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“Interesting. Whose?”
“A Sparrow’s.”
“Fuck, these taste good,” I mumbled once I finished chewing.
She nodded her agreement as I reached for the cell she tossed at me and flicked it on. “And I do care, by the way. I have a definite interest in your controlled explosions now.”
I laughed and almost choked on a pecan nut that decorated the top of the sweet treat.
“Jesus, you’re worse than Katina. Walking disaster area much?” she complained, slapping me on the back with more force than was necessary.
“I think you gave me a hernia,” I clipped, voice hoarse from choking.
“You can’t give someone one of those.”
“You can. Don’t talk about controlled explosions if you don’t want a response.Or, talk about them as much as you want, just expect to be a part of the blast.”
A small smile kicked up the corners of her lips, but she didn’t reply, just motioned at the phone.
“What am I looking for?”
“The calculator app, apparently,” she reasoned, picking up a letter that Kuznetsov had written her. A quick scan from afar told me it included the basics he knew about his son, Aleks’ death, in a car crash, and his granddaughter, Lyra, who disappeared in the same accident, as well as pertinent details about the app. “He says it’s a shadow app. You tap in a code and there’s a login page.”
As my mind focused on the fact her uncle and cousin had died in a wreck, I tapped the appropriate numbers—it really did lead to a login page.
The screen was black apart from the two white windows where the username and password could be entered.
“And he doesn’t have any login details?”
“No. While thePauksmanaged to break the code to the app, they’ve failed to get any further. That’s probably why we’re here.” Absently, she sucked her fingertip to clear away a remnant of icing. At least, I assumed that was why she sucked on her finger and that it had nothing to do with trying to torture me. She appeared to be totally unaware that I was fascinated by the move. “So, the game plan I had in mind has shifted,” she prompted briskly. “I’m surprised he passed this along to us. Figured he’d make us wait until we gave him some answers.”
As I stared at the app, trying to see if it had any recognizable features amid the black soup of the login page, I drawled, “I think he wants you to like him.”
“Ithink it’ll happen when hell freezes over.”
“Never say never. You don’t have much family left,” I pointed out softly.
“You were the one who said we can choose our families.”
“And you can, but what if he’s a nice guy and you and he could have had a great friendship? You don’t have to treat him like a grandfather to get to know him better.”
Her lips formed a moue. “I suppose.”
“Look, he could be an asswipe. But you stabbed him in the hand with a fork and he took that on the chin, didn’t he? That’s got to mean something.”
“You call that caterwauling taking it on the chin?”
Shaking my head, I laughed at her disgust.
“He also locked me in a bedroom—”
“Literally abedroom. With antiques. That you destroyed. All when you were trying to kill him. You said it yourself, the United Brotherhood is powerful. I’m sure there are plenty of places where he could have locked you up and tossed away the key.”
Like a shipping container in the Catskills.
She huffed. “Back to the game plan. Where do we start?”
“I think we actually start with a phone call to my brother.” I scratched my jaw. “Not a Brother. No capital ‘B.’”
