Blood Cursed (Rogue Angel) (2 page)

“Monsieur Braden.” A thin Bulgarian man wearing a multicolored knit hat with flannel flaps over his ears bowed and pressed his palms together before his chest in the universal sign for
namaste
. Knee-high riding boots showed a lot of wear and a long red-and-white, zigzag scarf looked like something someone’s grandmother might have made if she’d been high on medicinal cannabis. The Bulgarian swept a hand back toward the goods. “Please, look over the product.”

The “product” was crammed into the back of a rusted black delivery truck that was scoured with more dents and holes than an Army tanker in Iraq riddled by steel penetrators. The bodyguards assumed stances behind Garin at ten paces, and kept their eyes on the three men who accompanied their host. None were a match to the body shape and strength of his men, but that meant little. A concealed weapon always trumped a swinging fist. Which is why his men carried more than enough artillery to put down a stampede, if necessary.

From the haphazard arsenal pile spilling out of the truck, Garin fished a dusty AK-47. The folding stock swung out freely. Sand spilled from the barrel. Something rattled inside the receiver. And it smelled like...gasoline. This was not good.

He shook his head. He hadn’t expected pristine secondhand weapons, but this was pushing his idea of acceptable. And while the assault rifle was a favorite among the military for its durability and ease of use, these weapons were more than a decade old, which shouldn’t matter, but Garin guessed they had never seen cleaning oil.

“This is crap,” he said, turning to his host.

Knit Cap waved his hands in a salesman’s protest. “Oh, no, no, the weapons work perfectly well. Just give it a shake.”

“A shake?”

He grabbed a magazine from inside an opened cardboard box stuffed among the weapons and jammed it into the receiver. An easy fit. Expected. These weapons were designed to be durable, if not long-lasting.

Swinging about, Garin aimed at Knit Cap. The man didn’t flinch.

Exactly.

Garin ground his back molars together. He was in no mood for this today.

“Your unflinching stance tells me you’re confident this one won’t fire,” he challenged. “I don’t like that.”

Knit Cap shrugged.

Garin tossed the gun aside. It landed on the pile of weapons in a clatter, sending not only AK-47s sliding to the ground, but also a spill of fine sand he assumed had originated in the deserts of Kabul, which is where this shipment had supposedly come from. “Is this all you’ve got?”

“It is what you requested! Quality goods. They are in working order, I swear—”

Angered that the man should continue to insist what he was selling was anywhere in the same galaxy as a quality used weapon, Garin lunged and grabbed the machine gun he’d loaded with the magazine. Swinging wide and high, he fired. The bullets scattered, piercing the tin roof and sending the pigeons squawking—then abruptly stopped. The magazine dislodged with a pop, clattering onto the pounded-dirt floor. Despite the wood grip, the weapon burned above his fist where flesh met steel.

Slamming it to the ground, Garin swung around and grabbed Knit Cap by the scrawny throat.

The seller’s guards made a move, hands sliding inside their jackets. Garin’s bodyguards snapped up their pistols and stopped them, prompting the opposition’s guards to raise their empty hands to their shoulders.

“Your definition of quality is skewed,” he hissed at the audaciously fearless Bulgarian. “Where did you get these playthings? Your little boy’s sandbox?”

“You expect mint condition for these prices?”

“I expect something that works.” Shoving him hard to stumble against the door of the truck, Garin marched away to the sounds of fists meeting jawbones as his bodyguards cleaned up the mess.

“Having a bad few days,” he muttered.

The hijacked shipment last night and now this?

He had a phone call to make to a New York auction while they traveled on to Liberec. That call had better lift his spirits.

* * *

“I’
M
SORRY
, M
R
. B
RADEN
,
but there seems to be a problem with your credentials,” the woman on the other end of the line said calmly and professionally.

Normally by now, he would have complimented her in a charming tone, but the Germany to New York connection was static, so Garin had to strain to hear her, and couldn’t judge if she was young enough to make charm worth it, or old enough to appreciate his efforts.

“We can’t allow your bid through until matters have been cleared up.”

Item number seventeen sat on the auction block as they spoke. Clearing up credentials would take longer than it required for the auctioneer’s hammer to hit the block and close the sale.

Sitting in the passenger seat of the Mercedes SUV, watching the landscape soar by in streaks of green, Garin caught his forehead in his palm. A tumbler of Irish whiskey sat within reach in the cup holder. He wasn’t sure whether to tilt it back or throw it out the window. The past twenty-four hours had not included his finer moments.

“Mr. Braden?”

“I’ll look into it,” he said, and hung up. He tucked the cell phone into a breast pocket.

The priceless black pearl, rumored to have belonged to the Sultan of Brunei—who had made his mistress wear it in a delicate place at the apex of her thighs—during the Ottoman reign would go to someone else. And he had a good idea who that someone else would be.

“Roux,” he muttered.

About the only other person on this planet who had an interest in pretty little bits tied up with fantastical histories was Roux.

Garin didn’t need the pearl. His goal had been to keep it out of the Frenchman’s hands. Hell, he had to keep the old man on his toes. But now that he’d been denied the opportunity to bid on it, he felt as surly as if he’d been denied the whiskey a hand’s reach away.

His credentials? His papers did have a tendency to color into various shades of gray.

Sucking down the whiskey, he then poured another two fingers and tilted that back in a couple of swallows. Raking his hands through his dark hair, he stomped the floor of the vehicle with his boot. He was being childish, he knew that. He didn’t care.

He had one last appointment this evening. Routine check on an operation that ran smoothly without him, but required his presence on occasion to keep everyone in line.

