“You could say that,” Nick said, his voice raw. “I thought I did.”
Suspicion dawned on the kid’s battered face. “Wait a freakin’ minute. You must be the thug,” he said. “Becca’s boy toy. The one Becca was having the hot affair with. You’re that guy I talked to on the phone, right?”
“Yeah. Did she meet you today? At a house on Gavin Street?”
“Yeah, that’s where Nadia took me,” Josh said. “She said it was her place, but I guess it was this mobster guy’s house all along—hey, man, are you OK? You look like you’re going to be sick, or something.”
Nick was so fucked. More than fucked. He was doomed.
“So where the hell is my sister?” Josh demanded.
He tried to suck in enough air to answer. “Somewhere she shouldn’t be,” he said. “I’ve got to haul ass to go fix it.” He turned to Tam, who was trying to throw her deadly pendants over her shoulder.
The baby was grabbing for them, chortling with glee.
“Becca was telling the truth,” he said. “I have to go get her. Zhoglo had her tagged. He could trace her to the place where I left her.”
“Ay. That’s bad. Go, then.” Tam’s eyes went bleak. “We’ll finish here without you. Run like the devil is after you, Nikolai. Because he is.”
He did, spurred on by bone-chilling fear, and wild, crazy hope.
Chapter
33
T here was screaming in the room behind the picture window. Something shattered against the wall. Zhoglo was in a bloody rage.
Eventually he would take it out on her. That was going to be bad.
But it hadn’t happened yet. One thing at a time. Becca still had a few moments to smell the pines, throw her head back, look up at the moon lighting the holes in the clouds, and weep for joy.
Josh and Carrie were safe. She’d seen it with her own eyes on the monitor. Seen Nick, bursting in at the last moment and stopping those monsters from cutting that poor girl. And if Sveti was saved, then Josh and Carrie were, too. And all the rest of them, too. Free and clear. Saved.
Zhoglo’s henchmen had forgotten the monitor, which kept on transmitting the live video feed. Sveti still lay on the table, with a woman in scrubs bending over her, checking her pulse. Seth stood next to her, half visible on the screen, grimly holding a gun on someone or many someones, all of whom were off camera. Someone was moaning and babbling in pain. Not Sveti. Seth didn’t appear at all concerned about it.
Becca was crying, but she didn’t care. She flung her head back, sniffling, listening to the trees rustle above her head. Dragging in lungfuls of the sweet breeze. A big circle opened in the clouds, lined with light. Stars, clouds, moon, trees. Beautiful.
Carrie and Josh would have to live it for her. Love it for her.
She ached with sorrow for her own loss, but Josh and Carrie would go on. They would grow up, choose mates, make families. Ripen into strong, happy people. Live long, full lives. She hoped for it desperately. Wished it for them, with all her strength, all her love.
And when it came to living fully, well. She may have skimped on life experience up to a week ago, but her affair with Nick had been so intense, it was like years of living crammed into a few short days.
She’d loved him. Fully. Not wisely, but well. That was a blessing. More than a lot of women had to look back on at the end of their lives.
She would cling to that as best she could, when the time came.
Nick had never driven so fast in his life. He floored it through the interior of the warehouse complex, his flesh creeping at the thought of Becca, staked out in the dark. The virgin sacrifice. Innocent.
He fished in the glove box for the flashlight. He should’ve left it with her in the first place. Hell, he shouldn’t have left her at all.
Moonlight came and went as clouds scudded by. Inside, that place would be as dark as the pits of hell.
And he was the one who had chained her there.
Stop. Focus. No point in flogging himself for fucking up again. He had the rest of his life for that. Becca herself could do the honors. For now, he was focused on making it right. As right as it could ever be.
This kind of wound was the kind that never healed. He knew about wounds like that. He’d watched them inflicted, seen them fester, for his entire childhood. Until love was just a distant, bitter memory.
She would never want to see him again. He knew that. But it would be enough to know that the Becca he loved still existed on earth, exactly who he had believed her to be the first time around. Even if he wasn’t worthy of her himself, cold, suspicious, screwed-up, brain dead bastard that he was.
