Authors: Shannon McKenna
“That we’re totally fucked,” he said. “Get down. I’ll try to get you there in one piece, but do your part not to get your head blown off.”
She studied his scowling profile from her crouched position, head sideways on the seat. “You’re not inspiring confidence,” she told him.
“It’s not my job to inspire confidence.”
He drove fast, once she gave him the address. Centrifugal force tossed her from side to side as he surged and braked, took curves on squealing tires. He went the wrong way down one-way streets, too. She heard a lot of blaring horns, the occasional outraged shout. She didn’t analyze his route, just stared at the taut mask of concentration that was his face. She couldn’t look away.
It was like a superstitious thing. The world would disintegrate to chaos without him. His ferocious focus was what held it together.
And that kind of clingy, needy crap would get her into deep doo-doo. No way could she pin that kind of responsibility on him.
There was probably a name for what she was experiencing.
Some clinical pathology she’d studied in college. She had to just endure it, not analyze it. Groveling gratitude and anger were a tough mix. Together, they curdled into something caustic and unappetizing.
He jerked the car to a stop. “Stay there,” he ordered, shoving the door open. Seconds later, her own door popped open. “Stay next to me. I’ll get you in there, but I can’t stay, not if there are cops involved.”
She nodded, eyeing the very large and intimidating shotgun he held so casually. It would freak her colleagues out, if he carried that thing into the New Dawn admin office. Too bad.
He’d pulled over across from a side entrance to the building, into a parking spot on the narrow street. The sky felt open, strangely threatening. Her eyes darted, searching for their attackers.
“Call the cops as soon as you’re inside, and don’t leave that building again without a police escort or Bruno’s guy,” he said.
“Um, OK.” She forced down the urge to beg him to stay. If he couldn’t, he couldn’t. He’d done enough. She’d be OK once she was inside.
“I don’t like this.” He stared up the street. “This feels wrong.”
“Balls itching again?” she asked.
His chin jerked. “They’re on fire.”
“Mine, too,” she told him.
“Oh, yeah?” A grin flickered on his face. “You ready?”
Just then, a black Audi with tinted windows turned the corner, and the full force of their murderous intention blew right through her like a weird ghost wind.
. . . that’s her . . . die, bitch . . . cut our losses . . .
“Watch out!” she shrieked, as the window started buzzing down.
Aaro grabbed her, shoved. The pavement heaved up to greet her.
Smack,
she was on the sidewalk.
Bam-bam-bam,
the world exploded.
Glass shattered, pattering down in a glittering hail. Car alarms started squealing everywhere. Aaro leaped up as the bullets whizzed, swung up his shotgun.
Bam-bam-bam.
Glass shattered.
A huge crunch and smash. Shouts.
Aaro dropped, crawling around to the front to peer around the tire. A constant stream of foreign profanity was coming out of him again. She no longer needed a translation.
Even she could tell that they were, indeed, totally fucked.
Take that, dickfaces.
He scooped Nina up as she rasped in air, and heaved her into the front seat again, broken glass and all. Slammed the door shut.
“Stay down,” he told her. “Hang on tight to the door handle.
Gonna be a wild ride.”
He dove in, head ducked, and started the motor. The street ahead had been clear, so he wrenched it into gear and punched the gas, hoping it still was.
Bam, bam,
a bullet caught the side window. Glass flew, stinging his face. Hot blood trickled down.
A second ticked by. He bobbed up over the dash just in time to veer out of the way of a parked car he was about to swipe. Out the rearview, shrinking into the distance, he saw the dazed thugs spilling out of the wrecked Audi. The bald one, the dark one.
The dark one aimed . . .
Aaro punched the gas and swerved. Nothing hit them.
Nina gasped for breath. “How did you . . . what did you—”
“Blew out their windshield with the shotgun,” he explained tersely. “Tires, too. They spun out. Crashed into a parked car.”
Fuckheads had problems now. They’d gambled on speed, surprise. They’d lost big.
Too bad, pussies. This round goes to me.
He wished he could overhear the talk they’d have with their boss tonight. The debrief and the subsequent reaming would be hugely entertaining.
Wind blew through the empty, blasted windshield, blowing trickles of blood sideways on his face as he sped down the street, hitting all the greens. The option of unloading Nina at her place of work, surrounded by caring friends and colleagues, was no longer feasible.
