Authors: Owen Laukkanen
SHE HAD TO RUN.
She had to run now.
She’d retrieved the knife she’d dropped when the silent man came through the door. Crawled toward the doorway as the man fought with the Dragon, praying they didn’t see her, or notice she was gone. She heard more gunshots behind her. It sounded like the world ending.
The door splintered above her head. Catalina wrenched it open as the men fired again. She didn’t know who they were shooting at. She hoped it wasn’t her. She threw herself out the door and landed in the hallway, all plush carpet and red and gold. It was a maze. She couldn’t remember where to go.
The men would come for her. They both wanted to kill her.
Make a decision.
Catalina pictured the apartment in her head, the windows. Tried to remember the way she’d arrived. Couldn’t remember. No time. She just ran. She ran left.
A bank of elevators, around the corner. Catalina pressed the call button. Waited. Waited. Realized she should have found the stairwell. Realized the stairwell was behind her, back toward the Dragon’s door.
Ding.
The elevator door slid open. Nobody inside. Catalina hurried in, clutching the knife to her chest. Pressed the first-floor button, then the “close door” arrows. Heard footsteps in the hallway like thunder. Watched the door slowly close and urged it to close quicker.
It slid shut just as the Dragon arrived. He clawed at the door, pounded. Swore in frustration. Catalina screamed. Then the elevator was dropping.
The elevator was mirrors. Catalina studied herself, her clumsy makeup, her oversized T-shirt. Her hair was unkempt, and there was blood on her hands and on the knife. The pervert’s blood. The Dragon’s blood.
The elevator dropped toward street level. Catalina waited. Gathered herself as best she could, and prayed the car made it to the ground floor before the Dragon caught up with her again.
L
E
PLAVY CALLED BACK
as Windermere sped the Charger up Madison Avenue.
“Looks like Catalina left a message on the phone,” he told Stevens. “Something in Romanian.
Parca Strada balaur
. Apologies if my pronunciation is shitty.”
“Parca Strada balaur.”
Stevens looked out through the windshield. Around him, Manhattan rose, crowded and crazy and chaotic. “What does it mean?”
“According to Google Translate, it means ‘Park Avenue dragon,’ in Romanian,” LePlavy said. “And I don’t think that’s the name of a Chinese restaurant.”
“I think you’re right,” Stevens told LePlavy. He ended the call. “Park Avenue, and hurry,” he told Windermere. “It’s our lucky night.”
PAVEL DEMETRIOU
clutched his wound as he hurried down the stairs, cursing the girl all the way to the bottom. Cursing Andrei Volovoi, too, and anyone else he could think of.
Ironic that the bitch had stabbed him. Poetic justice. He’d intended to carve her pretty face himself when he had finished with her. Instead, she’d ambushed him. Wounded him. Cut him.
She would not stop him.
Demetriou paused on a landing. Leaned against a railing to catch his breath. He felt dizzy, light-headed. There was a lot of blood, but he ignored it. One little bitch wouldn’t slow the Dragon. Neither would Andrei Volovoi, or the fucking FBI, for that matter. He pushed himself off the wall. Reloaded his machine pistol and then reached for the vial around his neck. Unscrewed it and poured himself a bump of cocaine, inhaled until he saw fireworks behind his eyes.
He would track down the girl. He would drag her out of the building and escape New York with her, regroup. He would kill her eventually, after he’d enjoyed her. After he’d repaid her for the trouble her family had caused him.
The cocaine helped. Demetriou hurried down the stairs. Ignored his wounds, pushed them from his mind. Barely felt the exertion. He made the main floor and burst through the fire doors and into the lobby. Looked around. The lobby was quiet. A doorman sat behind a desk by the front doors, reading a paperback. Otherwise, nothing. No movement. No sounds.
DING.
The elevator. Demetriou spun as the doors slid open, raised the TEC-9. But the elevator was empty. No girl.
He stared at the empty car for a moment. Studied the numbers above the second elevator’s closed doors. That car was climbing, from the first floor, skyward. Demetriou crossed the lobby to the doorman. “A girl,” he said. “A little girl. Did you see her?”
The doorman looked up. “Beg your pardon?”
Demetriou leveled the gun at him. “A little fucking girl. Did you see her?”
The man shook his head. “No,” he said. “No, man, I swear to God.”
