In For the Kill (10 page)

“We will start soft. We have plenty of time,” he said. “I'm an artist, you see. I like a long, slow buildup. Tell us about The Sword of Cain.”

She dragged in a huge breath and screamed, with everything she had. All her horror and fear and anger, from the depths of her being. She screamed, in his face. His mouth was open, he was yelling back, but she just kept on screaming. She might never stop.

He shoved her underwater.

The world went blue, shot through with red, her lungs already empty from screaming. Her lungs jerked in agony. Her torso was overbalanced, shoved down headfirst. She flopped and writhed, but that cruel hand held her down. Airless, frantic. Drowning.

 

Sam peered through the swaying tree boughs that draped the rotten, fragile roof upon which he was stretched full length. Trying not to slide down, not to make a sound, to catch a clear glimpse of the sentry by the open door. Breathing down his panic. He'd never panicked before. He turned ice cold when things got dangerous. He had a reputation for it. He didn't sweat, his heart rate didn't go up. His colleagues envied him that quality. It had never failed him.

Until now. His heart was crawling up into his mouth, and his bowels churned. How anybody could think clearly or handle lethal weapons responsibly in this condition, he did not fucking know.

Didn't matter. Scared shitless or not, he was all Sveti had.

He dragged himself up off his belly, easing into a crouch behind the cover of pine branches that draped the roof. The van was parked right below him. The building he was on looked like a derelict barn from the first half of the last century, paint peeling, wood faded to gray. In front of the barn, on the other side of the van, was a small cinder-block building, of newer make, but just as derelict.

He had not seen them unload her. They must have done that while he was making his approach on foot. Lucky their team was small, and that they weren't expecting company. The front entrance that looked down the road was the only approach they bothered to guard.

He tried not to think about what was happening inside.

The sentry was smoking a cigarette, a walkie-talkie on his belt, a ski mask, an H&K PSP in his hand. Sam had a clear shot. He could cap the guy, and was tempted to do so, but with no suppressor, he'd lose the advantage of surprise. This had to be quiet, or he'd get Sveti killed.

It had taken fifty minutes to get here. The roads were deserted; he'd been forced to hang back and risk losing them so as not to be noticed. If he shot the sentry, he could use the guy's cell to call the cops, assuming there was coverage, but it might take the local guys a half hour just to find this place, let alone get on top of things.

No. It happened now, and fast, or not at all.

At least he wasn't dealing with high security. The place had the feel of an impulse decision. The owner would be absentee Joe Schmoe from Phoenix, or somebody dead with no heirs, property in limbo.

His face itched under the mud he'd smeared on it as he reviewed his strategy. All he had to work with was what he'd gleaned from his car, the detritus of an out-of-work loser. Bottles he hadn't bothered taking to the recycling center, the gas in his tank. He'd half-filled an empty whiskey bottle with premium unleaded, ripped off the lower half of his shirt, wound it around the bottom, knotting it and soaking the dangling end of the rag in the bottle for a fuse. He corked it, leaving the bottle top free for flinging. His hands stank of gasoline. He'd be lucky not to self-immolate. A hostage situation, and he was reduced to a fucking Molotov cocktail. Problem was, it would make noise, too.

His leather jacket would have given him more camouflage than his light gray sweatshirt, and the smartphone in the pocket would have given him fifteen experienced cops to back him up.

This was what he got for being a goddamn gentleman.

If he could get that guy into a better position, he'd have a chance of jumping him. Sam lobbed the chunk of rotten wood he'd found on the roof, aiming for the cinder-block wall. It thudded dully against the wall. The sentry's head jerked around at the sound. He held still, listening. Slowly, he sidled closer to investigate. Sam willed the guy to follow the right trajectory. So much hung on pure, random chance. He fucking hated it.

Closer . . . closer. A gut-wrenching female scream ripped out from within the building. Sam lit the fuse, with trembling fingers, and let the bottle fly. The scream continued as the bottle sailed through air.

Crash,
breaking glass against the cinder-block wall, then the
whump
of ignition. The sentry stumbled back with a startled shout, and Sam leaped as he reached for his walkie-talkie. He landed on the guy, smacking him to the ground. The walkie-talkie dropped. The H&K flew out of the sentry's grip, bounced, spun.

