One Wrong Move

by Shannon McKenna

  Nothing more.”

  Roy looked stung. “My talent’s been plenty useful to you so far.”

  “Not today,” Rudd murmured, pointedly.

  Roy shrugged, defensively. “So I bring Anabel with me.”

  “She’ll be busy fucking the senator this morning. Which can’t wait.”

  “Neither can this. Ah, boss? One more thing you should know.”

  Rudd braced himself, eyes closing. “Yes, Roy?”

  “Arbatov could be our telepath for this job,” Roy said cautiously. “He’s good. As good as Anabel.”

  Fury rose in Rudd’s head like a red fog. “You’ve been passing psi-max around to your friends? ”

  Rudd’s outrage battered Roy down onto the bed and pinned him there, writhing. But at this rate, he would have to completely remake the bed for Anabel’s impending exploits with Stillman.

  He let Roy go.

  Roy struggled up. “Sorry, boss.” His voice burbled with snot.

  “I was actually trying to kill the guy. I figured, he’d be like the others, the ones we tested back at Karstow! I thought he’d go bonkers, and his brains would pop! I’d used him for a job, and I was cleaning house. Figured I’d flush him that way, so I wouldn’t risk his uncle Oleg coming after me. But, uh . . . he didn’t die.

  He, uh, went telepath.”

  “And you’ve been supplying him with psi-max? Behind my back?”

  Roy nodded sheepishly. “It was that or kill him.”

  “You should have killed him. No wonder you’re always short.”

  He drummed his fingers on the table. “All right, Roy. If you say you can vouch for your Arbatov friend’s ability, I will authorize this. But only today. Are you sure you can control him?”

  “If I have psi-max for him, I can,” Roy said. “He’ll do anything.”

  Rudd rolled his eyes. “Well, then. Go to the supply site, get whatever you need, drugs, paraphenalia. When you get the information from him, have your mafiya friend do the honors. A drug deal gone wrong. One thing.” Rudd’s voice hardened. “Being linked to this would not enhance my tough-on-drugs platform, so explain to me why we couldn’t discuss this on the dedicated, encrypted phone.”

  Roy hemmed and hawed. Rudd stuck his hands in his pockets and waited for it.

  “I’m low,” Roy admitted. “I used two hits to power up while I was going after Kasyanov, and if I supply Arbatov, I won’t have enough—”

  “You idiot,” Rudd snapped. “You can’t eat it like candy!

  Kasyanov was the only one who could cook it up properly, and you lost her, Roy, along with the last two known doses of Psi-Max 48 that exist! I take it you didn’t find out whether it’s true? About the new formula stabilizing the psi? Or is that just another one of Helga’s lies?”

  “Kasyanov didn’t talk, boss, and Anabel wasn’t there to read her.”

  Kasyanov had made a big deal about the enhanced formula, promising that it would render their psi powers permanent, and much stronger. Kasyanov was hard to read, heavily shielded, but Anabel had still sniffed out the stink of a half-truth, so Rudd had deemed it prudent to try out Psi-Max 48 on the good doctor herself, in case it was a trap. Figuring that he’d see for himself just how well it functioned upon her.

  Well, hell. The drug made her strong enough to escape from the lab where they had been holding her for three years, ever since they faked her death at the research facility fire. Strong enough to fell a vicious thug like Roy. Psi-Max 48 was strong stuff. He wanted it.

  “Get on this, fast,” he said curtly. “We lose Kasyanov, we lose Psi-Max 48 permanently.”

  “If you want me to catch her frequency, I’m going to need more hits,” Roy said. “Give me twenty, at least. Thirty would be better.”

  Rudd pulled out a stoppered tube, and shook some small red pills out of it. “I’ll give you ten.” He passed them to Roy.

  “I’ll need ten for Arbatov, too,” Roy reminded him.

  “Eight,” Rudd said sternly, measuring out more. “But you want the magic pills? Do your job. And keep Arbatov under control. If you fuck this up, the well goes dry, and you’re just any old worthless schlub again, my friend, like in the bad old days. You want to go back to that?”

