Forever Mine (Tormentor Mine 4)

Some Russian words are similar to English, which means the one that sounds like “null” could mean “zero.”

Okay, then. Zero, unknown, one, five—that’s three out of four. I can brute-force guess the unknown number… if Peter’s phone doesn’t lock me out for too many incorrect attempts, that is.

Jumping up, I grab the phone, and as I start inputting the zero, all ten numbers come to me.

Ahdeen, dva, tree, chetyre, pyat’, shest’, sem’, vosem’, devyat’, desyat’.

I can almost hear Anton’s voice reciting them to me.

Holding my breath, I follow the zero by six, one, and five.

37

Henderson

My hand sweeps out, knocking off the porcelain horses dotting the shelf—Bonnie’s idiotic collectibles that she insists on lugging with us all over the world. They shatter with a satisfying crash, but it’s not enough to quell the rage burning inside me.

Not yet located.

The words on my computer screen taunt me, rubbing me raw from within.

Manhunt ongoing but fugitive not yet located, the email from my CIA contact states.

How the fuck is that possible?

How could they have gotten away?

According to the SWAT agents who survived the gunfight, Sokolov had been shot at least twice—and there’s footage showing his wife stealing some supplies from a hospital, so he had to have been hurt badly enough for them to risk stopping there. Yet there’s no trace of the two of them anywhere—nor of the car that she stole at that same hospital, though the police think they might be able to track it before long.

Incompetent bastards. It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. Sokolov should’ve been killed during the arrest.

That sniper bitch, Mink, was paid well to ensure it.

If Sokolov makes it out of the country, it’s only a matter of time before he figures out what happened and comes after me and my family—and I can’t let that happen.

He has to be killed during capture, but for that, he has to be found first.

Rolling my neck from side to side to relieve the pinching pain, I compose an answering email to my contact.

It’s time they expanded the net by calling in Interpol and all the rest.

38

Sara

I pace around the cabin on unsteady legs, glancing out the broken window every five seconds. It’s pitch black outside, the silence interrupted only by the usual forest noises.

Still, I keep looking, keep listening for police helicopters.

It’s now been almost sixteen hours since I stole the car from the hospital. By now, its owner would’ve found it missing and reported it to the police. If they’ve discovered our Mercedes in the parking lot—and I would be shocked if they haven’t—every law enforcement officer in the area must now be looking for the blue Toyota and the fugitives in it.

It’s only a matter of time before they find our cabin.

If Yan doesn’t get here soon, it will have all been for nothing.

I look at the phone again, rereading his email for the fifteenth time. I should conserve the battery, but I can’t help myself. The three little words on the screen are the only thing keeping me going.

On our way.

That’s all Yan had replied when I sent him an email detailing the situation and our location. He clearly knows what’s happening because he’d answered in under a minute.

On our way. That’s it. No specifics, not even a rough ETA. I have no idea if he’ll be here in minutes or hours or days.

For all I know, we’re looking at weeks.

It had been another agonizing choice when I’d unlocked the phone: call 911 to get Peter the medical attention he so badly needs, or reach out to Yan and continue this fugitive madness. In the end, I went with my instinct—and when I looked at the phone’s browser after getting Yan’s reply, I was glad that I did.

Our faces are now all over the news, both mine and Peter’s. Every media outlet, minor and major, is dissecting our lives online, the articles constantly updating with new details about our wedding and speculations about our relationship. In some, I’m cast as a brainwashed victim; in others, I’m complicit from the beginning. When it comes to Peter, however, there’s no ambiguity.

In every story, he’s the villain.

“She told me he killed her first husband,” Marsha is quoted as saying in The Chicago Tribune. “That he tortured and stalked her before kidnapping her. She was gone for months, and when she came back, she was completely messed up. He must’ve done a real number on her, brainwashed her somehow. Because when he showed up again, she married him. Like, within days. She denied it was him—he changed his last name somehow—but they couldn’t fool me. I always suspected the truth.”

My bandmates had also been interviewed. “He just popped up out of nowhere,” The New York Times quotes Phil as saying. “For months, we all knew her as this shy, reserved widow, and then suddenly, she’s marrying this mysterious Russian. She said they’d been dating in secret, but I’ve always thought there was more to that story. And he was so possessive of her. Like, dangerously possessive. You could tell he’d kill anyone who dared look at her a moment too long. He just had that lethal aura about him.”