Page 51 of Hunt Me, Daddy

I turned back to the monitors. “You are unusually talkative today.”

“You are unusually reckless.”

“I have been called worse.”

“Not by me.”

That made me pause. Sergei did not move. He was all stillness and hard edges, arms crossed over his chest, green eyes steady in the cold server light. My brother had seen too much, lost too much, and forgiven too little of the world to waste concern on sentiment. If he thought I was moving badly, he would say so. If he thought I was already lost, he would not bother, but he was still here.

That mattered.

“I need legitimate contact,” I said.

“Why?”

“To warn her.”

“You could warn her now.”

“She would not believe enough of it.”

“Then tell her more.”

I smiled faintly. “Radical honesty from a Morozov. We should commemorate this moment.”

“I am serious.”

“I know you are.”

He waited.

I looked at Kit’s name on the schedule and sighed.

“She has been hunted in the dark for weeks,” I said. “By Orlov. By me. If I approach her, she runs or attacks. Possibly both. If I approach her as a professional contact, she might listen long enough for me to shift her direction before Mikhail’s people make the right connections.”

Sergei considered that. “And after she listens?”

“Then I keep her alive.”

“That is not a plan. It is a vow.”

I said nothing. He exhaled slowly, which from Sergei was equivalent to screaming into a pillow.

“Maxim will need to know.”

“Not yet.”

“He will not like that.”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

“I had gathered.”

“She will find out, you know.”

“Yes.”