Page 75 of Hunt Me, Daddy

“Usually I say it during.”

“You think this is funny?”

“No.” I removed my gloves slowly. “I think if I stop making jokes, I will start killing people before I have decided where to put the bodies.”

Sergei was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Do they have her name?”

I looked at him. There was no point lying to Sergei now. He had already built half the truth all by himself. Another lie would insult us both.

“Yes.”

His expression tensed just a hair. “How long?”

“Twenty-four hours before they move physically. Perhaps less if the new analyst is better than I think.”

“And is he?”

I thought of the corrected trail, the timing, the careful way the new hand had stopped trusting the data when it tasted too sweet.

“Yes.”

Sergei pushed away from the wall. “Maxim needs to know.”

“He will.”

“When?”

“When I have her somewhere he cannot turn her into a family problem before she understands what is happening.”

“She is already a family problem.”

“No,” I said, and the word came much more harshly than I intended. “She is mine.”

Silence followed. Sergei looked at me the way he did when a target finally admitted the important thing out loud. I held his gaze. There was no taking it back now, but I did not want to.

Finally, he said, “Then stop treating her like a secret you can manage.”

“I am calling her.”

“Now?”

“Yes.”

“She will not like what you tell her.”

“She does not have to like it.”

Sergei’s eyes narrowed faintly. “That sounds like Maxim.”

“Insulting.”

“That was not an insult.”

“It should have been.”

He very nearly smiled. Then his expression hardened again. “If you need men outside her building?—”

“No.”