Extreme Danger (62 page)

The trees twirled crazily, and then the deck twisted and whirled up, and slammed right into him like a speeding truck.

Becca jerked back as Kristoff practically landed in her lap. Nick took forever to fall. He tipped and teetered, turning, and then crashed to the deck with a slow inevitability. Drops of blood flew off his chest, illuminated by the big light from the house as he hit, bounced and lay still.

Blood began to pool next to his chest. So much blood.

She was pushed beyond herself now. Beyond pain, beyond fear, beyond everything she’d ever believed or known about herself. She was conscious only of a huge, hurricane-force rage at those men for hurting him. For their monstrous, unspeakable cruelty.

She looked at the dog chain in her shaking hands. The rage threw a switch, clicked her brain out of victim mode and into terrible focus. She finally saw the thing for the deadly weapon that it actually was.

Her hands tingled.

Kristoff was taunting Nick in Ukrainian. She couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was unmistakable. Blood bubbled out of Kristoff’s nose as he pulled himself up into a crouch. He didn’t consider her.

She leaped. Her arms shot out, looping the length of chain across the guy’s thick neck.

She jerked him backwards, almost toppling under his weight, but the strength of desperation kept her on her feet. He grunted, gasped, clutching his throat, but he was still scrambling, crablike, trying to get his feet under himself when her back hit the railing. She hooked a foot on the bottom slat, heaved herself up, perched her butt on the rail—

And flung herself over backwards.

Free fall. Into the dark. Until she was brought up short by the chain. She shrieked. Her entire weight hung on her cuffed hands, and the thick lengths of chain she’d wrapped around her hands and wrists. The cuffs cut into her skin, the chain pulled brutally tight, crushing her wrists and fingers like a vise. Oh, God, that hurt, hurt, hurt.

She peered up, blinked the tears out of her eyes, tried to stop making that panicked sobbing sound. She’d had the vague notion of dragging Kristoff with her, making him fall to his death, but the outcome was different. He’d fetched up against the post, throttled.

He made no sound. There was no sound but the rustling trees. She swayed back and forth in the dark like a crazy pendulum, in a haze of pain and dread. Soft pine needles tickled her arms, her legs. Blood trickled down her forearms.

A hideous laugh sounded from high above her.

She looked up. Zhoglo’s face hung over the railing, like a full moon. His mouth was stretched wide in a parody of mirth.

He clapped, slowly. “Bravo, Rebecca,” he said. “You have done me a favor. I was bored at the prospect of killing that blockhead. You spared me that, and in such an entertaining way too. Grisly. Would you like to see? Here, Pavel, help me pull her up. I want to show her the rewards of defiance.”

Pavel appeared beside the other man, his cadaverous face expressionless. Becca could not hold back a keening moan as he pulled her up, a slicing, fiery agony burning her hands as the distance between herself and that smirking nightmare shortened. Finally Pavel grabbed her under the armpits and heaved her over the rail. He set her on her feet.

Blood slicked the chain, the cuffs, her hands. Her fingers were crushed, throbbing with pain. Zhoglo seized the chain and yanked on it. She fell forward, shrieking.

“I love a defiant woman,” he said. “It makes her cringing and begging all the sweeter in the end.” He gestured at Kristoff. “Look at what you did,” he said. “And you are so sylphlike. So delicate.”

Kristoff’s head was flung back, a dark, bloody mark across his crushed larynx. Her fall, her chain, had caught him across the throat and killed him. His face was purplish, his eyes wide. Becca’s gaze darted away, and she suddenly saw the widening pool of blood beside Nick’s limp body. As she watched, Nick started to move.

She let her eyes slide off him as if she hadn’t noticed him. Saw him drag himself to his feet out of the corner of her eye.

Zhoglo clutched her blood-streaked breast in his hands. He lifted bloody fingers to his lips. Slowly sucked them clean, one after the other, smiling. She was about to faint.

Nick took a shuffling step forward. Another.

