Page 10 of Cruel Kiss

There's Yuri, who used to run with Lev's crew back in the day before he came over to me. Yuri would know the codes. Yuri would know Lev. But Yuri came to me preciselybecausehe hated the old ways, all the filthy shit Lev and my father made him do, and I've never seen him waver from that. Unless the whole thing was a long con, fifteen years deep, it's not the right answer, either.

Beyond that core group, there are a handful of others, each less likely than the last. The half-dozen men who were on the house tonight—but no, they got played, they didn't play.

There's the guys who handle the money now, the ones who were supposed to replace Pyotr. Any one of them could be it. None of them feels like it.

That's the issue: None of them feels likeit, and all of them could be it, and I'm standing on a stoop at three in the morning with a splitting head, trying to solve it fast because so much hangs in the balance.

"I can't narrow it," I admit. "Every name I put up, there's a reason it's not him. Grigor's too soft. Anatoly's too new. Yuri's too clean. And that just tells me I'm not seeing it right, because itisone of them, or someone like them, and my own trust is fogging the glass."

Navi nods. He's been doing the same mental exercises nonstop, I'm sure. "So what do we do?"

I look up at the windows again. There's a soft light burning behind the shade on the left—Isabella's room, her seashellnightlight—and I think about her asking me if I'd be there for pancakes, and me hearing myself say yes and meaning it, and how I want to be up there right now more than I've wanted anything in my whole life.

Not out here running amok on a list of men who might want me dead. Upthere. On the floor by a shoebox with a caterpillar in it.

Too bad I'm not allowed to be there ever again.

"We find him," I say. "The mole. Whatever it takes. I don't care how long it takes or what it costs. But I want the traitor, and I want him dead."

"That's a big job," warns Navi.

"It's the only one that matters."

Navi studies me. "You sound like her, you know."

"Like who?"

"Like your girl." He nods up at the house. "I was eavesdropping—sorry not sorry—while you two were talking, and she said that she'd deal with everything herself because she's the only person she trusts to get it right." He raises an eyebrow. "Now, you're standing right here, saying the exact same thing. You two are the same brand of stubborn. It'd be funny if it wasn't going to get one of you killed."

Fuck me.

He's right.

We're the same. She's up there right now, refusing every hand that reaches out to help her, sure that the only safe pair of hands are her own. And I'm down here doing the identical thing, telling myself that the only way through this is me and me alone.

My judgment, my hunt, my kill.

Two people convinced they can only trust themselves.

Two people with the exact same blind spot, standing on opposite sides of a broken door, each one so busy protecting the other that neither one will let the other help.

It's a hell of a thing, to see your own worst habit staring back at you in the form of someone you love.

"Get some sleep," I tell Navi. "Then start pulling everything on Lev. Where he's been, who he's been drinking with, every man who's had a private word with him in the last six months. And do it quiet. If there's a mole, he's watching us watch, so don't let him see us looking."

"And you?"

I look up at the light in the little girl's window one more time.

"I'm going to stand right here," I say, "until the sun comes up, and make sure nobody else comes up these stairs."

Navi nods. He puts a hand on my shoulder for a second, heavy and warm, the closest thing to comfort either of us knows how to give the other. Then he goes down the steps and disappears into the dark toward the corner.

And I stay.

On the stoop. Under her windows.

Guarding the door I'm not allowed through.