Secured By The Seal

Alexei spread his hands. “You have to admit, the police make sense on this one.”

“I know, and yet...”

“What?”

She patted a place right above her heart. “I know right here my sister needs me. I can feel it.”

Alexei let out a breath and sawed into his French toast. Britt’s sister was a flake who took off, leaving her sister to deal with her debts. Although Sergei was a dirtbag, he probably wasn’t involved in the disappearance of Britt’s sister—other things, but not this.

“What do you hope to discover skulking around Sergei’s office?”

“I’m not sure. Personnel files, my sister’s name somewhere.”

“It’s a dangerous game you’re playing. Sergei is not someone to cross.”

“I know. I sense that, too. I’m pretty good at reading people.” She slumped back against the seat and broke a piece off the end of her bacon. “So, you don’t believe he had anything to do with my sister or even that she’s missing.”

“I understand why you’re worried, but I can see why the police declined to investigate.”

“Now it’s your turn, Alexei Ivanov.”

“My turn?”

“Why did you break into the club, how did you erase that footage and how do you know Sergei?”

“I’m doing a sort of...investigation.” Now that he’d determined Britt didn’t have anything on Sergei, he regretted inviting her into his world.

“An investigation?” She crumbled more of her bacon between her fingertips, dropping it into her eggs. “Is that why you’re so quick to side with the police? You’re a cop?”

“Something like that.” He had no intention now of telling Britt anything resembling the truth. She needed to get out of that club and go back to her life.

“After I gave you my life story, that’s rather vague on your part.”

“Just trying to protect you.” He took one of her hands in his and felt her wild pulse beneath his thumb. “You should quit the job at the club and go home. Wait for your sister to call you. She’ll probably contact you the next time she’s in trouble or needs money.”

Britt jerked her hand away from his, her bottom lip trembling.

“I’m sorry. I’m a jerk.” That same guilt he’d felt before lanced his belly, and he wanted to press his thumb against her mouth to stop the quivering.

“You’re just telling it like it is, and you’re not wrong about Leanna.” Britt sniffed and dabbed her nose with a napkin. Then she dragged her purse into her lap and pawed at the contents inside. “There is something else. Can you read Russian?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe you can at least help me with this.” She waved a Tattle-Tale cocktail napkin at him. “I found it with my sister’s bills. I’m pretty sure she didn’t learn Russian while working at the club.”

He held out his hand, and she dropped the napkin. It fluttered and landed in his palm. He flattened the napkin on the table. “It’s written in Cyrillic.”

“Yeah, I have no clue.”

Alexei ran his finger beneath the symbols, and when he reached the end of the note, he curled his fist around the napkin, crushing it.

“What’s wrong? What does it say?”

“You were right, Britt. Your sister is in very big trouble...if she’s even alive.”

Chapter Three (#u6f674270-d476-51fe-bb39-4375f4aba784)

A chill raced through her body, leaving a pebbling of goose bumps across her flesh. She swallowed hard and met the unflinching gaze across from her, as Alexei’s blue eyes darkened to midnight.

She started to speak, her voice raspy. She cleared her throat and tried again. “What does the note say? Who wrote it?”

“A woman named Tatyana. She’s a victim of...rape, of slavery.”

“Slavery?” Britt wrapped her hands around her coffee cup, trying to warm them, but little heat remained in the lukewarm liquid. “Who? Does she name her rapist?”

Alexei released the crumpled napkin, and it fell to the table in a ball. “She doesn’t name names, but I think it’s clear who’s behind the human trafficking.”

Britt smoothed out the napkin on the table and read the black-and-red lettering of the club’s logo in the corner. “The Tattle-Tale Club? Sergei?”

“A good assumption.”

“Why would my sister be in danger?” She flattened her hands against her belly to soothe the butterflies swirling inside. “D-do you think they tried something on her?”

“I think they’re too smart to try to enslave an American with a family, but your sister must’ve known Tatyana. Maybe Tatyana was reaching out to her for help. If Sergei knew about the note, that would be enough to put Leanna in danger.”

Britt chewed on her bottom lip. She and Leanna didn’t have much family to speak of—just each other, and they’d done a poor job of having each other’s backs up to now. She’d done a poor job.

“I don’t understand.” The strange characters of the note blurred before Britt’s eyes, which were puddling with tears. “I work at the club of my own free will. I witnessed a bunch of women coming into work—some waitresses, some dancers—nobody forcing them.”

Alexei drove his finger into the napkin on the table. “Maybe this Tatyana worked at a different place. They have more than one.”

“They?”

“Sergei’s family. They own a restaurant and banquet hall in Van Nuys. There could be other activity going on there.”

“One of the other waitresses mentioned a banquet hall tonight.”

Alexei’s lean jaw tightened, and Britt could almost imagine smoke coming out of his ears from the anger that kindled in his eyes. He’d done his research. He knew these people. Maybe he could help her find Leanna.

“Is that why you were in the club? You’re investigating human trafficking?”

He blinked once, his heavy lids shuttering the blue depths of his eyes. “No.”

“But now that you know about this—” she poked at the napkin on the table between them “—you can bring charges against them. You can tell the police about my sister.”

“Now that I know about this aspect of their operation, I can use it to further my own investigation. It’s not a good idea to involve the police at this stage. That will just alert Sergei and his family and drive them further underground. We don’t even know who or where Tatyana is.”

Since she’d hit her own brick wall with the police, she wasn’t anxious to return to them for help. She’d rather put her money on this blue-eyed stranger who seemed to understand the seriousness of her sister’s predicament.