They rolled on the ground. Sam came out on top, but the guy was wiry and quick to recover. He smacked the heel of his hand up under Sam's chin. Sam jerked back in time to avoid the elbow rake across the throat. The sentry twisted free. They bounded to their feet, and Sam blocked a roundhouse to the thigh and spun, deflecting a punch to the face. A grab, a rush, and the guy went down again, Sam on top.

The man's legs wound around him, struggling to flip him. Sam grabbed the guy's biceps to pin him, wrenched loose, and slammed his fist down into the guy's groin. He howled. Sam shoved the man's legs aside and half-mounted the fuckhead's chest. An elbow strike into his face, a knee strike to the temple. He pulled away, panting. That guy was done.

He spun around, looking for that H&K. Sweet Christ. The one thing that could have upped Sveti's odds lay in a pool of flames. They licked hungrily at the weathered chunks of lumber and junk.

Suck it up. He ran inside the warehouse. Faint light leached through filthy, cobwebby windows. Nothing but piles of moldering stuff. Ancient furniture, dusty machines and appliances, piles of newspapers, boxes shredded by rodents. There was a single aisle through the heaps of junk. A door at the end of the room.

He approached it on soft cat feet and burst inside.

A big man in a ski mask was hauling Sveti's head and shoulders out of a plastic tub of water. Her eyes were closed. She sputtered, choked, wheezed. The man's gaze whipped up.

Bam, bam.
Sam squeezed off two shots. The fuckhead jerked back with a shout, hand to his ear.
Bam,
he took one to the upper arm and jolted sideways, letting go of Sveti. She fell forward into the tub, struggling, but her weight was canted too far forward, and her arms were bound. She was drowning.

He lunged toward her, which was what saved his life. Bullets ripped out. A whip-slash of fire across the side of his lower back and he hit the ground, rolling up to take aim at the new shooter.
Bam, bam, bam.
Ski-mask Number Three staggered, blood pouring from his neck.

Sam sprinted for the tub, saw the torturer struggling up on one arm, and took the moment to aim a flying kick to the guy's face before he scooped his arm under Sveti's chest. He hauled her out of the water and laid her on the ground. Her chest did not move.

He smacked her cheek, pumping on her chest. “Goddamnit, Sveti! Are you going to let those assholes win? Fucking
breathe!
”

She convulsed, vomiting water and coughing.

Tears fogged Sam's eyes, but another perception clamored for attention. A smell, acrid and scary, tickling his reptile brain.
Danger.

Smoke. Oh, fuck. Sveti was still coughing and choking, slumped on the floor in the sodden heap of crimson fabric like a wilted poppy.

Sam dragged her to her feet. “Babe. We have to run for our lives now. Up.
Move!
” He hated using that hard-ass tone when she was so fucked up, but smoke billowed in, there was an ominous orange glow out in the main room. This place was a death trap. Of his own making.

She wobbled on her small, bare feet, but nodded, still coughing, and stumbled gamely when he dragged her forward.

Flames leaped at the far end of the room, where mildewed heaps of newspaper had caught fire. The smoke was choking. Searing heat battered their faces. The door was obscured by glowing orange smoke.

He bent low, forced Sveti to do the same. They scurried, coughing and hacking down the narrow, stinking corridor, into thicker smoke, hotter air. It hurt to breathe. Sveti was slow, scrambling awkwardly, hobbled by her sodden skirt. Eyes squeezed shut, hand clamped over her nose. A little farther—he pulled on her . . .

And they were out, in the sweet cool morning. Gasping for air.

The fire roared out of the roof, only on one side, but spreading fast. Sparks swirled and flew up. Heat battered them. Sveti thudded onto her belly. Blood was mixed with the dirt stuck to her bare feet.

Sam's eyes fell on the first ski-masked guy, lying where he'd fallen, right next to the blazing building. “One second.” He ran back, close enough to the blaze to scorch his face. Seized the dead guy under the arms and dragged him free of the fire.

He dropped the stiff fifteen meters away, in the middle of the clearing, and met Sveti's questioning glance. “I don't want that body incinerated,” he said. “I want him ID'd as soon as possible.”

“You think like a cop,” she coughed out.

