Page 54 of The Beast of Moscow

“And the driver filled you in—”

“On the flight plan and your number, should I need it. What would I need it for, exactly? I meant to ask ...”

Igor tapped the bottom of his throat with two fingers she said, “You’ll know. If you have to use it.”

Well, then.

For the first time, even after her former bodyguard had showed up at her place the day before with his own warning, Vera felt those familiar pangs of unease deep in her gut. Alexi’s warnings had felt almost hollow to her.

“He’s good to fly, right?” she asked. “I mean, I don’t want to ask about his medic—”

“Da, nyet.”

Vera quieted instantly.

“Don’t,” Igor added. “And it wouldn’t matter if he could or couldn’t—the fact here is that he is flying.”

She was ninety-nine percent sure the man wanted to add because he said so but opted not to. The tone of his voice gave it away.

“Enough of this,” Igor muttered with a nod at the jet. “Get going.”

“Any rules this time?”

Igor did smile at that. “Go on his cue?”

Why was that a question?

Vera didn’t bother to ask.

*

The jet leveled out lower than Vera expected it to, and she couldn’t help but notice the way the wing tilted to the left a bit when she peered out the porthole window.

“They’re circling back around—I wanted to fly over the city before we left.”

“Why?” Vera asked the man in the white leather seat across from hers. The small jet had the same color scheme on the inside as it did outside. A vast amount of luxurious white with crisp, clean gold and black accents on everything from the seat belt and buckles to the cupholders in the four rear passenger seats.

She hadn’t gotten a chance to really check the plane out when she boarded because as soon as she did, a flight attendant directed her straight to her seat. They taxied shortly after, and Vaslav didn’t even bother to say hello. Never mind put down the Moscow Times, one of the few newspapers that retained some semblance of control outside of the government. That tended to happen with media that had connections to the mob.

Or so she had heard.

Vera didn’t care to know if it was true.

“Can you see the canal yet?” Vaslav asked.

He hadn’t even bothered to answer her question. In fact, he still hadn’t put down the newspaper creating a thin wall of gray, black and white between them. Vera tried not to be annoyed by his lack of attention, considering he asked her to come on this trip with him. Then again, he’d barely grunted at the flight attendant when she asked him to put away the paper before takeoff.

Clearly, he didn’t listen.

“I hope there’s something interesting to read in there,” Vera said before she could stop herself.

“Actually, there is.”

Without warning, Vaslav folded the newspaper back together and dropped it in the middle of his lap. She would have been happy to finally see the man’s face, except his eyes were covered by opaque aviator sunglasses. The furrow of his brow and hard-set line of his squared jawline gave very little away except that he probably wasn’t happy.

It was hard to admire the rest of him, every inch of him filling out a black-on-black suit and the dark silk shirt underneath his jacket that had been unbuttoned at his throat, when all she could make out of the man staring at her was his scowl.

Was it because of her?