It had been less than six minutes since the first shot.
We did an inventory. The bags with our clothes in them were still in the motel room and so lost for good. Luckily, Gabriella had left her laptop bag in the car after the junkyard, so we had that. And she had her phone and some cash in her jeans. I had the two handguns I’d taken to the junkyard but was running low on ammunition.
“How did he find us?” Gabriella asked. This time, we had time to think about it.
“Did you go online?” I asked.
She shrugged. “Sure. I talked to some friends.”
“But you didn’t tell them where we were?”
“No! Of course not. And anyway, I trust those two.”
“Did you hack Nikolai again? Could he have traced you that way?”
“No. I didn’t go near his computer.” And then she frowned at her laptop.
“What?”
“I just had a horrible thought.”
Gabriella
I prayed I was wrong. But I got Alexei to drive us to the nearest electrical store and there I bought a new laptop, which took a good chunk of our remaining cash. We found a coffee shop that had WiFi and set up in a quiet corner: a hazelnut latte for me, a black Americano for Alexei, a couple of sandwiches and the new laptop, all crammed onto a table. I got online and opened up the private chatroom the Sisters of Invidia used.
lilywhite> What happened to you?
yolanda> Everything okay? What happened with your Russian?
diamondjack> I just got shot at but I’m okay. We’re together+had sex. Listen, they tracked us down to that motel even though I didn’t go near Nikolai’s computer again.
lilywhite> Impossible
diamondjack> I’ve been offline for days. I only went online this morning...and suddenly Seventeen shows up. What if my laptop’s infected? What if they sneaked malware onto it and it’s reporting back to them?
lilywhite> Did you open files from Nikolai’s computer?
diamondjack> Yup. But no virus/malware alerts. At least, nothing the normal virus checkers could detect. Yolanda, can you scan it?
yolanda> Yup.
I opened up my old laptop and connected it to the WiFi, too, then gave Yolanda remote access. I could see her running all sorts of specialized search programs. No one knew malware like Yolanda—if there was something there, she’d find it.
Alexei was sitting next to me, looking bemused. “Be ready to go,” I told him. “If I’m right about this, they’ll be tracking us down right now.” He nodded and we ate quickly while Yolanda worked. It took less than ten minutes.
yolanda> SHIT
diamondjack> What?
yolanda> There was something there, hiding in your hard drive’s firmware. Squawking your position back to someone in Russia. Undetectable to all the normal virus checkers, real military-grade stuff. Which means it’s the FSB.
lilywhite> Shit.
I turned to Alexei. “Who are—”
“Russian Federal security service,” said Alexei. “Like your FBI.”
I felt my chest close up. “Why would Nikolai be working with them?!” My voice was a scared little whisper.
“I have no idea. Some Bratva do deals with the FSB, but Luka stays away. Their help always comes at a price. If Nikolai is working with them, he must have offered them something big.”
yolanda> You’re in over your heads
It took a moment for me to type a reply. My hands were shaking.
diamondjack> Yeah, we just figured that out.
lilywhite> GO.
I shut down the old laptop and closed it. “She’s right. They’ll have our location now. Come on.”
We got out of there. While Alexei drove, I pulled everything I needed off the old laptop. Then he pulled over at the next dumpster we saw and I hauled back the lid and—
I stood there, unable to let go. I’d had that laptop for years. I’d done some of my best hacks on it. But we couldn’t assume we’d found every bit of malware. Like my apartment, it was unsafe, now.
I threw it in and heard the plastic crack as it bounced off the bottom. Another piece of my old life, gone.
Back in the car, we drove in brooding silence, following the freeway until we figured out where to go. We’d scored one small victory in escaping their tracking, but our situation was much, much worse than we’d thought. We’d thought we were running from gangsters but this was a whole different level. The FSB had resources the Bratva couldn’t dream of. Hell, what if they contacted the FBI and asked for some co-operation? They could tell the US government that Alexei was a wanted criminal or even a terrorist, and that I was his accomplice.
