She was quiet for a long time. He was almost lulled into thinking that she’d conked out into a swoon of exhaustion and would leave him in blessed peace. Then she cleared her throat. No such luck.
“Um, this is kind of a hard thing to say, so please don’t get mad at me, OK?”
He braced himself. “Have at.”
“Ah…you did what you did to those men to save me. To get me away from the island before that guy…before he could…”
“Yeah,” he broke in, impatient. “And?”
“Well, first off, thank you,” she said, in a breathless rush. “I don’t know why you did that for me, but thank you.”
The pause after those words begged the question, so he thought about it for a second. “I don’t know why I did it either.”
He got the sense that what he’d said was not the answer she had hoped for. This did not surprise him. The reality of Nick Ward always shocked the ladies, once they got a clue what they were dealing with. Usually, he fled the scene before that development.
“Well. Hmph,” she said, with a disapproving cough. “What I’m trying to say is that, ah, considering your work, and, um, the people you associate with, I understand why you don’t want to have anything to do with the police. But I’m very grateful to you for saving me, and therefore, when I make my statement, I won’t mention you. If you just take me to the station and let me go, I won’t say one word about you. If they have me look at pictures, and I see yours, I won’t ID you. It’s not like I know…hey, stop that! What’s so funny?”
So Becca thought he was one of Zhoglo’s goons. It was inevitable, but for some reason it struck him as funny. Dry laughter snorted out of him, racking his chest, making his throat hurt, his eyes sting.
“Oh, that’s good,” he said, wiping his eyes. “That’s great, Becca. Tell them you took out four armed mobsters and fled the island all by yourself. The naked girl commando. Sounds like a video game. They’ll be coming in their pants when they take your statement.”
“Do not make fun of me.” Her voice had gone chilly. “There’s nothing amusing about this. At all.”
“Oh, no,” he agreed. Laughter jolted his ribs. “Not at all.”
She waited, radiating disapproval, until he got himself under control. “Are you finished?” she asked. “Can we discuss this like adults?”
Becca had nerve, talking like that to a guy she took for a bad-ass criminal. “I was infiltrating that organization,” he said. “I’m not one of his thugs. I was under cover.”
She gazed at him, agape. The silence was sweet. He savored it, for as long as it lasted. Which wasn’t long.
“Oh. So by getting me out of there, you, ah—”
“Blew my cover? Wasted years of preparation? Trashed a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring that motherfucker down? Yes, yes, and yes. Lives were at stake, sweetheart. I traded them. For yours.”
Her eyes were huge, her mouth pursed into a shocked O.
“This evening, I was supposed to kill you,” he went on, his voice hard. “After the big festive gang-bang, of course. That would have been my entry fee to Zhoglo’s exclusive club. I had to get you out. So here we are, babe.”
She sucked in a shuddering breath, pressed a hand to her mouth. “Oh, God. So you’re from the police—or some agency—?”
The flinch was involuntary. He could only hope she didn’t notice. “Not anymore,” he said. “I used to be.”
“Used to be?” She looked bewildered. “Then why are you doing this?”
“A lot of things went wrong.” The last thing he wanted to think about was that rotten, convoluted story of betrayal and torture and murder. “I’m working on my own.”
“Meaning?” She looked puzzled.
“I had my own personal reasons to investigate this prick. I’ve been waiting for years for a chance to get close to that bastard. I found one, it was cranking along, and ta da…you showed up, to take a dip in the pool.”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “I am so sorry.”
“Me, too,” he muttered sourly. “What a fuck-up.”
“A fuck-up?” She sounded offended. “You saved my life!”
“I didn’t go to Frakes Island to save your life,” he pointed out. “Believe it or not.”
She chewed on that. “I’m sorry that I made difficulties for you.”
Difficulties? The woman had a talent for understatement.
A relatively tranquil twenty minutes passed before she piped up again. “Tell me the truth about something,” she said.
He hesitated. That sounded like a trap. “If I can,” he hedged.
