Her Sweet Liberation: Billionaire Secrets - Book Six (2 page)

Chapter Two

Desperate times call for desperate measures.

That's what Lindsay kept telling herself.

She looked nervously around at her surroundings. This was definitely the lower end of the organized crime universe. She was waiting outside the offices of Vasily Obochek, used car dealer and alleged auto theft kingpin of the Washington D.C. area. Seedy didn't describe the atmosphere; degenerate, neglected and menacingly ramshackle would have been better. It was hard to imagine anyone coming in here to demand service on the basis of a used car sales warranty. In reality Lindsay should have been apartment hunting but what was the point of that? She didn't have the money for a deposit and her car would soon be repossessed, so she might as well use what she still had to try and make good on the story she had risked so much on. Her baby sitter was working for free in lieu of payment and this could be her last chance to keep herself and Nena out of the homeless shelters of the Metropolitan area.

Marco hadn’t fired her yet but he had stopped paying her expenses. He had listened to the low quality snippets of conversation she had recorded and insisted that they were worthless without further evidence but had also told her to drop this story once and for all.

But she just couldn't let this one go. If she had wanted to allow dirty deeds to be brushed under the carpet in order to save her own skin she would have chosen politics instead of journalism.

"You can see boss now."

She jumped. The accents were familiar to her now to the point where she could tell a Muscovite from an Eastern Siberian from a Southerner. The Muscovite Mafiosi tended to be more hostile, arrogant and ruthless. This man had a strong Moscow accent.

He led her into the office where a small, fat, pock marked middle aged man in a wrinkled suit was waiting for her behind an empty desk.

She took a seat in front of him and pulled out a note pad.

Vasily was a vain man and was flattered by the interest the pretty young journalist was taking in him and his people. He also had a stake in finding Mikhail Boyevik and it was just possible that the resourceful journalist woman might be able to do what the FBI and Mafia couldn't and find the missing crime boss so that he could either confirm his death or carry out his own form of justice on the former international player. He was stringing her along, selling her bullshit information while he waited for her get a genuine lead. Lindsay for her part was hoping Vasily would be able to provide that one vital clue that would help her break the story in her crusade to link the Dale and his brother to Boyevik's disappearance.

She scribbled on the pad and then pushed it towards him.

On it she had written; 'New information. Boyevik with Feds. Confirm.'

Vasily scribbled a reply and pushed it back.

'Boyevik with fishes. Kiev Mafia.'

The notebook began to slide back and forth.

'Proof?'

'I hear. No proof.'

'Clayton Hargrave, Ruben Mayweather. You know these names?'

Vasily shook his head. Lindsay cursed under her breath and stood up to leave.

"Sit down." Vasily barked at her. His guy stepped in front of the doorway.

"I need to go."

"Information not free. Never free. No free lunch in America."

"You didn't give me information." She moved to leave but the heavy pushed his hand against her chest pushing her back into the desk behind her. Vasily caught her by the wrist with his sweaty hand.

"I give information, you pay. Always like this."

"No information, no payment. I don’t have anything to give you."

"You pay." He repeated. "Or we take."

She tried to pull her hand away from him but he was too strong.

"Okay, okay, I'll pay. How much did that valuable 'information' just cost me?" She said sarcastically. Vasily held onto her wrist and leered.

"One thousand dollar." He said slowly and then raised her hand to his nose. She managed to jerk if from his grasp this time, leaving him with a sick grin on his face.

"I don’t have one thousand dollars."

He continued to smile.

"You not have? I can get. If you need lend of money I can get for you. You need lend. I hear rumor your boss in trouble, yes? How you pay your debt to me with no job Lindsay?"

Shit, shit, shit.
She felt herself begin to tremble. Suddenly the office seemed very small, very, very confining.

"It's just a rumor Vasily. We're moving address. That's all. The business is doing fine."

"Good. Happy to hear this. Then he not mind pay for this new information. One thousand dollars."

"I thought we had a relationship Vasily, an understanding."

"Only understanding is money. Nothing else. When there is not money, there must be other thing." He began pushing into his chair to stand up.

"Okay, okay, I'll get your money. I don’t have it on me but trust me, AltNews is good for it. I'll go get it and drop it right back--"

"Piotr go with you. I need now."

So much for that bluff. Maybe it was time to go on the offensive.

"I have information on you Vasily." Lindsay said, her voice shaking. "Wouldn't you like that to stay private?"

Vasily nodded to his guy who snaked an arm around Lindsay's neck and put a gun to her head.

"I trust you Lindsay." Vasily said. "You tell me all is secret between us. I trust you. Now take Piotr with you, go get money. Then everything okay."

Lindsay nodded and Piotr put his gun away.

If ever a story she had worked on had been cursed, this was the one.

********************

Outside on the gritty streets of Southeast DC Lindsay went to get into her own beat up old Ford but Piotr pulled her into his mafia pimp-mobile instead.

"You drive." He said.

She put the car in gear and pulled out into the street, wondering where the hell exactly she was going to go. Marco was as broke as she was. The company was essentially shutting down although he was trying to paint the move as temporary and described it as 'streamlining' everyone knew it was all but the end. Most the office furniture was rented and was being returned, the IT servers were going to Marco's house, files and documents were all being warehoused. If she was lucky she might find her boss helping out with sorting and packing things up, but he would hardly be in a position to hand over one thousand dollars.

"Piotr," she said, "isn't there some other way we can resolve this? I know what I said to Vasily but the truth is that I need more time to come up with this money."

