LITMIR.BIZ

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was because of Larissa that Gracie wept into her pillow every night. What was wrong with her that she couldn’t even lead her best friend to salvation?

      Pastor Yuri finished his farewell speech and again reached for her hand, and Gracie thanked the Lord for making her from stoic Scandinavian stock. She managed a convincing smile.

      Why, oh why, did Russia have to obey their visa laws? It wasn’t like they took any other laws seriously.

      The clapping died as she found her seat next to Dr. Willie and Evelyn, career missionaries and the lucky ones who got to stay. The successful missionaries who changed lives and made a furrow in the eternal landscape of the soul.

      Gracie’s heart felt like it weighed a million pounds and sweat beaded her brow as she stood for Yuri’s presermon prayer. The sun poured through the lace curtains of the log church, heating the room like a sauna, despite the lingering chill outside. Still, most babushkas huddled under three layers of wool and headscarves, relying on the masses of clothing as a bulwark against an early death. Gracie shifted in her denim dress, feeling rumpled, hot and empty. She’d leave more than her emotions flopping and bleeding in the former Soviet Union. She’d leave her hopes for a new Gracie. Her dream for a fresh start.

      She sat, and Pastor Yuri began his sermon. Yuri’s venerable presence on the podium as he gripped the lectern and moved into his impassioned speech reminded her that he had been her champion. He’d stood up for her a year ago when her one-year visa expired, working some behind-the-scenes magic that allowed her to stay. He’d been encouraging, and, although she couldn’t understand everything he said, she felt as if he somehow appreciated her. His handshake and solemn eyes had to mean something.

      She might have impressed the pastor, but he didn’t know the truth. Unless over the next five days before her departure her ministry took a hundred-and-eighty-degree about-face and she turned into Billy Graham or D. L. Moody, she’d be returning to the States the same scarred failure she was when she left it. Only this time, she’d be out of second chances.

      As if reading her thoughts, Evelyn reached out and wrapped her soft, wrinkled hand around Gracie’s. “You’ll be okay, honey,” she whispered.

      Gracie looked away, blinked tears.

      Unless she figured out a way to stay and keep fighting for redemption, not likely.

      The fact the militia had sent Chief Arkady Sturnin in response to Vicktor’s call meant two things. Either they’d forgiven Vicktor for the past, or the chief was the only one in the office.

      Yeah, like Vicktor had to guess at the right answer.

      “He was a friend of yours?” Arkady’s cigarette bobbed between his lips as he talked. The ash dropped onto the linoleum and sizzled in a muddy puddle.

      Scowling, Vicktor waved the smoke away and watched the forensics team prepare Dr. Evgeny Lakarstin’s remains for the morgue. Although every door in the clinic had been propped open, the odor from the wreckage of medicines embedded the blue walls, the muddy wooden floor, the cracked plaster ceiling. Nausea dogged him as Vicktor watched the mortal remains of his friend manhandled.

      “Yeah.”

      “Funny no one found him before this.” Arkady’s bulldog face jiggled when he spoke. “Did you have an appointment?”

      Vicktor worked a nagging muscle in the back of his neck. “No, I just stopped by. My father said Alfred’s been a bit droopy.”

      “With a mug like that, doesn’t he always look droopy?” Arkady guffawed at his joke.

      Vicktor clenched his jaw.

      “Have you been to the kennels?” Arkady asked, his laughter dying.

      “Yeah. Right after I called you. It’s not pretty. Every animal has been gutted.”

      Arkady toyed with his Bond cigarette, squashing fuzzy eyebrows into one wide brush as he scanned the small clinic.

      “What do you suppose this is?” The old man bent over to finger a wad of soggy papers, grunting as he went down, sounding every bit of his nearly sixty years.

      Vicktor winced with remorse. Arkady had aged a century since the Wolf incident. Another residual casualty, another cop paying for Vicktor’s impulsiveness and reckless pride.

      “I don’t know,” Vicktor answered thinly as he stalked back to the lab.

      A fog of saline and alcohol hung low and heavy. Vicktor put a hand to his nose as he stood in the doorway watching technicians gather evidence from the black lab table and smearing it on glass slides. Every vial had been smashed, and a gooey amber liquid covered the table like syrup. What had Evgeny been cooking up in here?

      “Vicktor Nickolaiovich.” Thankfully, the technicians still gave him respect, using his full name to address him. The technician motioned to him, then crouched behind the lab door.

      Vicktor crossed the room and knelt beside him, arms hanging over his knees. The man peered into a thin metal bucket.

      “What are we looking at?”

      “Ashes.” The tech wiggled the can. The orange peels at the bottom shifted and Vicktor made out a thin layer of charred paper, curled as if peeled from a block of chocolate.

      “What is it?”

      “Looks like the remnants of a tetrad, the kind professors use to record lab data.”

      A notebook. For experiments? Vicktor rubbed his chin and rose. Why would Evgeny burn his lab notes? Turning, he glimpsed another tech slip something into his pocket. “What are you doing?”

      The man whirled. Reed thin, with bloodshot eyes and scaly skin, he blanched. Vicktor grabbed him by the collar and shoved the tech against the sticky lab table. Glaring into his eyes an inch from his nose, Vicktor reached into the man’s pocket and pulled out an unbroken vial. Novocain.

      “Zdraztvootya? I believe that’s called stealing.”

      The tech’s Adam’s apple dipped twice in his neck. “He doesn’t need it anymore.”

      The room went quiet. Vicktor let the kid go and blew out a hot breath. The tech’s mottled face, glistening with a scrim of sweaty fear, told Vicktor he wore what Roman would call his “tiger” face. Great. Just when he thought he had a clamp on his emotions.

      Good thing Roman wasn’t here. Though perhaps, if he were, Vicktor wouldn’t feel like the only uninvited guest at a birthday party. The militia stepped up and took notice whenever a COBRA walked into the room—the training the FSB received to become the special agents who fought the mafia guaranteed respect.

      Or better yet, the entrance of David Curtiss, Green Beret and Delta Force captain, would get their attention. Only, he couldn’t shout that little alliance across the room, could he? Sometimes Vicktor felt like David, better known as Preach, was in his head, his little voice of reason, and he would admit, only to himself, that he needed Preach’s words of wisdom way more than he’d thought ten years ago.

      Who knew that a pickup game of hockey, a fistfight and an American-style pizza would lead to friendships that felt tethered to Vicktor’s very soul?

      Sometimes he wondered if Roman and David had planned it that way.

      Vicktor set the vial in a tray on the examining table and shot the tech a scalding look. “Get to work.”

      Stepping into the hall, he fielded a frown from the Bulldog.

      “Spequietsye, Vicktor. This isn’t America. Loosen up.”

      Arkady’s voice, although low, tightened Vicktor’s gut. He swallowed a retort, closed his eyes and sighed. “Sorry.”

      Arkady was right. He didn’t need a new generation of enemies in the militia, and another stunt like that could route his next urgent phone call straight to the morgue.

      Arkady tapped his cigarette. The ash died to gray before

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