Page 198 of Mile High Ruin

None of it gave me Sloane.

So when we finally found her, the fact that I didn’t immediately tear through her door surprised everyone, including me.

Petrov was the reason. Petrov, and the possibility that for the first time since this began, Sloane might lead us somewhere he believed was safe.

I hate that strategy every time I see him near her.

Tonight there has been no sign of him.

I look at Anton. He starts the engine.

We’ve barely moved when the radio comes alive. “She’s leaving the building.”

I look back automatically. Sloane steps out onto the pavement a few seconds later, pulling her coat closed with one hand while adjusting the strap of her bag with the other. She looks exhausted even from this distance, but she’s moving with purpose, heading in the direction of the hospital like she has done almost every time she has come back here.

I say nothing. There are men already positioned along the route. They know not to approach her. They know not to let her see them. They also know that if Petrov appears, nobody moves until we know where he goes afterward.

Anton glances at me. “We can leave.”

I should agree. Instead, I watch Sloane reach the end of the street and turn the corner.

“Drive.”

Anton doesn’t ask where. He already knows.

We keep well behind her, far enough that she can’t possibly notice the car and far enough that I can continue pretending this has something to do with surveillance instead of the fact that I can’t make myself stop watching her.

She walks three blocks before slowing near an intersection. Her phone is in her hand. She looks at the screen, then across the road, apparently trying to decide whether to continue straight or take the narrower street running behind the row of shops.

She chooses the narrower one.

Anton looks at me.

I keep my eyes ahead. “Let her go.”

He says nothing.

The surveillance man on foot follows at a distance. There’s no reason to interfere. She’s not in danger simply because I don’t like where she’s walking.

Then two men step out near the alley ahead of her. One of them looks at Sloane, and the other says something to him.

She keeps walking. My instincts start to tickle, but I hold myself back.

Sloane is supposed to be bait, nothing more. The plan is simple enough when Sloane is reduced to a name on a surveillance report and a moving point on a map: we let her live her life, we make Petrov believe she’s beyond my reach, and we wait for him to become careless enough to come close. She’s supposed to draw him out without ever knowing she’s doing it, and every man involved has been instructed not to interfere unless there’s an immediate threat to her life.

The problem is that whatever discipline I have left disappears the moment Sloane is involved. I can tell myself she’s an asset in an operation, that interfering too early could ruin months of work, that Petrov may be watching to see whether anyone reacts to her. None of it matters once I think she might actually be in danger.

Because when it comes to Sloane, reason has never survived very long.

The first man moves partly into her path.

I stay where I am. Anton’s hand rests near the door handle, but he doesn’t move either.

Sloane says something and tries to walk around him.

He lets her pass, and for half a second, I think that’s the end of it.

Then the second man follows her.