Vanishing Act

by Linsey Lanier

  Where was Parker?

  Get hold of yourself, she thought. She had to calm down. She had to think.

  Shifting in her chair, a bolt of pain shot through her head. She forced herself to be still and it subsided into a throbbing ache. The result of the blow.

  Irina tossed her blond wig into a corner. “And now you are going to die.”

  The woman was insane. She had to get out of here.

  Her mind clearing, Miranda twisted her wrists to try to figure out what Irina had bound her with.

  Plastic. Zip ties.

  And then her fingers touched flesh.

  She almost jumped, but she managed to keep herself in check. Her head aching, she craned her neck, and from the corner of her eye she could make out a form.

  Parker.

  He was in another metal chair, back-to-back with hers. Their hands were bound together behind them.

  His glasses were gone. His head was bowed forward as if he were out cold. What had they done to him?

  “Him, too,” Irina sneered.

  Miranda turned to face her again. “What?”

  “Your ‘manager’.” Irina made quote marks in the air. “He is going to die, too.”

  Not if she could help it. “You won’t get away with this, Irina. Gurka and his men are onto you and your illegal operations at Udar.”

  Irina paced back to her shadowy corner like a caged animal. “Hah. Gurka is gone. My people took care of him and his men.”

  The woman had to be bluffing. That couldn’t be true.

  But Miranda’s heart sank anyway.

  She battled back the sense of defeat as she twisted her wrists behind her and took in more of her surroundings.

  Behind Irina she could just make out a door tucked away in a recessed space. It might have been made from wood. Or metal. From this angle, she could just see the handle was wrapped with a heavy chain and padlocked.

  High overhead burned a single bare light bulb.

  Maybe twenty or so feet up the concrete wall to her side was a high window. It let in only a little light, probably from the streetlamps. It must still be night. Whether it was the same night she was last conscious, she couldn’t tell.

  Near the window a narrow vertical pipe ran all the way down and disappeared into the floor. A water system. Might be able to scale it and get out that window.

  On the floor near the pipe, an old mattress was rolled up against the wall. She turned her head the other way and saw a dusty old fashioned roll top desk on the opposite wall of the space. It had definitely seen better days. Still it was an odd piece of furniture for a dungeon.

  She curled a lip at her captor and decided to pick at her ego. “Did you really think you could get away with a drug deal of that magnitude?”

  Irina lifted her hands in the air, eagle like. “I can do anything. I proved it today.”

  “Two hundred and forty kilograms of cocaine? Really?”

  Irina’s black eyes flashed. She was starting to get to her. “You know that from my flash drive. The one you stole from my office.”

  And she’d do it again.

  “You are not so high and mighty. You are nothing but a common thief. I should kill you just for that.” With a loud shriek, Irina rushed across the floor and slapped Miranda hard across the cheek.

  Her head jerked to the side with the force, her skin flaming, her head pounding. The woman was strong.

  But Miranda wasn’t giving up. She was going to face this bitch down and make her tell her everything. “Someone else stole a copy of that flash drive first. His name was Vladislav.”

  Irina didn’t seem surprised Miranda knew that. She put her hands on her hips. “Vladislav Zelenko. A worthless piece of scum who deserved the end he got.”

  “The police found his body in the river. He’d been shot.”

  “That is right.”

  She must have seen it on the news.

  “Did you kill him?”

  Irina smirked. “I do not do such dirty work.”

  “Who did, then?”

  A dark male voice came from behind her. “I killed him.”

  Miranda craned her neck the other way and saw the huge man standing in the shadows in the corner opposite Irina. She could barely make out his form, but his scornful laugh was loud and clear.

  Sergei.

  Of course. Irina couldn’t have captured both her and Parker without the help of her right-hand man.

  “I shot him last November on the Pivnichny Bridge,” Sergei said as if he were ordering lunch. “I watched him fall into the Dnieper. He died like the coward he was.”

  His words sickened her. But that was one confession. Maybe she could get more.

