Now it was up to him.
THE BOYS FINISHED
securing the bomb vest to Cassie, retrieved their guns, and stood back. Kasanov left his chair and moved to look each one in the eye, nodding at them as if he were a general inspecting his troops. “Well done. Don’t forget to kennel the dogs before you activate the motion detectors. You know what needs to be done.”
The boys moved behind Cassie and out of sight. Kasanov turned his attention to the other children who sat on the floor behind the dais. While he’d addressed the guards, the older woman, Natasha, had brought out a pitcher and began serving drinks to the children. They ranged in age from eight or nine to their teens. As they accepted their paper cups of what looked like orange juice, Kasanov moved behind them, stroking their hair, kissing them on the head, and whispering something to each as they drank. It seemed like some kind of bizarre bedtime ritual.
With the showroom spotlights aimed down on him, glinting from his gray hair like a halo, the whole affair took on a surreal quality. As if he’d hypnotized the children. They beamed up at him and drank, each placing an empty cup on the floor in front of them.
At first Cassie didn’t realize what she was witnessing. When she did, it was with a sick feeling that roiled through her stomach. “Stop,” she shouted, keeping the rest of her body frozen in place. “Don’t drink that.”
Kasanov caught her eye and shook his head in disapproval. He’d come to the end of the row of children, the last, the youngest, sitting in his lap as she finished her cup of juice. He gently moved her to the floor and returned to his seat.
He pulled out a small remote, the kind that could start a car. “It’s active now, Dr. Hart. Any movement and it will explode, taking all of us. But if you do nothing, they will all die anyway. How frustrating it must be for you. The doctor who never gives up on her patients, who chases after any lost cause no matter the danger to herself, and here you are, forced to sit and watch these innocent children die.”
“This has nothing to do with Rosa or any treasure,” Cassie said, trying to reason with Kasanov. Drake would be here soon, was all she could think. “Why are you doing this? And to your own family?”
Kasanov stretched his legs out and crossed them at the ankle as if he didn’t have a care in the world. “First of all, they aren’t my family. Merely random strays Natasha collected and taught some basic street skills to. Useful, but disposable.”
Cassie glanced past him to see if the children responded to his declaration, but they all had their eyes half-closed, slouching or lying across the floor in a stupor. Whatever he’d given them, it acted too quickly to be cyanide, the poison of choice among cult leaders like Jim Jones. Maybe a benzodiazepam or barbituate?
“Second,” Kasanov continued, “this has everything to do with your grandmother and her treasure. Do you know how she killed my father?”
His voice grew shrill, despite his relaxed posture. Unsure of how to respond and not wanting to agitate him further, Cassie merely shook her head.
“She knew that treasure was my father’s only chance to save his wife and unborn child. But Rosa didn’t care. She tricked him; let him and the Nazis he was working with follow her deep into the catacombs below Paris. They thought she was leading them to the gold, but instead she led them into a trap. They reached a dead end and she blew up the cavern, thousands of tons of rock came down on top of them.”
He leaned forward, both elbows on his knees, his voice dropping as if he whispered a prayer. “Imagine how they died. Crushed under the weight, broken and bloody, slowly suffocating as the air went out, or drowning in their own blood. I want you to picture that, Dr. Hart. Because that’s exactly how you will die here, tonight.”
Kneeling and holding her position for so long beneath the weight of the bomb had her entire body aching, ready to collapse. She just had to stay strong long enough for Drake to get here.
Then Kasanov surprised her. He leaned back and said, “I really thought Drake would have figured it out sooner.”
Cassie frowned at that, trying hard not to move. “You want him to come here?”
“Of course. I want him to suffer as I have. Knowing that you were the cause of all this death and destruction. They can see us clearly through the showroom window—it’s why I chose this place. They’ll call for SWAT and the bomb squad, whoever. Drake will be forced to watch. I’ll wait until the first wave of officers comes in, trips the motion detectors. Or if their SWAT team snipers kill me, then this,” he raised his fist with the detonator, “will set the bomb off as soon as my grip loosens.”
“A dead man’s switch.”
