Free Smoke and Mirrors by Marie Treanor

He smiled at her quizzical look.
    “Maybe it’s time to answer,” he observed, reaching into his trouser pocket. “You don’t need to run off. I won’t beat you. Or kiss you,” he added, lifting the phone to his ear while he watched her reaction.
    She made the effort to curl her lip but she had the lowering feeling her blush belied the contempt too obviously.
    “Gadarin,” he said into the phone, with apparent fondness. “How are you?”
    ****
    Rodion held the phone away from his ear and switched it to loudspeaker. Oh yes, he’d really pissed Gadarin off. Nell, the delicious blush beginning to fade from her cheeks, stared at him as if unsure whether she should be sharing such a joke. Well, it was only a joke if you didn’t think of Irina.
    When the incandescent flow of Russian paused for long enough to let Gadarin breathe, Rodion said, “Of course I know about the fire. The police arrested me on suspicion of causing it. I just hadn’t realised you relied on them for your intelligence.”
    That shut Gadarin up for all of two more seconds. Then: “What do you mean?” he said aggressively.
    “I mean, I’m barely out of the police station before people are trying to kill me. They were your people, weren’t they?”
    “You burned my heroin.”
    Not “my people.” “My heroin.” “Why would I burn your heroin?” Rodion asked patiently.
    Nell turned away from him with another curl of her expressive lips. But it got him another two seconds. Gadarin knew his operation had been upset, and somewhere he knew it had to be Rodion who’d shafted him, but in fact there was no motive for it that Gadarin could possibly think of. Rodion, and therefore the Bear, had been paid for the heroin. Why would he then burn it and upset the trade they’d just bought into?
    “You stole some of it back for your own personal business,” Gadarin snarled at last. “Shafting the Bear as well.”
    “Sure I did. That’s why the police let me walk without charging me. How they laughed at my boyish pranks as they pulled bag after bag of narcotics from my pockets.”
    “All right, who’s the girl?”
    “What girl?” he asked innocently. Interestingly, although she’d turned her back and even taken a step or two toward the door, Nell hadn’t gone. And now she twisted round again to face him, listening quite blatantly.
    “Your partner,” Gadarin snarled. “The girl who met you outside the police station.”
    “She met me inside first. She’s the police translator, and your guys nearly blew her head off.”
    Nell jerked at the brutal words, almost as if she was being shot at again. She really wasn’t used to this stuff. He was genuinely sorry for that.
    “So what the fuck were you doing with the police translator in a café?” Gadarin demanded.
    “Have you seen her?” Rodion demanded.
    Nell’s eyes widened. That was a better look. She was an intriguing mixture. Sometimes he had the impression she was using her looks to charm him; only then she seemed so damned surprised when it worked.
    After another two-second silence—Gadarin really wasn’t quick on his feet; the Bear would have him for breakfast—Gadarin said blankly, “You wanted to fuck her?”
    Nell’s face flamed all over again. It was dangerously fun to hold her wide, startled gaze and say with perfect honesty, “Of course I wanted to fuck her. But you’ve ruined any chance of that. Getting your head nearly blasted off plays havoc with the libido of ordinary women.”
    “Serves you right, you bastard. I want my heroin back.”
    “Well, that’s not going to happen, is it? You need to be thinking about how to get some more and get it fast before the Scots go elsewhere.”
    Gadarin got it at last. “To the Bear?” he said in a hard voice.
    “We can get you some.”
    “And will it go up in flames too? I’m not stupid, Kosar. I won’t keep paying for the same few kilos of heroin, and I’m well aware of your untraceable incendiary skills.”
    “I’m