“Damn right.” He picked her up. Her soaked dress was in tatters, her face smudged with soot. She stared into his face. Teeth chattering.

He picked up speed, going at a steady lope. She needed a hospital. Tetanus, shock, hypothermia, water in her lungs, who knew. His car came into view. He got her into it, cranked the heat up. They bounced with teeth-rattling jolts over the bumpy gravel road. He wished he had a coat to wrap around her. A blanket. Anything.

Her blue, shaking lips formed a word with no breath behind it. “Sam.”

“Yeah.” He pulled onto an asphalt road. The engine roared for joy.

“You came for me,” she whispered. “You . . . were watching?”

“It's the upside to having a stalker,” he said.

C
HAPTER
8

J
osef pulled out the sewing kit from his suitcase. Dental floss, from the toiletries case. He pulled out a few lengths, dropped it in the hotel room's coffee cup. Stuck it into the microwave to sterilize it.

The keyboard of his laptop was sticky with drying blood, but he ignored that, logging in to the e-mail account Sasha had used to contact the Ardova girl while the microwave hummed, doing its work. Finally. There was a new message in the drafts folder, that being the method the two of them had used to communicate without ever actually sending out e-mails. A fine plan, if no one else ever hacked into one's account. Stupid little prick. Thought he was so clever.

He clicked it open. In Ukrainian Cyrillic, capitals, bolded across the page.

That lying, sneaking, ungrateful sack of
shit.
Defying Josef, and his own father. The message had been sent a scant twenty-five minutes before. There was no response, as of yet, and chances were Ardova was too busy licking her wounds to be checking her e-mail.

He poised his fingers over the keyboard. Selected Sasha's text, deleted it, and typed in an alternate message.

Josef's phone buzzed angrily, vibrating on the desk. Two rings. Three. He coughed. It felt like chunks of burnt lung were coming up.

The smoke had almost overcome him. He'd crawled on boxes, smashed through a window. A long fall, but his cuts and bruises were the least of his problems. As was the bullet that had gone through his bicep.

These things were as nothing, compared to that ringing phone.

He picked it up, hit ‘talk.' “Vor,” he rasped.

The vor waited. There was little point pleading for mercy. It only made things worse. “She got away,” he said thickly. “There was a man she was fucking. He followed us. The snakeheads are both dead.”

“Ah,” Cherchenko said. “So you did not question her after all.”

“I had just begun,” he admitted. “But I am sure she knows everything. She's coming to Italy. She left Sasha a message last night that she's flying into Rome. I just checked the account, and Sasha warned her not to come. I deleted his message and wrote another, begging her to come as soon as possible. I will take her in Italy.”

“You will do as I tell you, idiot. Who knows if she will come, after your hack job? Get on a plane. I will decide an appropriate punishment as you travel. Aleksei and the others have not found Sasha, who is out there writing messages to God knows who. He is our top concern now.”

“Yes, Vor,” he said dully. The connection broke.

Josef stared into the mirror at his broken nose, his bloodied chin. His blood-crusted, half-detached earlobe. He pulled out his knife. Splashed it with rubbing alcohol. He stretched the torn earlobe out and cut.

The chunk of flesh thudded onto his boot and rolled to the floor.

The phone burped. He glanced at it. An airplane ticket. The flight left in only a few hours. It would be a challenge, making himself presentable enough to be allowed on an airplane. A medical facility was out of the question. There were people he could call, but no one he trusted enough to let himself be seen in such a weakened state.

No one had gotten the better of him like this since he was a boy.

The microwave dinged. He pulled out the cup of boiling water. Fished out the dental floss with the point of his knife. Threaded the needle. He palpated the wet hole in his bicep, wiping it clean with gauze. His eyes stung with smoke-tainted sweat. Fresh rivulets of blood ran down his arm as he began to stitch up the torn flesh. The needle pierced his own raw meat. Again. Two stitches. Three.

Enough. He doubled over, and vomit splattered the mirror.

He was disgusted with himself. This was nothing. He'd had his legs shattered with a hammer. His pimp had branded his ass with a hot iron when he was a boy. Now
that
was pain.

A hot iron. Yes, that would be entertaining, to use upon Svetlana and her lover. White hot, shoved deep into their tenderest places. Like the needle that he'd stabbed into his own raw, ruined flesh.

