Russian Mobster's Princess (22 page)

“You do realize that Viktor is going to rip you apart when he finds you, right?” Katie kept her tone almost conversational. It seemed to make Sasha far more uncomfortable.

He snarled something to his remaining companion, trying to ignore Katie. The other guy—Igor—rolled his eyes at Sasha, but nevertheless left the room to do his bidding.

“Even your minions know you’re an idiot,” Katie muttered. “Did you learn your bad guys skills from the cartoons or something?”

“Would you
shut
up
?”

Katie frowned. “Why would I do that? You’re holding me hostage for some reason you still won’t even talk about, and I swear you’re more afraid of something than I am. I have no reason to shut up. You’re not intimidating enough to make me.”

Sasha grabbed a wooden spoon from the kitchen counter and slammed it on the table so hard that it broke in half. “Is that what you want?” he shouted. “Will that scare you into silence?”

“I think not,” Katie said with deliberate dismissiveness. “If someone had used that spoon on your butt when you were a child, we wouldn’t even be needing to have this conversation.”

Sasha grabbed a kitchen towel and stomped over to Katie. He pried her mouth open by pushing on her cheeks until her back teeth cut into her flesh. Tears sprang to her eyes, but she refused to let him see her cry. Then he shoved the towel into her mouth. With her hands tied, she couldn’t pull it out. So she began working at it with her tongue, a task made difficult because the towel soaked up all the moisture in her mouth and made her tongue feel big and clumsy.

“Finally!” Sasha moaned.

Boris Karkoff lumbered into the kitchen from the direction of the front door. He looked first at Katie tied to a chair, then at Sasha nearly about to wet himself from anxiety, and began to curse in low, emphatic Russian.

“Uncle, I can explain!” Sasha said quickly.

“Really?” Karkoff looked pissed. “I hope you realize that I am not the one you need to explain to. I made peace with Viktor just last night all because you kidnapped this woman. I smoothed things over and calmed him down.” Karkoff stabbed a finger in Katie’s direction. “And now you go and do it
again
? For what purpose, I ask you! Why would you do this thing?”

“I’m telling you, Uncle,” Sasha said insistently. “Viktor knows what happened to those women. He did it! He’s the one who let them escape. So he should be the one responsible for getting them back!”

“Do you honestly believe
anyone
would be able to get them back?” Karkoff looked bewildered. “I am pissed that the shipment went missing. But I have handled it with the supplier. We are working on a solution. One that does not include kidnapping random women and holding them hostage!”

“Viktor must pay for disrespecting us,” Sasha insisted. “You cannot let him get away with this, Uncle. He is making you look weak.”

Boris Karkoff drew his hand back and let it fly once again. The blow nearly knocked Sasha to his knees. This time, though, his nephew came up swinging. His fist connected with the old man’s jaw. His head rocked back on his spine, the sound loud in the close confines of the kitchen.

Katie gasped behind her gag as she realized that the impotent rage Sasha felt was completely out of control. Karkoff fell backwards, landing on his bottom. Sasha dove after him. Landing on top of his uncle, Sasha grabbed the man by his sparse gray hair and began pounding his head down onto the tile floor.

“You don’t get to treat me like that!” Sasha bellowed. “You don’t! You don’t!”

Soon a bloody smear appeared on the tile. Katie started screaming as a panting Sasha finally stopped beating on his uncle. Igor came running in from the other room. He saw the scene in the kitchen and started yelling furiously in Russian. Katie couldn’t tell whose side Igor was on.

Igor and Sasha screamed at each other for several moments. Igor gesticulated wildly toward the floor and Sasha leapt up, getting right in the other man’s face. Then Igor took a swing, and Sasha went down.

Katie felt horribly exposed there in the chair as the two men grappled like bulls. Then she saw Sasha roll toward his uncle’s prone body. He grabbed the butt of Karkoff’s weapon and pulled the gun out from beneath his uncle’s suit jacket.

Before Katie could even attempt to scream a warning, the booming sound of gunfire deafened her almost totally. Her ears rang and her eyes watered as she saw the red stain bloom on the front of Igor’s chest. The man just sort of stopped moving. He sank to his knees, raising his hands and touching the blood pouring out of his body with his fingertips. Then he collapsed to the floor and was still.