He mourned it, sharply. It had been so perfect. Leaving her with people used to protecting women in danger, who already had systems in place for it. Bruno’s new bodyguard detail could have met up with her there, and the responsibility for keeping her in one piece would have been shuffled off of his shoulders.
Whatever. Spilled milk. Let it go.
He turned off the next side street, and screeched to a halt. He fished his duffel and laptop out of the backseat, and yanked the bullet-warped passenger door open. “Come on, let’s go.” He tugged Nina, but she would not budge. She’d been scared into silence.
Just as well. Less provocation. Upped his chances of success at pretending to be a civilized human being for any length of time.
“Nina.” He cleared his throat. “Let go. Please.”
A shudder went through her. She scrambled out. He hooked his arm around her shoulders, leaving his gun hand free, and hauled her toward Flatbush.
She scurried to keep up. “Should we be going toward such a big street?” she asked. “Those guys—”
“We need a taxi. Better if you hail it. Cabs don’t stop for me.”
“Not me,” she said. “I never have any luck with—”
“Shut up and hail the fucking cab.” He jerked her arm up high.
“You don’t understand! They don’t stop for me, either!” she yelled.
He gave her a disbelieving stare. “Why not? You’re a woman, you’re young, good-looking, not slutty or sloppy or punked out, you’re not wearing leather, your hair’s not green. What’s not to stop for?”
“You’ll see,” she muttered grimly.
She stared into the street, arm up, lips flattened to an angry line, and maybe it was her pissed-off vibe, but a river of empty cabs with their numbers lit flowed by. Aaro studied the drivers, perplexed. They didn’t even flick their gaze over to check out a possible fare and then dismiss her, like they did to him. They didn’t seem to see her at all.
Fuck it. The cars had slowed for the red, so he chose an idling cab at random and jerked open the door without a visual invitation from the driver. He bundled Nina inside, shoved in his duffel, and climbed in.
“Hey! Wait! I am not in service!” The turbaned Sikh driver swiveled, his eyes alarmed. “I was on my break! You cannot get in here!”
“Your light was on,” Aaro said calmly.
“But I—”
“Take us to the car rental on Wilburn,” Aaro said, cutting off his protests, and suddenly was conscious of the trickle of hot blood rolling down his temple. He looked fresh out of mortal combat.
He gave the guy a smile that spoke of a long, painful death.
The cabbie whipped his head around and laid on the gas.
Aaro peered out the window, trying to define the thought that hadn’t had a chance to form yet, with all the chaos and noise.
“I saw your face, right before that Audi pulled up,” he said. “I saw the car turn the corner exactly when you did, but your face changed before the window rolled down. You knew that car, Nina?”
He tried to keep from sounding accusatory, without much success. Nina still looked affronted. “No! I have never seen that car!”
“Then why the look?” he pressed. “What gave you the jump on them? Out with it, Nina. If I’m going help you, you have to tell me everything. Every last nasty, secret detail. Every sore and every score.”
Her throat bobbed. “My personal life is boring and quiet. I do not have nasty, secret, private details to titillate you with. No sores, no scores.” She spat the words at him. “And I did try to tell you everything. I tried this morning, when I sent you that file, remember? We’d both know a hell of a lot more if you’d condescended to help me earlier!”
“Don’t scold me,” he ground out. “Just tell me how you knew who was in that car.”
Her eyes flicked away. “Um. Well,” she murmured. “It’s just that, ah, Shira told me about this guy, Sergei. He came to the shelter to ask about Helga Kasyanov, and me. And, um, she saw his black Audi.”
She was lying. Like a rug. Her lie buzzed against his nerves. It bugged the living shit out of him. “Who the fuck are Shira and Sergei?”
“No need to snarl,” she said. “Shira works with me at the New Dawn administration office. Sergei is the dark guy with the ponytail, the one who was at my house. The one shooting at us, outside the office.”
His jaw gaped. “What the fuck? You mean, you
know
this guy?”
“No!” she wailed. “No, of course I don’t know him! I only heard about him from Shira! He came looking for me after I got needle stuck, and said he was Helga’s brother! I got a call from Shira after I left the hospital, and—”
“Yeah, that was another question,” he broke in. “Why did you leave the hospital? What the hell were you thinking?”
