That Time in Moscow by Logan Ryles (summer reading list .TXT) 📕

muttered. He glanced at Kevin and knew his fellow operator wanted to make a snide comment but was too busy recovering from the cold himself.

They stumbled after the others, down the stairs, and toward the stretch limousine waiting twenty yards away. It was black, built out of an elongated Hummer, and its tires were caked with packed snow and ice. Exhaust fumes gathered beneath the rear bumper.

“Put the bags in the back,” Edric said, motioning without meeting Wolfgang’s eyes.

He followed Kevin to the rear, while the limo driver hurried to open the door for Edric, Megan, and Lyle.

Wolfgang fumbled with the bags as his fingers turned numb. Even through his thick cotton pants and his favorite peacoat, the wind sliced through him as though he were naked. “I take it back,” he said. “Grunt work sucks.”

Wolfgang hurried to shut the rear door, but Kevin stuck his arm up and blocked it.

“Are you screwing my sister?” Kevin’s eyes were as cold as the wind, and his tone cut just as much.

Wolfgang blinked. “What?”

“You heard me. Are you screwing my sister?”

“No.” Wolfgang dusted snow off his shoulders and turned toward the limo door.

Kevin caught him by the arm and turned him back. “I’m watching you, Wolf. I see the way you look at her. You’re a good operator, and you cut me a break back in Paris, but you leave my sister alone, you hear? Back off.” Kevin slammed the rear door, still glaring Wolfgang down, then walked past him and slid into the limo without a word.

Wolfgang was stunned. For a moment, he forgot about the cold and thought about Megan. The depth of her grey eyes and the way her mouth twitched when she tried not to smile. Kevin was Megan’s half-brother, and while they shared nothing in the way of resemblance or personality, it was no secret he was protective of her.

He can back off.

“Wolfgang! Get in here.” Edric shouted from the limo.

Wolfgang shrugged off Kevin’s aggressive warning and ducked inside the car. The interior was warm, with plush leather and a minibar with thermoses of hot Russian tea. Edric, Megan, and Lyle sat in the rear, stiff-backed and indifferent to their security detail. Wolfgang shut the door behind him and found a seat across from Kevin. The bigger man avoided his gaze as the limo slid into gear and turned toward Moscow.

4

In his imagination, Wolfgang pictured Moscow as something of a winter wonderland. It wasn’t. What should have been white was grey, and what should have been grey was black. Snow mixed with mud, oil, and debris piled up next to the buildings, and the sky was glum with not only clouds but the smog of automotive and industrial fumes.

The only splashes of color came from the occasional nightclub or bar that flashed past the limo on the way into the heart of the city. There were plenty of tall buildings, all rising out of the muck and reaching into the cheerless sky like fingers of a desperate humanity starved for sunshine.

The streets themselves were crowded, as Wolfgang would have expected in any city this size. Cabs, buses, and the occasional brave motorcyclist wound their way through the heart of the city, impervious to the time of day or temperature. Wolfgang wondered what it must be like to live in a place like this—so cold and crowded and stained by decades of controversial history.

Only, to the Russians, it wasn’t controversial history, he realized. It was simply their history, and much like Americans, they probably didn’t overthink it. This was home, cold or not, crowded or not.

Wolfgang leaned back in his seat and indulged in a brief smirk. He’d had similar thoughts about Cairo only a few weeks prior. It was the polar opposite of Moscow in almost every way, yet people there also called it home. He wondered if a Russian or an Egyptian had ever visited Saint Louis and asked themselves, “Why would anyone live here?”

The limo swung and glided down the big streets like a yacht, slowly winding its way deeper into the city until at last it slid to a stop under the portico of the Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya, towering twenty-one floors above street level. Edric flashed Wolfgang a look that said “showtime,” and Wolfgang nodded. As soon as the Hummer stopped, he pushed the door open and stepped out, flinching in the blast of bitter wind before stepping to the side and waiting for Edric, Megan, and Lyle to climb out. They each waited without so much as glancing his way, and Wolfgang helped Kevin unloaded the luggage while the others hurried inside.

As Wolfgang towed the baggage into the hotel, he tipped his head back to glimpse the towering spire that jutted from the top of the building. He’d read about this building in one of Megan’s travel books. It was built in 1954, one of seven sister buildings constructed during that time in the Stalinist neoclassical style—a mixture of 1930s American architecture and Russian neoclassical architecture that was already a fading memory.

The hotel, now renovated and operated by Hilton, was an homage to another time—a dark time, when the iron fist of the Communist Party held Russia in a death grip both colder and more deadly than the wind that now whipped through his coat.

“Wolfgang! Let’s go,” Kevin called from the steps.

Wolfgang hurried to follow. Edric checked them in to their suite, and the five of them piled into the elevator. Wolfgang sucked in deep breaths of warmer air and glanced at Edric. Before he could speak, Edric shook his head once and tilted his head toward the ceiling of the elevator. Wolfgang shot a quick look up and saw a security camera poking out of the woodwork, staring down at them like an eagle eying its lunch.

Crap. Is the entire hotel wired?

The elevator dinged to a stop, and they piled out onto dense red carpet. Their suite was just as fancy, featuring two rooms with giant king beds and a small