  Roy’s Adam’s apple bobbed beneath the red scar tissue that covered his throat, swallowing saliva at the sight of the pills.

  Junkie trash.

  “Wait, Roy,” Rudd said, in a warning voice. “Wait ’til you need it.”

  Roy poured the pills into a vial that hung on a chain around his neck. “You know what, boss?”

  Rudd spun at the door. “What, Roy?”

  “You’re such an asshole, you might just make a pretty good governor,” Roy said. “If you get Psi-Max-48, and it makes you as strong as the freak doctor, you could be fucking president.”

  Roy was just brownnosing, now that he’d topped up his stash.

  But even so, Rudd felt a pleased smile twitch his lips.

  “Clever boy, Roy,” he said. “You’ve found me out.”

  Chapter 3

  “No! You don’t understand,” Nina told the doctor. “Helga Kasyanov was like an aunt to me. She was my mother’s best friend. They did research together, at Columbia. Helga was in psychiatric pharmacology, I think. I babysat her daughter, Lara, when I was in high school. I didn’t recognize her at first this morning, because it’s been years, and she was so thin, and she’d been beaten. But she had nothing against me. She had no reason to hurt me. She was my friend!”

  The tall, elegant black woman doctor whose name tag read DR. TULLY harrumphed, clearly not counting on that. “In any case, we’ll still cover all our bases with the testing. But it’ll be a few weeks before we can have definitive results for the HIV test.”

  Nina couldn’t stop shaking her head. “It wasn’t like that. I can’t explain. It wasn’t like she was holding a needle on me demanding money or anything like that. She would never do that.”

  “How can you be sure of that, Ms. Christie? Didn’t you tell us yourself that you couldn’t understand a word she said?”

  Nina couldn’t articulate it, but she couldn’t stop shaking her head. Sticking her with a dirty needle on the street, it was so base, so squalid, so nasty. So not the Helga Kasyanov she remembered. Helga had been elegant, brilliant, confident. Mom had leaned on her back then, a lot. But then again, Mom had tended to lean. After too many years with Stan, she couldn’t stay upright on her own for long.

  No, there had to be another explanation. She just couldn’t imagine what it might be. “She spoke English when I knew her,”

  she repeated stubbornly. “Perfectly, with no accent. Plus seven or eight other languages. Maybe she had some brain trauma to her language center?”

  Dr. Tully harrumphed again. “Why don’t you concentrate on your own problems, Ms. Christie, and don’t concern yourself with—”

  “Her problems are my problems at this point,” Nina snapped, and then bit her tongue. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m very tense.

  And the fact that she recorded what she was saying means she was at least trying to communicate with me. I have to get that translated. How long will it be before the tests give you some idea of what that stuff might do to me?”

  “Not long.” Dr. Tully frowned. “You’re not showing any symptoms at the moment, and the fainting could be attributed to shock. But you’ll need to stay a while longer under observation before I can let you go.”

  Nina let out a careful breath. “How is Helga now? Has she woken up? Has she said anything?”

  Dr. Tully shook her head. “Still unconscious.”

  “Well, the driver, then. Maybe he can—”

  “The cab driver dumped both of you at the Urgent Care and fled the scene,” Tully said, her voice hard. “He won’t be of any help to you.”

  “I have his plate number, and my friend’s ex-FBI buddy got someone to run his plates, so I know his name and address!” she said triumphantly. “His name is Yuri Marchuk, an
d he lives on Avenue B, in the East Village. I’ve been trying to find Helga’s daughter, Lara. She could translate the recording, and if I can find the driver—”

  “You’re agitating yourself.” Dr. Tully’s brow creased. “Try to stay calm. We’ll talk later when we have more information.”

  “Information is exactly what I’m trying to get,” Nina said, through gritted teeth. “Look, if she wakes up and starts to talk, tell me, OK?”

  “Certainly.” Dr. Tully’s voice was cool. “Later, then.”

  Nina let out a jerky breath as the door to the examining room clicked closed. Agitating herself, her ass. Talk about understatement. Every part of her jiggled and clattered against every other part. She slid off the examining table, her phone rattling in her shaking fingers. Her friend Lily’s number was still up on the display.

