Danger Mine: A Base Branch Novel (10 page)

Light brown eyebrows shot to a buzzed hairline. “Who are you?”

“A recent acquaintance of your nephew’s,” she purred.

His gaze roved her tight pants and fitted top, and then rewound over her legs. “Sorry. I, ah, wasn’t expecting anyone besides my nephew.” He wrapped a warm hand around hers and caressed the back with his thumb. “Especially someone so much better suited for a mature audience.”

“Oh, your nephew and I aren’t acquainted like that.” Khani narrowed her gaze, but maintained her smile.

“Even better.” Vasaya’s grip tightened.

“Isay is tied up at the moment and couldn’t get the door. Please, come in. Let’s talk.” She tugged him forward with an expectant twinkle in her eyes.

“Just talk?” A few feet inside his gaze swung from her. It lit on Street, and then fused to his bound nephew. His eager steps faltered.

“I expect you’ll scream a little too.” Khani divested him of his blade and slung it into the wall. At the same time, she lifted their clasped hands and twisted clockwise. She clamped onto his presented wrist with her throwing hand. Her thumb pressed his lower limb into an L. She used her freed hand to lock his elbow in place and shove everything against his shoulder blades.

A bellow erupted from his throat.

“See? Screaming.” With minimal, well-placed pressure, she drove him to his knees. “You have two choices, Vasaya. Tell me what I want to know or I’ll pry it out of you. Just look at Izzy and you can see fighting is valiant, but futile. Besides, we both know you’re not the valiant type.”

“You’ll pay for this, bitch.” He lunged forward.

Isay whipped his head in rapid shakes. A suppressed cry erupted from behind the sock.

Khani maintained her hold on the chap’s wrist, but released his elbow. He landed on his left hand, his right arm extended behind him. His legs kicked blindly.

Her gaze honed on his protracted arm, specifically his knobby elbow. She cocked her right palm. Khani powered through the joint. A crack ricocheted around the room.

“That’s gotta’ hurt.” Street winced.

She stepped back and allowed his wail to roar without muffling it. Most of the people that lived on the street weren’t home. She guessed they wouldn’t bother to call the police if they were.

Vasaya cradled his misshaped arm. He balled into the fetal position.

Finally his howling abated to sniveling. Khani leaned over him and stared into his glassy brown eyes. “Why did you order junior to lead Zeke Slaughter into the middle of an ice-field and leave him?”

His gaze livened with a series of blinks. Shrewd brown eyes shifted back and forth between her, Street, and his nephew. He shuddered. “Jesus. Look, I’m small time. A few shipments of coke a year. I’m not in with these guys.”

“What guys, Vasaya?” she asked, her interest piqued.

“I don’t know,” he groaned.

Khani snatched his good hand and flipped him over.

“No. No. Listen,” he squealed. “My cousin, Aleksey, lives in New York. He set me up with his supplier to funnel through Alaska. Low risk. Low income. Just enough to help during the long winter.”

“But…” Khani offered.

His breaths condensed, misting the dark wooden floor. “A week before this Slaughter guy was due to show for a tour I got a note in the shipment. It said I’d find a quarter million wired into my shadow account for my compliance. If I didn’t, I’d find my wife’s severed head on my kitchen counter the next day.”

“You’re married? What a lucky lady,” Street interjected.

Khani barely heard the aside. Her brain calculated the meaning of the news. A bigger force worked against her brother than she ever imagined. “What exactly did they order you to do?”

“Usher him to the middle of the ice-field, leave him, and…” A sob shook his torso. “And never speak about it or I’d lose my head.”

“I want the note,” she demanded.

“I burned it and the picture they included of a man’s severed head. An actual head,” he hollered.

Khani released his hand. “When you brought him to the ice-fields, how’d you know where the middle was? It’s an expansive place.”

He rolled onto his back and shielded his crooked arm with his good one. Dirt smeared the front of his vest and his white sleeves. “They gave coordinates,” he sniveled. “Latitude and longitude. It took forever to figure out the actual location. I’m a businessman, not a militant or boy scout. Heck, I’ve only been on the neatly paved paths that run in front of the glacier and that was for a photo shoot.”

Vasaya had a point. Only boy scouts, pilots, sailors, and militants used specific coordinates. Her gaze met Street’s. From the look in his eyes he thought the same thing, and it didn’t bode well for her brother.