Sasha was almost inconsolable. He threw the gun down and started ranting in a combination of Russian and English that was too disjointed for Katie to understand. He was tearing and ripping at his hair as he paced wildly about the kitchen. It was as if he had completely lost his mind.

Katie struggled against her bonds. She knew it was time to go. Sasha had just murdered two men in front of her. Getting out alive was the only thing that mattered.

Then Sasha glanced at her and started laughing. He gave her a long, disdainful look. “Tell me, Katie, are you afraid of me now?”

Chapter Thirteen

Viktor banged on the front door of Karkoff’s house until someone finally answered. It was dark now and the house was lit up as if there were a party going on inside. Karkoff’s man Denis answered the door, looking harried.

“Where’s Karkoff?” Viktor demanded, not even bothering with the niceties.

Denis narrowed his gaze, his big beefy shoulders rolling as he stood in a very threatening manner. Obviously he hadn’t forgotten Viktor’s throat chop from the night before. Then he looked down and spotted Max standing beside Viktor.

“What’s with the dog?” Denis demanded.

“He and I share a common goal for the moment,” Viktor offered. “Now where’s your boss?”

“I was hoping you might be able to answer that question.”

“Me?” Viktor’s mind started spinning. “Why?”

“Because the boss left about an hour ago and hasn’t come back.” Denis called to someone over his shoulder in Russian. There was an answer, and then Denis frowned. “The boss was bitching and complaining about you when he left.”

“And that means I must have something to do with his disappearance?” Viktor snorted. “I hate to tell you, but your logic is flawed. I haven’t seen Karkoff since I left here last night. And while I’ll admit that I had a confrontation with him when I was here, when I left things were settled.”

One of Karkoff’s other oversized enforcers crowded the entry. “Sasha is gone too. I thought the boss went to settle something with him, not Viktor.”

Viktor shut his eyes, wishing he could be wrong and fearing that he was not. “Has anyone seen Sasha?”

“No.” Denis shook his head.

“Does he live nearby?”

Denis shrugged. “A few miles.”

“Has anyone thought to look for Karkoff there?” Viktor felt as though he were talking to children. Did these guys ever do anything without Karkoff’s say-so?

It was obvious from Denis’s expression that he hadn’t thought of that. He turned and barked an order to several of his men. Viktor wasn’t surprised when he heard them pulling out weapons and checking clips. Something had made these men uneasy. Viktor felt it too.

“I’ll come along if you don’t mind,” Viktor told Denis.

“And if I do mind?”

“My friend Katie is missing again,” Viktor said tersely. “Sasha claims he picked her up to hold her as insurance.”

“For what?” Denis was frowning.

“Something about that last shipment going missing,” Viktor said vaguely. “He’s afraid he’s being blamed for it, and he seems to think I know where the missing cargo is.”

“Do you?” Something in Denis’s voice suggested that he thought that was a safe bet too.

“Does it matter at this point?” Viktor waved his hand. “The cargo is long gone by now, and your boss is now the one who’s missing.”

Denis started laughing. His low chuckles would have been unnerving had Viktor not already been on high alert. It was time to get moving. Didn’t these men realize that? Katie could be hurt and Viktor might be too late. Beside him, Max was shifting restlessly as if he, too, felt the urgency.

“We told the boss you were the one who opened the van,” Denis informed Viktor. “But the boss likes you, for some reason. He doesn’t want to hear a word against you.”

“Like I said, it doesn’t matter,” Viktor insisted. “Can we hurry up and get out of here?”

Denis seemed to catch the tone of urgency just enough to get him and his men moving a little faster. They gathered out back and piled into an SUV not unlike the one Sasha had been driving.

Without waiting for an invitation, Viktor and Max jumped in along with the other men. Denis gave Max a dirty look. “That dog had better not make a mess.”

“I think that’s the least of our problems,” Viktor muttered.

Denis started the vehicle and roared off into the night. It was a surprisingly short ride to a house a few blocks away where Sasha apparently lived. Viktor realized that in all his time knowing Sasha, the man had never let slip any details about his home or personal life beyond his familial tie to Karkoff. In hindsight, it seemed a little odd.

The SUV pulled up before a very nice townhouse in an older, but still fairly expensive neighborhood. The men got out in a hurry. It was as if the SUV opened and they all just tumbled out, hitting the ground at a run.