But even all alone, the idea of her existence would comfort him.
He heaved the doors open, with a rattling roar. The beam of his flashlight sliced through the cavernous dark, and caught a small, furry body that scurried for cover. Rats. Oh, Jesus. Another nail for his coffin.
“Becca?” he called out. “Hey!”
No answer. That chilled him. No way could she be asleep. Maybe she just didn’t feel like speaking to him. He could hardly blame her.
“Becca!” He sprinted down the center aisle towards the fifth bank of scaffolding where he had chained her. “I know you’re pissed, but—”
He rounded the corner and skidded to a stop, his heart squeezed tight to bursting in a claw of icy terror and dismay. Rats scattered.
Not there. The bags were there, the water bottles, the scattered protein bars, but Becca, the handcuffs and the chain were gone.
He wanted to vomit. Oh, fuck. He had no idea where to start, where to turn. What cliff to jump off of.
He wanted to howl like a mad dog.
There was no sound, but the air behind him shifted and moved, alerting him just in time to spin around—and take the length of metal pipe on the front of his skull, rather than the back.
A burst of blinding, white-red light, and he slid right down a long, agonizingly painful slope, into an oily black nowhere.
Becca had thought that what had happened in the warehouse would burn away the tender feelings she had for Nick. That she could fall no further. She was dead wrong.
Kristoff and the man that Zhoglo called Mikhail had hauled Nick in, unconscious, trussed up and bleeding. Zhoglo began taking out his rage by kicking him—back, legs, belly, groin, face. Every awful thud of contact against Nick’s limp body was like a blow to her own flesh.
There were depths left to come. That was Zhoglo’s specialty, after all. Untold depths of pain, of shame, of despair.
Nick’s hands and feet were bound before him with a ratcheted plastic cuff. Another tie fastened hands and feet together, folding him in half.
Zhoglo kicked over the table that held the snack foods that Pavel had brought out to them. Crystal goblets smashed, food scattered and flew, wine glugged from the bottle, dark and heavy as blood.
Becca flinched as Zhoglo hauled off for another violent kick to Nick’s ribs, which drew the man’s attention to her own unlucky self.
He swung around and hung over her, panting. “Hundreds of millions of dollars!” Spittle from his wet red mouth hit Becca’s face, making her flinch again. “Do you have any idea how much money you and this bleeding piece of shit have cost me? Can you even conceive of the magnitude of waste?”
“The important things were saved,” Becca said softly. “Money is nothing.” Her sane side cringed at her own brash idiocy. Where had that come from? A fatalistic desire to speed up her own death? God.
“Nothing?” Zhoglo shrieked. “Nothing?” He slapped her hard across the face. “Arrogant bitch! Who are you to say that money is nothing? Have you ever survived without it?”
Yes, she wanted to say, but she didn’t have the nerve to speak when she looked into that maddened face, livid with rage, those staring white eyes, pupils contracted to pinpoints.
He whacked her again, backhand. Her eyes teared. “Have you ever had to steal it?” he bellowed. “Have you killed for it? Felt hot blood well over your hands for it? How hungry have you ever been, you goddamn American rich bitch?” Whack. “Have you fought rats to eat rotten meat from a garbage dump? Have you bent over in an alley and let yourself be buggered by swine for a crust of bread?” Whack. “Have you?”
His voice rose to a grinding scream of fury. He grabbed thick handfuls of her hair, and flung her, chair and all, onto the deck. Right next to Nick’s booted feet. She could almost touch them.
Food lay all around her. Smashed grapes, apple peels. Crumbled water crackers, little triangles of cheese. A slice of ham lay next to her face, spread out like a panting dog’s long, pink tongue. The fatty, meaty smell of it made her stomach heave in protest.
And the fruit knife. It gleamed and flashed before her eyes, catching the light. The little paring knife that Zhoglo had used to peel his apples and his grapes. Right beyond reach of her fingertips.