  Thank God for Lily. She and Bruno and all their super-tough, macho McCloud friends had leaped right into emergency mode on her behalf, and she hadn’t even met them yet. Awesome people. She loved them already. Lily had already called her three times from Portland. They were the ones who had procured the address of the cab driver, in record time. Lily had even threatened to fly to New York, though her guy, Bruno, and Nina had both instantly vetoed that idea. Lily was in the eighth month of a problematic pregnancy, was taking anti-spasmodics, and was currently admitted at OHSU for observation. No way was she getting on an airplane. But it was great having a friend who cared enough to want to come.

  Nina missed Lily so badly, it hurt. All those late-night takeout dinners they used to have in her Upper West Side apartment, giggling and gabbing and just being together. It had been wonderful to have Lily nearby. A college roomate who had become the sister she never had. They’d counted on each other to fill the place of family, for years.

  It was Lily’s moving out to Portland that had finally prodded Nina to break the lease on her Upper West Side studio and move back into the house out in Mill Basin that she’d inherited from her stepfather. The family she’d rented it to had recently moved away, and New Dawn, the battered women’s shelter for which she worked, was in Sheepshead Bay, so her commute to work was far shorter from there.

  She had mixed feelings about that house, bad memories, but years had gone by. The past was dead and gone. So was Stan. She was not that damaged person anymore, and a house was a house, for God’s sake. She was damn lucky to own one.

  To think she’d thought that ditching her two-hour commute and being able to walk to work would improve her quality of life.

  Hah.

  With Lily gone, there was no reason to stay on in Manhattan.

  Lily was in Portland, three times zones away. Madly in love.

  Nina was happy for her friend. Really. Lily deserved to be adored the way Bruno adored her. After years of backbreaking work, Lily had finally gotten lucky. Bruno was smart, sexy, tough.

  A good dad, too. He’d demonstrated the dad skills with the toddler twins that he’d recently adopted. Lily was part of a big extended family now.

  So it was all good. Good for Lily. Yay. Hurray.

  And the sad, flat silence that followed that statement forced the comparison with her own arid life. Her own more-or-less shit luck.

  Goddamnit, she didn’t even want thoughts like that to cross her mind. She didn’t want to feel lessened by someone else’s good fortune, particularly not that of someone she loved so much. It felt hateful, small, and pathetic. It made her angry at herself. God, she missed Lily.

  Damn, girl. You have bigger problems than loneliness and envy right now. Like dying from some mysterious poison, for instance.

  She stared at the phone number that Lily had texted to her.

  The number of this guy named Aaro, an army buddy of one of Bruno’s adopted brothers. The one who spoke Ukrainian and various other Slavic languages. The phone jiggled in her fingers like a live thing. It had been twenty minutes since she’d last spoken to them. Bruno had been talking to Aaro while Nina spoke to Lily. He’d sent the file already. Aaro knew how urgently she needed this information. He might have already listened to it.

  He might know, at this moment, some crucial fact that Nina’s doctors needed. Something that could save her life, or her sanity, or her liver.

  So why was he sitting on it? Why the hell wasn’t he calling her?

  “Shit,” she muttered, and hit “call.” If he thought she was a freaked-out head case, so what? He’d be right. So?

  The phone rang four times before the line clicked open. Yes.

  She sucked in badly needed air, and opened her mouth—

  “What?” a deep voice barked. As if she were bugging him.

  Her heart rate spiked. It took a stammering couple of seconds to frame a coherent phrase. “Ah . . . ah, is this Alex Aaro?”

  “Who wants to know?”

  “I’m Nina Christie, and I—”

  “I know who you are,” the guy snapped.

  Nina’s raw nerves jangled at his brusque tone. Her response popped right out. “If you already know, why the hell did you ask me?”

  Dead silence. The guy had no good answer? Fine. She’d give him one herself. “Is it a verbal tic?” she asked tartly. “Something you say automatically? To put anyone who speaks to you on the defensive? Very slick, Aaro. I bet that wins you lots of friends and admirers.”

  There was a shocked pause. He cleared his throat. “I’m not interviewing for friends,” he said. “And I don’t need admiration.”

