Conflicted (Undercover #2) (12 page)

I understood, now. Luka wasn’t setting up a gun deal; he was setting up a business. A steady, poisonous flow of guns into my country.

Luka handed out loaded magazines and the men slotted them into the rifles. The guards placed some of the old cardboard cartons that littered the place on top of the machines to serve as targets.

A second later, the air erupted into a deafening roar as the men test-fired the guns. The huge room was lit up with flickering white fire and the windows shook from the noise.

Luka looked at me, worried. Then he put his big hands over my ears, blocking out the sound. It helped but, as I looked up into his eyes, I couldn’t find the man I knew there.
You always knew he was an arms dealer, you idiot,
I told myself. But, somehow, I’d been imagining him selling a few handguns to some far-off country or maybe a tank to a Middle-Eastern regime. Not this. Not crime on a corporate scale.

I stared at him in the near silence, the thump of the guns just a vibration through his hands. My eyes pleaded with him and, just for a second, I saw the conflict start again in his face. The wish that things could be different.

I was starting to realize, with horrible certainty, that things could never be different. He was trapped in a role and so was I. He had to do what his father expected of him, just as I had to follow orders from Adam.

The guns finally ran out of ammunition and Luka gently lifted his hands from my ears. I turned to look. The men were laughing and grinning, high on adrenaline. All of them were nodding that they’d take Luka’s deal.

I looked at the cartons they’d been shooting. The cardboard had been shredded by the bullets and inside—

It had been a doll factory. Naked plastic carcasses were piled in the cartons, their heads and arms and legs ripped off by bullets, holes punched clear through their bellies and chests. A thousand tiny murders, a warzone in miniature.

I turned around and threw up all over the floor.

“Who the hell is
that?”
asked one of the Americans

I could feel Vasiliy’s eyes burning into me with disgust. “No one,” he muttered.

Outside, the Americans filed into a fleet of black SUVs, still laughing and joking. Luka embraced his dad before the older man climbed into a limo with blacked-out windows. I guessed it was probably armored, too.

Vasiliy waved and gave me a big, fake smile as he got into the car. Then he pulled Luka close and I heard him say, in Russian, “She’s trouble, Luka. You’ve fucked her—now break it off.”

Luka didn’t nod...but he didn’t argue, either. He just closed the car door and watched as the limo pulled away. What did that mean?

It hit me that I now had the perfect excuse to end things. My mission was done, after all. I knew all about the deal and had enough information for the CIA and the Russian cops to bust Luka’s business wide open. When we got back to Moscow, I could break up with him and it wouldn’t seem at all suspicious. Hell, he might even break up with me before I could do it.

All simple and clean. So why did it feel as if pieces of jagged glass were being pulled from my heart?

Luka walked over to me and told the guards to give him a minute. They waited a respectful distance away, still watching out for snipers but looking a little less jumpy than before. Now that the guns and Vasiliy—the two big targets for any rivals—had departed, things felt slightly safer.

“Are you okay?” asked Luka, taking my hand in an oddly old-fashioned gesture. His hand completely covered my much smaller one. “You”—he searched for the right word for
threw up
—”You
unwelled
.”

Despite everything, that made me smile. “I’m okay now. I just…” I shook my head. “I wasn’t ready for
that.
” I could feel my face going pale again.
“
Jesus, Luka, you’re going to flood the market.”

He gave me a strange look, and I realized I’d spoken with too much authority. I didn’t sound like a tourist. I tried to brazen it out. “I took some business classes,” I said. “And that’s what you’re doing, isn’t it? Flooding the market. Thousands of cheap guns. So that your competitors look expensive and you force them out, and you control everything.”

He slowly nodded. “Exactly.”

“But it’s
guns.
So many guns. Just one of those could be used in a robbery or a murder and you’re talking about
thousands
.”

“Hundreds of thousands, over the next decade.” He put his hands on my shoulders. The touch would have been warm and comforting any other time, but it wasn’t working now. “But I don’t control what people do with them.”

At that, I lost it. Hot anger bubbled up from right down in my chest. “That old excuse?”

He stared at me and I could see his own anger growing, too. “It’s just business, Arianna. I’m taking the violence
out
of it. Once we control the whole market, there’ll be no more fighting with rival gangs. Much better than if bastards like Olaf Ralavich control it. The deals, the smuggling—it can all be clean and bloodless.”

“But it’s
guns!
It’s never bloodless! You’re ignoring what happens when the guns get to where they’re going!”

His eyes narrowed. “I didn’t make your criminals want to kill each other. I didn’t even make them demand guns. I’m just filling the demand.”

“What about kids?” I said savagely. And, at that, I saw him hesitate and almost wince. For a second, those hard eyes softened. “What about kids of fourteen, fifteen—even younger, who get mixed up with street gangs and shot with one of the new, cheap guns? What about them?”

He glanced away, not meeting my eyes. “That is unfortunate.”

“But you could do something about it! Once you control the supply, you could set conditions! Threaten to cut off their guns if they hand them out to teenagers.”