Zhoglo turned away from her, kicking at the metal stand that held the computer monitor, knocking it to the ground. She lunged for the tiny knife while he occupied himself with kicking the portable computer into ruins. His henchmen were watching him, beady eyed and cautious not to pull any more rage down on themselves than they had to. No one watched her as she strained her body, pulling against the tape until it cut against her skin, reaching—
Got it. She palmed it. Nick’s boots were right in her face. If she tried again, she could just about reach…yes.
She kept the blade hidden in her hands, let her hair flop over her face and tried to look limp and defeated while she picked at the thick plastic tie that held his hands and feet together.
It took forever. No way could she get through it before they saw her. But she had to try. She had an atom of a chance to actually do something. She’d be damned if she’d waste it.
The tie popped loose. Zhoglo was still bellowing in Ukrainian, flinging the detached monitor screen at the plate glass window—
Crash, the window shattered. Shards peppered her arms, her back. Becca dug around until she found the tie that bound his legs together, and sawed desperately while the rest of them scrambled out of range, pulling slivers of glass out of their flesh.
The tie popped loose. She tried to reach the one that fastened Nick’s hands together, but she came up about two inches short. She willed him to shift, to wake, to help her out. Please, Nick. Please.
He just lay there. Like a dead man.
“Cut her out of that chair,” Zhoglo ordered shrilly in Ukrainian. “Get that tape off of her. Get everything off her. I want to get started.”
Nick held the hurting at bay, with all the mental muscle he possessed. He had to be ready to use what Becca had given him. Courageous goddess that she was. Chained to a chair and mouthing off to that maniac while he was in one of his rages—the chick had suicidal nerve. But then again, who knew that better than him?
Hold the position, damn it. Cuffed hands tethered to cuffed ankles, while looking limp, unconscious. His hands were still bound, but they were in front of him. And feet were a hell of a lot better than nothing.
It hurt like fire to breathe. His ribs were cracked, maybe broken. Everything hurt. Push it back. He remembered a taunt his father used to throw at him when he was young, when he blubbered after beatings.
Pain can’t hurt you, kid, so shut up.
He repeated it to himself now. Broken bones, ruptured organs, ripped tendons, who gave a fuck. He wasn’t going to be needing his body again after this move, so he did not need any of this sensory information from his peripheral nervous system. Thanks, but no thanks.
The data was irrelevant. Pain can’t hurt you. Push it back.
Through swollen, slitted eyes, he could see that ogre Kristoff, yanking Becca by her dog chain off the chair and slicing off her snug shirt with his knife. Then, the knife snapped beneath her bra cups. The evil bastard licked his lips, chuckling.
“Mikhail. Wake that stinking turd up,” Zhoglo ordered. “I want him to watch. Everything we do to her. Every last instant of it.”
Mikhail stood at his head and bent over him, then flopped him onto his back so he could start slapping Nick’s face. Smack, whack.
Right…now.
He whipped his legs up, clamping the guy’s head between his thighs. A violent twist and jerk, and he scooped his bound hands around the guy’s off-balance body. Flip-twist again, and he yanked with desperate strength. Pure instinct, blind technique, no fucking clue if it would work—then pop, a wet crunching sound.
A choked shriek from Mikhail, and the sudden smell of shit as the man’s bowels loosened. His spine had been snapped.
Nick panted as he rolled away from the limp body and rolled up onto his feet. Kristoff dove for him, roaring like a bull, and somehow Nick figured out, on the fly, how to counterbalance the frontal kicks with his hands bound, how to parry Kristoff’s slashing blows to the head. He danced back, swung a swift roundhouse kick that connected with Kristoff’s face, and sent that fuckhead gorilla reeling back, blood spurting from his nose. He hauled off to follow it up with a—
Bam. The gunshot rocked him. Zhoglo was brandishing a pistol.
A sensation of fire-edged cold spread in his chest, high on the right. Nick tried to breathe as he staggered back. Blood welled hot from the hole. Air, bubbling, sucking. Shit. The lung. He was gone. Oh, Becca. Becca.