It got worse. Alexei attempted to call Luka to tell him what was going on, but few in the Bratva would even answer the phone to him and those who did warned him he was a marked man and hung up. I could see him getting more and more worked up—not just with frustration but at the fact he’d been so completely cut off by the people he thought of as his family. Eventually, he hurled his phone across the car. Any other phone would have smashed, but his brick-like Nokia chipped the window instead.
“We’d better ditch your phone, too,” I told him. “Mine’s okay—Nikolai doesn’t know my number, but he knows yours.” I threw his phone out of the window as we drove along.
We were completely on our own, with both the Russian mafia and a security agency looking for us. I felt an overwhelming sense of tiredness sweep over me—I just wanted to crawl into a dark, warm nest with Alexei, curl up and go to sleep.
Alexei glanced across at me, saw my expression and stroked his fingers through my hair. I pushed my head towards him, rubbing my cheek against that huge hand. “We still need to find out what Seventeen is planning so we can stop him,” he said. “We might be the only ones who can. We’re the only ones who know something’s going on.”
“But we can’t find him. We know he’s here in New York, but we don’t have any leads. He’s hunting us better than we’re hunting him!”
“We need help,” said Alexei. “But we can’t go to the police, or they’ll arrest us. My own people won’t talk to us.”
“So that leaves no one,” I said miserably.
“Maybe one person. Konstantin Gulyev. The boss of Petrov, who in turn was the boss of Seventeen.”
I stared at him. “I don’t get it. I thought he was Luka’s rival. Isn’t he sort of the enemy?”
“Yes. But I’ve been thinking about it. Why did Nikolai pay Seventeen all that money to get him to quietly switch sides in the first place? Why use a hitman from a rival family when you’ve got plenty of your own?”
“Because he wants to do something off the books, something that can’t be traced back to him?”
“Yes. And?”
Light finally dawned. “Because he can blame the whole thing on Konstantin?”
“That’s what I think. Which means Konstantin will be a victim in all this, too. Which means maybe we can get him on our side.”
“Can you even get to talk to him?”
“He’s here in New York. He throws a party at his place outside the city every Friday night. All the super-rich Russians come. It’s cocktails for the women, poker for the men.”
“How do you know so much about him?”
He glanced at me, then looked away guiltily and finally stared fixedly at the road. “Konstantin has been Luka’s rival for many years,” he said.
My jaw dropped. “You were planning to kill him?!”
“I had to be ready to. I had to have a plan in place, in case Luka ever asked me to.”
I suddenly felt cold. I hadn’t really thought about what his life must have been like before I met him. Now I did and it wasn’t comforting. A whole life spent watching people, learning their movements, planning their deaths. No wonder he was so cold, so ruthlessly efficient. “Jesus.” I thought for a moment. “Did you plan to kill me?”
“Don’t think about that,” he said, his voice strained.
“I can’
t not think about it!”
“Gabriella—“
“Did you plan to kill me?” My voice was rising. “Did you plan it all out?”
Alexei suddenly swerved across two lanes, making horns blare behind us, and pulled up at the side of the freeway. “Get you to open the door, four steps to the office, two shots to the chest, walk out,” he snapped.
We stared at each other, both breathless. He was fuming and I was staring back at him disbelievingly. The only sound was the cars whipping past beside us.
“It wasn’t you!” he said. Then his voice softened a little. “It was meant to be some guy, some hacker!”
“I am some hacker. If I’d been someone else, you would have done it—right?”
He was silent for a few seconds. I could tell he didn’t want to say it. “Yes.”
I turned away, staring out at the road through the windshield. What the hell am I doing? I’d fallen for this man...hard. But was I completely crazy? He’d killed. He’d been going to kill me.
I snapped my head around, staring right at him. His eyes had changed around...where once they’d been that icy gray with just a flicker of blue, now I swore they were the other way around.