"Only two ways." He said. "You go find money now or you go back to Vasily. Now. You pick."

"Okay, okay." She said. "Then I've got to pull over."

"No pull over. Drive."

"I need to call my boss. He won’t have that kind of cash on him. I need to let him know so he can have it ready."

Piotr didn't answer.

"Piotr. I need to call him, do you hear me?"

"Okay, pull over. No bullshit. You make call, then we go."

She nodded and pulled in to the sidewalk. Her heart was racing, her palms slick with sweat on the steering wheel.

Was this her plan? Was she going to do something here? She knew from personal experience what these people were capable of and while she had never feared for herself in the past, ever since the day Nena had come into her world staying alive had slowly grown to become a priority above all else. Her niece had already lost two adults from her life. She didn’t plan to be the next one.

She still hadn’t taken out her phone and Pitor was beginning to get nervous. He reached across her, stabbed the central locking button, then reached into his pocket and pointed his pistol at her through his jacket.

"Make fucking call." He said menacingly. "No bullshit."

Her hand trembled as she reached into her pocket and found her phone. Piotr watched her like a psychotic hawk, waiting for any sign of 'bullshit'.

She held up the phone and began scrolling down through her address book to find….who? Marco? What would she even say to him? She passed down through the As, the Bs and Cs, her vision was beginning to close in, the cruel pressure across her chest threatening to shut down her breathing.

The first name in D was Dale.

Dale Hargrave.

Her thumb hovered over the name.

When they had 'dated' he had always told her to call him, no matter what, no matter what happened between them and no matter how things went with her story. If she needed help, he would be there.

She tapped the screen with a feather light touch and then watched the call connect.

Please God, please, please, please God--

"Dale Hargrave."

She slammed the phone to her ear.

"Hi boss it's Lindsay."

There was a pause.

"I'm on my way downtown and I have a bill to pay. Can you have one thousand dollars ready for me? In cash?"

On the other end of the line Dale had taken a deep breath of relief on hearing Lindsay's voice. He had been taking steps to get her closer to him again but the last thing he had expected was to get a call from her on his personal line. Not this quickly and not without an 'incentive' of some kind to induce her. But what the hell was she talking about? 'Boss'? One thousand dollars in cash? It flashed through him like a jolt from of electricity.

She's in trouble.

His sharp mind kicked into high gear as he took a breath to get into his 'game-on' zone. Trouble meant leverage and leverage meant the woman of his current obsessions flat on her back begging for more.

"Are you sure that's all you need?" He said.

"One thousand is fine. Can you meet me at the AltNews main office in a half an hour?"

"I'll be there. And I'll pick you up later at eight."

No free lunch. She gritted her teeth. Even now he was still angling to get into her pants. He never gave up on her, no matter what she did to him, no matter what lies she told. A well of tears began to surge up in her and she had to breathe hard to choke them back down.

"We can talk about that later." She said.

"It's a date or forget about your thousand dollars."

God damn it.

"Okay. See you in thirty." She ended the call and felt her body relax. She had saved herself and she had saved Nena but her so-called crusade for truth was dead in the water. Once again she had become the story. She would use his money to bail herself out and then where would that leave her? Maybe it was time throw in the towel, get into bed with the devil and see how the other half lived - the half of humanity that looked out for themselves and their family first and didn't give a damn about integrity.

"Get going." Piotr growled at her.

"Cool it Shestyorka." She said, addressing him with the lowest ranking title possible for a Russian mobster. He looked at her for a second and then delivered a short, sharp slap to the side of her head that made her see stars.

"Drive." He said.

She shook her head and started the car.

I'm so sorry Dale. So, so sorry. Please God, just look after Dale and Nena, please. I'll do anything you want if you keep them safe. I'll ditch this stupid job, just keep them safe.

*******************

Forty minutes later they were parked outside the building that housed the soon to be vacant offices of AltNews. Removal crew guys were entering and leaving constantly with arm loads of furniture.

"Why we wait here bitch?" Piotr hissed. "Go inside. Get money now." He shouted. He had waited five minutes already. It was the extreme edge of his very short limit.

Lindsay gripped the steering wheel but didn’t move. There was no point in going inside. If she did that then the game was already over.

Come on Dale. Come on. Where the hell are you?

The feeling of slowly choking to death was fast closing in on her again.

A tap on the passenger side window made Piotr turn around. A burly man with a smiling face peered into the car. He indicated with one thick, gloved finger for Piotr to lower the window down.

"Fuck. Off." The Mafioso said.

The man tried the door but it was locked. A wave of fury went through the mobster.

"I told you fuck off." He shouted through the window at the stranger.

Dale was watching from across the street. There had clearly been something weird about the phone call, so as a precaution he had brought two of his people with him and decided to appraise the situation before handing over what was essentially, a paltry sum of cash. He had also contacted the detail he had shadowing Nena and her babysitter to make sure that everything was okay with them too.

One look at Piotr and it was clear that something very unpleasant was going down. The car was locked and Lindsay looked very, very scared. While his guy continued to pull on the passenger door Dale walked across the street and into Lindsay's view on the other side. Her face was full of desperate relief when she saw him. No man had ever looked so good as he did at that moment. He walked over to the car but she started shaking her head. She needed to get out first or Piotr could easily grab the money and then just drive away with her, but Dale wasn't taking the hint. He just kept on coming until he was right up alongside her window. He smiled to calm her down and then tapped loudly, causing the furious Piotr to look around at him. He had been about to take out his pistol to threaten the intruder on his own side and now his attention was split in two.