Free Wiser Than Serpents by Susan May Warren Page A

“What do you mean in trouble?” He turned and headed for the bedroom, yanking his jeans off a hanger in his wardrobe.
    “She has dual tracking devices. One is still working—her phone—but she was supposed to call me twelve hours ago. I didn’t panic until her GPS—the one she’s wearing—went dark about two hours ago.”
    “And you didn’t tell me?”
    “I’m telling you now.”
    Vicktor yanked a T-shirt over his head. “What kind of GPS was she wearing?”
    “A pair of diamond-studded earrings. It’s got global GPS and a panic button. She texted me from Korea, said she’d checked in. We were both hoping that she’d befall the same fate as Elena, and that she’d be able to connect with her kidnappers. Yanna and I figured that whoever had her would find her phone. But her GPS going dead isn’t great.”
    Vicktor was already tying his shoes. “I’m sorry, did I hear you correctly—you wanted her to be kidnapped, perhaps killed? Because, in my line of work, that’s not such a happy ending.”
    “No—if you’d listen, we believe Elena is alive, and Yanna thought she knew who had taken her, so she posed as one of the girls in the dating service. And, just to be clear, I’ve hated this plan from the beginning.”
    “Apparently not enough to stop her. Please, please, tell me that you have a backup plan.”
    Roman looked away.
    “Oh, that’s perfect, Roma. She’s pulling a classic Roman Novik—run off into trouble without a plan.”
    “Hey, for your information, I tried to stop her. I tried to tell her to wait for us. But she wasn’t having any of it. She had Elena on the brain and wasn’t going to hang around waiting for us to get clearance for Taiwan.”
    “Like I said, pulling a Roman.”
    Roman clenched his jaw. “I got clearance,” he said finally. “We leave in an hour. Transport to Korea, and from there a commercial flight in.”
    Vicktor stood in the doorway, an uneasy feeling clenching his gut. And it wasn’t just Yanna’s disappearance that made him want to hit something. His fiancée, Gracie, had become increasingly distant over the past month, and he’d finally screwed up the courage to ask, beg…plead for her to tell him the truth.
    Did she really want to marry him? Yes, theirs had been a lightning-fast courtship, with the kind of life-threatening drama that would push any girl into the arms of her protector. But since then, they’d had a relatively calm, no-one-shooting-at-them sort of relationship, and he thought everything he saw in her beautiful eyes when he’d proposed had been true.
    Real.
    Only, that had been nearly a year ago, and she still wouldn’t set a date, still wouldn’t give him the faintest hint of encouragement to run down to the embassy and apply for a fiancée visa.
    He was losing her. And he hadn’t a clue why.
    He blew out a breath, rubbed his temples with his finger and thumb and let out a cry of frustration.
    “Soglasno,” Roman said. “Ditto on your frustration.”
    “No, it’s not just Yanna. I was supposed to hook up with Gracie online tonight. We had a fight last time we talked about her living alone in downtown Seattle. I hate being a few thousand miles away, especially when I don’t know how to fix whatever is going wrong between us.” Her words, from a previous conversation, rushed back at him: You don’t always have to fix everything. Sometimes I just want you to listen.
    Yeah, well, he didn’t operate that way.
    “She’s probably just busy with work.” Roman picked up Vicktor’s arm holster and tossed it to him.
    “Sarai and I go head-to-head about once a month and then I spend the next twenty-four hours trying to get her to talk to me. I’ve decided that it’s a pretty good trade-off for the rest of the month when she’s trying to get me to listen. Don’t forget your passport.”
    “At least you know that Sarai is committed enough to live in the same country as you. Gracie doesn’t know where she wants to