Zhukov's Dogs (19 page)

Val looked like he wanted to say something, maybe yell at me even, but he just held his hand out. I pulled mine out of his reach. “I’ll give them back in exchange for an explanation.”

“Hah. Screw you.” Val scoffed, turning away from me and toward the heat lamp. The way he fidgeted every few seconds betrayed his attempts at indifference. I’d seen the same behavior in Aiden when he pretended to not need a cigarette as bad as he actually did. It was hard to watch and, I imagined, even harder to experience.

I scooted closer to Val and reached over his shoulder to hand him the pack and lighter. He eyed them for a second, looking for the invisible strings attached to the gesture of kindness.

“I’m not going to—” He started.

“Just shut up and smoke.” I sighed.

Val took them from me and had a cigarette lit between his lips in no time. He held the smoke in his lungs longer than usual before exhaling with a dry, “Thanks.”

“What are you at? A pack a day? Are you trying to give yourself cancer?”

“The life expectancy of people like us isn’t very long. Might as well enjoy it,” Val said, smiling as the nicotine began relaxing him.

I could appreciate his logic, but not his choice of words. “People like us?”

“You and me,” he said. “You know, the bad guys. Murderers.”

I laughed uneasily. “I’m not a—”

“Let’s play a game, Nik,” Val said, turning toward me and folding his legs underneath him. There was a dangerous look in his eyes, which tricked me into work-mode. “I’ll tell you all about me if you tell me all about you. One answer for one question. No bullshit allowed.”

I didn’t know where the sudden rush of excitement came from, especially with how dangerous a game it would be if I actually told the truth. Of course, I wasn’t going to tell the truth. I shouldn’t even agree to play the game at all, but I found it difficult to say no to him. I ran over my cover story twice before saying, “All right, let’s play.”

Like a true diabolical mastermind, Val grinned. “Since I’m such a nice guy, I’ll let you go first.”

“Nice guy. Right.” I chuckled. It didn’t take long to figure out what I wanted to ask him first. “Where’d you go after you left Seattle?”

“South. California,” Val answered. I opened my mouth to ask why, but he put a hand up to stop me. “Nope. It’s my turn… Are you really with the Black Bloc?”

“Yes,” I lied. There was no way I’d tell him I was from the Y.I.D.

Val leaned forward to study my face, looking for some sign I wasn’t telling the truth. I wasn’t worried. I was too good of a liar to get caught. After a minute, he leaned back with a small nod of approval.

“What were you doing in California?” I asked.

“Working.”

“Aw, come on, that’s too vague.”

“Then be more specific with your questions,” Val said. He took a drag from his cigarette, tapped out the ashes on the end, and calmly asked, “Ever kiss a boy?”

I tripped over my words. “What?”

“It’s a yes or no question.”

“No, never.” In an attempt to flip the conversation around with a joke, I asked, “Have you?”

“A couple,” he said, grinning from ear to ear. “Ever think about it?”

“D.C. isn’t really the place for that.”

“I’ve heard.”

“So, what were you doing for work in California?”

Val’s grin shrank. He took a drag of his cigarette, then another. His index finger began to tap against it. I didn’t like seeing him so uncomfortable. For the sake of my mission, I needed to stay focused. I needed details. Maybe I could find them out later, though, sometime when the setting was better and he trusted me more.

“Never mind. Just forget I asked,” I said before I could second-guess my reluctance.

“No, it’s okay,” Val replied, eyes on the ground between us. “I made the rules, so I’ll follow them.”

“Really, it’s fine. You don’t have to—”

Val cut me short. “Drugs. I was moving drugs.”

I didn’t say anything at first. Hell, I didn’t even know where to begin. I watched Val shift, pulling his legs in tighter. He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck as his posture bent further forward.

“I met some guys in the factories,” Val continued before I could get a word in. His voice was low enough that even as close as I was, I had to strain to hear him. “They told me about a booming industry down south. With cities from Seattle to San Francisco abandoned, there was money to be made off raiding hospitals and pharmacies.”

Everything clicked in my head. The timing of his disappearances. The charges of drug trafficking on Val’s file. The number on his shoulder scarred by lashes. It wasn’t a date; it was a brand.

“You were in the cartel?” I asked, dropping my voice to his level.

Val took a hasty pull from his cigarette and nodded as he exhaled the smoke through his nostrils.

Two years ago, the S.O.R. sent a team out west to catch the organization turning a profit off prescription medication. It wasn’t just an issue because their redistribution was illegal, though. There was much more to Val’s story, which he was deliberately leaving out.

Now that I knew who he was, I felt no sympathy for him. I wanted to break him down. I wanted him to confess to the real crime.

“I remember the headlines, Val.”

His eyes flicked up to mine then right back to the ground. I saw torment behind them, even when they were deliberately avoiding mine. Oh, the guilt he must be living with was truly impressive.

When he refused to confess, I pressed harder. “It was all over the news. Expired prescription drugs, mostly tetracycline, linking hundreds of deaths on the west coast together.”

The fact I was sitting so close to a member of one of the nation’s most notorious drug cartels, and the fact he was even still alive, excited the soldier in me. Over sixty individuals had been rounded up by the S.O.R., interrogated, and either imprisoned or executed. How had this Grey bastard slipped through?

“I didn’t know,” Val insisted.

What Val
didn’t
know was that I’d seen the interrogation footage of his old partners and listened to them scream “I didn’t know” the exact way he did. In the end, they all confessed when less orthodox means of questioning came into play. Darkly, I wondered how long Val would last in a room with a closer and two persuasive Grey Men.

