Page 147 of The Wrong Brother

Ruslan

The drive westfeels longer than the map said it should. California disappears behind me, replaced by endless stretches of highway that cut through rust-colored mesas and lonely gas stations with faded signs.

I barely notice the scenery. Every mile brings me closer to a conversation I’ve delayed for more than a decade. One that has lived in the back of my mind ever since I carried a six-year-old girl out of foster care and promised myself I would someday find the woman who was forced out of her life—the same way I was forced from mine.

Utah greets me with overcast skies and dry air that smells faintly of rain.

By late afternoon, I’ve followed enough dead ends and old contacts to arrive outside a weathered roadside motel on the edge of a small town. It isn’t the sort of place tourists choose. The paint is peeling in places; a neon vacancy sign buzzes lazily near the office, and several pickup trucks sit scattered around the cracked parking lot.

Still...

It’s cleaner than the last place I’d tracked Shannon to.

Cleaner than the trailer park where she’d vanished years ago.

For reasons I don’t entirely understand, relief settles quietly in my chest. At least she’s surviving.

I park beneath a dying cottonwood tree and walk toward room seventeen.

Though I insisted on coming alone, partly to keep from drawing attention to my search and partly to make sure Shannon doesn’t get scared off, a small team of men back in Santa Barbara are running point for me. With each stop I make, I feed information back, and in return, I’m brought one step closer.

Stepan’s intelligence when we talked half an hour ago had been accurate. Shannon has lived here for nearly eight months, paying week by week and keeping mostly to herself. She works occasional shifts at a nearby diner, never long enough for anyone to know much about her before moving on again.

She’s still running. Just more slowly. Which means she might try and run fromme.

I stop outside the faded blue door, and for a moment, I simply stand there. I’ve rehearsed this meeting in my head countless times.

In some versions, she’s furious.

In others, she slams the door in my face.

Once or twice, I’d imagined she’d already be dead, and I’d be the one to find her face-down on a flat motel bed.

Banishing the nightmares, I raise my hand and knock. Footsteps sound in the room beyond, not hurrying. A deadbolt clicks, and the door opens a few inches.

Shannon peers through the gap first, her expression guarded until she recognizes me. Then that look of distrust and disbelief only deepens.

She’s older than I remember.

Fine lines frame her eyes now, and strands of silver have begun threading through dirty-blonde hair that was once almost identical to Kate’s. She’s thinner than she should be, though healthier than the frightened young woman I met years ago.

“Ruslan?”

She says my name with such incredulity it’s as if she expected me to be dead. Maybe she did. I can only imagine what Andrei warned her about me back when they were together, and even when I found her after Kate disappeared, I’m sure Shannon had sensed the kind of man I’d become.

Shocking that a BratvaPakhancould live well into his forties.

“Hello, Shannon.”

She doesn’t move. “I...” Her eyes dart nervously across the parking lot, clocking each car, including mine, before returning to me. “What are you doing here?”

“I need to come in.”

Fear flickers across her face.

“No.”

“It’s important.”