“Exactly.” He beamed at her as if she were a slow student who had finally gotten an answer correct. “I didn’t come here tonight to learn about a treasure. I came here tonight to die. With you, Dr. Hart.”
THE HOLE VINCENT
had used to escape the fenced in scrapyard was hardly a hole, Drake discovered. More like a place where the dogs had dug out a few inches of dirt below the fence. Still, the dirt was loose and it was easy enough to enlarge it to accommodate the larger bulk of a full-grown man wearing a tactical vest. He just hated wasting the time.
He knelt in the dirt and used the stock of the shotgun to dig, jabbing it furiously into the earth and ramming the soil out of his way. Usually, situations like this, he was able to keep his heart rate low, slow his breathing, stay focused and in control. But after everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, knowing Hart was in there along with innocent children, knowing the killing spree Kasanov had gleefully left in his wake, there was no way in hell Drake was in control. What he felt was the exact opposite of being in command of the situation, more like a berserker frenzy.
Which was exactly why Mandy Devlin hadn’t wanted him involved. Too much emotion, too much adrenaline, and he could get everyone killed.
He cleared enough space beneath the fence. Shedding his vest, he stacked it and the shotgun against the fence and belly crawled through. Spitting dirt, he reached back and dragged the Remington and his vest through, then knelt there for a moment, his vision hazed red.
Breathe, damn it.
His fingers fumbled the vest back into place, a quick check of the pockets to make sure he still had the flex-cuffs, extra ammo, paint can, OC spray, and flashlight.
Still shaky and breathing too fast, he climbed to his feet. Saw a shadow overhead: the drone. He waved at it and it did a quick circle in acknowledgment. Mandy had come through with the cell and radio jammer. He drew in a deep breath. Finally, something had gone right tonight.
Time to finish this.
His plan was simple: take out the guards and sneak into the car dealership while the SWAT team got in position. Vincent had shown him how to access the car building via a side entrance away from the bombs—Kasanov’s exit strategy, Drake guessed.
He skirted the piles of broken-down vehicles until the blazing lights of the car dealership came into sight. The large, plate-glass windows of the showroom revealed everything: children lying still on the floor, Kasanov standing, holding a detonator in one hand and a pistol in the other, and Hart. Kneeling. With a suicide bomb vest strapped to her body.
Time for a change of plan.
<<<>>>
“YOU DID ALL
this, killed innocent people, just to kill yourself?” Cassie asked.
“They weren’t all innocent. Certainly not Alicia Fairstone. In a way, you owe your fate to her. She killed my grandson, Anton. Anton was to be the future of my little enterprise. He would carry on my bloodline. Without him, I’m nothing. There’s nothing left for me. Except death. A death of my choosing, not some random whim of fate.”
Cassie looked past him to the children who all now lay unconscious on the floor. “That’s ridiculous. Look at those children. You could have raised one of them to carry on—”
He leapt to his feet. “Blood is everything,” he thundered down at her. “My worthless daughter, Natasha, might be content leaving my legacy to
gaje
, but that’s not why my father died, not what my mother taught me.”
Speaking of Natasha, where was she? The woman had vanished. Cassie focused on the immediate problem—reasoning with Kasanov. “Please. They’re just children.”
“You think I care? That I haven’t killed women and children before? I had a lot of fun in my youth searching out women who could have been Rosa—I even killed my fellow Roma and others who knew her during the war, trying to find her. You see, she disappeared so completely we could find no trace. My mother didn’t know Padraic Hart’s name, much less where they might have taken the gold. It wasn’t until the Berlin wall came down and the Stasi opened its archives that I even found a photo of Rosa.”
“That was almost fifty years after she left France—you were still looking for her?”
“Of course. She owed me a blood debt. I was not about to forget that. By then I had lost much of the fury that drove me as a youth, learned more patience. With the info I found in the Stasi files, I tracked her here, to Pennsylvania, but then lost her once more. When it came time to get Anton the computer skills necessary to revitalize our family enterprise, I sent him here with Natasha and she kept looking.”
His face twisted with pain. “Fate is cruel, though. After Anton was killed, when I saw the police file and investigated the detectives involved in his case, I found Drake—and photos of you, the spitting image of Rosa. Too late to save my family, but never too late to savor vengeance.”
