Tam made a disapproving sound. “So you fucked yourself, me and Ludmilla, to bail out this clueless honey’s ass, hm?”
Nick’s silence was her answer. Her laughter had a bitter edge. “Didn’t have the guts to watch them cut her to pieces, did you?”
His throat bobbed as he tried to moisten his dry, ragged throat. “Didn’t have the guts to do the cutting,” he said. “Hate to say it, but I have my limits.”
“Hmph. You’re soft, Nikolai. Soft in the head, limp in the spine. But I bet there’s one part of you that’s as hard as a diamond, hmm?”
“Tam, it’s not—”
“I hope her sweet tail is worth it, jerk-off. I hope she fucked your brains out. Not that she had far to go. I don’t think there was much rattling around in there to begin with. What am I supposed to do about Ludmilla? Any bright ideas on how I can keep her from getting her tits cut off, Nikolai? I’ve called in all my favors. Now I have to deliver some.”
He stared down at the scissors in his hand, pondering. Ludmilla was one possible point of future contact with Zhoglo that he might be able to exploit. Zhoglo was going to want to have a talk with Ludmilla. That was a big drag for the madam, but any woman who made her living taking advantage of helpless and destitute young women knew how to look after her own interests.
In this case, though, her interests and his were right in line.
“I’ll talk to Seth and Davy,” he said. “I’ll arrange twenty-four-hour-a-day surveillance of her agency. Two guys constantly nearby, and ready for quick intervention, if he sends anyone to take her out.”
“Oh? Really? Do you have any idea how expensive that will be, my friend? Who’s going to pay for it?”
“I will,” he said rashly.
“You?” She cackled. “You’re an unemployed ex-fed. You will pay with exactly what winning lottery ticket? Exactly which rich dying uncle? You’re an orphan, Nikolai. I’ve seen your bank account, your tax returns. You’ve cashed in your last CD, you’ve borrowed against your pension. Unless you have an offshore account I haven’t noticed yet, your resources are all tapped out.”
“You invasive bitch,” he said mildly, sawing off more hair. “Get your nose out of my wallet.”
“Just looking out for my own interests, darling,” she purred.
“Front me the money,” he suggested. “I’ll sell my condo and pay you back.”
“I will hold you to it,” she warned. “Kind of amusing to think of you huddled under a bridge in your cardboard home. As I dine by candlelight. On fine china.”
“Whatever blows your skirt up, Tam.”
She made an irritated sound. “This is in the interests of killing him now, no? You are finished with whatever other foolish heroic notions you had before? And don’t expect me to believe that you care about Ludmilla’s safety. Your hero complex doesn’t go that far.”
He thought about the flinty-eyed, bleached-blond Ludmilla, and shrugged inwardly. “I don’t actively wish her any ill,” he hedged. “And yes. It is in the interests of killing him. Now, anyway.”
Tamara made a disgusted sound. “Get it right this time. I should have hired a sniper to take him out from a distance.”
“You didn’t hire me,” he said evenly. “You weren’t paying me, last time I checked. And I never said this was going to be a straight hit. I had my own agenda. But it’s fucked.”
“What agenda, Nikolai?” Her voice was flat.
He flung the scissors into the sink, cursing his own careless words. He was so fucking tired now, he was babbling. It was dangerous to let Tam know too much of your business. He yanked out his pocketknife. What worked for Becca’s hair would work for him. He sawed off chunks until the sink was full of dull, snarled hair.
So different from the satiny coil of hair he’d cut off Becca. So soft. His hand closed into a fist, remembering the silken feel of it in his palm.
“I’m waiting, Nikolai,” Tam prompted.
He grabbed another hank and attacked it viciously. “So keep waiting,” he growled. “Wait all you want.”
The silence after his words made him twitch. Tam was ruthless, supernaturally smart, and her hidden agendas were incomprehensible. Dealing with her was like dealing with a space alien. You just had to suck in a deep breath, roll the dice, and hope she didn’t kill you.
“This is about that mess in Ukraina five months ago, isn’t it?” she said softly. “When Sergei got killed? And his daughter abducted?”