  She thought of the spreadsheet and all the names on it. “There was a file called Names on the flash drive.”

  Irina’s face contorted. “You opened it.”

  “Inspector Gurka opened it.”

  The sudden burst of hatred in Irina’s eyes gave Miranda hope that Gurka might still be alive.

  Give her a name, she thought. See what she does with it. “Ilya Elkovich Dudnik. Who is that?”

  This time Irina didn’t flinch. “I have never heard that name.”

  “Of course, you have. That’s the man who killed Gurka’s nephew five years ago. Except it was a fake identity.”

  Irina shrugged. “They are all fake identities.”

  “You take them from dead people and give them to homeless boys you get from the streets, right?”

  Irina folded her arms and studied Miranda for a long moment, as if considering whether to reveal Udar’s secrets. She must have decided it didn’t matter now, because she began to talk.

  “You are very clever, Ms. Steele. Yes, that is how we work. When a young man comes to us off the streets or from somewhere else, if he proves himself, we change his name and give him a new identity.” She seemed proud of the process.

  “And he goes to work for you,” Miranda prompted.

  “If he proves himself to be reliable.”

  Reliable. If they can frighten him into keeping his mouth shut. “You get these young men involved in dealing drugs and human trafficking. Right?”

  Irina let out a sound of disgust. She went to the wall where she had been standing a moment ago and began to spread the rolled up mattress out on the floor. “We pay them well. They have a nice place to live and plenty to eat. They are trained in martial arts. It is a life they could never hope to have without us.”

  “So you’re a philanthropic institution.”

  “You understand nothing. My father built this business. He was a genius. He worked very hard to make it a success. My father grew up in Kiev, but we moved to Moscow after he rose in service to the General Secretary. We had such a pretty house there. It was where I grew up.”

  Miranda thought of the dolls in the cabinet in Irina’s office.

  She began to talk about her life in Russia as a child. As she spoke, Irina crossed the floor to the worn roll top desk and removed something from a drawer. A pair of handcuffs. Returning to the mattress, she crouched down and pulled the cuffs around the vertical pipe.

  They were intended to hold the victim lying on that bed.

  From a nearby duffle bag, she removed a coil of rope and a whip. Then she took a sleek black pistol from her waistband and laid it down on the mattress.

  Miranda squirmed in her chair. This sadist had an imagination.

  All the while, Irina went on and on about her palace house in the center of Moscow and her dolls and how her father doted on her, even more than her mother. He gave her everything she ever wanted.

  She was a spoiled brat.

  The panic was coming again. Miranda stared at that gun and wondered if she could get to it.

  Suddenly she felt a pressure on her palm.

  It was Parker. He was alive. She risked a glance behind her and saw his head was still down. He was playing possum.

  Then she realized he was tapping a finger against her palm.
/>   He paused.

  She didn’t respond.

  He started over. Tap, tap-tap. Tap-tap-tap.

  Now she got it. Morse Code. Dah-di-dit dah-dah-dah.

  What was he saying?

  She forced her mind back to her training. It took a moment, but at last she was able to decipher the letters in her head.

  Do…you…remember?

  Remember what?

  Then she knew what he meant.

  In IIT classes they’d learned all sorts of techniques for escaping from restraints. She’d been good at breaking out of zip ties.

  She found an inconspicuous patch on Parker’s palm and tapped back. Dah-di-dah-dah. Dit. Dit-dit-dit. Yes.

  He tapped back again. Wait for my signal.

  She replied. Dit-dit-dit-dah-dit. Verified.

  But while she was waiting, she had one more question to ask.

  Irina was staring at her with a curious look. Had she seen their fingers moving?

  If she had, all Miranda could do now was distract her. She inhaled and blurted out the question she had wanted to ask ever since she’d stepped inside Udar.

  “What did you do with Sasha?”

  Irina wrinkled her nose. “Who?”

  That was right. She’d know Sasha by his formal name. “Alesander Antonenko.”