“Canov, don’t screw with me tonight.”

He’d gone beyond patience. The next bad thing to happen would push him over the edge.

* * *

T
HE
NEEDLE
THE
nurse wearing the pink dress stuck into his arm hurt. What she wore didn’t look like a nurse’s uniform, but rather like something one of his father’s girlfriends might wear to their house. When he got sent to bed early. She smiled and patted his head, cooing reassurances and reminding him of his nana. Except she was about his father’s age. Her hair was blond and her eyes were tired and edged with creases in her darkly tanned skin. He would sleep, she said, and he felt his eyelids flutter as she taped cotton to the inside of his elbow.

When they’d removed the blindfold from his eyes, he’d craned his head to take in the room where he’d ended up. Looked like a doctor’s office, but old and dirty. A dingy yellow insect strip, thick with black flies, hung from the exposed lightbulb. The room didn’t have a bright light or shiny steel fixtures like the one in Liberec he’d been in last year when his stomach had hurt and his father had rushed him to emergency care in the city. It only had one of those hanging lamps like his father used to see inside the hood of the car when he was working on the engine. And it didn’t smell like the hospital, but like the sewers.

He didn’t like it here. But he could no longer keep his eyes open. He wanted to scream. Maybe Pa would hear him and come wrap his arms about him?

Opening his mouth, the boy only sighed, and then blacked out.

* * *

T
HE
CINDER
-
BLOCK
warehouse was used to store weapons en route to other countries. Munitions passed through the warehouse in a matter of days and were usually trucked out in larger shipments. Nothing remained for long.

Canov ran a tight operation, and had never given Garin reason to question his allegiance. Though Canov took his own pay from the profits before they were siphoned to a bank in Switzerland, if the man was greedy, he kept his greed in check.

Yet this evening, Garin felt a strange niggle at the back of his neck. Something wasn’t right in this big almost-empty warehouse. They were forty miles from the nearest town and surrounded by a forest of gnarled oak trees. And there were too few munitions for all the muscle he saw standing around.

If Canov was managing a job on the side, he didn’t want to know about it. But neither did he want it to interfere with this operation.

“You’ve never questioned me before,” Canov said, casting a glance to one of the men, likely security, who stood behind Garin near a sheet of white plastic that hung from ceiling to floor.

Garin wasn’t sure why the plastic was there. The warehouse was big enough that they didn’t need to partition off areas in such a manner. Its very presence made him want to look behind it.

“You know I am faithful to you, Monsieur Braden.”

The man wasn’t French, but he’d lived in Toulouse most of his life, and while he’d lost the accent, he hadn’t dropped all of the words.

“Smells wrong in here.” Garin glanced again at the plastic sheet, which he could not see through. “What’s going on back there?”

“It is not your concern. I do as you request and never miss a shipment. You should allow me some freedom to attend other business matters.”

“Not on my property.” Garin turned and started toward the sheet.

A security guard put himself between Garin and his destination.

“Out of my way,” Garin demanded.

The man, who matched him in height and girth, set back his shoulders and had the audacity to lift his chin and look him directly in the eye. One of his own? Or one of Canov’s hires?

He was the boss here. And the way his day had been going, no one wanted to piss him off.

The bodyguard placed a palm under his cotton jacket. Unbelievable. The man was prepared to defend whatever was behind the plastic curtain with firepower.

Wrong move.

Garin’s anger spilled over like a volcano spewing lava. He swung his left fist, meeting the man’s block with the sound of cracking bone. The man did not waver, instead bringing up an uppercut that missed Garin’s chin by a few hairs.

A blow from the left staggered him. Another guard must have joined in. Garin swayed. He slashed through the plastic sheeting with his arms and got tangled in plastic tubing attached to a tall steel rod. An IV stand. A bag of blood wobbled near Garin’s face before falling and bursting open. Blood spattered his face and he spat out a mouthful, catching a glimpse of someone lying on a wood pallet, prone, unconscious.

Grabbed by the back of his shirt, he was whipped around and tossed toward the guard with the newly broken wrist. Garin fisted him in the jaw, dropping him to the ground. The guard scrambled away. He didn’t want this fight? Smart man.

Incensed, Garin turned on his heel and growled at his aggressor. The blood on his face managed to ramp up his anger even more. The guard put up his palms in placation.

Wrenching a look toward his employee, Garin barked, “What the hell are you doing here, Canov?”

“It is a side job. Not your concern,” he pleaded.

“I’ll show you what
is
my concern.”

Garin charged the bodyguard, using his weight to bring the man down. He punched his jaw, over and over. Knocking the man beneath him out cold with a final punch to his kidney, Garin stood. He didn’t see Canov.

He headed for the side door. Whatever was going on behind the plastic curtain, he’d investigate later. He wanted to put his hands on Canov first.

Canov’s white Jeep pealed away from the warehouse stirring a brume of dust in its wake.

Garin’s man called out from the waiting Mercedes, “What is it, boss?”

“We need to pursue!”

He blinked and something blurred his left eye. Garin swiped a finger across his eyelid. Covered with blood. From the IV bag. That’s when he remembered he’d seen a person attached to the IV.

He turned in the doorway, eyeing the plastic sheeting, rippled now along the edge where his body had mangled it. Whatever was behind there, Canov was right, it wasn’t his business. And it wasn’t something he wanted to make his business.

Whether or not he’d approved the operation, he was allied and associated with the dirty dealings.

“Blood?” He wiped his face.

The Mercedes engine revved. Canov wouldn’t get away with this. Garin dashed outside for the vehicle.