Page 16 of Lethal Obsession

You don’t forget friends like that.

Unfortunately, given her late-night visit and rather pained expression, I suspect our friendship is about to be tested.

“Please tell me that wasn’t Ron Watkins you just fed to the gators,” she says without preamble.

Dima’s cough fails to mask his chuckle. He shrugs when I glare at him. “She always was smarter than you, mudak.”

He’s not wrong. Renata got out of Miami, and away from her family, at eighteen, moving to New York and entering the NYPD as a rookie straight out of school. She studied nights to earn her degree in criminal justice, then moved to the US Marshals office.

Despite our opposing positions on the law enforcement spectrum, our friendship has, rather bizarrely, survived, not least because there’s usually a thousand miles between her operations and mine.

Usually.

Tonight’s visit definitely doesn’t bode well.

“You could at least buy me a drink first,” I say, feigning hurt. “What do the feds want with a piece of shit like Watkins, anyway?”

“Fuck.” Renata shakes her head. “So it was him.” She gives me a dirty look. “Just for once, I wish you weren’t quite so efficient at garbage disposal, Lex.”

“Hey.” It’s my turn to shrug. “It’s what I do. So what was so special about that particular piece of garbage?”

“Since my only reason for being back in this shithole city just disappeared into some gator’s belly,” Renata says dryly, “why don’t we have that drink, and I’ll tell you all about it?” She nods at the cooler in the rear of the boat. “Probably best to stay here and out of sight, if there’s any beers left.”

I jump up and pull three beers out of the cooler, then toss one to Dima, who catches it and wanders off to a diplomatic distance. In our line of work there are some conversations best had without witnesses. Renata hauls herself up to sit beside me on the rear board of the boat.

“Salud.” She clinks her bottle against mine, closing her eyes as she takes a long drink. “Maldita sea,” she says, when she finally lowers the bottle. “I needed that.”

“Must be some special kind of shit show to bring you this far south?”

She nods. “Watkins was in witness protection.”

I pause with my bottle halfway to my mouth. “He was fucking what, now?”

“Yep.” Renata stares grimly at the dark water. “We turned him six months ago. Got him out of New York and safely undercover in Wisconsin. Nice job, white picket fence, the whole bit. Then a month ago, he upped and disappeared. Took us until three days ago to track him to the Cays, but by that time, he’d made his way to Miami.” She shoots me a dark look. “Unfortunately, it appears that’s where the trail ends.”

“Who did he turn on to wind up in witness protection?” I take another swallow of my beer. “Wasn’t me, was it?”

Renata grins. “No, idiot. Unfortunately, however, now that you’ve knocked him off, you might just have put a target on your back that not even the swamp can get rid of.”

“Oh, you’d be surprised at what lies hidden down there,” I say lightly, tilting my head at the still water. “All manner of dark, dirty secrets.”

Seeing Renata’s grin fade, I instantly regret my choice of words.

“I’m sorry.” I touch her arm. “I wasn’t talking about that.”

“I haven’t forgotten what you did for me, Lex,” she says quietly. “I never will.”

I wince inwardly. Nice one, asshole.

Ten years ago, on Renata’s way home from school, she was raped by an entitled college kid who was in Miami for spring break. If she’d gone to the police, his family would have bought their way out. If she’d gone to her own family, they’d have killed the kid but never let her forget the shame, even though it wasn’t her fault.

She came to me instead.

I was still under the Orlovs’ control. But I’d been doing their bidding long enough by then to have a degree of independence. It took me one night to hunt Renata’s rapist down, string him up, then slice and beat him until he screamed for his mother. Just before dawn I took him deep into the swamp and fed the bastard, still alive and conscious, to the gators.

It was the first time I’d ever killed someone for my own reasons, instead of on the Orlovs’ orders. Even though I knew nobody would ever see it, I carved a Romanov eagle instead of the Orlov sparrow into the arrogant prick’s skin.

In some strange way that secret act of defiance gave me strength, the sense that even if I was the murderous dog the Orlovs had made me, I was still my own man.