“You were lying when you told me you’d take me to the police station, weren’t you? No way in hell would you do that. Because what you are doing is illegal, right? A rogue operation. And the powers that be would not be happy with you for doing it.”
He let out a short, explosive sigh. “That’s correct.”
She twisted her hands together. The blanket had fallen open, displaying her tits in all their lush, pear-shaped glory.
He jerked his gaze back to the road, focused on the yellow line. Like he had time for this juvenile shit.
“Don’t lie to me,” she said. “That’s something that I really hate.”
It’s not all about you, sweet cheeks. He stopped the caustic words just in time, and was congratulating himself for his uncharacteristic self-control when a stupid answer burst out of him. “I won’t,” he said.
That startled him. He didn’t even know if the words were true. What the hell. He would make them true. By keeping his big mouth shut.
He had to unload this chick, pronto. Before he did something really stupid. He could feel the momentum gathering in his balls.
“So…so what are you going to do with me, then?”
The quiver in her voice annoyed him. “Don’t know. Chain you to a radiator?” he snapped. “It may be the only way to keep you safe.”
She shot him a look as if he were Godzilla and shrank to half her size against the door. Fuck. “I was kidding, Becca,” he growled.
“I cannot believe you would kid about that right now.”
“So dock me a sensitivity point. I’m an asshole. By the way, I’ll take you wherever you want to go. Run to the cops if you want. The only way to stop you would be to lock you in my basement, but I’m tired and that sounds too fucking stressful right now.”
“What a lovely sentiment,” she muttered.
“But be aware,” he went on grimly. “If you do go to the cops, that bastard will come for you. He will find you. And you will die. And so will I.”
“Thanks for the warning. That’s just great to know. Just great.” Her voice was burbling, hands over her face. Aw, shit. He hated tears.
He drove, trying not to listen to the pathetic sniffles and snorts from her hunched form. “Stop it,” he exploded. “I’m sorry!”
“Oh, piss off, you condescending bastard.”
He was comforted by the smackdown. He liked her feisty.
Chapter
11
Z hoglo stared down at the four blood-soaked corpses, his face expressionless. Anatoli had been with him for twenty years, faithful as a hound, and about as intelligent. But he had valued the man’s loyalty. Anatoli’s throat gaped open from ear to ear. Yevgeni’s too. Ivan had a bullet hole drilled between wide, startled blue eyes. A promising young man, intelligent and ferocious. And Yuri. Three hundred pounds of pure muscle, but his bulldog neck had been snapped like a baby chicken’s.
Arkady Solokov had gotten away clean, with the girl. While Zhoglo’s armed, highly trained, ruthless guards tripped over their feet and died. The man was a professional killer—but who had hired him? And why?
The list of candidates was endless. It baffled him.
He was furious with himself. He should have known. In fact, he had known on some level. Solokov had been too calm, too sealed, too difficult to read. High-risk. He should have shot the man where he sat.
But no, Zhoglo had decided to wait, to observe Solokov’s behavior during the orgy he’d planned and the subsequent execution, before drawing his final conclusions. He had miscalculated. Nothing infuriated him more.
It did not track. Killing the girl would have pulled Solokov still deeper into the Vor’s confidence. In fact, he’d suspected that Solokov had brought the girl here just for that purpose. Aside from the other man’s wish to have something to fuck on long, boring nights, she would have been a gift of blood for the Vor.
So. The girl’s continued existence was important to the man for some reason, but if this were the case, why in God’s name bring her here, to certain death? It made no sense.
It had been decades since he had gotten his own hands red. He had long ago delegated such duties to the eager young thugs on the bottom rung of the power ladder, hungry to show how ruthless they could be. But he was so furious, he wanted to slash and cut again. Watch hot blood spatter and fly. Feel muscles and nerves twist in agony against the slick blade of his knife. Hear the screams ring in his ears.
If he got his hands on the throat of that treacherous whore, he would kill her himself. No, both of them, taking turns, making it last for days. Until their throats were too ruined to scream.
