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The desk was large and made of dark wood. She knelt behind it and pulled on the top drawer, surprised when she found that it wasn’t locked.
He must have thought that the lock on the office door was enough, but he didn’t count on her determination.
She almost couldn’t believe how easy it was to find what she was looking for. The second drawer she opened held a ledger, tracking illegal transactions with names, dates, and huge amounts of money. She also found pictures of the former DA sleeping with a woman that wasnothis wife. Taking pictures of all of it, she opened the next drawer to find a handgun. She took note of the serial number, wishing that she could take it to be processed. If there were any bodies attached to that weapon, it would give her everything she needed. But she couldn’t take the risk.
The phone she was using to take the pictures was the burner that she used to contact Roberts, but as she slipped back out of the office, she couldn’t bring herself to send them. Not yet.
But as she returned to the living room and sank down onto the couch, she wondered if she could ever do it.
She had to. She was an FBI agent. It was herjob.
That was what she told herself. Her brain was on board with it, but her heart was a different story.
She knew better than this. She knew that she shouldn’t have gone on a date with Nickolay. And falling for him was a complete disaster.
She told herself that it was too soon for her to have strong feelings, but that was her brain talking again. It was her heart that already felt like it belonged to him.
For a moment, she thought about minimizing the damage as much as possible. Instead of taking down the whole Bratva, maybe she could hand over that gun and get Alek behind bars. It might be enough to make Roberts happy.
Then, she thought about Chloe holding that bear to her chest. She would be crushed if Alek went to prison. There was no denying that she would be ruining lives if she turned over any of the evidence she’d discovered.
But she wasn’t sure that she could betray everything that she believed in before this all started. She became an FBI agent because she wanted to catch bad guys and help people. She believed that was what she was doing all these years, but now, she was questioning everything.
By the time she left the house at the end of the day, she still had no idea what she was going to do.
12
NICKOLAY
The bar was crowded,which he took to be a good thing as he sat at a table in the dark corner with Vlad at his side. Having so many people here meant that it was less likely that they would be spotted. If the man they were looking for was a part of the vigilante group, he might recognize them as members of the Bratva.
He sipped his beer and looked at the people closest to the stage, the ones that were obviously fans of the band. Some of them were wearing the same shirt he’d seen on the man that stole the car, but the man himself didn’t seem to be among them.
“Fuck, I hope that he shows up tonight,” Vlad said. “I’d hate to have to tell Alek that we don’t have any leads after two whole weeks.”
Nickolay chuckled. “Yeah, he really laid into Sam for not finding anyone at the FBI that could be brought over to our side.”
“I heard about that. Doesn’t everyone have a price? Surely, he can get to one of the directors at the local office?”
“Sam’s good at what he does. If there’s someone we can get on our payroll, he’ll find them.”
“And what about us? Are we good at what we do? Because I’m suddenly not so sure.”
The crowd on the dance floor shifted as Vlad spoke, and he caught sight of a man sitting behind a sound board at the side of the stage. He’d already determined that none of the men in the band were the man they were looking for, but it didn’t even occur to him that it could be the sound guy.
“Hell, yeah, we are,” Nickolay said, pointing. “We found the bastard.”
Thinking about the shootout on the street just a few weeks ago, he wondered if the man he was looking at was there. Rage filled him at the thought of this bastard firing shots at him. It was tough to resist the urge to force his way through the crowd and drag the guy out of here, but he didn’t want to draw that much attention.
So, he ordered another beer and waited. The band played for another thirty minutes before going on a break, and Nickolay kept his eyes on the sound guy the whole time. He watched the man pull out a pack of cigarettes and make his way out the back door.
Perfect.
“He’s in the alley,” he told Vlad, standing to follow. “You get the van and meet me back there.”
Vlad slipped out the front entrance while Nickolay followed the man. He was alone in the alley, puffing on a cigarette as he messed with his phone. They were alone, and as the door closed behind Nickolay, the van’s headlights appeared at the end of the alley. The man’s eyes looked in that direction, and Nickolay took advantage of the distraction. He moved toward the man and grabbed the cell phone from his hands, shoving him against the wall as he threw it down and ground the heel of his boot into the device.
“What the fuck-”
