Kissing My Killer (41 page)

Luka looked at me and then at Alexei. “If this is true,” he said slowly, “then how did you find out about it? Why did you betray Nikolai in the first place? Why didn’t you just kill her?”

It took Alexei a few seconds to form the words. “I fell in love with her,” he said at last.

I thought Luka’s eyes were going to bug out of his head. “
You?”

The door of the SUV opened and Arianna slid out. “It’s true,” she said.

Everyone stared at her.

“I can see the way he looks at her,” Arianna said. “I think he’s telling the truth.”

Luka sighed in frustration. I could tell part of him wanted to tell her to get back in the car, but that, equally, he knew he was way out of his depth. He cocked his head at Arianna as if to say,
are you sure?

Arianna nodded and I nodded, too.

Luka very slowly lowered his gun. The guards did the same. I let out a long breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. My whole body was shaky with tension.

“Where is everyone?” Alexei asked. “Where’s your father and your cousins?”

“Already here,” said Luka. “In the house. Nikolai’s here, too.”

“Then you need to get them out,” said Alexei. “Seventeen could already be here.”

“He’s psychotic,” I said. I looked at Arianna, remembering the sawmill. “You can’t let him anywhere near your family.”

Yuri shook his head irritably. “We have over twenty guards here. Well-trained men. Well-armed.”

“Nikolai will have thought of that,” said Alexei. He looked at the handful of guards that were with us. “Where are the rest?”

“Guardhouse,” Yuri replied, “being assigned their weapons.” Then he glanced at Luka, his expression growing nauseous. He grabbed a radio off one of the guards and started to speak.

There was a sound like a giant’s foot hitting the ground. The noise echoed through the trees, followed by a warm wind and the patter of things hitting the ground. A cloud of smoke started to rise in the distance and I could just make out the sound of people screaming. Yuri stared towards where the guardhouse had been, his face pale.

Luka turned to look at Alexei, his eyes wide with shock. Then he gave Yuri back his handgun and took one of the sub-machine guns from a guard. “Get Arianna to safety,” he told Yuri. “I’m going to get the others.”

Alexei stepped forward. “I can help,”

I almost prayed for Luka to turn him down, but he slowly nodded. Alexei took a handgun from one of the guards. The smoke from the explosion was billowing through the trees towards us, now, and I tried to shut out the screams of the injured. I stepped towards Alexei.

“No,” Alexei told me. “You go with Arianna.”

I shook my head, panicked. “Don’t leave me again!” I grabbed at his shirt, pulling myself close to his chest.

“I don’t want to...but I can’t protect you in a firefight,” he said gently. He took my hands in his much bigger ones. “Yuri is a great bodyguard and the SUV is armored. It’s the best place for you.”

I nodded reluctantly, but it felt wrong. Yuri herded me towards the SUV and pushed me into the back alongside a white-faced Arianna. The last thing I saw was Luka throwing Alexei a radio and the two of them setting off into the forest towards the house.

My chest closed up as I realized that might be the last time I saw him.

Gabriella

Yuri turned the SUV around and we started to bounce over the rutted, pitted track. Inside, everything was cream leather and polished chrome. It felt as if we’d already been spirited away from the muddy forest. Alexei was right—we probably
were
safe in there.

But I couldn’t get the idea that this was wrong out of my head.
I should be helping him, not running away.

I looked at Yuri’s reflection in the rear view mirror. He looked grim...and shaken. Like me, he was probably still trying to wrap his head around what had happened to the guards. How many had been killed in that explosion—all of them, save for the handful near the checkpoint? Fifteen men...more? All just to clear the way for more murder…. I closed my eyes, my head swimming with the brutality of it.
This is not my world.

But it was Alexei’s world. If I wanted to save him, I couldn’t retreat down into the warm safety that I knew.

I opened my eyes and looked across at Arianna. She was an American, too. She must have faced this same decision with Luka. She glanced at me and our eyes met.

“We can’t just let them go in there alone,” I blurted.

Yuri heard and shook his head. “Is better you stay here.” He glanced outside. White smoke from the explosion was curling along the ground like mist. “Is no place for you two.”

“You don’t know Seventeen!” I snapped. “He’s not just a hitman, he’s crazy. Literally psychotic.”

“Luka said to take care of you,” said Yuri tersely. “I am taking care.”

“He needs us,” said Arianna quietly. “She’s right, Yuri. We have to help
.
Irina and Lizaveta are in there.
And
Luka’s dad. The men can’t do it all on their own.” She glanced at me and nodded and I felt a warm little glow of unity—our own minor revolution, right there on the back seat. I liked her already.

Yuri drove on in silence for a few seconds. But his shoulders were hunching as if he was trying to shut us out. We were getting to him. “There is nothing you can do,” he said at last.

“Maybe there is,” I said. “Does this place have a security station, where all the cameras route to? Somewhere not in the house?”