The sounds they would make would be soothing to his soul.

 

Sam stared at the cadaver on the morgue table, confused.

The stiff was Chinese. The corpse looked greenish in the blazing light. Sam shoved a hand through sweat- and blood-stiffened hair. “It doesn't make sense,” he repeated. “The guy who questioned Sveti spoke Ukrainian. He asked about a picture her mother took six years ago, in Italy. Why would snakeheads give a shit about that? It's old, it's half a world away, and it's not their stuff.”

His friend Trish's face was calm, but he knew her well enough to read her body language. Her arms folded across her chest, mouth tight.

“He's been positively ID'd,” she said. “Jason Kang. Born in Hong Kong. His wife was in earlier. She said he was a vicious, evil-hearted son of a bitch, and she's glad he's dead. He got out of the pen three months ago. He worked with Helen Wong before his stint in prison.”

“Yeah, I know. Sveti sneaked into one of their sweatshops with a live camera last year,” Sam said. “They sent her death threats.”

Trish's shrug told him to do the math. “The wife said he didn't speak great English. Enough for his dirty deeds, but no more.”

The implication pissed him off, but Trish was doing him a favor, letting him see the body. She'd been his friend for years. They'd been rookies together, he a patrol officer, she a criminologist. She was great; down to earth, funny, smart. She did not deserve to be snarled at.

“They all finished with you, down in headquarters?” Trish asked.

He kept staring at Kang's greenish face. “They Mirandized me, I gave my statement. We went through it, blow by blow. Many times.”

“Who took your statement?”

“Tenly and Horvath,” he said.

“Ah, okay.” She nodded. “They're good. What did they think about you burning down the crime scene with two of the perps inside?”

He made an irritated sound. “I was focused on saving Sveti's life.”

“Of course you were,” Trish murmured. “At least you saved one of them for us. Good of you, to throw us a chunk of meat.”

Sam's stomach twitched nastily, and his eyes flicked away from the dead man. “They talked to the DA,” he said. “Everybody's okay with self-defense. It was self-evident, when they saw the shape Sveti was in.”

“Bet the DA wasn't thrilled. Being tight with Big Daddy and all.”

“Drop it.” He was tense enough without thinking of his father.

“So, back to this girl,” Trish said. “I've read her anti-trafficking blog. Amazing. That's one razor-focused woman. Nerves of steel.”

“Tell me about it,” he said bleakly. “Why the fuck would these guys be interested in Sveti's mother?”

“Maybe they weren't.” Trish examined her fingernails. “Does she have emotional trauma associated with her mother?”

Sam paused. “Well, ah . . . it's hard to find any significant aspect of her life that isn't associated with emotional trauma.”

“Is that so? Huh. What's with the mom?”

“Suicide. Jumped off a cliff into the Mediterranean six years ago.”

Trish nodded. “Okay, moving on. Other family?”

“Her dad was murdered by the Ukrainian mob,” Sam admitted. “Concurrent with Sveti being kidnapped by organ traffickers, held for the better part of a year. Rescued just in time. They'd sold her heart. She was on the slab when the cavalry stormed in.”

Trish's mouth dangled for a moment. “Oh, my God, Sam.”

“But these people are all dead,” he repeated. “The dad, the mom, the mafiya vor. The traffickers themselves are in a maximum-security prison, monitored by her adoptive family. This stuff is dead and buried.”

“Except for inside of her,” Trish said.

“No,” Sam repeated. “She has no history of delusional thinking.”

“She was kidnapped, Sam! And tortured! You said they were drowning her in ice water! She could be excused for being delusional!”

Sam shook his head, his jaw set. Everything Trish was saying was true, reasonable, not even remotely offensive, and yet he wanted to swat it away from himself, as if she'd accusing Sveti of malicious lying.

“Sam, you need to face the facts,” Trish said.

“Just drop it,” he said, more sharply.

Trish's eyebrows shot up. She twitched the cover over the body and zipped it up. “Whatever,” she said. “If we're done, I need to scram.”

“Trish,” he said, his voice weary. “I'm sorry.”

She sighed and relented. “Come on, Sam,” she urged. “Let's go. You need to get something to eat, get some rest. Relax. You're wrecked.”