The noise that had been brushing against the back of her mind finally identified itself. Police sirens screaming. Getting louder.

“The cops are on their way,” Nick said. “Hear them?”

Pavel and Zhoglo jerked around at the sound of his deep voice, and pointed their guns at him. Nick’s hands were pressed to his chest. Blood trickled through them. His eyes were terribly calm.

Zhoglo’s insane laugh shook his big belly. He looked at Becca. “You see, my dear? How it is with me, every time? Always, I must abandon my juicy treats right before I sink my teeth into them. Such a shame to kill you this way, when you deserve to die slowly, screaming. But as I told you before…I can be flexible.”

He shoved her away and trained the gun on her, lips twisting into a hideous leer. Nick launched into the air and slammed into her.

Bam, a gun went off. They hit the ground with all the rib-crunching force of their combined weights, knocking out her wind.

Over Nick’s shoulder, Zhoglo stared down at her for a moment, a look of pure hate in his eyes. Slowly, he toppled forward.

He landed on top of Nick, eyes frozen wide. Blood seeped through his buzzcut silver hair, trickling into his staring eyes and around the thick, swollen lumps of his fleshy face.

What? How…?

Becca was close to smothering under the combined weight of the two men, her lungs hitching in and out. Pavel was the only one still standing. He held a pistol in one limp hand as if he’d forgotten it was there. His eyes were empty in his haggard face.

Lack of oxygen was pulling a veil over her eyes. Blood from two different death wounds pooled around her, hot and thickening.

Pavel nudged Zhoglo’s body with his foot. He flipped it off Becca and Nick, and onto its back. He crouched down, said a few quiet words that Becca could not understand, and spat into the dead man’s face.

Then he rolled Nick’s body off her, on to the other side. Nick flopped onto his back. Air rushed painfully back into Becca’s lungs.

Pavel knelt beside her and pulled her up till she was sitting. He fished something small and bright out of his pocket. A key. He inserted it into the bloody handcuffs and unlocked them.

She stared into his face, utterly confounded.

“Why?” she whispered as soon as she had the breath to speak.

“For my son.” Pavel’s voice was somber. He did not meet her eyes.

She shook her head, uncomprehending, but he said nothing more. He retreated, boots crunching over broken glass into the dark house.

Becca stared after him. The heat of the pooling blood reached her thigh, startling her out of her shocked stupor. Nick. Oh, God, Nick.

She bent over him, peering at the wound in the dim light from the room behind them. It looked awful. Blood was everywhere. His face was ashy pale and his breath bubbled in his lungs.

But he’d picked himself up and tried to take a bullet for her.

The sirens were deafening now. Lights swirled through the trees, blue and red. They were coming. Good. No time to lose. God knows, she was no medic. She tried to remember her high school first aid course.

Apply direct pressure. She stripped off the scrap of T-shirt still clinging to her shoulders, wadded it into a ball and pressed it against the wound. The best she could do, other than praying, desperately.

She sagged over him, resting her forehead against his. Waited, eyes shut tight to block out the unseeing gaze of the corpses.

Presently, people and loud noises boiled out onto the deck, hustling and bustling, asking her loud, urgent questions that she could not bring herself to comprehend, let alone answer. She had nothing left for them, whoever they were. She was used up. All done.

Finally someone had the kindness to sting her in the arm with a needle and lay her gently down on something flat.

That was the last she knew.

Chapter
34

Six weeks later…

N ick fidgeted behind the wheel of his truck, staring at the carved wooden sign on the storefront that read The Wandering Gourmet—Fine Catering.” He’d been there for an hour. This was stupid.

He slid out of the truck, fed the meter for the third time, and pressed his hand against the dull ache in his chest. It took a while for a hole through the lung to heal. They’d thought he was going to bite the big one, he’d been told. He’d also been told that Becca had stayed at his side the whole time he’d been in intensive care and various other wards, all the way till they downgraded his condition to conscious-but-miserable-piece-of-shit-in-fiery-pain.