Shock rippled through him. He let the knife drop on to the heap of hair. “How the fuck do you know about that? That’s classified!”
“I have my sources,” she said, cool as a cucumber.
“Con,” he grated. “That stupid flapjawed son of a bitch—”
“You’re still hoping to find the girl, aren’t you? How old was she? Eleven, twelve?”
He stared down at the black plastic thing that kept talking to him, torturing him, not letting him be.
“Oh, Nikolai.” Her voice had softened. She sounded sad. “You act so tough, but it’s all bullshit. You know she’s dead, don’t you?”
He couldn’t breathe, or speak. No, the voice in his head said. Maybe she’s not.
“Dead, or worse than dead,” she went on, matter-of-factly.
That made his tissues all contract. “Shut up, Tam,” he snarled.
“Can’t bear to think of it? Get it through your head, big boy. The truth will make you free. One way or another, she’s past saving now.”
Nick made a noncommittal sound, and took one final slash at the last long hank that dangled down over his eyes. His hair stuck out every which way now, like it had been chewed off by rats on crack. He turned on the clippers. The low, pervasive buzz of the machine filled his ears.
“Can’t hear you, Tam,” he said loudly. “I’m cutting my hair.”
He took his time, running the clippers over his head, and his beard. He’d chosen the longest setting, since he didn’t want to look like a plucked chicken. He’d done this himself every couple of weeks, back in his clean-cut days, but it was trickier when the hair was longer.
When he finished, he stared at the results, grim and unsatisfied. He did not look forgettable. He looked like a short-haired, stressed-out, evil-eyed thug who’d gotten a well deserved pounding. He turned off the clippers. The sudden silence vibrated strangely in his ears.
“I know what you’re trying to do, Nikolai,” Tam said quietly.
He grunted. “That’s great, Tam. That makes one of us.”
“You’re trying to save your soul,” she said. “Watch out, my friend.”
The hair clipper fell into the sink, bouncing on the thick pad of hair. He swayed forward, gripped the sink for support. His insides empty. No ground beneath him. Just an endless, sickening fall.
“It’s dangerous to pin your soul onto a lost cause,” Tam whispered into the phone. “The girl’s gone. Zhoglo ate her. Face it, deal with it. Pin your soul on something else. Believe me. I know what I’m talking about.”
He breathed down a sudden urge to throw up, sucking in harsh, audible breaths as rage built up inside him.
“I see why you’d feel that way,” he said. “Nobody saved you, did they? They left you in the dark, right? Were you past saving, too, Tam?”
It was a blind lashing out, a shot in the dark. He didn’t know shit about Tam’s mysterious past. No one did. But he knew from the sudden change in the quality of the silence that he’d hit the mark. Dead on.
He already felt like shit about it.
“Fuck you,” Tam whispered. She hung up.
He picked up the phone, wound up and slammed it into the mirror. Right between the reflected image of his own glaring eyes.
Crash. The mirror shattered, making a depressed well in the center surrounded by radiating cracks. Sharp shards of mirror glass hung askew and pattered into the sink.
Seven years of bad luck. He stared at the mirror. Like any kind of luck could top what he’d been having lately.
Chapter
14
K ristoff was bored in the new house. There was nothing to do yet. No one wanted him to help, after his failure in the control room on the island. The Vor was in a foul mood and caution dictated staying as far out of his way as possible. So Kristoff huddled in the back suite, his nerves still badly rattled by what had happened the night before.
In fact, he was surprised the Vor hadn’t killed him by now, for not reacting fast enough. Perhaps it just hadn’t occurred to him yet.
He felt guilty. He’d been staring off into space, imagining how it was going to be to fuck that girl when his turn came. Watching Arkady with her on the vid screen had gotten them all worked up.
And then, out of nowhere. Poof, boom. He was gone, with the girl. Leaving four corpses behind, like a blood-sucking demon from hell.
He pulled out his laptop and logged on, surfing the porn sites. He sifted through the trash that interested him less, perversions and fetishes, gay, S&M. He was a traditional man, with traditional tastes.
