Page 236 of Mile High Ruin

“Are you serious?”

Now he looks at me. There’s no charm in him anymore. He looks deadly calm, and that frightens me more than if he had been frantic.

“They have a tracker in my car,” he says. “They will find me any second, and after the stunt I pulled at the hospital, he won’t believe you were innocent.”

I shake my head immediately. “No. He wouldn’t⁠—”

“He would.”

“No, he wouldn’t.”

“You still don’t understand him.”

“I understand him better than you do.”

That makes his mouth twist, but not into a smile. “He has probably been tracking you for weeks.”

My thoughts stop. “What?”

Viktor looks out the window again. “I got careless.”

The words settle slowly.

Can it be true? Could Vadim really have been keeping track of me?

I think of Vadim appearing exactly when I was attacked. Vadim knowing when I left the hospital, where I was, how close Petrov had come.

The trap at the garage. The message from my phone.

The men closing in from both sides as if the whole thing had already been arranged.

I hadn’t understood everything back at the hospital because betrayal had been too loud in my head, but now the pieces lock together with such obvious certainty that I feel stupid for missing it.

That was the plan.

I was the plan.

I should be furious. I should feel used, exposed, humiliated. Instead, all I can think is that Vadim knows where I am.

He’s coming.

And with that thought comes such sudden, frightening relief that I have to close my eyes.

I want to go back to him. God help me, after everything, I still want to go back to him. What is this insanity?

Viktor watches my face as if he can read enough of it to hate what he sees.

“All of this.” His hand tightens on the steering wheel. “Every mistake. Every dead man. Every ruined plan. All of it because I was too blind when it mattered.”

“What do you mean?”

Before he can answer, shots crack somewhere behind us. I flinch at the sound. Tires screech at the end of the lane.

Viktor curses and shoves his door open. “Out.”

I stay frozen.

“Sloane, move.”