  Irina snorted. “I do not have every name on that list memorized.”

  “You don’t recognize it?”

  “He must have come to Udar before I took over.”

  She’d try the other name they’d found. “What about Anatoly Tamarkin? His name was next to Alesander Antonenko.”

  Recognition flashed across her face. “Ah. That man.”

  “You know him?”

  Her expression darkened. “I know he was trouble for us. His fingerprints got into Interpol. We had to ship him overseas to the US before he was ready. Before the authorities could find him.”

  Miranda recalled the data Becker had found on Tamarkin on Interpol. So that was how the name had gotten there.

  Irina waved a careless hand in the air. “And so you have your answer.”

  “What answer?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Each person’s aliases are in the same row.”

  Miranda felt as if the woman had slapped her again. “What are you saying?”

  “What do you think I am saying? If the two names were on the same row, Alesander Antonenko is Anatoly Tamarkin.”

  No. It couldn’t be. Sasha couldn’t be that thug from Kennesaw. The idea was making her dizzy again. But the facts began to burn into her brain.

  Big boy. Size thirteen shoe. Sasha’s talent with strange herbs. Had Sasha Pavlovych made that concoction that put his victims through hell? Was he part of Group 141?

  “Exactly.” Irina smiled. Realizing the news troubled her, she continued, pointing in the air as if the spreadsheet were projected there. “Alesander Antonenko’s alias is Anatoly Tamarkin. And the name next to that is his next alias. Yakiv Doroshenko. They gave it to him after he got in trouble in the US. He works for the man there. That is how I know about him.”

  Miranda could hardly take in what the woman was saying. “What man?”

  “The man who was my father’s business partner. The man who financed Udar from the beginning. The man who, now that my father is dead, runs it.”

  “Runs Udar? From overseas?”

  “Of course, from overseas. We all work for him. We are all accountable to him. Everything funnels up to him. If we fail, he is the one who will make us pay. He is the boss.”

  The boss.

  The word reverberated through her. The crime boss? As in Russian mob boss? Had she discovered the real leader of Group 141?

  “This boss,” she repeated. “Is he Russian?”

  Irina sneered at her as if she’d asked the most ridiculous question she’d ever heard. “Of course, he is not Russian.”

  Icy fingers began to snake up Miranda’s spine. “Who is he?”

  “I know him only as the man in Boston.”

  “He’s an American?”

  “Have you not been listening? Of course, he is American. He is not unlike your husband there. Very rich. But also very powerful.” Irina wiped her hands on her slacks. “Enough questions. Now I make you pay.”

  Miranda barely heard her. Her head was spinning with the things Irina had just told her. Sasha. Tamarkin. Kennesaw. The man in Boston. American. Rich and powerful. It was all starting to make sense now.

  Then she realized Irina was shouting at her.

  “Listen to me, suka! I know who you are. You are not Peaches, and that is not your manager. He is your husband. You are private investigators. And that is why what happens next will be so much fun.”

  Miranda squirmed again. “What are you talking about?”

  “I will tell you. First we wake up your husband. I will have Sergei play with you here while he watches.” She gestured to the mattress with the cuffs and the whip and the rope and the gun. “Sergei has a great talent for inflicting pain in places you did not even know you had.”

  Miranda swallowed hard.

  “That should take a good hour or two. Maybe three. And then you will be in for a treat.” She pointed at Miranda. “It will be your turn to watch as Sergei beats you husband to death in that chair. He will do it slowly. It might take another hour or two. Finally, it will be my turn. I have not yet decided how I will do it, but I will make sure your death is even slower and even more painful than what Sergei will do to you. I will make it last for days.” With a vicious leer, Irina took a step toward her.

  A chill went down Miranda’s spine. She forced a laugh. “All that over a spreadsheet?”

  Irina grimaced. “To hell with the spreadsheet.”

  “Isn’t that what you’re so upset about?”

  “Hah. That is nothing. I am going to make you pay for what you did to my brother.”

