Page 112 of Mile High Ruin

I bite into the toast purely out of spite.

He almost smiles. I hate him a little for that.

After several bites, I set the toast down and return to the issue that matters. “Now tell me where my phone is.”

Vadim leans back slightly. “It was being checked.”

I stare at him. “You took my phone while I was sleeping, went through it, and then sat here waiting for me to wake up as though that’s a perfectly reasonable thing to do?”

“I needed to know whether there was anything on it connecting you to the tracker or the men at the airfield.”

“There isn’t.”

“I know.”

That answer stops me. “What do you mean, you know?”

He reaches beside his chair, picks up my phone, and places it on the table between us.

I grab it immediately. The screen lights when I press the button, and I swipe through my messages, calls, photographs, and apps as though I expect to discover that half my life has been rearranged overnight.

Everything appears normal.

Vadim watches me check. “We found nothing that connects you to Petrov’s people.”

“Petrov?”

Marek glances toward Vadim.

Vadim does not elaborate.

I file the name away. “That means you believe me.”

His expression shifts slightly. “It means there’s nothing on your phone.”

The relief I felt lasts less than a second. “So you still don’t trust me.”

“I don’t know enough yet.”

There it is. Not an accusation anymore. Not innocence either.

I put the phone down more carefully than I want to. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you since last night. I don’t know how the tracker got into my bag, I didn’t know where the plane was landing, and I didn’t even know who you were before you boarded that first flight.”

“There appears to have been some kind of mix-up,” he says.

I stare at him. “A mix-up.”

“Yes.”

“You accused me of helping armed men find your plane, and now you’re calling it a mix-up.”

“I said there appears to have been one.”

“That’s not an apology.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

Marek suddenly becomes very interested in spreading butter across a piece of bread.