Bare Nerve by Katherine Garbera

one of his boyhood. Next came the family he and Maksim had created in his early twenties, and now this final family.
    How many times did a man have to be burned before he stopped reaching into the fire?
    “What do you need from me?” Yan asked.
    “Nothing, for now. We will leave in the morning to meet our contacts in St. Petersburg. I want to make sure our stores are secure.”
    “They are. I will go into Tamanrasset and hire some locals.”
    That city was built in a wadi —a desert valley. And it wasn’t a city in the way foreigners thought of a city. To be honest, even he wasn’t used to the small mountain-village city. He liked the cement jungle and the conveniences that came with it. Most of the men he dealt with preferred that world as well.
    “Good. We will leave once you return from hiring them. I want to assemble a new team for this deal with the Sudanese.”
    “Do you need anything else of me?”
    “Not tonight.”
    Yan left Demetri alone in his room. The sky was brighter here than in Seattle, and as he stepped outside and stared at the sky, he wondered what his kids were doing. He couldn’t contact them—had barely had time to tell his wife good-bye before he’d had to leave the country.
    One step ahead of the law.
    He’d been on the run his entire life, and he wanted…what? He wasn’t the kind of man who could just sit down and stay in one place.
    He had to keep moving.
    Demetri opened his laptop, took a glance at the picture of his kids, minimized the photos, and went to the secure Web site he used to broker his arms deals.
    He had three e-mails waiting for him from men he had used before. Kirk Mann was one of them. He wasn’t sure how much he trusted Kirk; after all, the man was a mercenary, but, to be fair, no one double-crossed Kirk. He was very good with weapons, and Demetri had found that his clients liked seeing their merchandise demonstrated in competent hands.
    Pierre Munro had left a message as well. He was a good pilot and driver and was excellent in the tensest of situations.
    Demetri decided to use both men for the deal in St. Petersburg, but he didn’t need them until the end of the month. He fired off e-mails to both men and then sat back.
    This was a far cry from the luxury he liked to surround himself with, but now that he was here, he was starting to remember the hungry youth he’d been.
    That was one lesson Maksim had forgotten as they’d aged. You had to be hungry to stay alive. Once contentment flowed in, so did the mistakes.
    And that was exactly what had happened to Demetri in Seattle. He had gotten a little too comfortable in that silly CFO job with his pretty wife.
    He’d started to think he was just like the other men in the corporate world. That was a mistake he wouldn’t make again.
    He summoned Yan.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “I am going to stay here while you go to St. Petersburg and make arrangements with our client. I want to make sure nothing goes wrong this time.”
    “Certainly, sir. Is there any reason you aren’t leaving?”
    “I’ve been gone too long.”
    Yan smiled at him. They were cousins on his mother’s side, and that branch of the family was loyal to each other—as loyal as men always fighting for money and life could be.
    “Yes, you have. It’s good to have you back home.”
    Demetri looked around the cave and silently acknowledged that this was his home. This was the place where he belonged, and if he was going to stay alive and in the game, he would do good to remember that.
    “It is good to be home. I think it’s time we stopped playing games and concentrated on what we’re good at.”
    “Arming the world,” Yan said.
     
    They stopped in Ghârdaïa where there were a lot of modern-looking hotels and restaurants. The city was the south of M’zab, which was home to the Mozabites, a puritan culture that didn’t really like outsiders. The city of M’zab was picturesque with it’s green date palms lining the streets. The drive into the