Demetriou shot him anyway. The sound echoed through the lobby, half deafening. Demetriou let the doorman slump to the ground. Then he walked back to the elevator and considered the empty car, thinking.
CATALINA STARED OUT
at the hallway, confused. She’d pressed the first-floor button in the elevator, but the doors had opened on a hallway identical to the Dragon’s upstairs. There were doors to apartments. A thick carpet. Soft lighting. No escape to the street.
The apartment closest to her was apartment 112. Beside it, 113, and so on. This was the first floor, she realized. The lobby must be below her. She was still one floor too high.
The elevator doors started to slide closed. Catalina reached for the L button, then thought better of it. Instead, she slipped out into the hallway. Too much time had wasted. The Dragon might be waiting for her in the lobby already.
She could hide. She could knock on an apartment door until somebody answered, then burst in and hide until the police came. But that could take hours. She couldn’t speak any English. Probably the men had friends in the building. They might take her to the Dragon themselves.
She needed to get out of the building. The Dragon wouldn’t follow her into the streets, and even if he did, she could lose him. New York was huge. And this building was deadly.
She crept down the hall, her knife at the ready, felt her stomach turn as she remembered how easily it had cut through the maniac’s flesh.
She came to the fire exit. Opened the door slowly and listened. No sounds. Nothing. She slipped into the stairwell, peered up through the center, then down. Saw no hands on the railing. Heard no footsteps coming for her.
Cautiously, Catalina descended. Reached the lobby level, the heavy steel fire door. There was a window, a porthole to the lobby. She stood on her toes and peeked through it. Saw nothing. The lobby, pristine and deserted. The elevators.
She pushed the door open and slipped through. Hugged the wall to the side of the doorway, and looked out and saw the front doors, the dark night beyond. Cars and pedestrians, almost within reach.
He’s not here,
she thought.
He’s gone. Run five meters and you’re safe
. Then she saw the smear of blood behind the doorman’s front desk.
Shit.
Nothing moved in the lobby. The doorman was gone. Somewhere, a clock ticked, earth-shatteringly loud. The Dragon had been here, Catalina knew. Now he was gone.
She crept out of the alcove and hurried for the doors. Made it halfway before she felt him behind her.
“Târfa,”
he muttered.
Whore
. His hand gripped her shoulder and he wrenched her back toward him.
VOLOVOI PULLED HIMSELF
off the hardwood, struggling to slow the flow of blood from his wounds.
Pavel had shot him three times in the stomach. The wounds bled black. They burned, a blinding-hot fiery pain. His shoulder ached where Bogdan Urzica had shot him at the gas station. It seemed like years ago.
The apartment was silent around him. The walls were strafed with shrapnel from Pavel’s gun, the furniture shredded. Catalina Milosovici was gone. The Dragon had chased after her. The apartment was empty.
Volovoi couldn’t hear the police yet, but he knew they were coming. Somebody would report the gunshots. The NYPD would arrive. Sooner or later, they’d make the connection, and then the FBI would show up, and if Volovoi didn’t die, he would spend the rest of his life in jail.
This was okay, Volovoi decided. This was not the worst-case scenario.
The Dragon was the worst-case scenario.
He’d been stabbed. Catalina Milosovici had somehow overpowered him, put a knife in him. She’d managed to escape. But the Dragon wasn’t dead. And as long as the Dragon survived, Volovoi couldn’t rest. Not with his family still out in the world. Not with his nieces at risk.
Volovoi pushed himself to his feet. Propped himself against the couch and gathered his strength. In a closet by the front door, he found a couple shirts, a coat. He tore a shirt to shreds, wrapped it around his torso. Pulled the jacket over top and clutched it around him. Held his pistol tight and hoped he had the strength to point it at the Dragon when he saw the chance.
Leaning against the wall with his good shoulder, Volovoi limped toward the Dragon’s ruined door. Edged out into the hallway and saw nothing, no curious neighbors, no onlookers, no cops. Not yet.
Perfect.
He struggled into the hall. Made his way down the corridor. He felt better now, a little, now that he was upright. Now that he had a goal in mind.
He would find the Dragon. He would kill the Dragon. Then, if he had any strength left, he would figure out a way to get out of this city.
Volovoi reached the elevators. Pressed the call button and waited, fighting waves of nausea and dizziness, that fire-poker pain in his belly. The elevator arrived. Volovoi slipped inside. Leaned against the mirrored walls and pressed the button for the lobby. He was leaking all over the polished floor. More blood. Big deal.