He was capable of change. Sparing me was proof of that. I just had to be patient with him.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay what?” He was still tense, gripping the steering wheel like he wanted to rip it off.
“Okay I’m not going to think about it.” I let out a long breath, trying to calm myself. And remembered what we’d been going to do in the motel room, before Seventeen started shooting. “There’s something else, though. We need to talk.”
“Talk?” He said it as suspiciously as most people would say “Cyanide?”
“About us.” Then, defensively, “Look, a lot’s happened today!”
And then I blinked, leaned my head back against the seat and slowly started to laugh.
Alexei frowned at me. “It’s...funny?”
I shook my head, then nodded. “It’s kind of funny.” We’d been shot at, we were on the run from the authorities and I was still trying to find time for a where is this going conversation. I sighed. “Look, forget it. We’ll figure it out.”
He looked suddenly uncomfortable. “No. You need to talk—we talk.” And he switched off the engine.
I blinked.
He looked embarrassed. “I talked to Luka once. He said, American women are always needing to talk. If you don’t talk to them, they get angry.” He sighed with frustration but shook his head. “I don’t want you angry. So talk.”
I blinked at him again. My heart was swelling in my chest. He was so obviously way outside his comfort zone...and he was doing it for me.
“Talk!” he insisted.
“It’s okay,” I said. “I think you just answered every question I had.”
He looked at me suspiciously, checking to see if it was a trick. Then he nodded uncertainly and restarted the engine. “Wasn’t as bad as I thought,” he muttered to himself.
Before he could take off the handbrake, I grabbed him, turned his face to mine and kissed him. He returned it and it wasn’t like the kisses we’d shared before, with their undercurrent of raw sexual need. This was slow and gentle and it ended with us pressing our foreheads together, eyes closed. It was exactly the reassurance I needed.
When we leaned back, I said, “So your plan is: we go to some cocktail party thrown by your employer’s rival...and hope he doesn’t kill you on sight, and then hope he’ll listen to us and help us?”
Alexei nodded.
“Aren’t you going to try to persuade me not to come?” I asked.
He shook his head. “We need to get close to Konstantin before anyone realizes who I am. We’ll be less conspicuous as a couple.” He looked down at himself. “I’ll need a tuxedo.” Then his voice took on a dark hint of lust and his eyes ran down my body. “And you’ll need a dress.”
Gabriella
Four hours later, I was crouching behind a bush in a cocktail dress. Or what Alexei insisted was a cocktail dress. It had certainly been expensive, but it wasn’t...subtle. It was cobalt-blue and made of a shiny, wet-look fabric that hugged every inch of me. It was basically a tube that went all the way down my body, almost to my ankles, and was tight enough that every curve of my ass and hips was outlined. Walking was possible, but only because the fabric was stretchy. Underwear wasn’t an option.
All of which I could have lived with. Except—
“Don’t you think it’s a bit...low?” I’d asked weakly, when I’d seen myself in the boutique’s mirror.
Alexei had come up behind me and put his arms around my waist. “It’s perfect,” he’d growled.
The dress covered me...just. If I so much as sneezed, my boobs were going to escape. It was an outfit designed to get attention, especially once I’d added a pair of towering heels. That made it the polar opposite of the jeans and sweatshirt I normally wore.
“Trust me,” he’d said. “It’s what all the other women will be wearing.”
I’d relented, even though buying the dress and a tuxedo for Alexei took all of our remaining cash. But now, crouched behind a bush, I felt ridiculous. Alexei, on the other hand, looked fantastic, as if James Bond had turned to the dark side. The white shirt and flawless black jacket looked even better on him than his usual suit.
About ten feet beyond the bush was a wire mesh fence topped with razor wire. And patrolling the fence, on the other side, was a guard with a German Shepherd. I tensed when I saw the dog.
“It’s okay,” said Alexei. “We’re downwind of it.”
I cannot be doing this. I cannot be crouching in a bush in a party dress trying to sneak past a guard dog.