At which point, she’d made herself scarce. She’d left him there, all alone, to stare at the IV bag dripping into his arm and ponder what he’d done, and what it had cost him. She’d changed her phone numbers.

He knew a “fuck off” when he heard one and yet here he was. She had to tell him to fuck off in person, to his face. Maybe it would sink in.

He couldn’t take any more of this. Stumbling through his days like the walking dead. Dreaming of her every night, waking up in tears with his dick stone hard.

He walked towards the catering place. His legs felt like they might just give way at the knees at the prospect of the ultimate Fuck Off.

He walked in to the reception area. A fresh-faced blond girl manned the front counter. “Hello, can I help you?” she chirped.

“I want to talk to your boss,” he said.

“Just a sec. I’ll go get her.”

She scampered through the swinging doors. He glimpsed a high tech kitchen, lots of gleaming equipment.

Becca burst through. She stopped, so abruptly the blonde bumped into her. Her professional smile switched off like a light.

They stared at each other. She looked sharper, her chin and jaw more defined. Her hair was longer, the ringlets lengthening into waves. She was so beautiful, it made his eyes ache. “Hey,” he forced out.

She put her hand to her throat. “I see you’re all healed up.”

“More or less,” he said.

“That’s great news.” She folded her arms under her breasts. The blond girl cut her gaze back and forth between them, at a loss.

“I see you’ve, uh, gone into business for yourself.” He gestured around at the place. “Good for you. Looks great.”

She shrugged. “I decided it was time to get out of the kiddie pool,” she said coolly. “Besides, not much scares me these days. I had to take out a huge loan, but it’s a good location. And my ex-boss from the country club is passing me a lot of great referrals. Out of pure guilt, I think, but that’s fine with me. I’ll use guilt, if it works.”

“Oh, it works,” he told her. “Believe me. It definitely works.”

That clammed her right up. There was a long, tense silence, and he hardened his belly and gathered the nerve to break it.

“Is there someplace private we could go to talk?” he asked.

“No need,” she said. “We don’t have anything to talk about that can’t be said right out in public.”

He tried to breathe out the pain. He’d known this would be bad.

“How did you find this place?” Her tone was faintly accusatory.

“Margot told me,” he admitted.

“Oh. Yes, I catered Jeannie’s christening party last week,” she said. “Such a cute baby. Margot brought her in when she came in to choose the menu. Adorable, with all that fuzzy red hair.”

“Yeah, she’s real cute,” he said mechanically. “Margot told me she’d seen you. But you weren’t at the party.”

“Oh, no. I had to work another event that night. We’re super busy on weekends,” she said crisply. “Carrie did the McCloud job. She’s working for me this summer, you know?”

“You were avoiding me,” he said baldly.

Becca stared at him, and did not respond. He sighed and dug into his pocket. He pulled out a battered envelope, handed it to her.

She took it gingerly. “What’s this?”

“For Josh,” he said. “From Sveti. She has a huge crush on him. Six pages, thanking him for what he did. Jumping Yuri, and all that. She made me translate it for her.” He rolled his eyes. “Very fervent.”

“Oh,” she murmured. “I see. I’ll give it to him.”

“He’s a good guy,” he offered. “Brave. It was the first nice thing anybody had done for her in months. It made a big impression on her. I think she’s hoping he’ll keep himself pure for her until she grows up.”

“Hmm,” Becca murmured noncommittally. “I wouldn’t hold my breath, if I were her, knowing Joshie. Is she, um, OK?”

“She’s fine now,” he said. “The McClouds flew her mom over from Kiev right away, while I was still in the hospital. She and Sveti went back home to Ukraina last week.”

“And the others? What about Pavel’s son?”

“Back with his mother and brother. The kid’s marked for life, but he might pull through. The rest of them are still stateside, in protective custody. When this thing hit the news, there were thousands of offers to adopt them, so we’ll see. All except for Rachel, that is.”