Danger Mine: A Base Branch Novel (15 page)

None of the tree limbs hung; none were snapped at awkward angles. Except for the spot where the grizzly had been and the line of their defense, the ankle-high plants stood perky and green. She hadn’t struggled with anyone or any thing.

Had she left him? Again his head shook. No, she wouldn’t have gone ahead without him unless…she found out about his digging into their backgrounds or… Or what? He didn’t know.

Agitation propelled him forward. His gaze roved for any sign of her, any clue as to what had happened to her. Street followed the route they’d plotted yesterday toward the cabin. His heart scaled the craggy walls of his chest.

A syrupy cloud drifted in, blanketing the sunshine. It thickened the air. Each breath he heaved required extra effort. He gave it. He gave it all, churning his heavy legs up the rising slope in a sprint.

Fifty feet of push and constant swivel produced nothing. No Khani. No direction in which to proceed. His teeth gritted. The joints of his knuckles threatened to pop. Busting his arse earlier had revealed the abductors’ trail. Out of options, Street hit the deck, palms and cheek to the ground.

The rocky earth held its secrets, refusing to reveal an obvious path. He smashed the meaty side of his fist against the ungiving rock. His head tilted and he choked back a growl that burned his raw throat. A stone’s throw away clean brass against the grey expanse caught his eye.

Street lurched at the blip. He pinched a bullet between his thumb and forefinger. The inscription on the end of the brass read Winchester 45 Auto. The full metal jacket matched Khani’s ammo to the T. He squeezed the cool metal in the center of his palm. Either she left him a clue or she dropped one in a frantic effort to reload. Again, if the later were true, he’d have heard the shots.

He jumped to his feet and bolted up the route with silent steps. Ears opened, he tuned out the hum of bugs, the random caws of a hawk looking to get laid, the thump of his heart. Nothing. Yet.

Several yards ahead another bullet lay between the cracks of the rock. Street pocketed both bullets and pushed on. Hope solidified his rapid strides.

“`Suka.” A deep rumbling voice spat the word. It echoed through the stolid pines, but not at him. The curse was too faint to be meant for him. And he was many foul words, but he was no man’s bitch.

Neither was Khani.

Street planted himself behind the widest tree in the vicinity and searched the horizon for movement. He pressed forward two hundred yards, dodging between pines not bigger around than his thigh.

Thirty feet away two beefy men held each of her elbows. She twisted and bucked, but gave no real effort to escape. They dragged her toward the narrow porch of a hickory log cabin about the size of a double-car garage. European cars, not American. The west building looked more like an outhouse than a shed. A length of chain and a padlock secured the door to the small but hearty structure.

Zeke was still alive. A dead prisoner didn’t require lock and key. Relief loosened the flow of his breaths. Khani would’ve seen the silver metal and drawn the same conclusion.

“Please,” Khani sobbed, “let me go. I don’t know who you are. What do you want with me?”

“Shut up.” The son-of-a-bitch on her right jerked her arm. His reedy voice held a thick Russian bur. “You stick your nose where it doesn’t belong, you get it cut off.”

Khani belted a shriek scripted for a Hollywood drama. The sound was so stratified with fear, he had to remind himself she was putting on a show.

Street extricated his phone and sent the coordinates and time for the HELO extraction. It’d take them every bit of an hour to get here from Anchorage. He just hoped they didn’t need it sooner.

The front door of the cabin flew open. It banged against the weathered logs and swung back toward the frame. A fat hand short a pinkie slammed against the door, stopping it cold. The stocky man pounded his way onto the stoop. Craters scared his wide face. A scowl added to the revoke of his presence.

“`Tchyo za ga`lima?” The apparent leader tossed his whole arm into the air. “That’s not a grizzly bear.”

“We found her in the woods less than a mile away, Iosif.” The taller of the two explained with a hitch of his thumb down the mountain.

“Why bring her here?” The leader barked.

“We don’t know what she was doing out there. Maybe she nose around and find—”

“Zatk`nis.” Iosif’s hand sliced the air. “Take her back where you found her and let her go.”

“But—” One of the men protested, but the sentence was severed by another stroke of the man’s hand.

The leader’s mouth opened to speak, but then closed. He leaned into the cabin, as though someone required his attention. He spoke, but Street couldn’t make out what he said. His Russian wasn’t that good. Someone else in the cabin made the count at least four to two.

