The Professional Read Free Page A

curiosity from my parents.
    After that, I’d imagined a man and a woman in their forties, mired in endless wondering about the child they’d given up to a Russian orphanage twenty-four years ago. The thought had pushed me to take on yet another job, to keep digging relentlessly. I’d searched not just for my sake, but for theirs .
    But he’d never known I existed? Then I frowned. “My investigator? Zironoff? He hasn’t returned my e-mails or calls.”
    “He was made aware that we would be handling this internally going forward.”
    “Oh.” Thanks for the heads-up, dickwad . At least I hadn’t gotten ripped off again. No, I’d . . . succeeded.
    After six years of searching.
    I tottered from shock—and residual tequila. I returned the tank cover to its spot before it dropped on my head like a cartoon anvil. “If you’re my bodyguard, then why were you spying on me in the bath?” I snagged my pink robe, hastily swapping it for the towel. “Huh?”
    Silence. When I didn’t hear anything , I had a weird spike of panic that this man—a new source of answers, an alleviator of curiosity—had vanished as quickly as he’d appeared. “Are you there?”
    Trying not to think of how short my silk robe was—and what he’d just caught me doing—I poked my head out of the bathroom; no sign of him. So I cautiously padded toward my room. “You didn’t answer my question. Hey, why are you in my closet?”
    He emerged from the walk-in. “Where is your luggage?”
    “What does that have to do with anything?” I didn’t have real luggage. I’d packed for school in laundry baskets and boxes.
    He raked his eyes over me in my robe, lingering on choice parts of me. Seeming to shake himself, he snagged my sizable book bag, dumping library books on the floor. The History of Sexuality , The Boundaries of Eros , A Thorn in the Flesh .
    “What the hell, Russian?!” If he’d noticed the titles—my general field was the history of women and gender—they didn’t faze him.
    When he tossed the empty bag to me, I barely caught it. “Pack necessities only. Everything else will be provided for you.”
    I gaped down at the bag then back up. “I’m not doing anything, not until you tell me where you think I’m going. And why this can’t wait until tomorrow. For all I know, you could be a human trafficker!”
    “And this would be my m.o.?” He exhaled with a kind of surprised impatience, as if no one had ever argued with him before—as if he’d done this to a hundred other girls, and every one of them had started packing with a Yes, sir . “My name is Aleksandr Sevastyan. Call me Sevastyan.” Like Sebastian with a v . “I’ve worked for your father for decades. Kovalev is keen to meet you.” He added almost to himself, “I’ve never seen him so eager.”
    “How can he be sure I’m his daughter? Zironoff could’ve made a mistake.”
    “Nyet,” he said, enunciating a hard no. “You offered up your DNA. Kovalev already had his on file. There is no mistake.”
    “If he’s so eager to meet me, why didn’t he come himself? Why not just call me?”
    “As I said, he is a very important man in Russia, and at present, he’s caught up with work concerns that can’t be handled by anyone but himself. He trusts me implicitly.” Sevastyan moved to my bedroom window, peering out between the blind slats with the same wariness I’d noticed in the bar. “If you pack a bag and get on a plane with me, he will meet you at his estate outside Moscow in less than fourteen hours. This is your father’s wish—one I will be carrying out.”
    My manalyzer might be cocked up, but my bullshit detector was still pinging clear; against all odds, I was starting to believe this guy.
    Reality began to set in. “But I’ve got shifts tomorrow.” Which I wouldn’t need if my search could end . “And my classes!” As soon as the words left my lips, I felt silly. What would this towering, tattooed Russian understand about a