Wiser Than Serpents by Susan May Warren Page B

the woman didn’t show up, Gracie had spent half the day camping out at the airport, hoping she might have caught a different flight. What if she’d just missed her? Just to make sure, she’d spent the rest of the day waiting…hoping. Gracie cringed, remembering her phone conversation with Vicktor. What if she’d made him panic for nothing?
    And now, she’d gone and poked her nose into the disappearance of Ina Gromenko, a teenage girl from her weekly Bible study. Not that Gracie usually tracked down AWOL teens, but she’d seen Ina at a local mall just the day before.
    Shopping for rings.
    With a man who looked about ten years older, wearing the creepy and identifiable garb of a Russian Mafia thug—black pants, black silk shirt, squared-off shoes. Ina had introduced him as her boyfriend, Jorge. However, when Gracie had pulled the girl aside with a few words of caution, the look the man gave her made her feel as if she’d been transported back to Khabarovsk, Russia, and was again trying to dodge the crosshairs of a serial killer.
    Apparently, she still had more work to do with her therapist to drive suspicion from the corners of her mind. Still, she didn’t have to have her paranoid-o-meter set on high to know that something was terribly wrong when she visited Ina’s parents’ home this morning.
    The entire complex had seen better days—a row of fourteen townhomes built in the eighties. Wrought-iron railings bracketed concrete steps, and wooden siding with lime-green paint flaking off below the windows. A blanket hung over the front window, and on the steps a clay pot imprisoned a sopping wet tomato plant, wilted from the abundant rains. The front yard had been dug up and furrowed, and the potato plants growing in the patch of earth sprouted green and healthy on their mounds.
    Venturing into this section of town prodded memories of her stint in Far East Russia, with storefront signs written in Cyrillic, and the yards all furrowed into kitchen gardens.
    The house looked vacant, but then again, with the blanket over the window…
    At Gracie’s knock, the door cracked open.
    The woman, maybe in her early forties, with age around her eyes, barely opened the door. “Privyetstvooyou,” she said in typical Christian greeting.
    Thankfully, part of Gracie’s training here in Seattle had been language based. While trying to figure out her future, she’d joined up with a program helping Russian immigrants transition to their new land, find jobs, learn English and eventually blend into society. But with the little Russian village set up inside Seattle proper, with radio and television stations broadcasting in their native language, with the newspapers and schools catering to only Russian-speakers, she had to ask why anyone would make the effort to change languages if their world adapted to them?
    Not that she didn’t like Russia. In fact, Gracie was one of the few program managers who still longed for Russian food, Russian songs, Russian people. She even attended a Russian church, hence the Bible study with a group of Russian young ladies.
    Sadly, the influx of Russian culture included the occasional Russian gangster, which had driven Gracie and her curiosity to Luba’s front door.
    “Privyet,” Gracie responded, reverting to Russian. “Luba? Remember me, I’m Gracie Benson, from the church? I lead your daughter’s Bible study group.”
    Luba looked away, behind the door, lowered her voice. “Ina isn’t here.” But something on Luba’s face said more.
    Gracie heard shuffling. Footsteps.
    “Where is she?” Gracie asked, feeling Luba’s panic. Something wasn’t right—
    “She’s gone. Left with…that man.”
    “Jorge?”
    Luba nodded. “I have to go—”
    “Where might they go, Luba, do you know?”
    The door closed with a slam.
    Gracie stood there, swallowing back the fear that had perched, right in the back of her throat. Yelling came from inside. She stood there, listening, but the words came too