  “Damn lucky for you, considering,” she retorted.

  He harrumphed. “Had a tough morning, lady?”

  Her spine prickled up, like an affronted cat. Smart-assed son of a bitch. “You could say that,” she said, enunciating very carefully. “Bruno briefed you about my tough morning, am I right?”

  “Yeah.” His voice was cautious. “Hell of a thing.”

  “Good. Then you know already that I have no time for bullshit. Have you listened to the recording yet?”

  “No,” he said.

  The flatness of his “no” was disconcerting. “I wish you would hurry up with that. Shall I call you back after you—”

  “No,” he said again.

  She floundered. “What . . . but . . . did you not get the message with the audio file? Should I resend? I urgently need to know what—”

  “I can’t translate for you right now. I’m on the Belt Parkway right now, heading to Brighton Beach. There’s something I need to do out there before I can help you. It’s urgent.”

  Urgent? “But I . . . but this drug . . . my doctor needs to know if—”

  “Contact the Ukrainian embassy. Ask someone there to help.

  You’ll find the number online. Come to think of it, there are probably residents right at the hospital who are Ukrainian. Ask around. You’ll find someone. I’ve got something to do, and it’s time sensitive.”

  “More time sensitive than this?” Her voice cracked.

  “Yes,” he said, with all the flatness of utter finality.

  Yes? Her head wagged, in mute denial. How dare he? How could he? Of course, she had no reason to assume this guy would feel obligated to help her, except that Lily and Bruno had assured her that he would. Warring impulses locked swords. She wanted to beg him to just listen to the file. She wanted to plead, to babble, to implore.

  She also wanted to tell him to fuck off and die.

  She tried again. “But . . . but Lily and Bruno said you could—”

  “I don’t know what Lily and Bruno told you, lady.”

  “They told me you could translate that file.” It burst out with explosive force. “What they didn’t tell me was that you are an asshole!”

  “I’m sorry,” he said, sounding anything but. “When I’m done, I’ll call you back, and if you still need me to—”

  “Don’t trouble yourself. Really. And with all my heart, fuck you, too. Have a nice afternoon.” She hung up on him, and burst into tears.

  Oh, God, how she hated crying. She hated Aaro even
more, for driving her to it. As soon as the weeping had died down, she grabbed the phone and clicked around in the menu until she puzzled out how to block the jerk’s number. She’d never bothered learning that function before, but it was the only spiteful, petulant thing she could think of to do. Nyah, nyah. As if he’d ever call her now, after her snit fit.

  “Ms. Christie?”

  She jumped at the voice. “What?”

  A tall, balding, red-faced man in a white doctor’s coat peered into the examining room. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Um, do you need the room? I’m sorry,” Nina said shakily. “I . . .

  I got distracted. But I was just leaving.”

  “Don’t worry. I was looking for you, Ms. Christie. I’m glad I caught you. I’m Dr. Granger. This is Dr. Woodrow, my associate.” He walked in. He was tall, huge shoulders. Grinning so his gums showed. He had a disfiguring burn scar that covered his neck. A beautiful blonde followed him in, giving Nina a dazzling smile. All that manic smiling. It was eerie.

  She couldn’t smile back if she wanted to. “Um, yes?” Her voice felt thin and wobbly.

  “We need you to come with us to the lab upstairs.” Dr.

  Woodrow’s perfect teeth glowed like they were lit up from inside. “There are some tests we need to run.”

  “Really?” Nina pressed her hand against a cramp in her belly.

  “Did you discuss them with Dr. Tully? She gave me the impression that we’d covered everything.”

  The two doctors exchanged speaking glances. “Well, about that,” the male doctor said. “There’s a lot of talk, about your case. Everyone has strong opinions about it.”

  “Dr. Woodrow and I feel that the tests that Dr. Tully ordered left out a few important possibities that need to be ruled out,”

  the blond doctor said. “There’s no time to lose.”

  “Ah. Well.” The pain intensified, getting bigger, wider. “The thing is, I don’t want for the right hand not to know what the left is doing.” She forced the words out with difficulty. “Since Dr.