CHAPTER ONE

The Half-Brother

Sarah

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Sarah Bell stumbled backward when Blaze sidestepped in front of her, blocking her line of sight and her half-brother’s line of fire.

One of the men in the New York City apartment, the blond one standing over by the huge window, was aiming a handgun at her.

Not at Blaze, the huge ex-Navy SEAL, the dangerous guy, the obvious target.

He was aiming at her.

As soon as they’d walked in, that guy had aimed straight at where Sarah trembled against the wall.

The other man in the living room, standing by the white couch in the whited-out living room that was like being hunkered down in the middle of a snow cave, stared upward at the white molding on the ceiling corner like he couldn’t stomach what was transpiring. At least he wasn’t pointing a gun at anybody.

And then there was Logan.

Logan Bell, Sarah’s long-lost brother, the guy who was supposed to have her best interests at heart and would protect her from the Russian organized crime boss, was also pointing a gun at her from the hallway where they’d come in. He was between her and Blaze and the apartment’s heavily locked front door.

And the Russian organized crime boss, Sarah’s gosh-darnit aunt, was watching the whole fiasco from the computer screen. She’d crossed her arms in a dignified and sophisticated manner befitting a Russian Mafia czarina and squinted at the standoff.

Sarah glared at the stranger pointing a gun at her, then her half-brother with his weapon held in his outstretched arms, and she twisted her neck to switch back and forth as if watching the two of them would prevent them from firing. A watched pot never boils, so a watched gun never fires, right?

Or maybe that other guy or her own dang brother wouldn’t shoot her if she were staring right at them.

Blaze crowded Sarah against the wall, holding his arms back as if he could shield her from those two death-dealing cylinders that gaped at her.

A white floor vase sitting on the white carpet bumped her leg but barely moved. The unyielding weight of it against her calf felt like concrete.

Blaze yelled, “The hell, guys? What the hell are you doing?”

That concrete vase was heavy enough that if Sarah swooped down and grabbed it, maybe she could hurl it at Logan. She was a strong farm girl, growing up hauling bales of hay and buckets of water, not to mention fighting livestock. She could hurl heavy things.

But the other guy might shoot her if she did.

Her skull and back panic-blazed like she was on fire.

The rocky vase chilled her leg.

Dammit, they shouldn’t have come here. She’d known better. She should have told Blaze to buzz off when he’d said Logan would keep her safe, and she shouldn’t have argued with Blaze in the elevator when he’d wanted to leave.

Logan looked down the sights of his pistol as he advanced toward them. Without taking his milky blue eyes off Sarah, he turned his chin to talk to the woman on the computer video call. “I got them here, just like I said I would.”

Sarah’s heart clenched. She’d wanted so badly to believe that she still had someone left in the world who gave half a dang about her, but she’d been wrong.

The worst disbelief wasn’t even at Logan.

Beyond Blaze’s shoulder, Sarah glared at her aunt’s image on the video call. “Tell them there’s been a mix-up!” Sarah yelled. “Tell Logan that everything’s okay! Tell Blaze that you’re a history professor, and this is all just a misunderstanding!”

Aunt Mary barely blinked. “I’m so sorry you got mixed up in this, Sarah. I didn’t plan for it to go this way.”

Dang it. Dang-it-dang-it-dang-it. “Then how did you plan for it to go?”

Aunt Mary’s shoulders dropped, and she looked down. “It was nice to talk to someone who wasn’t afraid of me or didn’t want something from me, and I do like Russian history.”

A good girl would have been despondent that she’d been lied to and cried prettily at the betrayal.

Sarah yelled, “What the living heck, Aunt Mary! This isn’t right. I thought you loved me because I’m your niece! I love you!”

Aunt Mary nodded. “I am sorry about how this turned out. Logan, it’s time to get this over with.”

Logan Bell, her own dang brother, encroached on where she and Blaze stood, placing his shiny dress shoes ever so precisely on the white carpet. “I can’t shoot her, Dr. Bell.”

Sarah’s heart leaped. Dang, yeah, he wouldn’t. Logan was her brother and was defending her.

He said, “If there are gunshots, the neighbors will call the police.”

She screamed at him, “Logan, no! I believed in you!”

Aunt Mary shrugged. “You’d think the builders would have soundproofed your apartment better for that price. Fine. Take her somewhere and get rid of her.”

The screen went black, and the tiny green light at the top of the monitor flickered out.

Prayers in English and Russian started looping in Sarah’s head, all but blinding her to the black holes of the guns pointing at her face. She babbled, “You were just telling her that to get her off the call, right? You aren’t really going to shoot me? Please, Logan. I’m your sister. You’re the only family I have left!”

Blaze whispered, “Remember what to do if I told you to run.”

Logan stalked forward again, still holding the semi-automatic gun straight out in front of him, his arms braced in a taut triangle. Still not taking his eyes off her and Blaze, he turned his chin toward the other two men in the living room. “Micah, you heard Dr. Bell. Let’s get them down on the floor so we can take her somewhere and finish this.”

The frickin’ second location.

Every true-crime podcast and video screamed through Sarah’s head at the same time.

If the serial killer took you to the second location where they had all the power, you were dead.

You had to take your stand in the first location and force them to fight you immediately.

Not where they had more power.

Not where no one would hear the guns fire or her screaming.

The other guy with the gun strode toward them, holding the gun up and at eye level. His steps covered the white carpeting as he paced toward them.

Sarah didn’t look down but bent sideways, grasping for the stone-like vase on the floor.

Blaze stepped backward again, the heel of his running shoe landing between Sarah’s scuffed farm boots as he leaned back, squeezing her between his muscular back and the wall.

