teen was deaf and was very good at giving us pointers on how to read lips. Lev, of course, was almost a pro now. He had been “reading” what Vik and I were saying.

“The man who I killed, but didn’t kill, when I took out Yusef Ilyin.” He scowled as he spoke, clearly unhappy about anyone questioning a detail of his last assignment before becoming Eva’s bodyguard and now Oleg’s right-hand man.

“The Ilyin guard?” I asked, familiar with the strange incident.

“No.” Lev shook his head. “The Ilyins never said he was one of theirs.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Then why would he ever be there to be a bodyguard for Yusef Ilyin?”

Lev and Vik shrugged.

“No one can follow this fucker, but he’s been seen around. On campus, in the city.” Vik shook his head. “He’sanotherperson to keep an eye on.”

There was no shortage of those.

“And now the Boss is getting interested in him,” Lev said. “Because he was seen tailing Eric Benson recently.”

I frowned. “Is he that serious about hoping for clues about Sonya from someone in the Benson family?” It was just such a long time ago that Sonya disappeared.

“It seems like it,” Lev said, frowning when a soldier approached us.

We were all alerted to this man’s direct approach. He had that look, the serious, I’m-on-a-mission, get-out-of-my-way soberness that had to mean something happened.

“Now what?” I muttered.

I had no reason to be concerned. Jerome Parson, the blight from Kelly’s past, was dead. She couldn’t be under any threat now. In that recording that Kelly got on her phone when she was taken, it sounded like it was Jerome’s idea to kidnap Kelly. Eric had seemed hesitant to use her to get intel. So Eric Benson couldn’t be after her.

“Lev?” The man nodded once in acknowledgment once he reached us. He glanced at Vik, then me, giving us a nonverbal indication that he was here to speak to all of us. But his attention returned to me and lingered. “Rurik, there has been a development.”

“For fuck’s sake,” I muttered. “Right when I’m telling myself therecan’tbe a development with Kelly.”

“What’s going on, Nick?” Lev asked.

“The cameras at the apartment show the several officers going to Ms. Garnet’s?—”

“That’s Mrs. Baranov,” I corrected.

He nodded. “Sorry. It’s still so new. Several officers went to your wife’s apartment ten minutes ago. It looks as though they are trying to arrest her.”

I huffed. “What the fuck for?” I turned to face Vik. “You cleaned it all up at that office, right?”

“Yes, of course. It was all handled, just like any other cleanup. What the hell is going on?”

I glanced in the direction of the women, glad that Kelly was far enough across the room that she was oblivious to what we were talking about.Shehadn’t learned how to read lips yet. But I bet she could read how serious I looked. I positioned myself so she wouldn’t see me around Nick’s sharing this update.

“We’ve been following the police chatter, and it sounds like they’re trying to say she’s obstructing justice and impeding their investigation of Marcus James’s death.”

That was old news now. Jerome was the last man to be killed there.

Lev rolled his eyes. “Well, they’re not going to get close enough to try to arrest her here. They won’t get past the gate.”

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