Page 83 of Stealth Mission

For a few seconds the line is quiet.

“So. Anyway.” Her voice wavers. “I wanted to tell you about some things I found about the farm.”

“Okay. Sure. What?”

“Marianna went to college to study agricultural entrepreneurship. She was planning to come back to Vandemora and run the farm with her grandfather. But…”

Camile clears her throat. “But he died unexpectedly a few months ago… and she’s been left with a struggling business.”

“Struggling, how?”

“It’s expensive to operate, and I found a loan application. There are debts too. She needs money for?—”

Her voice cuts off.

“Camile? Can you hear me?”

When I look down at my phone, all of the signal bars are gone. Not even an SOS call icon is blinking on it. I guess I’ll have to get the rest of the information later because when I look up from the phone, Vik’s striding up the trail toward me.

And he’s got a head of steam.

I set my rifle aside and stand up. Stretching out the kinks feels good.

His face is a slab of stone that leans toward resting bitch face. “You’re still here.”

“I’m not going anywhere until I know she’s safe.”

Vik halts his forward momentum a few feet from me. “You idiot. She’s safe. I’m in house. No one is going to fuckvithher.”

I glare at him. But he does have a point. He’s better than any guard dog.

He shakes his head. “You should be dealing with father and Sylvester, not sitting on hill like hyena.”

“I need to talk to her.”

He scoffs and rolls his eyes. After saying something guttural in Russian he sits down on a rock. “I told her it was love.”

“What?!?”

Leaning back, he sticks out his legs and crosses them at the ankles. “Told her you are obsessed because you’re in love. It’s writing on fucking wall.”

I wheeze. “Whatever.”

His laugh is loud enough to echo in the valley below. “You two are a pair.”

I scrub my face with both hands and kick a rock off the edge of the hill. “I’m going down to that house to talk to her.”

“You go near house you deal with me.”

Fucking lug headed Russian mountain of muscle. I should have just winged him when I saw him walking up the trail.

“What do you want, Vik?”

His smile turns cunning. “Now we get somewhere.”

The look on his face makes my stomach drop. “What’s going on?”

“We work together, yes?”