Free Kissing My Killer by Helena Newbury Page A

I started keying in commands. “But it’s one of the early models and the security was weak, so unless the owner’s updated it—which they never, ever do….”
    Alexei gave a sort of grunt of disapproval. But after a few seconds, he came to stand behind me, looking over my shoulder at my screen. “I don’t trust this stuff,” he muttered.
    “Hacking was how I found out your boss was up to no good,” I said without turning around.
    “And how you got caught.”
    I typed in a final command and looked at the car. There was a very satisfying click as the doors unlocked and then a roar as the engine started up. I climbed into the passenger seat and waited, trying not to smirk.
    “My way is faster,” Alexei muttered. But he walked around the car and got in beside me. As we drove off, we could hear police sirens coming down the street.
    We passed the other motel, where people were already congregating to look at the ruins of the motel room. My stomach churned as I saw the hundreds of bullet holes. “We can’t just run, can we?” I asked.
    Alexei shook his head. “Nikolai wants you dead...but it’s more than that. I thought he just wanted to kill the hacker, to send a message. But he sounded worried. He’s scared of what you know and scared you’ve told me. He’s not going to let us go, ever.” He turned into an alley and parked, then turned to me.
    “Do you think he’s doing something with that trafficking guy, Carl?” I asked. “Some deal the big boss—Luka, right?”—Alexei nodded—”Some deal Luka wouldn’t approve of?”
    Alexei shook his head. “Anything big and Luka would find out. If it was small, it wouldn’t be worth the risk. But he is doing something, or planning something.” He stared at me with new respect. “I think you stumbled on it when you hacked him. Now he’s worried I’ll find out what he’s doing and stop him.”
    “Can’t we just go to Luka and tell him something’s going on?”
    “No one in the Bratva will even talk to me now. They’ll shoot me on sight. Word will have passed round that I’m a traitor.” He almost spat the word. “They will not listen to accusations.”
    “So what do we do?”
    He thought. “Work out what Nikolai is plotting. And then stop him. If he really is doing something against the family’s code, we would be heroes, not outlaws. All this would be over.” He nodded at my laptop. “Can you find out what he was doing? A name, somewhere we can start looking?”
    I stretched my fingers and went to work. I had Nikolai’s email archive on the portable hard drive, plus some of his bank records. All of it was in Russian but, with a lot of backtracking and cross-referencing, I started to piece things together.
    We went to a drive-thru and got fried chicken for lunch, eating in the car. I wrinkled my nose at Alexei’s choice. “Chicken?” I asked. “ Just chicken? No bread, no fries, no slaw or beans or salad? Just chicken?”
    “Protein,” he grunted.
    I shook my head and focused on my own food. It was some mom and pop place and the fries were amazing, crispy on the outside and meltingly fluffy on the inside. I munched through half a bagful of salty goodness and then took a long pull on my soda—
    And noticed something in the reflection in the windshield: he was looking sideways, watching me.
    I pretended I hadn’t seen. Eating takeout food had to be the least sexy thing to do in the world, right? So why would he be watching me?
    When we’d wiped our sticky fingers, I went back to work while Alexei kept watch, sitting still as a statue. I got the impression he could do it for days at a time, if need be.
    Eventually, I sat back, stretched my aching shoulders and pointed at the screen. “There.” It was an email sent from Nikolai to Carl, one of the most biggest human traffickers we knew of. Lilywhite had been after him ever since she’d set the Sisters of Invidia up, but so far we hadn’t been able to track him down. The email said