Viktor bolted as soon as his boots touched the pavement. He couldn’t let these idiots startle Sasha into shooting the hostages. Not just Katie, but Boris Karkoff too. Beside Viktor, Max had already sprinted toward the house. The dog obviously had a lead on something the rest of them hadn’t discovered yet.

“Sasha!” Denis shouted. “Open up!” Denis shouted it again in Russian while pounding on the front door.

There was no answer. Denis started using his shoulder to ram the door. Finally he and one of his comrades managed to beat their way inside the house. The other four men followed suit, with Viktor bringing up the rear. He had no weapon, but he wasn’t going to need one if someone challenged him right now. He was angry enough to rip Sasha apart with his bare hands.

“Nothing!” Denis called over his shoulder. “The place is empty.”

The men were already starting to file back out of the house. Then Max whined and took off as though he were tracking something unpleasant.

“Wait!” Viktor shouted. “The dog found something!”

Denis’s men turned back, following on Viktor’s heels as he tracked Max’s movements through the house. The dog was definitely antsy. He was whining and sniffing as though he had found something that disturbed him deeply. Viktor could only hope it didn’t involve Katie. If Sasha had left Katie behind, that could mean only one thing.

“There!” Denis shouted, pointing to a closet.

Max scratched and jumped at the hall closet door. The alcove was tucked back into a corner of the house where Viktor probably never would have thought to look. He grabbed the handle, looking to Denis. The big man pulled out his gun and nodded.

Viktor yanked the door open and two heavy thumps hit the floor. Max began barking furiously and Denis and his men were yelling in barely comprehensible Russian. Viktor stared at the corpses on the floor. The only thing that registered was that neither of them were Katie. She had to still be alive.

“He was beaten to death!” Denis’s angry tone could have flayed Sasha alive. “Look at his head. It is crushed. And Igor”—Denis’s mournful tone suggested that he and Igor had been close—“my cousin is dead.”

“I’m so sorry,” Viktor said carefully. “I know this must be hard, but we have to find Sasha. Is there anywhere he might have gone? Someplace he might feel safe?”

Denis spouted off some old proverb about a jackal always returning to the scene of the crime. That was when it hit Viktor. He knew where Sasha would go. Now everything depended upon whether or not Sasha had taken Katie with him.

***

“You should really just let me go,” Katie said in her most reasonable tone. “I’m slowing you down, and at this point skipping town would be your best bet.”

“Would you shut up?” Sasha snarled. “Do you
ever
shut up?”

“Not when I have something to say that you should listen to.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. It was temping to do exactly as he said and shut up. The man was insane. She was sure of it. Why she was sitting here and poking the crazy person? She simply felt that she could somehow reason with him.

“Why are we sitting at the park?” Katie asked quietly. She was trying not to move around too much, but she was also attempting to loosen the soft nylon rope around her wrists. That meant she needed to keep Sasha somewhat distracted.

“Because I need someplace to think,” Sasha answered. “I like the park.”

“Okay.” Katie felt the ropes around her wrists give a little. She tried to squelch her excitement. If she could just get out of this stupid van, she could make a run for it. Even in the dark, she knew this place better than Sasha did. Katie thought of something mundane to keep his brain moving and busy. “Did you play here as a child?”

“I didn’t grow up here,” he snapped. “My mother was Boris Karkoff’s oldest sister. She moved away from here when she was just out of high school. My grandfather arranged a marriage for her with a mafia man from another city.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t stay there.” Katie’s comment was spontaneous, but the reaction from Sasha was instant and violent.

He turned in his seat to stare at her. “My father died doing his duty! They screwed him over. That’s why my mother brought us back here. That’s why I’m better off in my uncle’s organization.”

Feeling a renewed sense of urgency, Katie slipped her hand free of the ropes. She groped behind her for some kind of weapon. The van was cluttered, but most of it wasn’t particularly useful. Then she found a length of metal rebar. She wrapped her hands around it and waited for the span of two breaths.

A set of headlights cut a swath of light across the field in front of their parked van. It was the perfect distraction. Sasha leaned forward in his seat, trying to see if there was really a car coming or not. Katie took the opportunity to swing the rebar up and over her head. It landed squarely on Sasha’s shoulder.