H
e strummed the keyboard
. After a few passwords and a fingerprint scan, Street searched the Base Branch database for Vasaya Polzin. It pulled information from every national and international database that knowing or unwittingly allowed them access. In seconds he had the bloke’s tax returns for the last decade, bank accounts, real estate, email and social media profiles ready to be accessed in the fancy dashboard. A few more pecks had some high level software decrypting the wire transfer into Vasaya’s account and tracing it to the source.

It had taken precious time to secure the Polzins in the local precinct in solitary confinement until further notice. Well, time, plus two faux FBI badges and a call to the “Director of the FBI”, which actually led them to Vail’s cell phone. Luckily the chappie knew how to work off the cuff. It had also taken the proper amount of leverage with the knowledge that members of their force had taken bribes from at least one person over the last year. They’d burned a bit of daylight, but they couldn’t have either of the bastards blabbing about their interrogation. Not until after they found Khani’s brother.

Street leaned back from the small hotel desk while the computer did its thing. He threaded his hands behind his neck. Across from him, slender fingers clacked frantically on the keys of her laptop.

“Are we going to talk about this?”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she snapped. “We don’t know anything yet.”

“We know more than we knew this morning.”

“And I don’t like it any better because Zeke isn’t sitting in front of me.”

“I’m sitting in front of you. I’m trying to help you, but I can’t do that if you won’t trust me.”

Her bruised knuckles hovered over the letters. She shouldn’t have punched the wall at Isay’s. It showed a lack of control that might cost them in a head-down, balls-tucked situation, and yet, at the same time it showed a level of humanity he’d never expected from her rigidity.

At long last, the leaden striations or her eyes shimmered in his direction. “I’m activating a tracker I put in Zeke’s wallet before he left for the States.”

His fingers slowly unthreaded and fell to his sides. “You had a tracker on him and you’re just now activating the thing?”

“It was in case of emergencies only.”

“And your brother missing in Alaska wasn’t an emergency?” He shrugged. “You came here looking for him.” His mouth hung open for a minute and he inhaled her scent across his tongue. “I don’t understand.”

She ticked away on her laptop. “I wouldn’t expect you to.”

“If you won’t even try and explain it, how can I?”

Her chest rose and fell on an exaggerated huff. “I don’t need to explain myself to you.”

He held his tongue and her gaze.

“Zeke put a tracker on my car three years ago. When I found it I didn’t speak to him for a year.”

His brow quirked in question.

“It’s not the fact that it was there. It’s the fact that he didn’t ask my permission or even tell me when he put it there. We’ve been through hell together. We tell each other everything. He’s the only person I trust completely and he broke that trust.”

“He did it to keep you safe.”

“Doesn’t matter. Once it’s broken you can never really get it back. You can try, but it’s not the same.”

“So you put a tracker on him out of spite?”

“No. After we started talking again—”

“You mean after you started talking to him again?”

She slammed back into the chair. “Yes. Okay? When I started talking to him again. We agreed to have trackers on each other as a safety net, used only in the case of extreme emergencies.” One of her shoulders bobbed. “I had to be sure.”

“You are an interesting creature, Khani Slaughter.”

“You can’t tell me trust comes easily for you? Not after what you said at Polzin’s.”

“Since when am I a fan of easy?”

After a pile of seconds her gaze dropped and she plunked on the computer again. Street watched the gears work their magic on his end.

“I think it’s about time you tell me exactly what you know about your brother’s hobbies.” He didn’t tack on his, ‘because this doesn’t look good,’ opinion to the end.

She clamped her mouth shut and considered him for so long he thought she might never speak again. “He works for a US-based private security firm.”

“Private securities, a.k.a. guns for hire?” She loved her brother despite his shoddy moral compass. Yet, she treated him like an airborne strain of the plague. Street shook his head. “And I’m the bad guy.”

“You’re not the bad guy. I’m the bad girl.” Khani looked away and toiled with the zipper on her jacket. When she’d stepped foot in his room she’d refused to take the thing off, wearing it like a coat of armor.

Street’s gaze centered the screen and the completed diagnostic. His fists clenched. “Grisha Filipov.” He tested the name on his tongue, hoping it wasn’t the same Grisha about whom he’d heard tales wicked enough to keep him up at night.

“No.” Khani's hands flew to her mouth.

Damn. It was.

Apparently she’d heard a horror or two about the man. He thought to wrap her in his arms, to protect her from this, but it wouldn’t give her comfort. The only way for him to help her was by finding her brother.

“Work on your tracker, Khani. I’ll research Filipov and see what I can find.”