He held my gaze for a split second, his eyes widening in surprise. And something else. Respect. But then he shook his head and looked away. “Arianna, you don’t know this world. I couldn’t do that. It shows weakness. Besides, my father would never support it.”

“You have to!” I blurted. And then realized I’d said far too much already. What was rattling around my head was,
you have to, because if you’re really this cold then I don’t know if there’s any hope for you.

His lips pressed together in a tight line and he
loomed
at me. “I don’t
have
to do anything,” he said sharply. But then he stared at me for another beat, half furious and half...something else. “You’re not, are you?” he muttered.

“Not what?”

“Not scared of me. No one ever stands up to me.”

“I
am
scared of you,” I said in a low voice. “I just...say stuff anyway.”

He held my gaze a second longer and then he glanced off down the road. There was nothing in sight, but I knew what he was thinking. He was gazing at the point where his dad’s car had vanished into the distance. Reminding himself that he and I could never work. He sighed. “Come,” he said. “We should go.”

***

The trip back to Moscow would be much quicker than the outward one. Now that we’d got rid of the guns and didn’t have to dodge the coastguard, Luka explained, we could take a more direct route. Five hours on the yacht, a flight and we’d be home.

Luka spent most of the time on the bridge with the captain. Given that there wasn’t anything to see except for the featureless gray ocean, I knew he was avoiding me. And I knew why. He was debating breaking up with me.

I lay on the bed in our stateroom and tried to figure out my feelings.
I should be happy!
The mission was nearly over and it was a complete success. I’d done everything asked of me and soon I’d go home. Some weeks or months down the line, there’d be an epic bust. I’d be hailed as a star field agent and Luka would spend the rest of his life in a Russian prison.

So why did I feel ripped apart inside?

It was as if everything good we’d had was being twisted like a knife into my guts. I’d used his feelings against him.

He was an arms dealer. He was evil. But I was worse.

***

Back in St. Petersburg, Yuri transferred our bags to a car and we set off for the airport. Luka and I both sat there brooding, staring out of opposite windows. It seemed like we’d sit like that for the entire flight back to Moscow, too.

Until, suddenly, Luka’s cell phone bleeped. Not a call or a text—some sort of app. And his face lit up with genuine pleasure for a few seconds before he reigned himself in. He leaned forward to Yuri and muttered something I couldn’t hear, and we turned off the highway.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

Luka grinned at me. I could still sense the storm on the horizon—we both knew, now, that this couldn’t last. But just for a second, he was happy and he wanted to share it with me. He showed me the screen of his phone—a map of the area, with an airplane symbol on St. Petersburg. “Jet is here,” he said with satisfaction.

“Jet is here?” I said blankly.

“Jet is here.”

***

“Another trophy?” I asked, eying the sleek white business jet.

He shook his head. “I bought this myself.” He stroked the wing lovingly. “She was having work done on her engines—that’s why we had to take a normal flight on the way here. But now she’s back.”

She?

On board, the pilot and co-pilot greeted us, all smiles and enthusiasm. Luka asked after their wives and kids. I saw the same fierce streak of loyalty in the pilots I saw in Yuri—for all his evil, Luka obviously treated his staff well.

He was still grinning when we sat down in the huge leather armchairs and buckled ourselves in for take-off. He took my hand and, as the engines spun up, he squeezed it.

He was...
excited.
This huge bear of a man, that nothing seemed to phase, was excited.

I blinked. I’d known there was tenderness inside him but I hadn’t expected to see...
fun.
He’d always been larger than life to me, but this was the first time he’d seemed complete—a man who’d make a good friend, a good father. He hid all that away.

“You like planes,” I said.

His hand loosened in mine. “What? No. Jet is to impress others. Symbol of status.”

“Status symbol.
And no it isn’t. The yacht was a status symbol. You
like
this plane.
”
I paused, studying him as we sped down the runway. “No, you love it.”

He squirmed in his seat, just a little. I’d found his weakness. It was incredibly reassuring that he had one. “You’ve liked planes ever since you were a kid, haven’t you?” I said, figuring it out. “It reminds you of those days. When you didn’t have to think about all this stuff.” I felt the wheels leave the ground. “It must be nice to have something pure—one thing in your life that isn’t about guns and violence.”

He locked eyes with me and held my gaze. I’d been talking about the plane, but it occurred to me that I’d just described myself.

“You Americans and your psycho-analyzing,” he muttered. But it was a good-natured mutter. As if he didn’t mind someone finding out his weakness....as long as it was me. We stared at each other and I knew he could feel the connection as strongly as I could. That sense that this was right, that we worked together...even though we both knew it couldn’t last. His dad had told him to break up with me and, even if that didn’t happen, I was going to betray him.

It just felt so good, though, to finally meet someone I clicked with. I leaned over and wound my arm around his much thicker one, spiraling them so we were entangled, and put my head on his shoulder. He let out a long sigh—not aimed at me, but at the situation.

“What are you doing here, Arianna?” he said. “Why not in America with stockbroker?”

We stared at each other. We both knew the answer. “A stockbroker isn’t what I want,” I said quietly.