The murder in his eyes had silenced even Zhoglo’s tedious dinner guest. The Heckler & Koch that Pavel had pointed in his face, and the presence of four bloody bodies had done their part to subdue him.
He cowered in the wingback chair, eyes wide.
Zhoglo had no reason to think that the doctor was responsible for this debacle, but he still wanted to kill the man. His air of entitlement was acutely annoying to a man who had grown up fighting the dogs on the streets of Kiev for scraps.
It would be enjoyable to watch Mathes grovel and beg for mercy. But as always, thrift prevailed. He had invested a fortune in this project. The profit potential was vast.
And the man did have a useful skill. Zhoglo himself was alive because of it. He rubbed the surgical scar, thinking of the young, muscular heart inside that pumped his blood so vigorously. It had belonged to the eighteen-year-old son of a man who had tried to defraud him with a seventy-million-dollar bank scam.
The man had been very contrite. He had, after all, other children.
The doctor’s eyes glittered with excitement. A thrill junkie, Zhoglo realized, with a twinge of disgust. Another addict. The world seemed overrun with them sometimes. That annoyed him too. It grated upon his nerves that this fool dared to associate with Vadim Zhoglo for the amusement value. No doubt he wanted to alleviate his boredom with his respectable, privileged life. The urge to kill the man swelled.
He took a calming breath, let the impulse subside. There would be killing enough later on to satisfy him. All in good time.
He turned to Pavel. Pavel seemed steady, but there was a subtle tremor to the gun that only Zhoglo’s trained eyes could see.
“You were the one who arranged for this man to handle security, were you not, Pavel?” Zhoglo asked. “You were the one who put this poisonous snake into my pocket.”
He made a quick gesture at Kristoff. The man stepped forward promptly, jerking his gun up to train it on Pavel. Best to be careful.
Beads of sweat hung on Pavel’s gray forehead. The man forced himself to speak, through stiff looking, whitened lips. “I knew the man, Vor. He was with Avia. He worked as a middleman for the—”
“He almost destroyed us,” Zhoglo echoed softly, nudging Yevgeni’s limp corpse with the shining toe of his dress shoe.
“When Pyotr—Pyotr was supposed to take care of security, and when he—” Pavel stopped, swallowed a few times.
“When he shot himself in the head, you mean? Your worthless nephew? Clearly, incompetence is an inherited family weakness.”
“After Pyotr…died, I had to find someone quickly.”
“You chose the wrong man,” Zhoglo said. “Whose idea was it, Pavel, to use Solokov? Who put it into your empty head?”
Pavel’s mouth worked. “I think, ah, Ludmilla mentioned to me that Solokov was in the area. I thought—having a man already in place…and his English is excellent, so—”
“Ludmilla? Who is Ludmilla?”
Pavel’s eyes squeezed shut, as if he were bracing for a blow. “She runs an escort service,” he said. “In Seattle.”
Zhoglo stared at him for a moment. “An escort service? Poor Marya. How disappointed she would be. But then again. Fucking whores is nothing compared to what you have already done to disappoint her. I doubt she would notice, or care, at this point.”
Pavel dropped heavily to his knees. The gun sagged in his limp grip. “Please, Vor,” he said raggedly. “Take me instead.”
Zhoglo scowled at him. “Take you? What are you talking about?”
“Send Sasha back to his mother. Take my heart, liver, eyes, kidneys, all of it. Barter them, sell them, whatever.”
“You?” Zhoglo began to laugh. “Pavel. Be serious. Who would want your rotten organs after the vodka you have guzzled, the junk you have shot into your veins, the diseased prostitutes you have fucked? The whites of your eyes are yellow. Your skin is pitted. You look like a walking corpse. I would not be surprised if you were HIV positive and riddled with ten different strains of hepatitis.”
“Vor, Sasha is only—”
“I am sorry to say it, my friend, but your body is useless as a bargaining chip. But Sasha, ah.” Zhoglo was smiling in earnest now, starting to feel much better. “Lovely, sweet, virgin Sasha. His various parts are as clean and fresh as newly plucked flowers.”