“It’s my turn to ask a question,” Val said, pulling my thoughts back. He looked over at the heat lamp, his eyes languid and out of focus. His fingers were perfectly still now. “Who are you really?”

“What do you mean?” I managed to sound genuinely confused, even as I started to panic.

“Don’t think for a second you’ve got me fooled,
Nik Maslow
,” Val said, his eyes shifting back into focus as he stressed my name. “I’m playing the game fairly, so why don’t you?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m talking about everything that happened on the bridge the other day. A first-year Black Bloc grunt wouldn’t be that good. I’ve been to D.C., and I know how the Bloc works.”

“Ever stop to think I might have had training before joining?”

Val was as willing to give up as I was willing to admit he was right. He rolled his eyes with an impatient sounding huff. “You said you just got into Georgetown. What sort of posh college boy would be able to maintain that sort of high GPA while doing intensive field training?”

“You’re crazy.”

“Yes, but don’t you dare think I’m an idiot.”

I had greatly underestimated Val. All this time, he’d been watching me just as closely as I’d been watching him and his friends. I was used to watching Greys during interrogations, not being interrogated by one.

“Well,” I began, taking great precaution with my words. “What do you think I am?”

“You’re a killer.”

“Just like you,” I replied, my voice calm.

“Just like me.” Val smirked. A large clump of ashes had accumulated at the tip of the cigarette in his perfectly still fingers. He tapped them off, took a drag, then ground out the cigarette on the cement between us. I used the time it took him to exhale the smoke to put together new lies.

“Okay… I lied,” I began. I took a deep breath like I was actually thwarted and ready to tell him everything. “Remember how I mentioned my folks were architects? Well, the truth is my old man is in the military.”

“Army?” Val asked.

That wouldn’t make sense
, I thought as I tried to iron out my story. An army soldier hardly spent enough time at home these days to teach their son the moves I’d demonstrated. “Not exactly,” I mumbled. The way Val’s eyes grew let me know he’d already figured out what I was going to say next. “He’s Special Forces.”

Val shifted quickly to get up, probably so he could whip out his gun and shoot me between the eyes. I grabbed his arms and kept him still, but Val roared loud enough to turn every head in the cavern, “Are you kidding me?”

“Lower your voice and hear me out!” I hissed, looking around at all the unwanted attention. Fortunately, nobody seemed interested in coming over to see what was going on. Visibly still on edge, Val froze. I kept my hands around his arms just in case he tried to act rashly.

“I’m not with them. I mean, yeah, my dad is part of evil-team-number-one in your book, and he’s the one who taught me. Won’t lie, he taught me
a lot
. I’m not like him, though. Seeing how messed up everything is, people like him and what they actually do… That’s the whole reason I’m with the Bloc now.”

I felt the muscles in Val’s arms relaxing in my grip. His pulse was flying and I could see a light sheen of sweat building on his brow. He dropped his voice as he spat, “You expect me to buy that?”

“You wanted the truth, so there it is. Christ, this is exactly why I lied to you in the first place.”

Val stayed silent. It was a risky move, reworking my cover story this far into a mission. It was even more risky telling Val, a fugitive still wanted by the S.O.R., that my father was Special Forces. If there was one thing I’d learned about him since coming to Seattle, though, it was how passionate he was about doing right by his friends. That coupled with his past suggested he was a strong believer in working toward redemption—something my cover story appealed to.

“Val, I’m not here to hurt anyone,” I assured him. It wasn’t a lie.

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m just here to help.”

Val’s eyes darted between mine. I felt his pulse picking up again. “People don’t travel across the country to help strangers.”

He was right, but I needed to convince him I wasn’t a threat. I swallowed hard and dug deep for emotions and lies. “Back in D.C., I was working myself to death. I was completely burnt out, stressed to the max and ready to snap… Then I heard about what you guys were doing out here. I thought it would be a nice break from everything in the city, so I volunteered.”

“You were hoping to get a vacation.” Val’s voice was bitter.

We sat there, stoic and silent, for the better part of a minute. Finally, I loosened my grip on Val’s arms. He didn’t try to run or even pull free. His eyes cut down to where my hands rested.

“If you hurt any of them,” he said, glancing to where his friends were gathered on the other side of the cavern then back to my eyes, “I’ll kill you.”

“I won’t. You have my word.”

Before Val could reply, Gemma called down to us, “Check me out!”

We looked up to where Gemma stood with Lee at the mouth of the cavern. She struck a pose once she had everyone’s attention.

“Be careful up there, Gemma,” Fritzi scolded.

Gemma laughed and tossed down the braided rope of clothing once it was secured high above. I looked to Val as Jayne started the climb. He was staring into the heat lamp, eyes out of focus again and lost somewhere in his own head. I wondered what sort of terms we were on; I seemed to keep going back and forth between the roles of confidant and suspicious person.

“Just do me a favor, Nik. Don’t cause us trouble.” Val sighed.

“Trouble?”

“People like you and me…” He hesitated, as if uncertain whether or not to group us in the same category, like he’d done earlier. “We cause trouble for people who don’t deserve it. Every single day, I worry someone is still out there looking for me, and that they might hurt Anya and the others to get to me… I don’t know what kind of stuff you’re mixed up in back east, but don’t get us involved.”

It had been a long time since I’d felt guilt. I’d like to have said it was a refreshing sensation, but if anything, it came back with a vengeance. “I won’t,” I lied. My thumb grazed over the side of his arm where I still held it loosely. I stopped the small movement, convinced myself it was merely an uneasy reflex, and said, “You can trust me.”