Page 6 of To Keep

“I saw him kill a man in cold blood.” She took a breath. “A woman, too. I can still see it in slow motion when I close my eyes.”

“How’d he see you?”

“I screamed. Then I ran,” she said. “He would have caught me, but I hid for hours in a garage storage cabinet before finally running back to the city.”

“Back?”

“He lives in the suburbs. It took me hours of walking, running, and hiding from cars before I got home. I wasn’t there long before I realized he knew where I lived.”

Everything was starting to make sense. This girl really was innocent. But why should he care? She wasn’t his responsibility or his problem. He remembered where he was and calmed a degree. Viko would handle this clusterfuck now.

A few minutes later, he could hear footsteps coming down the winding grated metal staircase. The place was a modern marvel created from converted shipping containers.

“There you are, Galen. I was starting to wonder if you’d follow orders.” Viko moved slowly, deliberately, an unpredictable predator.

“Have I ever let you down?” Galen held out his arms, then walked toward the wall of glass facing the ocean.

“This has become … complicated.”

“Yeah, you told me about the fake cash.” Galen was getting bored with this contract already. Viko probably wanted him to return the favor and wipe Petrov off the face of the earth.

“It’s more than that. The man he killed, the one your target saw murdered, was one of ours.”

Galen immediately turned around. “Come again?”

“I thought this was all about snuffing out a witness. I mean, that asshole can kill whoever the fuck he wants. That’s not my issue. But when I found out it was Seth Dante, things stopped adding up.”

“What was he doing there? You sent him?”

Viko shook his head.

“He hired the Circle of Monsters to clean up the mess after he killed one of us? Does he have a death wish?”

Galen had only met Seth a few times in passing. None of them held hands, but they had to coordinate and work together on occasion. Petrov wasn’t supposed to be direct competition as he wasn’t into contract killing, so why make an enemy out of Viko? He wasn’t exactly known for his charming disposition.

“Why Seth?” Viko asked. “Why go the extra step to hire us rather than hiding the murder? He has his own cleaning crew. It would have been easy.”

“Who was the woman?” Galen asked.

“What woman?”

They both looked toward Skye. She gasped, her lips parting.

He walked back toward her. “You said you saw your boss kill a man and a woman, right?” Galen asked.

Skye nodded but said nothing.

Viko took a few brisk steps, getting into her personal space. Skye immediately darted closer to him, wrapping both her arms around one of his, like a child seeking a security blanket. He didn’t push her away.

“Tell me exactly what you saw.” Viko crossed his arms over his chest. “This is very important, so think clearly.”

“It was dark. There was a man dressed in black. They were arguing or something. Mr. Petrov shot him in the back of the head when he turned around. He dropped to the ground. Then he focused on the woman—”

“Who was she?”

Skye shrugged. “I’ve seen her a few times. I assumed she was one of his mistresses. He has quite a few.”

“Okay, what happened next?”

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