The elevator door closed. The car dropped toward the lobby.
Find the Dragon,
he told himself.
Kill him. And get out of Manhattan.
IN THE CHARGER,
the siren screaming, lights flashing, Windermere’s foot to the floor.
Stevens checked his phone. “Shots fired, Seventy-seventh and Park,” he said. “Someplace called the DuPont.”
Windermere glanced at him as she slalomed through traffic. “Where the hell are we now?”
“Madison and—” Stevens strained for a glimpse of a street sign. “Seventieth. Better step on it, Carla.”
“It’s stepped on,” Windermere said, urging the car faster. “So help me, Stevens, it’s stepped on.”
THE DRAGON
gripped on to Catalina’s shoulder. “Not so fucking fast.”
She spun at him with the knife. Felt resistance, just slight, as the blade sliced his hand. Beyond him, she could see the open elevator door. Realized he’d been hiding there, waiting for her.
No time to think about that now.
The Dragon howled as the knife cut him. Released his grip. Catalina shook free and ran for the doorway.
The glass door exploded ahead of her. The gunshot echoed through the lobby. Catalina kept running. Felt her bare feet crunch on broken glass. Felt the shards slice her skin. She didn’t slow down. She couldn’t.
She zagged just as he fired again. Slipped, caught her balance, stumbled out through the ruined doorway. The Dragon fired some more, shattering a window on a parked car in front of her, triggering the car’s alarm. Her feet were on fire now. Every step was a fresh agony.
There were sirens. She could hear them in the air, but she knew they wouldn’t help her in time. Catalina ducked away from the doorway. Ran down the street toward an intersection in the distance, the Dragon’s heavy footsteps behind her. His ragged breathing.
He fired again. This shot barely missed. Catalina ducked and kept running.
WINDERMERE SCREAMED
the Charger up to Seventy-seventh and Park, slowed as she reached the intersection.
“Where am I going?” she asked Stevens. “Which one’s the DuPont?”
Stevens scanned the rows of tall apartment buildings lining Park Avenue, their doorways marked by covered awnings jutting out to the sidewalk. He couldn’t see a name anywhere.
Then Windermere punched the gas. “Whoa,” he said. “Find it?”
“I figure it’s the one with the shot-up front glass,” she said, steering the car through the intersection. “And the bloody thug staggering out the doorway.”
Stevens reached for his Glock, his heart already pounding. Across the intersection, an imposing brick high-rise. A girl running barefoot on the sidewalk, a man chasing behind her. A tall, terrifying man with a black, wiry beard and a big pistol. The Dragon?
Windermere pointed. “Is that little sister?”
Stevens gritted his teeth. “Sure looks like it.”
The girl ran for the street corner. The Dragon raised his pistol, murder in his eyes. Windermere squealed the Charger to a skidding stop. The Dragon didn’t take his eye off the girl.
Stevens was on the pavement before Windermere stopped the car. Drew his Glock and fired at the gunman, quick. Too quick. The shot missed. The gunman didn’t blink. Drew a bead on Catalina Milosovici and fired again, a deadly barrage.
Stevens didn’t check to see if the gunman hit his target. He pulled the trigger again twice, a double tap. This time the gunman paid attention. He staggered backward, clutching his wounds, his eyes searching for the shooter.
Stevens let him find him. Watched the gunman’s eyes darken as he registered his face. Watched his mouth curl in a frustrated snarl, watched him spin the gun toward him.
Stevens shot him again. This time, the gunman fell.
Stevens hurried across to the sidewalk, covered the man with his Glock, ran to him, kicked his gun away and stood overtop, breathing hard, wanting to say something, something to really underline what an evil piece of shit the guy was.
So long, you evil piece of shit,
something like that.
But the gunman’s eyes were lifeless, his blood soaking the pavement, and Stevens had something else on his mind. “The girl,” he asked Windermere. “Catalina. Where’d she go?”
Windermere spun toward the nearest intersection, Seventy-seventh Street. Stevens followed her gaze. The girl had been hoofing it that way when last seen, when the gunman had fired his last shot. Stevens hadn’t stopped to see if the man had hit his target, had been focused on putting him down.
Now, though, he looked again. Saw nothing. Empty space. Shot up or not, Catalina Milosovici was gone.