Her gaze flicked away again, and she waited a little too long to answer. “The doctor said she couldn’t justify admitting me,” she said. “I seemed fine. So I left.”
Another lie. He stared at her, through slitted eyes, and decided to wait and see where she was going with it. As soon as he found the hole in her story, he’d stick his hand in it and unravel the whole fucking thing. “Fine. They told you to go. Where did you go?”
“I went to Yuri’s house in Alphabet City, to see if he—”
“Who’s Yuri?”
“If you’d stop interrupting, maybe I could get through a complete sentence! Yuri Marchuk is the guy who was driving Helga this morning. He dumped us both off at the hospital and beat hell out of there, but Connor McCloud got someone to run his license plate number, so I had his name and address. So after you so courteously blew me off this morning, I left the hospital, and took the subway, to the East Village.”
He stared at her, waiting for it.
She exhaled sharply, and dug into her purse, rummaging until she came up with a travel pack of wet-wipe napkins. She fished one out, handed it to him. “For your face,” she said, gesturing with distaste at the bleeding slice on his temple. “All that blood.
It’s distracting me.”
Distracting her? He stared at the moist towelette, his nose wrinkling at its powdery perfume. He’d stink like a baby’s ass.
Hell with it. He wiped the blood off his face with it, as best he could. The chemicals that dampened it made his cuts sting.
What a woman. She’d escaped a violent death twice in twenty minutes, and still had her wet wipes at the ready. He crumpled the bloody rag in his fist. “So? You tracked Yuri down. And then?”
“I went to his address. But when I got there . . .” She sucked
82
in her lip, pressing down so the pillowy pink softness became a pale, sexless line. “It had yellow crime scene tape strung around it. An ambulance. Police everywhere.”
His dread intensified. “What happened in there?”
“He’d been murdered.” Her voice was small. “Tortured to death. A neighbor girl told me. I—I saw his daughter come out of there. Marya. She was soaked with blood.”
He closed his eyes, dismayed. So bad. Worse than he’d imagined.
Nina forged on. “I was coming home, and Shira called me. She said this guy came by who said he was Helga’s brother. I know Helga personally, and I know that she never had a brother, but Shira didn’t know that. Shira’s description of this guy matched the guy who shot up my closet. Tall, dark, ponytail, acne scars.
And, um, a black Audi. I didn’t put it together until the car window came down.”
It exploded out of him. “The fake brother, the murdered cab driver? Jesus, Nina! You didn’t think to mention those little details to me before we get mowed down by a hit squad?”
“And when might I have done that? When have we had time for a chat? Between hails of bullets and the high-speed car chases? I am doing my best, Aaro! Don’t you dare get in my face!”
He swallowed it back. No point driving her into a frenzy. This was a true McCloud-style clusterfuck. And he was in it up to his neck.
“I didn’t put it together until I saw the car and remembered Shira . . . oh God! Shira!” Her eyes went huge. “I am such a self-absorbed idiot!” She dug in her purse, the big pocket of her skirt.
“Oh,
shit!
” She turned blazing eyes on him. “I lost my phone!
Give me your phone!”
He snapped into defensive mode. “What do you want it for?”
“Shira! That guy who shot up my closet, he knew her name, and where she lives! He taunted me with it! Give me your fucking
phone!
”
He hissed silent obscenities through his teeth. He did not want his number on any register that connected him with this, but Nina was going to totally lose her shit if he didn’t oblige her.
He gave into the inevitable, and handed her his phone. The account was registered to another name, but those identities were expensive to build.
Nina punched in a number and hunched over it, waiting.
“Shira?” she said, voice wobbling. “It’s me . . . yes, I know. Shira, you have got to hide somewhere. You’re in danger, and I . . . I know. I was the one they were shooting at . . . of course I’m fine!
Would I be calling if I weren’t? The guys know where you live, Shira. You need to go into hiding . . . no, not me! I’m fine! This guy saved me. Shira, you have to . . .” A loud burst of words from the phone, and her gaze slid over him, uncertain. “He’s . . . well, I just met him, and there was a lot going on. He’s a friend of a friend.” Another burst, shrill and tinny. Aaro’s fingers curled into fists as he waited for Nina’s response.