She nodded, her gaze far off in some version of possible outcome for this nightmare. That in itself, his trooper, the fiercest person he knew glassed over and near catatonic, had his fingers striking the keys at lightning speed.

Only he didn’t research Filipov. He knew all he needed to know about the monster. He harkened to the file hidden on his hard-drive labeled Slaughter. It opened to two files Zeke and Khani. He never touched the latter, knowing it would breach a trust he needed to earn. He’d only riffled through Zeke’s enough to know what the bloke looked like, his current address, and his former employment history. Street had purposefully steered clear of the US Elite file under the bloke’s name.

US Elite was a private security firm. Though he’d tried not to jump to conclusions, he’d guessed Zeke had moved to the States to contract for them. There had been a possibility he’d been ordered to infiltrate their ranks for Queen and Country, or hell, even the Base Branch. They dealt in covert ops, which sometimes meant, unless you were on the top tier of power, one team didn’t know the tasks another was commissioned to do. Heck, when he’d made LTC he’d found out about three units under the London command he hadn’t known existed. Surely there could’ve been more. But if Khani didn’t even know about it, chances were good Zeke had turned his back on his ethics and now worked for the almighty pound or dollar, as it were.

He clicked on the US Elite file and scanned its contents. Most recently Zeke had been ordered to penetrate the New York associate of the Stas, the Russian mob named for its leader Lev Stas. The man’s reputation preceded him the world over.

Access to the Queen’s clearance codes worked to his advantage quite often, opening doors otherwise unyielding. Street clicked through a manifest and mission plan he shouldn’t have. The company had been contracted by an anonymous source the same day a small Russian nuclear warhead became a supposed item on the black market’s most exclusive auction block.

“I’ve got him.” The legs of Khani’s chair scraped across the floor. She shot up from the chair. “We have to add to our packs. Sleeping bags, more food, and way more ammo.”

Street closed his laptop and stood. “Where is it?”

“He,” she corrected. “On a mountain ridge a little past the coordinates where Isay left him.” Khani slammed the laptop closed and shoved it in her small pack. “Get ready. If we leave in twenty we should be able to make it halfway to the pass before nightfall. It’ll take us the rest of the night to make it to the beacon, but we’ll reach it by daylight.” She slung the bag onto her shoulder. “Meet downstairs in fifteen.”

Apprehension leaked from her pores, but he knew she’d die before she gave voice to it. Khani rounded the table, leaving him staring at an ugly print of an uglier acrylic painting of a maroon flower. She brushed past, headed for the door behind him, the scent of her fear strong in the air.

His hand snaked out and latched onto her wrist, nearly wrapping his fingers around her thin bones twice. She stretched his arm so far back he thought she’d take it with her, but she finally stopped. He held perfectly still, prepared to take the brunt of an attack without blinking. “Isay left him nine days ago.”

Her wrist jerked. Street lowered his eyes, tuning into his other senses since he couldn’t see her. The air around them stiffened. She held her breath.

“If Zeke were able and unrestricted,” he continued, “he’d have marched himself off that glacier, found the kid, and pounded him into the pavement for ditching him, or he’d have explored on his own and made it back in time to call you.”

“He might be injured, taking shelter in a cave. You don’t know he’s not there,” she argued.

“I’m not saying we shouldn’t go. We should and we are, but we can’t kill ourselves trying to get there by dawn. We’ll do him no good dead. You need to step back and look at this dispassionately.” Street released her wrist, and then slid his fingers across the heel of her palm. He pressed slowly. She un-balled her fist, allowing him to thread their fingers.

“I don’t think I can be dispassionate about this anymore. It’s too close to my heart,” she whispered.

Did she only mean the deal with her brother?

“Then let me help you.”

She slipped her fingers from his hold. Her steps retreated. The door opened. When it should have shut it didn’t. He waited, his heart knocking.

“Okay,” she said, and then the door latched and she was gone.

Street sat, opened the computer, and read.

Three members of Elite’s security force had been assigned to permeate Stas from different angles. Zeke had been tasked to become a member of the security detail. A hacker named Derrick Coen had been charged with aiding his acceptance, tracking their moves, and trying to trace the warhead. A woman, Greer Britton, had been loaded with gaining access by enticing the upper-level Stas by any and all means necessary.

His stomach churned.
What assholes
.

With a couple of clicks he opened two other dashboards for more information on Greer Britton and Derrick Coen. Both were reported missing two days ago.