I held my breath as the guard walked past. I couldn’t help noticing that he wasn’t some aging, overweight guy in a cheap uniform, but a muscled, six-foot-plus Russian thug with a bulge under his suit jacket. There was a very real chance of getting shot, if this went wrong.
As soon as he’d passed, Alexei ran to the fence and cut a flap just large enough to squeeze through. The storm that morning had made the ground muddy and I had no idea how I was going to crawl through without getting filthy, but then Alexei unfolded a tarpaulin and placed it beneath the hole. I crawled through and he followed. He bent the flap of fence back down, folded up the tarp and shoved it under a bush and there was no sign anyone had entered.
“You’re good at this,” I whispered.
He looked guilty, then grim. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”
He took my hand and ran with me towards the mansion—a huge old place built of stone, with warm light spilling out of every window. There were plenty of people already inside but more were still arriving: a non-stop procession of limos crept past the entrance, disgorging their passengers before making way for the next. Meanwhile, a stream of Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Aston Martins swept past us, heading for the parking at the rear of the mansion. Alexei had been right about the wealth on show...and everyone did seem to be in a couple.
We crept along the house to a side door—it was ajar, but I could see a guard just beyond it, standing with his back to the door to prevent any guests going through it.
Alexei flattened me against the wall. “It’s time,” he said. “Ready?”
I shook my head.
He smoothed my hair and then ran his hands down my body. Despite my fear, a rush of heat blazed out from everywhere he touched. “It’s just acting,” he said. “That’s all it is.”
I glanced sideways at the door, my breathing starting to speed up. I’d never been much good at acting.
He put a finger under my chin and gently turned my head so that I was looking at him. “I’m some Bratva gangster,” he said, “and you’re my American girlfriend.” And then he leaned in and kissed me, a kiss that started slow but quickly turned heated and urgent. His tongue plunged into me, finding mine, while his hands slid down over my bare shoulders. I squirmed against him. I’m his
American girlfriend. I could do that.
He started to move, backing towards the door while he kissed me. He kissed my jaw and then my throat, his hands sliding down to my ass. He pulled me hard against him just as he opened the door. I had my eyes closed, lost in what he was doing to me. He took my lower lip between his teeth and bit gently, drawing a groan from me. Then I felt one big hand slide all the way down between my thighs, cupping my groin through the tight fabric of the dress—Oh my God! What’s he doing?!
“Hey!” An angry voice with a heavy Russian accent. Alexei must have backed right into the guard, pretending that he didn’t even realize he was there.
I kept my eyes closed. My breath was hitching faster and faster, both from fear and from what Alexei was doing to me.
“What?” snapped Alexei. I imagined him glaring at the guard with that sub-zero gaze I knew so well. He had the palm of his hand hard up against my groin, the heel grinding against my clit while the fingers rubbed at my folds. Since I wasn’t wearing panties, the silky material of the dress rubbed right against my naked flesh. My legs weakened and I began to pant, my hips moving helplessly in response to Alexei’s touch. I knew that the guard was right there behind my closed eyelids, close enough to touch, staring right at me—
The guard’s voice faltered a little. “You’re not supposed to be out there!”
Alexei didn’t apologize or attempt to explain. He kept backing up, pushing past the man and into the house. “I’m taking her upstairs,” he said.
“The other floors are closed off!” the guard said quickly. Through the haze of pleasure, I realized what Alexei had done—he’d given the man a new problem to think about, jumping ahead before he had time to ask what we’d been doing outside.
“Then we’ll find a bathroom!” Alexei snapped. And he led me away, one hand still massaging my groin, the other now cupping my breast. My whole body was throbbing with adrenaline. The fear and the excitement had twisted together and become something else, now, the pleasure thrashing and whipping inside me, dangerously hot. My cheeks were flushed and I was glad my eyes were closed. I didn’t know how many people were watching us but, from the murmured conversations around us, it was a lot.
Kissing My Killer Page 16