  “Brother?”

  Irina began to screech out the words. “My brother, who was put in charge of Udar after my father died. My brother, whose place I took when he left to work for the organization in America.”

  Irina had a brother in America? What was she talking about? “I didn’t even know you had a brother.”

  “Oh, you know him. His name is Ostaf Savko.”

  Miranda’s brain reeled. Ostaf Savko?

  The Ostaf Savko who ran a human trafficking ring in Los Angeles? The Ostaf Savko who tried to have her and Parker and her team killed out there a few weeks ago? The Ostaf Savko who was now in federal prison?

  It couldn’t be. “Ostaf Savko can’t be your brother. Your name is Irina Voloshyna.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she realized her mistake.

  It was that patronymic naming convention again. Angry with herself, Miranda worked her hands behind her, twisting the ties to loosen them. She used her fingertips to make sure the clasp was centered between her thumbs.

  “You stupid American. My name is Irina Voloshyna Savko. My father was Volokh Savko, a high official in the KGB, until Perestroika came.”

  Miranda thought of Gurka’s suspicion about Udar’s founder and his connection to the Russian mob. That man was Irina’s father? Ostaf Savko’s father? No wonder they’d both turned out to be hardened criminals. They were following in his footsteps.

  “Enough!” she shouted. “Sergei, wake up the husband. I am going to show this suka how much I despise her.” She rushed toward Miranda, leaned in close and spat in her face.

  Then she spread her arms to reach around to undo her arms.

  Rage welled up inside her, but it was mixed with sheer panic. Parker, where’s the signal? Parker?

  At last she felt Parker tapping again. Dah-dit. Dah-dah-dah. Dit-dah-dah.

  Now!

  Chapter Forty-Five

  With all her might, Miranda yanked the zip ties apart.

  Behind her Parker did the same.

  The next instant, she shot up from her chair and head butted that suka with all her might.


  In shock and pain, Irina squealed like a child. She stumbled backward and fell to the floor.

  Miranda hurled herself onto her.

  Flashing in the corner of her eye was the vision of Parker. He was on his feet and wielding his metal chair at Sergei’s head.

  She couldn’t pay attention to it. Instead she began punching as hard as she could.

  A right jab to the chin. A left to the ear. Another right. Another left.

  Irina wasn’t going to put up with that.

  On the last swing, she latched onto Miranda’s arm and pulled it out of the way as she threw a hard punch to the side of Miranda’s face. Miranda’s head sang. She felt blood running down her cheek.

  Too late, she realized Irina’s position at Udar was more than a desk job. The woman could fight as well as scream at others in the cage. Before she could recover, Irina threw a leg around her waist, pivoted, and jerked Miranda’s arm up to her face.

  Uh oh. Irina was going for an arm bar, a classic MMA submission technique.

  But there was no referee in this dungeon. There would be no chance to tap out here. Irina wouldn’t stop until she’d broken bone.

  Miranda was assured of that fact from the pain now shooting from her extended elbow. She’d better do something fast before Irina snapped her arm in two.

  Her heart pounding, with all the strength she had, she turned her thumb up, relieving some of the pressure, and tried to lift her hips off the floor.

  While she struggled for leverage, the sound of grunts and fists pounding came from the other side of the room.

  Miranda heard Sergei cry out.

  Parker must have walloped him. She wanted to watch, but she had her own problems.

  Somehow she got her feet under her. Irina was still trying to bend her arm backward. With a gargantuan effort, Miranda swung herself around—and broke Irina’s hold on her wrist.

  She pushed herself up and to her feet. Gasping for breath, her elbow smarting from the extension, she danced away before Irina’s thin arms could lock around her ankles. Then she realized the woman wasn’t reaching for her.

  She was going for that gun.

  It was lying on the mattress just a few feet away.

  Irina must have given up the fun-and-games plan. Now she intended to end things fast.

  Hurrying to the mattress, Miranda bent to scoop up the gun.