Yuri nodded reluctantly. “
Da.”

“Take us to it. I can use the cameras, warn them of danger.”

Yuri shook his head. “It is secure computer. Passwords and codes. Only the guards had access.”

For the first time all day, I felt solid ground under my feet. “Trust me. I can get in.”

“And I’ll help,” said Arianna. She shot a look at me. “Everything’ll be in Russian.”

I hadn’t thought of that. “Okay. Yuri, let’s go.”

Yuri said nothing. He kept driving in sullen silence for another five seconds and then he muttered something in Russian and swung the SUV around so hard we bounced against the doors.

“What did he say?” I murmured to Arianna.

She leaned close. “
American women will be the death of me.”

Alexei

The guards from the checkpoint had run on ahead. As Luka and I approached the open area in front of the house, three shots rang out from the west and three of the guards fell, tumbling to the ground like rag dolls. Seventeen, using his sniper rifle again. The rest of us flattened ourselves against trees.

“My father will be in his office, on the far side of the house,” said Luka. “My cousins will most likely be upstairs, in their room.”

I nodded. “I’ll get them. You get your father.”

I’d been in dangerous situations plenty of times in the army. I’d felt fear before, but now it was different.

I’d thought that all I was good for was killing, and part of that life was knowing you could die at any time. Death from a bullet is usually quick and it hadn’t scared me…because I’d never had anything to lose, until now.

I’d always thought of myself as strong and my victims weak, because they were caught up in their lives and I was wholly focused on my work, without anything else to distract me. Now, it felt like it was the other way around. I didn’t feel strong; I felt as though I’d wasted every day until I’d met her. I thought of the strawberry scent of Gabriella’s hair and the little gasps she made when she came. I wanted more. More soft beds, more breakfasts, more
life...
but mainly, more of
her.

The house was eerily still. The white smoke from the explosion hadn’t penetrated in here and the place was still set up for guests: a white linen tablecloth and silver cutlery, magazines artfully fanned out on a coffee table. Hopefully the servants were safe, hiding in their quarters, and could stay there until this was all over. I crept upstairs.

Just as I reached the top, the door in front of me exploded, torn apart by a shotgun blast. I threw myself down on my face, half on the landing and half on the stairs. Chunks of wood pattered down onto my back. I looked up at the hole in the door: if I’d been even one step further, the blast would have taken my head off.

“
Stop right there!”
a female voice yelled in Russian. “
Or you can have the other barrel!”

Irina. She must have heard the stairs creak. “Don’t shoot!” I yelled back, still hugging the floor. “I’m here to help!”

“I don’t recognize your voice!” she snapped back. “You’re not one of the guards!”

“I work for Luka! You’ve never met me, but I’ve been his bodyguard a few times.” Then I twisted round on the stairs to look behind me—had that been a noise, downstairs...or just my imagination? I was a sitting duck if anyone came up the stairs behind me. “Look, we have to go! Luka sent me to get you out of here!”

“He’d send someone we know!” Irina yelled.

Another noise from downstairs, and this time I was sure. I dropped my voice. “Irina, the guards are all dead. And the man who blew up the guardhouse is downstairs. We need to leave
right now.”

“Don’t come in here!” she snapped. “I swear I’ll blow your head off.”

I could feel the frustration and panic coiling together, pushing me to do something stupid. I was utterly trapped. Another few minutes and Seventeen would find me and shoot me in the back. If I moved forward, Irina would shoot me in the front. I couldn’t solve this with force, or shouting. Nothing in the army or the years since had prepared me for this.

What would Gabriella do?

She’d be quiet and calm. She’d listen.

Against every instinct, I closed my eyes.

We. He’d send someone
we
know,
Irina had said.
I strained my ears and could just make out the sound of sobbing. Irina must have Lizaveta with her, the eight year-old. God, both of them must be terrified!

Talk. Gabriella would talk to her.

“Listen,” I said. “My name is Alexei. Alexei Borinskov. Your name is Irina, yes? You’re...how old, now—nineteen?”

“Twenty!” she said defensively.

“Twenty, okay. Listen...I know that you’re scared. I know that you want to be with Luka—and Arianna. My—uh—girlfriend is American, too. Her name’s Gabriella. She’s in Luka’s SUV with Arianna and Yuri right now, I can take you to them. But we’re going to have to trust each other. So I’m going to stand up, very slowly, with my hands empty, and walk to the door...and you’re not going to shoot me. Okay?”

Silence.

I could hear footsteps approaching downstairs.
Now or never.
I climbed gingerly to my feet, shoving the handgun into the back of my pants and raising my hands above my head. I stepped towards the door, bracing myself...but no shot came.

Through the hole in the door, I could see into the room. Irina, a slender girl with platinum-blonde hair, was crouched behind an armchair, the shotgun poking out over the top. Behind her, peeking nervously out of a closet, was the honey-haired, big-eyed Lizaveta.