Carol Ericson - Secured By The Seal

She exited her car and scanned the block, her gaze sweeping past an older couple walking a dog and a young Latino waiting for someone at the curb, his car idling and his music thumping through the open window.

She didn’t even know what Alexei was driving. He’d walked her to her car in the diner’s parking lot and watched as she drove away. Maybe he had a gadget to materialize and then disappear. She wouldn’t put it past him after watching how he’d altered Sergei’s security footage from his phone.

Hunching into her sweater against the gloomy late-June marine layer that had spread inland, Britt loped down the sidewalk. She turned the corner and made a beeline for Leanna’s pink stucco apartment building.

She jogged up the steps to Leanna’s place on the second floor and held her breath as she peered down the row of doors leading to about six apartments. She stopped midway at Leanna’s door and inserted the key into the dead bolt first and then the door-handle lock.

Her heart skipped a beat at the whisper of movement behind her, and she spun around, her nose meeting Alexei’s chest.

“Hurry, before someone sees us.” He reached past her and pushed open the door, crowding her inside from behind.

She closed it and locked the dead bolt. Turning to face the room, she slipped the key into the pocket of her sweater.

“Is this how you left it?” Alexei took a turn around the small living room.

“Yes.” Britt’s gaze darted among Leanna’s sparse furnishings, lingering on a row of oil paintings propped up against the wall. A dark piece with red swirls was still clipped to the easel in front of the window.

Alexei pointed to the painting. “Your sister was an artist?”

“Yes, and I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t have left her work behind.”

“Is it worth anything?” Alexei cocked his head to the side as if trying to make sense of the chaos on the canvas.

“They could be. She told me she sold a few pieces on the street at an art fair.”

“Where did you find the bills with that note on the napkin?”

Britt crossed the room and rapped on the kitchen counter that doubled as a table. “Right here. There were three bills, and the napkin was stuffed inside one of the envelopes.”

Alexei squeezed past her into the kitchen, his leather jacket brushing her arm. While the hot summer weather hadn’t yet descended on Southern California, the jacket and his motorcycle boots seemed like overkill—unless he rode a motorcycle.

He pulled open drawers and cabinets. “Looks like she took most of her kitchen stuff.”

Britt snorted. “That’s what the cops said even though I tried to tell them my sister wouldn’t have had much of that stuff to take. It’s not like she had a set of matching china to pack. Besides, I thought you believed my theory after finding Tatyana’s note.”

“Maybe she knew she was in danger and got out.”

“That’s what I’ve been hoping ever since you translated that note, but why wouldn’t she contact me?”

“Fear? Doesn’t want to involve you?”

“That would’ve been the old Leanna, but I made her promise me at the beginning of this year to call me if she needed anything.”

Crossing his arms, he wedged his hip against the counter. “Why weren’t you two close? Is it because you’re half sisters?”

“We didn’t grow up together.” Britt traced the dingy grout lines on the tiled countertop. “My mother was a drug addict and lost custody of us when we were little. My father’s family took me in, but they didn’t want Leanna. She went to foster care.”

“Your father?”

She shrugged her shoulders, hoping to convey everything, knowing it conveyed nothing at all. “Do you want to search the rest of the place?”

He pushed off the counter and returned to the living room in a few steps. He pulled the cushions off the couch and held up a quarter. “Payback for taking care of her bills and rent.”

He tossed it to her, and she caught it in one hand. “My sister doesn’t have to reimburse me. I just want her back.”

He continued to go through Leanna’s belongings in the living room, flipping through her pieces of modern art. “These aren’t half-bad. They convey a range of deep emotions—rage, terror, hopelessness.”

“You see all that in those swishes of dark, heavy strokes of paint?”

“Must be my Russian heritage.” He twisted his mouth into a smile—of sorts. “Anything else you can tell me about this room? Nothing missing from the last time you were here?”

“Not that I can tell. You think someone searched her place?”

“They may have done that before you or the police got here. It’s a good thing she hid that note in her bills. I guess she was pretty sure nobody would want to look through those.”

“Nobody but me.” Britt caught her breath. “Maybe that’s why she put the napkin with her gas bill. Leanna knew I’d grab all that stuff and take care of it for her. She put it someplace where she could be sure I’d find it.”

“If Sergei’s people never saw Tatyana’s note, maybe they don’t know anything about it. Although you can bet if Tatyana and Lee were close, they noticed.”

Britt clasped her hands together. “Oh, God. I hope Leanna got out of Dodge on her own, sensing danger. But why won’t she call me?”

“Did the police ever ping her phone?”

“Turned off. My sister used cheap burner phones anyway. She was always calling me from a different number.”

Alexei gave the living room a last look before heading to the back of the apartment. He poked his head into the empty bathroom, where a lone towel was hanging unevenly on a rack. “Anything in here?”

“No, and the police clung to that fact.” She nudged him out of the way, liking the feel of his solid shoulder beneath her hands. She yanked open the medicine cabinet above the sink. “All cleared out. Nothing in the shower. As if some...kidnapper couldn’t have swept all her toiletries into a plastic bag and hauled them out of here.”

“Same story in the bedroom?” Alexei jerked his thumb over his shoulder at the final room in the dinky apartment, already making his way toward it.

“There are no suitcases.” She followed him into Leanna’s bedroom. “But honestly, I don’t even know if Leanna had any suitcases.”

He flung open the slatted closet doors, and the empty hangers swayed on the wooden rod. Grabbing a handful of clothing on the other side, he pulled them forward for a closer look.

“These aren’t all the clothes she had, right? I mean, most women—” he released the clothes and they rustled and whispered back into place “—have a lot more than this in their closets.”

As she stood beside Alexei, relishing his shoulder wedged against hers, drinking in the way his dark stubble outlined his lean jaw, a horrible thought hit her right between the eyes. What if he had someone in his life? A wife? A girlfriend with a bunch of clothes?

“Sh-she wore a lot of different outfits with quirky accessories—hats, scarves.” Britt tipped back her head and squinted at the shelf above the hangers. “I don’t see any of that stuff here.”

Alexei stepped back, and she was able to think again without all that masculinity crowding her. She didn’t even know who or what Alexei Ivanov was. After her internet search for him this morning, she was pretty sure he wasn’t a photographer living in Algeria or a boxer. He was probably FBI, and she planned to ask to see his badge or credentials or whatever before she traveled much further down this rabbit hole with him.

He sat on the edge of the bed and yanked open the single nightstand drawer. He reached inside and held up his find, letting several connected foil packs of condoms unfold from his fingertips. “Would a woman take off with her boyfriend without these?”