Good odds.

Iosif’s wide shoulders shrugged. His gaze swiveled to Khani. Black eyes narrow. He really looked at her for the first time since he’d stomped onto the porch. A rye smirk curled one side of his mouth. “She is,” he called into the foggy interior. His ugly laugh curdled the contents of Street’s stomach. “Bring her to me. Grisha needs some fun after all his hard work.”

Street drew his S & W. He centered the chuckling man’s pock-marked forehead and braced his trigger finger on the guard.

Come on, troop. Make your move, I’ve got you.

He willed her to thrash the mothers, to give him a sign she was ready to end this charade. But she didn’t know he covered her pert ass. The muscles in his forearms quaked. His grip tested the metal’s strength. A string of curses ticked across his brain.

The goons ushered her forward.

Khani barred her legs on the bottom step. “No. Please. Let me—”

The douche with brutish muscles and a Mickey Mouse voice kicked the tip of his boot at the back of her knee. They shoved her at the other man.

Iosif’s arms locked around Khani’s waist. He snuggled her to his chest and buried his head at the side of her neck. Street tossed his inner hooligan behind bars. These guys would get theirs soon enough. Let them think they had the upper hand.

“And the bear?” The man lifted his mouth from her neck, licked his lips, and eyed the two subordinates.

“We chased it off,” the biggest chump said.

The hell they had.

“Couldn’t have it eat Slaughter. Not before we are ready,” Mickey added.

Chump smacked him on the back of the head, and then they both looked at Khani.

“Don’t worry.” Iosif smiled, revealing an incisor as incomplete as his pinkie. “If she stays to play, we have plenty of time to convince her not to talk. If she doesn’t play, she won’t talk again.” He winked at Khani, who didn’t see the gesture.

She tucked her head against the man’s chest. Her muffled cries bled their way to Street’s ears. The volume shied hysterics, but only by a degree or two. He kept reminding himself she wasn’t a crier, that this was all a spectacle. Still, the more she bawled the harder he drove his shoulder into the tree to keep from barreling into the fray.

Scar-pinkie held Khani close and pulled her inside the cabin. He grabbed the edge of the door to close it.

“What about us?” Mickey squeaked.

“Maybe after we’re done you can have a turn.” The man’s pink tongue peeked through the gap in his teeth, and then it lolled out of his mouth, licking his chops. “You go see if you can work some information out of our other guest, but whatever you do, don’t kill him. Dead men don’t talk.”

“Oh God,” Khani wailed. Such a pitiful sound streaming from a woman would cause any normal human being distress. The mobster’s grin widened. The door closed slowly, sealing his woman inside with at least two brutal men.

T
he stench
of Iosif’s pits and cigar-smoke burned her eyes. Heat radiated from a wood-burning oven in the corner, compounding the fetor. The handle of the man’s sheathed blade ground into her ribs. His fingers dug into her back.

“You want her mouth or her cunt?” the sick son-of-a-bitch asked.

Playing victim, even for the purpose of breaching the tiny contingent of corrupt Russians, irritated her more than the smell. She’d have preferred to kick the door in, guns drawn, with King at her back.

This was what she got for staring after him like a love-struck dummy. He’d challenged a grizzly to save her. At the very least he deserved her awe. And she’d given it, gawking after his sexy ass as he herded a beast four times his size down the side of a mountain.

Her back had been exposed, which nearly cost her life. Their shouted, “Ey,” had been the only warning she had to their presence. The guy she dubbed Soprano aimed a rifle at her chest and yelled in his native tongue. It took effort not to laugh. His vehemence that he should shoot her and leave her for the bear severely diminished exertion it took to hold back her chuckle. Instead she exchanged it for newly-discovered impulse control. She managed to
not
drop to the ground and draw on him.

A fraction of a second before she planned to reach for the WC at her side his friend cleared the line of trees with his shiny pistol at the ready. Cue hysterics. She was a graduate student—cough, cough—researching the ghymbo limbus ferns that only sprouted in spring along this segment of this ice field in all the world. Her graduation relied on it. She wasn’t hunting, but if they were, a bear was just heading down the hill.

They’d been skeptical and probably hadn’t understood half of what she’d said, but the bead the new addition held on her chest dropped to the forest floor she kept gesturing toward. She’d turned away pointing across the slope about the bear and used the opportunity to slip the 1911 and holster from her belt and slip it inside an outer pocket of her ruck.