Oral. Yes, he liked oral. He typed in his brand new American word, “blow job,” into the search engine.
Millions of hits. He sorted, clicking on the pictures. He opened his pants as he admired the girls, their gleaming, painted lips distended around various outsized phalluses, and stimulated himself idly as he perused their wonderful variety. All colors, shapes and sizes, but none as pretty as the girl on the island. Her tits had been without equal.
He clicked on another jpeg, enlarged it, and stared at it, jaw sagging. Not possible. It was like magic. He had been thinking of her, and there she was. The girl from the island.
But it was a normal photograph, not porn. She was looking back over her shoulder, her long dark hair swirling in the breeze. She looked harried, distressed, her mouth open in some reproof as she flapped her hand at whoever was snapping the picture. She wore glasses.
He read bits of the text with some difficulty.
Rebecca Cattrell, long-suffering fiancée of our naughty Don Juan, was unwilling to comment about her man’s mangled member…everyone wants to know about the famous blow job that ended in scandal, heartbreak, and a million-dollar lawsuit, to say nothing of the emergency room…has already been permanently entered in the annals of urban myth…
Kristoff’s erection wilted from the sudden lack of attention while excitement of another kind burgeoned in his belly. He tucked himself briskly back into his pants, picked up the laptop and carried it down to the dining room. This might help offset last night’s disaster.
Pavel was serving a huge cut of thick steak to the Vor. Seared on the outside, red on the inside, bleeding all over the plate. The Vor was attacking it with his usual ferocity.
What he had on the screen gave him just enough courage to approach the table and endure the flinty look the Vor gave him.
His boss sawed off a pink chunk, and stuffed it into his mouth. “What could be important enough to interrupt my meal?” he hissed.
Kristoff placed the laptop on the table, and angled the screen towards his boss.
Zhoglo stared at it. The chewing action in his plump, distended cheeks slowed, and then stopped. He gulped down the lump of steak unchewed, and began to laugh.
“You worthless, stinking turd,” Ludmilla hissed at him in Ukrainian. Her heavily made-up dark eyes looked daggers at him through the oversized vid screen in Davy’s and Seth’s big underground workshop, and her crimson cupid’s-bow mouth worked furiously. “I want nothing to do with you and your stupid schemes, your suicidal urges. Tell your stupid men to go away and leave me be. Tell them to fuck off. I do not want to die.”
After Tam’s scolding, and Becca’s parting shot, Nick was inured to females spitting insults at him. Good thing, too, because Milla was without equal in that department. She was the Olympic athlete of the filthy epithet in Ukrainian, and not too damn shabby in English, either.
“Your best chances are with us now, Milla,” Nick repeated patiently for at least the tenth time. “As soon as I get a fix on him, I’ll go after him and take him out. And you’ll be free and clear.”
“Hah! You said you’d kill him before, you fool, and you did not manage it. And you leave me out there swinging in the wind, and you tell me you want more from me now? Pah!”
“You’ll be free and clear,” Nick repeated obstinately. “And Aleksei will be avenged.”
That had been a risk. He knew that Aleksei, Milla’s first husband, had been slaughtered by command of Vadim Zhoglo over twenty years before, but he didn’t know if she had been genuinely fond of him or not. Aleksei had been a pimp too, and Ludmilla had been one of the girls in his stable before he married her and began showing his young wife the ropes of the trade.
Judging from the downturned, suddenly old-looking sag of her mouth, she had genuinely liked him.
“What do you care for Aleksei?” she snarled.
“Nothing,” Nick said, with perfect honesty. “Never knew the guy. But you did. That’s what matters. Wouldn’t you like to see that bloated flyblown sack of shit die for what he did to you?”
Ludmilla’s mouth shook with something like suppressed disgust. “You are an incompetent bastard. Using me, like a piece of toilet tissue, to clean up your shitty messes,” she hissed.
Ooh. Ouch. And this from a woman who raked huge profits off selling women’s bodies to anyone who cared to buy a piece.