He had to do as she said.
He withdrew the phone from his pocket and passed it to her. Savannah secreted it inside his jacket-the one she had worn into Roza that evening, the one he had left behind him at the club-and they moved off together toward his bike.
He would find a way out of this. He had to. Even though she piled on back behind him, he could tell it was an effort for her to bring herself to wrap her arms around his waist-as if she was repelled by him. As if she didn't know what to think of him. For the first time, Maxim suspected Savannah might be a little frightened of him, and the thought of her fearing him threatened to drive him to insanity.
He would find a way to clear his name and win her back, he vowed as he cranked the Nighthawk to life and they pulled away into the darkness.
He just had no fucking idea of where to start.
8
Split
"You really stepped in it this time, Casillero."
Savannah stared hard at her computer screen. Then, after a calculated moment, she slid her rolling chair out from behind her console and glared across the room. She tried to imagine the intensity of her look could cut Agent Tom Andrews with an edge as honed as the one on her new sword tattoo.
"Whatever you're smelling, Andrews, I'm pretty sure it's not me."
Tom Andrews stood behind his desk, mopping the sweat that dripped down from the dome of his head and onto his brow with a hand towel. He had just arrived at the office; he still hadn't changed out of his running gear, but it was early. Aside from the security guard who had greeted Savannah on her way in, it was likely that the two of them were the only ones in the building.
"You still think your boyfriend isn't involved in all this?" Tom retired the towel over one shoulder and leaned back against his desk, gazing at her incredulously. "Wake up, Savannah. He's a son of the mob, for fuck's sake. You better believe the lab's going to find his prints all over my crime scene."
Not yours, asshole. I was there first.
Savannah said nothing out loud, only rolled back behind her computer, if only to screen her expression from Tom. He could be abnormally dense for someone on the Blood Diamond Task Force, but his confidence about the case troubled her. Maxim had been smart enough not to touch anything at the scene, right? And if he really was the killer …
No! she interrupted her own thoughts vehemently. She had let him out of her sight for only an instant-there was no way his escape from Roza had bought him enough time to wreak that much damage on someone.
Right?
Then again, Maxim was a self-described retired killer. Who knew what he was capable of, much less who had trained him or how. There was a list of names in his file, of course, long-time associates of his father from various backgrounds and disciplines, but at the end of the day, Savannah had to resign herself to the fact that she had no idea what Maxim was capable of. She just had to trust him, trust that the intensity of the pull she felt toward him wasn't clouding her better sense.
Easier said than done.
Fortunately, her loud-mouthed colleague has satisfied himself by saying enough for the both of them. She glanced up as Tom exited, likely to go change out of his clothes in the locker room. Once she was reassured she was alone, Savannah slid her desk drawer open and pulled out Gordy Safin's burner phone, turning it repeatedly in her hand. She had confiscated it from Maxim, only to discover upon her return home that the device was completely wiped-either by the Russian's own hand, or the process had been done remotely by an unknown player. Not even the task force's advanced equipment could recover what was on it … it was just another piece to the puzzle that had been lost along the way.
She flipped it again, glaring at the dead screen, before tossing it into the waste bin with a sigh. There were no prints to be found on it, outside of Gordy's, Maxim's, and now her own. She had a feeling someone had wanted the phone planted on Maxim via Safin-someone had banked on it, in fact, and lured Maxim to the crime scene as a setup. The problem was, her gut instincts were all she had to go on at this point. Either that same someone had engaged a kill switch from afar and fried the phone, or Maxim had managed to wipe it himself … a timeline that would have had to align exactly with the hitman's murder, Savannah reminded herself. If Maxim was the murderer, she thought it unlikely that he would have prioritized destroying any cellular data over cleaning up the grisly mess she had discovered him knee-deep in at the scene. It just didn't make sense.
But couldn't she be wrong? She had already let her attraction to her only real suspect in the case get the better of her. Now, she risked being taken for more than one kind of ride by Maxim Karev.