The Black is crowded and loud. Liquor flows and the smell of cooking meat hangs in the air. Liam nudges me as he scans the room nervously. He hasn’t been here since his falling out with his father. Neither of us are sure if he’s still welcome. There’s no way out of this but I knew as soon as Liam suggested it, I was screwed.

My options are bleak at this point. If I come clean to Liam, I risk our friendship. If he found out I work with the Russians, he’d never forgive me. I can hear his words berating me in my head already. If anyone else knew, I’d risk jail time because one night someone would get drunk and say too much to the wrong person. That’s a gamble I’m not willing to take. The more people who know, the more leverage the Russians have on me as well and I couldn’t live with myself if anyone I care about got hurt because of me.

I didn’t want to come and do this but I didn’t have a choice. I’ve lied my way this far and there’s no turning back. Liam’s only here because he wants to please Nora, and Nora wants answers. If I hadn’t agreed to this, Liam would have thought I didn’t care about Aubry, and that would be the biggest lie of all.

But right now, watching Liam look for Gregor or Yuri has my heart pounding against my ribs. My lie to the Russians was my biggest and the most dangerous. When I radioed mechanical failure in that day, I told them I’d been thirty miles west of where I was because there had been a storm there at that time. I told them I hit severe turbulence, that the lock mechanism on the cargo door malfunctioned and that the contents of the plane that weren’t bolted down or strapped in, took a ten-thousand-foot drop through the sky and into the jungle.

“Did you go back for the package?” Yuri asked.

“No.”

“Text me the GPS location. I will send a clean-up crew.”

“You got it.”

“We expect repayment within three days.”

“I understand. You’ll have it.”

And he did. I refunded the fifty percent upfront payment without argument. I didn’t do this for the money anyway. As far as they knew, it was just a job gone wrong but I didn’t look at the goods. I didn’t know what I was flying for them and all was good.

“There,” Liam says loud enough for only me to hear. I follow his line of sight until I spot Yuri. He sits in a corner booth, a glass of golden tinted liquid in front of him. A cigar hanging from his lips.

“This is stupid. What the hell am I supposed to say?”

“Just go sit. Ask if he heard about the shooting a couple nights ago. Get him talking. Then you can ask if he’s followed the missing girl case from the docks. See if he flinches.”

“This isn’t going to work,” I say. And it won't because Yuri doesn’t flinch. But Liam doesn’t know that I’ve worked with Yuri and Gregor before. That I know them better than he does.

“Won’t know unless you try.”

He’s right about that. I can’t avenge Aubry unless I know all the facts and avenging Aubry is all I think about. Liam moves to the bar and sits. I head for Yuri’s booth.

“Mike! I haven’t seen you around for a while.” He pounds the table, causing the liquid in his glass to ripple. “Sit. Drink.” I slide into the booth opposite him. “Candy! Bring my friend Mike a drink,” he yells.

Candy’s head whips around from her perch across the room, she narrows her eyes at me before smirking.

“What’s new?” Yuri asks.

“Not much, keeping a low profile, you know, with all the strange things happening.”

“Strange things?”

“Yeah, that shooting the other night in town.”

Yuri nods his head, “Yes, I heard about that. Unfortunate. The young lad who was shot did a job for me once.”

Candy appears and sets a glass in front of me. “Nice to see you, Mike. How’s Aubry?” A chill runs up my spine. I glance at Yuri. His face gives nothing away.

“Doing better every day,” I say.

“Good. Glad to hear it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I see an old friend.” I look toward Liam and hope he’s prepared to talk to Candy, because, she’s coming for him. Old flames tend to do that as if they can smell your proximity. They hunt you down and trap you in a corner.

“Aubry?” Yuri asks.

I swallow thickly. “A friend in the hospital.”

He cocks his head at me. “The Aubry girl from the news?”

I debate quickly how much to give away. “Yes.”

“I didn’t know you knew her.” His eyes narrow. I shrug. He slides his glass across the table between his hands.

“Any jobs coming up?” I change the subject.

Yuri’s face wrinkles and he licks his lips. “No.”

His answer is atypical. Short and quick. A knee-jerk reaction. No longer friendly and gregarious, he smells distinctly like nervousness. He chugs the remainder of his drink and slides from the booth. “It was good seeing you,” he says. I’m left sitting alone in the booth, fire racing through my veins.

Fuck.