by Cindy Dees
Ashe eased into the narrow gap between darkened buildings. The parallel stripes of what did indeed appear to have been a pair of high-heeled shoes being dragged along the gravel and dirt alley came into sight.
He drew his pistol and breathed to Bastien, “I’m in your six and packing. Standard field of fire.” Which was shorthand for telling his partner that he was right behind, carrying a gun, and to be careful not to shoot Ashe by accident.
The two of them had practiced maneuvers like this a hundred times and knew the drill cold. But procedure was procedure. And it wasn’t like Ashe was functioning at his best right now. His entire body jangled with barely controlled nerves, and he was so jumpy he could hardly contain himself. Now, of all times, it was important to rely on the standard protocols they’d spent so many hours drilling into their bones.
A doorway yawned in the wall ahead. As he drew close to it, Ashe saw it was slightly ajar. Bastien was making it easy for him to follow. Good man. Ashe slipped into the darkness.
His heart just about leaped out of his chest, and he struggled to get enough air into his lungs. It was the most awful and unfamiliar feeling. He hadn’t been this scared since he’d been a kid. Never in his military career had this body-enveloping panic come over him. And he’d come damned close to death a lot. Hell, he’d killed and seen other men die more times than he cared to count.
But it had never been Hank. Not sweet, beautiful Hank.
He paused for a moment to slow his breathing forcibly. To allow his pulse to settle the hell down. To clear his mind. Hank’s life depended on him finding that emotionless, focused state of a warrior. C’mon. He could do this.
It was a fight, but he got there. Senses on full alert, he continued into the bowels of the darkened building. The interior was carved into a series of smaller spaces. Some looked light industrial, some looked like artists’ studios and others looked like storage lockers. How in the hell was he going to find Hank in this mess? It would take hours to clear the place cubicle by cubicle.
Bastien was in here somewhere. In breaching a room, the first guy in always swept right. On the assumption that his counterpart had headed right, he turned to the left and commenced checking doors and spinning into the spaces behind each unlocked one. It was tense work, particularly since silence was required lest he and Bastien give themselves away.
Ashe spotted a steel staircase and hesitated. Should he go up? The attacker had been dragging Hank’s body. Nah. He wouldn’t have taken her up there. She was down here on the main floor. He continued onward.
A scrape alerted him to the presence of someone else just ahead. His pistol swung up before him into firing position as he eased forward, rolling onto the balls of his feet with each stealthy step. Bastien or the bad guy? His finger cupped the trigger of his weapon, ready to deliver instant death.
A voice muttering low in Russian answered the question of the identity of the man ahead. Using the conversation to cover the noise of his approach, Ashe raced forward.
The man spoke again, impatiently. He was urging whoever was on the other end of the line to pick up his phone. A pause, then the guy left an impatient message to call him back immediately. It was urgent.
Ashe would bet it was. The bastard had seen fit to snatch Hank off the street. A movement down the hallway made him swing his weapon in that direction. Bastien. Closing in fast.
Using hand signals, Ashe indicated that they would use a standard room-clearing entry, going in hard and hot. The idea was to surprise Hank’s captor for just long enough that Ashe and Bastien would gain control of the situation.
Bastien signaled that, from his angle, the room appeared to have clean sight lines. Which meant there were no visible obstacles that would impede their ability to see and shoot Hank’s captor.
Ashe signaled that a live capture was preferable. Bastien pulled a disgusted face but nodded.
A quick countdown with his fingers, and then Ashe surged around the corner, shouting. Bastien came in on his heels, swinging left and also bellowing commands for the guy to freeze.
A man bending over a prone form. Reaching for his waistband. Dropping to one knee. Shooter.
The impressions registered so fast that Ashe didn’t consciously process each one of them. He and Bastien fired simultaneously, and the target spun to one side and fell to the floor, swearing.
Ashe charged forward and planted a foot on the guy’s neck. “Stay down,” he snarled in Russian. Bastien kicked away the guy’s pistol, which had fallen from his hand, and knelt by Hank, who was sprawled on the floor beside her kidnapper.
“Strong pulse, no visible injuries,” Bastien reported tersely.
“Then I guess you get to live,” Ashe growled at the man under his boot. The guy grunted, which Ashe took to mean the man understood English. Bastien pulled plastic zip ties out of a pouch on his belt and quickly immobilized and frisked their prisoner.
Ashe handed the guy over to Bastien and gathered Hank into his arms. She stirred slightly against him, as if even unconscious, she recognized him. “What the hell did you use on her?” he demanded over her head.
The guy shrugged. “It’ll wear off soon. Bitch fought hard and didn’t get much of a whiff of it before I lost the damned pad.”
Ashe assumed the guy meant a pad he’d used to cover her mouth and nose, soaked in the chemical he’d knocked her out with. “Who do you work for?”
“Nobody. I was just messing around.”
Bastien snorted in patent disbelief. “Is this an arrest, Hollywood, or is this off-book?”
“Oh, it’s completely off the record. This guy’s gonna talk if I have to pull all his teeth and fingernails out one by one.”
Bastien shrugged at Hank’s kidnapper. “Too bad, dude. My friend here is the meanest sonofabitch you’ve ever had the misfortune to cross paths with.”
