Staying Dead - Laura Anne Gilman [89]
“What, so I can tell you to get lost face-to-face? Fine. Get lost. Better yet, get stuffed.”
“Now, Sergei Kassianovich…”
“Leave my father out of this.” Scraping old wounds, using his patronymic. No, the Silence wasn’t stupid. But they did take risks. “When you wait for an invitation before appearing in my home, then I will be polite. When you come here to threaten—”
“There have been no threats made!” Andre shot off the sofa like an uncoiled spring, sounded truly outraged. His companion, a short but strongly-built redhead, looked as though he regretted not being the one to have made the threat. Sergei didn’t ask Andre the other man’s name. Didn’t care to know.
“You’re shadowing my partner. Making not-too-veiled comments about my failure to, what was it they said—ah, ‘my failure to bring her to heel.’ Like she was a dog I was supposed to train.” He glared at the older man, his shoulders squared and his mouth set in stubborn lines. “Pushing me to make deals. No. And again, no.”
“Will you hear me out, at least, before you throw us out of your home?”
Sergei locked glares with him for a long moment, then relented. “All right.” He made a seemingly careless gesture with one hand. “Make your pitch.”
“I’m not here to harass you, my boy. Nor to discuss your…ongoing negotiations with Operations.”
Right. And pigs fly.
“I merely wish to discuss a possible intersection of interests.”
“And for that you had to bring a companion?”
Andre smoothed past that comment as though it hadn’t been said. “It has come to our attention that you have taken on an assignment that runs parallel with a situation we ourselves have an interest in.” He reached into his suit jacket and removed a handful of photographs, which he then handed to Sergei.
Sergei looked, then dropped them onto the coffee table between them. They fell face up, fanned out as though for display. Two of Wren in the early morning light as she was working outside the Frants building, another one of her standing next to a car he didn’t recognize, and two more of the house their target lived in, taken from a slight distance but showing astonishing detail.
They had been tailing her. Suspecting it was different from having proof, and he had to force back the beast that now rose, snarling, in his throat. Hold, hold. Don’t lose it. You can’t afford to lose it.
Unaware of the danger he had been in, Andre fell into lecturer’s pose, knees relaxed, arms behind his back, as though he were addressing a class of eager freshmen hanging on his every word. “Before you get indignant, I assure you we haven’t made a habit of being voyeuristic. We merely—”
“Yeah, I know,” Sergei interrupted, still seething. “I assume that you have a file on Frants?” And then oh, good going he snarled inwardly, turning the beast on himself. A tyro’s mistake, to allow anger—any emotion—to push him into such a stupid error. You never, ever gave away information—in this case, their client’s name—without an equal exchange. Never assume they know anything. Their poker face might just be better, that’s all.
“We do, yes,” the older man said in a tone that rebuked him for asking such a foolish question, “but our interest is rather more with the man who…acquired your client’s item.”
And Wren thinks I dance around the topic, Sergei thought without showing any of his momentary amusement. But the break allowed him to regain his calm, to step back a half step and get some perspective. So they followed her. Think of it as unexpected backup. They weren’t going to harm Wren. Not intentionally. Not while they still think I can be used to manipulate