“Do it, then,” she challenged him. It was the only way she could save Drake and the other police officers. He’d be here soon. “Kill me now. Let’s die together.”
His grimace of pain turned triumphant. “It won’t be that easy. Not for the last person on earth who has Rosa Costello’s blood. You deserve a fate that will make the universe forever curse her name as I have. And your Drake? He’ll be a withered husk of a man after tonight, after he witnesses what you have caused. Guilt will gnaw at him, eat him alive, twist and tear at his heart better than any torture I could devise. You’ll die knowing you destroyed the man you love. It’s not the justice my father deserves, but it’s the closest thing I can give him.”
Tears burned Cassie’s eyes even though she didn’t dare wipe them away for fear of detonating the bomb. She should, she knew. Just jump up, end it all before Drake or the other police officers came in and got themselves killed.
But she couldn’t. Not because she was afraid of dying, rather because she could not give up hope. Life is hope.
Typical Rosa. Always had to be right.
Drake would find a way. He always did.
THE DOGS BEGAN
barking. Kasanov stopped his frenetic pacing and smiled down at Cassie. “Sounds like Drake has finally arrived. Better late than never.” He straightened his shoulders and raised his gun to aim it at Cassie’s head. “Let’s see if the SWAT snipers are paying attention.”
Nothing happened. No laser sights aimed at Kasanov, no shot shattering the windows. He frowned.
“You didn’t think it would be that easy, did you?” came a man’s voice from a hallway on the far side of the showroom.
Cassie’s hope died. It was Drake. Accompanied by two of Kasanov’s guards. They shoved him forward and beamed triumphantly.
Drake winked at Cassie, then focused his attention on Kasanov. She wanted to run to him, leap into his arms. She wanted to slap him silly for walking into Kasanov’s trap—what the hell was he thinking?
Most of all, she wanted him gone. Far from here. Safe.
Pinned in place by the bomb, she could have none of that.
Kasanov appeared equally unhappy. He whirled on the two guards, raised his pistol and shot them both in the face before they could respond. Their bodies slumped to the floor. Drake froze, hands raised in surrender.
“You were supposed to be watching,” Kasanov shouted at Drake. “Where the hell is your bloody SWAT team? Why haven’t they ended this?”
“I haven’t given them the signal to,” Drake said calmly. As if he were in charge.
“Then you can go to hell.” Kasanov raised his hand with the detonator.
Cassie kept her eyes open. Drake was still a good ten feet away, too far for her to touch, but if she was going to die, she wanted him to be the last thing she saw. He smiled at her. Not a sad smile, not a “good-bye forever, I love you” smile.
More like a, “don’t worry, we can handle this” smile.
Kasanov pressed the button. Nothing happened.
Before Drake could make a move, Kasanov swung on Cassie. He lowered his pistol, resting it against her forehead. “There’s a mercury switch on her bomb,” he told Drake. “I so much as bump her and it blows.”
Drake nodded as if he’d expected this. “I came here to update you on Alicia Fairstone. Turns out we won’t be charging her with murder after all.”
“What are you talking about?” Kasanov’s voice was tight with fury.
“She’s innocent. Your grandson was already lying dead on that road before her car hit him.”
“But how—who?” The gun pressed against Cassie’s forehead bounced with energy. It took everything she had to not let it rock her body.
“I think maybe it was his landlady,” Drake said in a calm voice as if they were playing a game and he’d just suggested the killer was Colonel Mustard in the library with the lead pipe. “Not exactly sure why. But when we went back and interviewed his friends at school, we learned he was saving money, planning to move out. And he’d already approached his professors about job opportunities with several
Fortune 500
companies.”
“No. He’d never…” Kasanov shook his head. “Young, foolish, traitor.”
“Natasha had to punish him.” Cassie tried to fill in the blanks, help Drake. She had a feeling he was bluffing. Despite the fact his face was devoid of emotion, she was expert in reading his body language. He wasn’t as confident as he sounded. “Natasha could never let him betray you like that—she was loyal to you, to your family.”