Page 33 of The Beast of Moscow

For a second, Vera wasn’t quite sure what to say. As fast as she connected that dot, another started to take form in her mind. Was that what Feliks had meant—about warning her?

She didn’t exactly feel scared, but that didn’t stop Vera’s gaze from drifting over the visible tattoos on Igor’s hands. Mostly importantly, the distinctive upturned spider on the back of his left one.

Vera had just enough of an understanding about men who joined the traditional brotherhood to recognize a tattoo like that. She’d been so concerned with Vaslav that day on the floor that she had barely noticed his visible tattoos at the time. But when she’d had the chance to return to her memories, she could remember she’d had seen some, too.

Just not what, specifically.

The same, maybe?

“Tea?” she asked.

“Tea,” Igor responded.

“First, a question,” Vera returned. “Do you know who I—”

“I know a great deal about you. Likely more than you would be comfortable with knowing that I know, really. That’s the nature of my job for a particularly important man. Do you understand?”

She glanced at his tattooed hands, and that time, Igor didn’t miss it. “Important, or dangerous?”

“It can be both.”

“Everything okay, Vera?”

The call from her right drew Vera’s attention to the man who had come out to stand on the front stoop of his villa beside hers. Mr. Anatoly probably couldn’t do much at his age, but one wouldn’t think so as much by the glower he leveled on Igor in that moment.

“Back again—where’s your friend, the one you were driving around?” the old, retired doctor asked Igor directly.

As she suspected, nothing went unnoticed in her neighborhood.

“He would notice me if I went missing,” Vera joked quietly to Igor, knowing her neighbor couldn’t hear.

Well, partly joking.

The warning still applied.

“Point taken,” Igor replied without missing a beat, “but it is just tea.”

“With a dangerous man, you said.”

“Apparently, you’ve been worried about him.” He flipped his hands up as if to silently say no offense. “You did ask about him, I’m only saying.”

“Hey. He brought me a shrub, first!”

And now Vera had to wonder ... “Did he do that because you looked into me—because you found out I liked plants because I often have them sent to my address?”

Igor didn’t reply to that.

Vera figured that was her answer.

Who was this Vaslav?

And why was he looking into her in the first place?

“I was only there to see him fall,” she said, more to herself than the man in front of her on the sidewalk. “I just tried to help, and he’s looking into my interests and hobbies?”

It might be a little concerning if she wasn’t so ... curious.

That probably wasn’t a good thing.