No, he was smashing her so tightly that she couldn’t grab that dang vase. If a smidgen of an opening happened, she needed to be ready.

Even though the odds were impossible with two men glaring at them over their guns.

Even if she tried to bean one of them with the vase while Blaze immediately figured out what she was doing and simultaneously moved on the other guy, at least one of them would manage to move his trigger finger a fraction of an inch and shoot.

And then he’d shoot again.

It was impossible.

No, not darn-it impossible.

What was that saying that Blaze kept mouthing off?

Oh, yeah, that he was never out of the fight.

Sarah tried not to attract attention as she pretzeled her spine, reaching for the vase. Her blunt fingernail scraped the rough rim, so if she could just bend a little more and grab—

Crack.

Blaze held both guns in his fists, pointing them at Logan and the other guy. He snarled, “We’ve known each other for over a decade, but you assholes forgot that I am a goddamned US Navy SEAL.”

Logan was holding his wrist and scowling, and the other guy was shaking his hand like he’d grabbed ahold of an electric fence.

Ho-lee carp. Sarah slowly straightened behind Blaze, watching her brother and the other guy for any sign of a countermove.

Blaze said, “Down on the floor, assholes. You, too, Tristan. All the way. Put your faces in the goddamn dirt.”

Logan mumbled, “There’s no dirt in my house,” as he bent his knees.

“Shut up, traitor. On the floor, or I will shoot you. I don’t give one feeble shit about what your neighbors hear.”

The three men lowered themselves to their knees, then flattened themselves on the white carpeting like blown-down scarecrows.

Blaze called out, “Tristan, you drained our bank accounts, didn’t you? You and your hacking and your computers.”

The third man, the one without a gun but with his hands raised, nodded and didn’t look at them.

Yeah, he should look down like he was ashamed. What a jerk, stealing from a frickin’ farmer like herself. She didn’t have jack-anything to begin with, and he’d taken what little she’d scrimped and put away.

Blaze’s jaw jutted forward. “I can’t believe you three sold us out to Mary Varvara Bell. Damn you all.” He turned his head slightly. “Sarah, unlock the front door. You assholes don’t move a damned muscle.”

When Blaze leaned forward, Sarah scurried around the edge of the room, keeping two snowy-upholstered chairs between her ankles and where Logan was lying on the floor, a dark swastika stain on the white carpeting.

The whole apartment was so monochromatic white that even the art hanging on the walls was nothing but blank white canvasses. The blizzardy chill scraped her arms even though she’d just come inside from a warm June night.

She backed down the hallway, keeping those jerks in sight so she could yell if one of them tried to attack Blaze, and then flipped the locks on the front door. “It’s open.”

Blaze followed the same path around the edge of the room, holding both handguns outstretched as he watched the three men lying on the floor.

As he neared, Sarah cracked the door open, then held it wide and glanced at the empty hallway outside. “It’s clear.”

“Lock the knob. Walk ahead of me. Go push the elevator button.”

She ran over to the elevator, tapped the red-glowing button about twenty times, and stood before the closed doors, shaking her hands because her arms were cramping.

Blaze’s broad back filled the open doorway, immobile as a brick wall.

The danged elevator finally pinged, and the doors separated.

She yelled, “It’s here!”

Blaze stepped backward and closed the apartment door, then sprinted at her. “Run.”

As she started to jump into the elevator, Blaze grabbed her around her waist and jerked her out. She scrambled to find footing with her boots on the beige carpet and then sprinted with him toward the far stairwell at the other end of the hallway rather than the one closest to the elevator.

He snatched the stairwell door open, flung her inside, “Go,” and then silently eased the steel door closed as Sarah ran down the stairs.

Blaze passed her on the steps in just seconds, leaping the last half of each flight and landing silently as a tiger.

Sarah’s boots clapped on each concrete step, no matter how carefully she tried to tiptoe. Instead, she concentrated on speed and accuracy, pumping her knees and trotting down the stairs like double-Dutch jump rope.

How had two people been holding guns, but neither of them had gone off?

That was some poor readiness right there. You don’t point a weapon at someone or something unless you intend to destroy it, and those two guys had failed. Sarah didn’t even aim her varmint rifle at a coyote harassing her chickens unless it wouldn’t stop attacking when she tried to drive it off.

Yeah, Logan must be only her half-brother. Sarah wouldn’t have been disarmed so dang easily.

Down and around and down she ran, focusing so hard on stepping on each stair as precisely as possible that she almost stumbled when she whirled herself around the handrail and corner and found only a flat track to the last sub-basement door.

Blaze was already at the door, looking out. “Clear.”

Outside the door, oil on hot metal and outgassing  tar stung her nose in the warm darkness, the summer night’s shadow only broken by wan stripes of light from the garage’s ceiling.

The parking attendant was just stepping into Blaze’s black sedan. A yellow piece of paper flapped under the windshield wiper.

“Hey!” Blaze yelled. “Hey! We’re leaving. Stop the car.”

The guy saw them and retracted his leg from the driver’s side. “Was Mr. Bell not in?”

Sarah sprinted around the hood of the car as fast as her aching legs could move. That building had a lot of stairs.

Blaze plucked the keys out of the guy’s hand as he dodged past him. “We changed our mind.”

She dove into the passenger seat, twisting like a snake in the seat as she tried to grab the seatbelt buckle.

Blaze slammed his door, and then the back of the car seat smacked into Sarah as she was still struggling with the belt.

The car bolted up the ramp and through the opening in the brick wall, leaping into an empty spot in the late-night traffic.

Sarah looked out the rear window, where the grid-glowing building receded and flowing car headlights took its place. “They’re going to follow us.”

Blaze growled, “Let them goddamn try .”

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