Free Smoke and Mirrors by Marie Treanor Page A

not that good,” Rodion said modestly. “And I’m not that devious. But I am an opportunist.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning I didn’t cause your bloody fire, but I can see benefits for my current organization in the fact that it happened.”
    Another two-second pause. Rodion smiled into the phone. The girl watched him, still and hard-eyed.
    “Your current organization,” Gadarin repeated.
    Clever boy. “Let me speak to my current organization and see if we can do some deal by way of sympathy and good will.”
    This time it was three and a half seconds.
    “You’ve got until tomorrow morning,” Gadarin barked. “And then I’ll kill you.”
    It was an empty threat and they both knew it. For one thing, Gadarin didn’t know where he was. And for another, Gadarin wasn’t averse to employing Rodion’s unique services. But the clear words escaping from the phone reached Nell, and he couldn’t help being touched by the start of fear in her eyes. Fear for him. It blazed only an instant, and then it was gone.
    If he’d left the café alone, would they still have gone after her? It didn’t matter now. That was one of the many things he couldn’t change. What he had to do was to make her trust him. And he didn’t underestimate the difficulties of that.
    The disgust in her eyes as she whipped away from him was like a lash, reminding him.
    He disconnected and shoved the phone back in his pocket. “So what do you think I achieved there?” he asked with deliberate mildness.
    “A change of drug lord? From a scary bastard one to a slightly more stupid if erratic one that you can more easily rip off? Maybe he’ll get your treasure back for you.”
    She was certainly perceptive. As much as she could be in the circumstances.
    “He doesn’t know about my treasure, and he never will,” Rodion said. He walked toward her, wondering what it would be like to see that eternal suspicion on her face melt into welcome and trust. And passion. Dream on, asshole. He knew to keep his goals achievable, and for Nell, he aimed at trust in one particular area. It was the best he could possibly do.
    He said, “For the rest, that’s certainly what I want Gadarin to think. My next step is to make the Bear distrust Gadarin, and with a little nudge, they will, hopefully, take each other out.”
    “And the drugs?” she said harshly. “To say nothing of the guns and all the other crap? What else do you do? Extortion? Protection? Prostitution? Christ.” She swung away from him, but he couldn’t let it end there.
    She wasn’t immune to his touch. And besides, he wanted to touch her. He liked touching her. So he did, closing his hand on her rigid shoulder and turning her. He placed his other hand on her other shoulder and looked into her eyes. She had rather beautiful brown eyes, soft, mysterious, and naturally warm, even though they glared defiance and anger at him.
    She had no business in this shit. And yet he couldn’t let her go.
    “The Bear does all of those things,” he admitted. “I don’t.”
    “You’re complicit,” she said harshly. “You work for him.”
    “I have to.”
    “Why?” she demanded without softening in the slightest. “Because he got you out of prison? You think he’ll somehow get you back in if you cross him?”
    That wouldn’t be excuse enough for her. Nor for him as it happened, even though he’d been in prison and never, ever wanted to go back there.
    “Because he has my treasure.”
    A frown twitched between her eyes, which searched his face in bewilderment. It was enough for now. He didn’t want her to think he was plucking deliberately at her heart strings. And besides, he’d got into the habit of telling no one, because the fewer people who knew, the fewer people there were to covet or damage his treasure by accident or design.
    He said, “The heroin, if I can arrange it, will never get onto the streets. It doesn’t really matter, of course, because someone else will always be there with