Of course, shuffling through her pocket had drawn their attention and their eager hands. The heavy, as she called him, hurried forward, rattling on in Russian.

“I don’t understand.” She had shrugged, yanked the map from her pocket, and thrust it at him, discreetly zipping the thing closed behind her.

He’d crumpled the map under his boot and clamped her wrists behind her back. And here she was in the place she’d longed to be for the last four days. Only she didn’t have her backup. A chuckle resounded in her brain. Two days ago she’d scoffed at his involvement. Today she relied on him. She’d bet her life King had found the cabin before she’d been sequestered inside. But she couldn’t bet Zeke’s.

As much as she wanted to make this last, to hear them beg for mercy as they surely would, she didn’t have the luxury.

With her head against the asshole’s chest, she surreptitiously eyed the interior. The main room was no bigger than a low rent flat in London; a one-serve kitchenette and mini fridge added to the effect. An open doorway gave view to another room. A bed with a hideous maroon and hunter-green comforter had been wedged in the corner probably fifty years ago when the cabin had been built with thought to function and none to feel.

The smoke curled up from a cigar on a coffee table. The cramped living area boasted a threadbare love seat and wingback chair. A man nearly as big as King reclined on the sofa, causing the center of it to sag. He held another cigar between his lips.

“You take the end with teeth.” He puffed a stream of grey like an industrial park. “I’ll take her ass.” Tattoos peeked out from the collar and cuffs of his oxford. She wanted to strangle him with the blue cloth. Who the hell wore a dress shirt on an Alaskan ice field?

Someone who didn’t get their hands dirty. Her gaze dropped to his hands. Not a bruise marred his knuckles. Not a hangnail ruffled his shining manicure.

Iosif’s hand plowed into her hair. Pain registered a second before he jerked her head back. His near black gaze danced over her. “Ooohhh, look at her face.” He turned her head to the other man. “She must like it rough.”

Her sobs died. “Yes, she does,” Khani purred.

The man thrust her to arm’s length. His eyes considered her more closely.

She winked at him. His mouth opened to speak. She placed her finger over his lips.

“And she likes to do the penetrating.” Khani yanked the knife from his belt. With a force developed over years of hand-to-hand combat and lifting, she rammed the blade into his carotid.

One of Iosif’s hands wrapped around hers. His nails sunk into her jacket. A gurgle erupted from his throat, bringing a river of crimson with it. Oops. She must have severed his esophagus too.

He lunged at her as though he could do anything but slowly die.

Khani’s gaze lifted in time to see the glint of the pistol the man on the couch pulled from the cushion.

Her grip on the knife firmed. She positioned Iosif’s draining body in front of hers and hoped his thick muscles would stop the bullets whizzing at her in rapid-fire succession.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

Iosif jerked with the first four shots. After that only the impetus of the bullet’s impact moved the body she hefted as a shield. Too damn bad the corpse didn’t have a gun on him. Hers hid in the pack, clinging laboriously to her back.

Her back.

If the other two came running she’d have a mess on her hands. She kept one quarter of her attention trained on the door. Holding the hundred-plus kilo man took most of her concentration. That and counting the number of shots that pelted into her human armor.

Click. Click
. Finally he’d run out of bullets. For how long she didn’t know. Khani dropped Iosif’s weight, but kept hold of the knife.

“Grisha?” she yelled at the man scrambling to his feet with the useless pistol in hand. His startled gaze met hers. Then his hands clambered toward the back of his belt.

Taking a play from King’s book, she launched the bloody blade through the air. It sank into the left side of the man’s expansive chest.

He straightened, and then hunched. His hands gripped the blade and yanked it free. He bellowed like an animal. She thought for certain she’d be dodging its point, but he dropped it to the ground. The metal clattered on the pier and beam floor.

Khani dove for the pocket. She wrestled blindly with the zipper, keeping her eyes on Grisha. Even wounded he could kill her with his bare hands. She could kill him with hers, but why chance it. Zeke needed her whole to get him out of here.

His good arm fished under his shirt.

The unforgiving barrel of her Wilson Combat met her fingers. She palmed it and righted the gun in her grip as she stood.

The familiar
ting
of a pin leaving the home of its grenade pulled her attention upright. Grisha yanked the small round explosive from a chain around his neck.

Fuck.