He followed her out. Eating or relaxing were not options. He was fried. Every time the day played in his head, ass-whomping chemicals dumped into his bloodstream, as fresh as they'd been this morning.

She looked back over her shoulder. “One detail eludes me. Why were you driving this girl home at dawn? Has your dry spell ended?”

He grunted sharply in answer. “Let's leave it.”

Her keen blue eyes narrowed. “Ah. So it's like that, is it?”

“I wish,” he said dully. “Not on her part.”

“I see. Sorry.” She stopped next to the exit. “What's Tenly and Horvath's take on the thug who questioned her in Ukrainian?”

“They think what you think,” he admitted. “Stress flashbacks.”

“It's not like anyone blames her,” Trish said. “There's no shame in it. I'd be in a padded cell if a tenth of her shit was mine.”

He was suddenly desperate to get out of the range of Trish's measured, pitying gaze. “I'm out of here. Going to the hospital.”

“You might want to shower and change first,” Trish suggested. “You walk into a hospital looking like that, they might just admit you.”

Sam looked down. He'd scrubbed off the worst of the mud and soot, but the sweatshirt Tenly had loaned him was stained by his leaking bandage. The shallow trough of the bullet graze over the back of his hip burned, but he knew exactly how much worse a bullet wound could be. He wasn't complaining.

“Sam?” she called after him.

Her urgent tone swung him around again. “What?”

“This thing, this girl . . .” Her voice trailed off. “It just sounds like a world of hurt.”

Sam was silent for a beat. “That's a good definition of her world.”

“And you really want to go there? To live there?”

“It doesn't have to be that way!” he said, defiant. “Her world can change! Anyone's world can change, goddamnit!”

“And you want to be the one to change it?”

He waved that away. “Let it go, Trish.”

“Just remember. Everybody deals with their own shit. And if she heard our stiff speak Ukrainian, then face it. Her wires are crossed.”

“Our stiff wasn't the guy who questioned her,” he shot back. “Our stiff was guarding the door. We don't have the questioner. He's still inside the smoking wreckage, remember?”

“And did you hear this masked questioner speak in Ukrainian? A multilingual guy like you could tell the difference between Ukrainian and Cantonese, even if you don't speak either one yourself, right?”

“I didn't hear him talk,” he admitted. “It wasn't a chatty moment.”

“So our Ukrainian interrogator is an equal-opportunity asshole. Maybe he has a race quota to fill, you know, for personnel.”

His jaw spasmed. Sarcasm was Trish's coping mechanism. They all had their favorites. It was stupid and childish to be bugged by it.

Trish shook her head. “Just be careful, okay?”

“I will,” he said. “Thanks, Trish. I owe you one.”

“You owe me more than that, buddy,” she called out after him.

At the car, he dug in the backseat until he found the clothes he'd been meaning to take to the dry cleaner since before his last bullet wound. The shirt was creased, and had stiff, discolored pits, but it was better than Tenly's workout rag. He pulled it on. He'd still look like hell for the hospital visit, but a slightly more elevated level of hell.

He made a straight shot for her hospital room, but an elderly woman was asleep in the bed Sveti had used.

Irrational terror zinged through him. He'd left for headquarters after Becca and Nick arrived, with the understanding that she not be left alone. He'd trusted Nick to be appropriately paranoid. He'd left the explaining to Sveti, having a long day of explaining to get through himself, downtown. So where the fuck was she now?

He waylaid the first person in scrubs that he saw, a middle-aged Latina nurse with a long black braid. “Excuse me, ma'am, but where's the girl who was in this room? Did they take her somewhere else?”

The nurse looked at the door he indicated. “Oh, yes. Her family came for her. She was discharged a few hours ago.”

“Family? Which family?”

The woman's dark eyes widened at his barking tone. She took a step backward. “I don't know her family,” she said coolly. “She was not my patient. She was discharged, and that's all I know.”

“Thanks,” he called as he loped away.

He pulled out the burner phone he'd picked up this morning before going to headquarters. He'd wanted to be able to place calls, but not receive them. No scolding rants from his father, no hysterical shit fits from his sister, no stern lectures from his grandmother. He plucked Kev's phone number out of his unassisted brain, after a few false tries.