* * *
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, Alexei pushed through the glass door of Mel’s 24/7 Diner. The homeless guy in the corner nursing a cup of coffee didn’t even look up. The couple at the counter, who looked as if they’d stumbled in after a bender on the Sunset Strip, gave him a quick glance and went back to stuffing their faces.
Only the cocktail waitress looked up and eyed him as he approached her table. He’d need to get a name out of her before the end of the evening...and the truth. If she were actively working against Sergei, he liked her already. He also liked the way her green eyes glittered and changed color with every passing emotion. And that hair, like a mass of sunshine.
He slid into the vinyl booth across from her and extended his hand. “I’m Alexei Ivanov.”
Those eyes widened, and her mouth formed an O. “You’re Russian.”
“I’m American, born and bred. My parents are Russian.”
“Is that why you’re sneaking around the club?”
“Yes and no.”
“Are you KGB?” She put a hand over her mouth. “Is Sergei some kind of criminal?”
Alexei toyed with the edge of the plastic menu. She was figuring this out a lot faster than he wanted her to, and he still didn’t know why she’d been hiding in Sergei’s office.
He tapped the edge of the menu on the table. “The KGB doesn’t exist anymore.”
The coffee-shop waitress parked herself next to their table, raising her brows and the coffeepot. “What can I get you?”
Turning his coffee cup over, Alexei tipped his head across the table toward the other waitress.
“Umm.” She ran her finger down the breakfast side of the menu. “Two eggs, scrambled, bacon and wheat toast...and coffee, please.”
Alexei ordered some French toast, and when the waitress left, he hunched forward. “What’s your name, and what were you doing in the club after hours?”
She searched his face as if trying to read signs there. “My name’s Britt Jansen, but the club knows me as Barbie Jones.”
His pulse jumped. She’d lied to the club about her identity. Anyone who could put one over on Sergei had his respect.
“And?” He circled his finger in the air.
Once the waitress had poured the coffee and left, Britt dumped three packets of cream into her cup and watched the milky swirls create a pattern on the surface of her coffee. “I’m looking for someone.”
“At the club?”
“Yes—no.” She picked up her cup with a trembling hand and slurped a sip. “I’m looking for someone who worked at the club but doesn’t anymore.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“I’m looking for someone who—” Britt leaned forward and whispered “—disappeared.”
The one word, hissed at him in the nearly empty coffee shop by a woman clearly afraid, made the hair on the back of his neck stand up and quiver.
“You’re looking for someone who worked at the Tattle-Tale, and you think the club holds some key to her disappearance?”
“I do, only because Sergei told the police that my...the woman quit, left LA with a boyfriend.”
“Maybe she did. She’s an adult, and people do quit jobs and move, sometimes without telling their friends.”
Britt smacked the table, and his spoon jumped from the saucer. “She wasn’t just a friend. She was my sister, and there’s no way she would leave for parts unknown without telling me first. I tried to communicate that to the police, but they just shrugged their shoulders and said there was no foul play.”
Alexei picked up his spoon and drew invisible patterns on the Formica tabletop. He had no doubt women in Sergei’s employ vanished occasionally, but usually not American women with families who’d notice their absence.
“You called the LAPD when you couldn’t reach your sister?”
Britt nodded, and her green eyes shimmered with unshed tears.
“What did they tell you?”
“First they told me I had to wait because she was an adult. When they did a welfare check at her apartment, they told me that while she had left some personal items at her place, it looked like clothes were missing and her car was gone. Then they talked to Sergei, and he claimed she’d told him after work one night that she was finished, leaving town with a boyfriend, and the cops told me it was over. They had no reason to investigate further.”
“But you did. Is it just that she didn’t tell you she was leaving? Are you and your sister close?”
“We...” Britt dragged a hand through her hair. “We weren’t that close. We’d just gotten back in touch.”
“So she could’ve left without telling you.”
“French toast and eggs.” The waitress delivered their food with a clatter of plates.
Britt waited until the waitress ambled back to the couple at the counter. “She could’ve, but I don’t believe it. In the last voice mail she left me, she talked about being in trouble.”
“What did the cops make of that?”
She lifted her shoulders and poked at her eggs. “My sister had some financial issues—unpaid bills, delinquent rent. That’s what they interpreted as her trouble.”
Alexei spread his hands. “You have to admit, the police make sense on this one.”
“I know, and yet...”
“What?”
She patted a place right above her heart. “I know right here my sister needs me. I can feel it.”
Alexei let out a breath and sawed into his French toast. Britt’s sister was a flake who took off, leaving her sister to deal with her debts. Although Sergei was a dirtbag, he probably wasn’t involved in the disappearance of Britt’s sister—other things, but not this.
“What do you hope to discover skulking around Sergei’s office?”
“I’m not sure. Personnel files, my sister’s name somewhere.”
“It’s a dangerous game you’re playing. Sergei is not someone to cross.”
“I know. I sense that, too. I’m pretty good at reading people.” She slumped back against the seat and broke a piece off the end of her bacon. “So, you don’t believe he had anything to do with my sister or even that she’s missing.”
“I understand why you’re worried, but I can see why the police declined to investigate.”
“Now it’s your turn, Alexei Ivanov.”
“My turn?”
“Why did you break into the club, how did you erase that footage and how do you know Sergei?”
“I’m doing a sort of...investigation.” Now that he’d determined Britt didn’t have anything on Sergei, he regretted inviting her into his world.
“An investigation?” She crumbled more of her bacon between her fingertips, dropping it into her eggs. “Is that why you’re so quick to side with the police? You’re a cop?”
“Something like that.” He had no intention now of telling Britt anything resembling the truth. She needed to get out of that club and go back to her life.
“After I gave you my life story,