Page 74 of Shielded Secrets

Besides, as I stared in the room and let my eyes acclimate, I saw something I couldn’t pass up on. Beneath the table I was hiding under was a tablet. Someone must have dropped it with how it was lying back here to the side, face down and its battery dying.

But the brightness of the screen was what snagged my attention. If O’Malley walked back by, he could notice the light despite it being under the desk. I couldn’t take that chance. I picked it up to turn it off and stopped when I realized the black and white camera feed was of a familiar place.

That office. Jessica Nolan’s office. The camera had to be a hidden one, positioned in there, and I gaped at the tiny date reading on the frame.

The night of that meeting. The night I was attacked and saved by Rurik.

The night Marcus James was killed.It was what the cops supposedly wanted to bring me in for questioning about, even though that had to be a ploy.

Someone had been spying on the activity in that office with this secret camera. And as I replayed the footage, I witnessed another death on the screen.

Marcus James had been killed in that office, but it wasn’t by Eric Benson’s hands, like some of the Baranov men were thinking. It wasn’t one of the drug dealers either.

It was a stranger. A tall man with a dark beard. No tattoos or anything else showed on his face, neck, or arms, and I had no clue how to identify him. He was good-looking, but in such an unsuspecting way that he seemed like he could be any random person walking down the street.

He put his gun to Marcus’s head, and the politician wannabe dropped out of the camera’s view.

Holy shit!

I had evidence that would officially clear my name from anyone thinking they could arrest me or bring me in for questioning about a death I had no clue about.

But as I got my phone out and took a video of the video, I knew the only “authorities” I’d be sharing this with were my husband and his Baranov brothers.

32

RURIK

At the first report of a gunshot, I stopped beating on the security guard who was in need of a lesson about disrespecting the Baranov spy stationed on campus grounds.

With my fist halfway through the air, I stopped and glanced at the other Baranov soldier in the room with me. “Was that what I thought it was?”

He furrowed his brow and nodded.

“Shit.” I dropped the front of the man’s shirt, letting the idiot fall to the floor. Before he could gather the energy and breath to groan in pain, I jumped over him and ran out the door.

A gunshot wouldn’t be good news. Not if it came from my men or anyone else. I wanted no gunshots at all when Kelly was nearby.

The man with me cursed when we came to the guard I’d left with Kelly. He was alive, struggling to sit up and pressing his hand over a wound on his stomach. “She went that way.” He pointed. “She ran to safety as soon as he showed up.”

I nodded, spotting another Baranov running down the hall to assist us.

“As soon as who showed up?” I asked as I started to jog away with the one man as my backup. The new arrival lowered to his knees to help the wounded man compress the wound on his stomach.

“The mayor. O’Malley. He was walking with Benson,” the shot man said, cringing.

“Fuck. What the fuck?” I looked at the soldier who’d stuck with me. “Why would O’Malley be here?”

Kelly had assumed he was dead all this time, and only now he suddenly shows up and resumes his hunt for her?

“Maybe he was visiting Benson?” the soldier guessed. “All those politicians getting together and whatever.”

I doubted it could be that easy, but I ceased whispering with this man. We tried door after door, searching for Kelly. It was on the tip of my tongue to call out for her, but that would alert O’Malley or Benson to our location if they were looking around here.

It was too damn quiet. She had to be here. She had to be alive and hiding. And if she was, I would find her again.

Please, Kel. Please be safe and wait for me to save you again. Please.

I refused to let my mind go to the darker matter of losing her. Like she’d reminded me when I promised her she would be safer as a Baranov, she was capable of using her survival skills to stay safe until I could rescue her.

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