Page 39 of Traitor

Grey stood up, signaling that the meeting was over. “Get a date and let me know. We’ll catch us a fucking mole.”

“Ladies and gentlemen, on behalf of the flight crew, welcome to Denver.”

I blinked to clear my head, realizing that I’d actually managed to sneak in some sleep this flight. People began unbuckling and reaching into the overhead bins to gather their belongings.

Yep. I was officially in the movie Groundhog Day.

“Come to Denver. It’s gorgeous,” I muttered angrily to myself as I disembarked, earning myself a condescending stare from a blue-haired old woman wearing a paisley neck pillow as if she was making a fucking fashion statement.

“What the fuck are you looking at?” I sneered before storming off the jet-bridge. It wasn’t Blue-Hair’s fault, it was Lauren’s. She refused to back down on her plan, even going as far as to threaten to cut me out of it if I argued with her one more time.

On top of that, I’d been looking into the messages Katya had received and it wasn’t good. This guy knew his way around the system. I’d been hoping for a run-of-the-mill crazy living in his parent’s basement somewhere out in Jersey.

Blue Hair caught up to me and popped me upside the head with her paisley neck pillow. “You kiss your mother with that mouth, mister? You need to learn some respect. Kids these days…” She continued muttering to herself as she headed toward the train, but I held back, deciding that waiting for the next one was the best way to guarantee I remained concussion free.

I was starting to think that I was fucking cursed.

I finally managed to make it to baggage claim and, in some weird twist of fate, Blue Hair was already long gone. The next four and a half hours were spent in my rental car, searching Katya’s condo and traveling up winding mountain roads, while forcing myself to yawn every so often, just to pop my ears. Fucking altitude change.

I made it to the cabin just after dark. The only problem was that I was the only one. Katya was nowhere to be found. I tried her cell phone several times, but it kept going straight to voicemail.

Two hours later, I was contemplating going in through the window and searching the place. I decided to try her one last time before performing a B&E.

She answered with a cheerful, “Hey, Mike. You calling to tell me I can come home and give up my dreams of becoming a mountain-woman?”

“Where are you, Katya? I’ve been trying to reach you for hours.” I tried to keep my tone casual, but it turned out that casual had left the fucking building two hours ago.

Her voice got quieter. “I got a job. I needed to get out of the house.”

I rubbed at my forehead wearily. “I’m at the cabin. We need to talk.” I hung up and got comfortable on her porch swing; steadying my breathing, while also working out a way to tell her that she couldn’t go back to the city yet.

A half-hour later, headlights hit the front of the house, damn near blinding me. Katya unsteadily pushed her bike up the hill with a truck right on her heels.

I reached for my gun, before remembering it was still locked away in my luggage. “Who’s this?” I asked as she drew closer to the house.

She shrugged and dropped her bike onto the gravel, as if this sort of thing happened to her all the time. “Some guy I pissed off.”

The man parked and got out. “Is she okay? I just wanted to make sure she made it home safely.”

I walked toward him, unarmed, but hopefully sending a message for him to back off. “She said she upset you. Did you hurt her?”

Katya fell over and immediately began crying and muttering to herself. She gathered up her things before crawling across the gravel path. Her knees were going to be a bloody mess.

I grabbed her arm and hauled her back onto her feet. “What in the hell are you rambling about over here?”

A dog joined the man as they made their way into the house next door. I called out, “Hey, I’m not finished talking to you.”

Katya shook her head and patted my chest. “Don’t—he’s fine. It’s me.”

Once inside, I glared at her. “Couldn’t just wait and see what I had to say, could you? You had to go and get blitzed beforehand.”

As if completely oblivious to everything I was saying, she took a big swig from the vodka bottle in her hand.

“What do you need, Detective?”

I sat down on the couch, my body desperate for sleep. It had been days since I’d slept soundly, the nap on the plane notwithstanding. There was too much work to be done. “Katya, I thought you stopped drinking. Your dad said you were sober when we last spoke.”

My mouth began to water as I watched her. I didn’t give a fuck that it wasn’t tequila—it was liquor and my body had been deprived of it for too long. I wasn’t under Grey’s jurisdiction anymore; I could drink and keep it a secret.

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