He moved away from Ashe and the prisoner and disappeared behind a tall wooden crate. Ashe understood what Bastien was doing. The cop needed plausible deniability later. To be able to claim that he’d no idea what Ashe had done to the prisoner and he hadn’t been present to stop it.
Ashe heard footsteps jogging up what sounded like steel steps. His friend’s voice floated downstairs, muffled. “You know that sniper you thought was covering the street? We found his hide. Nice rig he’s got. Modified Russian rifle, Israeli sight. State-of-the-art stuff. I’m impressed. If this op’s off-book, I may have to take this baby out for a test fire myself.”
“Be my guest,” Ashe replied mildly.
The sniper trussed on the floor flailed, irritated. No shooter ever let anyone else mess with his rig. It screwed up the sighting and made the weapon feel funny. Ashe made a sympathetic sound. “Sucks for you. Not that you’re gonna walk out of here in any condition to shoot a gun for the foreseeable future, man.”
The shooter subsided on the floor, eyeing him warily.
“How about we skip the questions and I just tell you who you are?” Ashe announced. “You work for Vitaly Parenko. He’s a low-level lieutenant in a much larger and more powerful operation. You technically work for that larger group and are annoyed at being stuck in this hellhole day after day, keeping an eye on his two-bit whorehouse. How am I doing so far?”
The sniper’s eyelids flickered faintly. Ashe was spot-on. He continued pleasantly. “You saw the girl, here, walk down the street toward the club hours after she normally shows up for work. That caught your attention. Made you a little suspicious. Then she acted tense when she left the club tonight. Tense enough to trigger full-blown warning bells in your head. Being a highly trained operative, you trust your gut, and it was shouting at you that she was up to something. Am I still on track?”
The sniper’s gaze slid away from his face guiltily. And that would be a yes. Ashe was spot-on so far.
“Bored off your ass and spoiling for a little action, you get the bright idea to snatch the girl. Question her. Maybe have some gratuitous sex with her before you hand her over to your boss. If sh
e’s up to no good and you bring her in, you catch the attention of the big bosses and they let you out of this godforsaken job. If she turns out to be just an innocent waitress, you—what—kill her? No one will miss her anyway. You have your fun and dispose of her body in one of the Dumpsters downstairs, with no one the wiser. Yes?”
The sniper glared up at him defiantly.
Ashe punched the guy in the face with all his strength, crushing the guy’s nose into a bleeding mess. The sniper screamed.
Hank stirred but did not wake. Good. Ashe wanted to be done with this little interrogation before she came around. She was too soft-hearted and kind to be able to witness what he had to do to this guy. He, on the other hand, had no such compunction. The bastard had intended to kill Hank.
“Who’s Vitaly’s boss?” Ashe asked the bloody sniper.
The guy looked faintly surprised at that question. “No idea,” he spit out on a mouthful of blood.
“Wrong answer.” Another punch. Another scream. A couple of teeth spit out at his feet.
“Let’s try that again,” Ashe said patiently.
It took a couple more minutes and a couple more body blows that left the sniper with a half dozen broken ribs, but the guy finally thought better of protecting his employers. He grunted, “Vitaly reports to a guy called the Butler.”
“Name?”
“I don’t know!” the sniper answered with enough urgency that Ashe was inclined to believe him. “They call him that because he likes to wear nice suits, and they’re always perfectly tailored and pressed.”
“The Butler, huh?” Bastien’s voice floated down from overhead. “The butler always did it. Bad rap those dudes get. Everyone’s afraid of a meticulous murderer.”
Leave it to Bastien to inject a note of lightness into the proceedings as a gentle reminder to Ashe to be chill and not get carried away. “Message received, Catfish.”
He had just one more question for the sniper. “Ever hear of a guy named Max Kuznetsov?”
Fear exploded—literally exploded—in the guy’s stare. Even with one eye swollen most of the way shut and the other side of his face puffing up fast, there was no missing the genuine terror that flared at the mention of Hank’s brother. What the hell?
Hank made a faint moaning noise, and her hands twitched a bit. Ashe stepped away from the sniper quickly to kneel down next to her. He pushed the tangled hair off her forehead gently. “Hey, baby. I’m here. You’re safe.”
Hank’s eyes fluttered open. Drifted closed.
He tried again. “Can you wake up for me? Open your eyes, kitten. Let me know you’re okay.”
Her eyes didn’t open, but she sighed. “You came.”
“Of course I came. I’ll always come for you.” He realized with a start that he meant it, too.
“I’m...okay. If you’re here, I’m okay.”
It took her a few more minutes, but gradually she emerged from the stupor the sniper’s chemicals had induced. She was able to sit up with Ashe’s help, and she looked around in confusion. “Where am I?”
Propping her upright with an arm behind her shoulders, he explained, “Your friendly neighborhood kidnapper, here, dragged you into this place. Catfish and I found you and apprehended him.”
He helped her to her feet and winced as she faced her assailant. “Looks like you worked him over pretty good,” she commented.
Ashe shrugged. “He resisted capture.”
Hank glanced at him drily. “Right. Let’s go with that explanation.”
“Only reason he’s alive is because I figured you’d get mad if I killed him.”
She nodded slowly. “A small fish like this isn’t worth killing. I want the big sharks. If they’ve hurt my brother, you can kill all of them you want.”
Bastien came downstairs and joined them now that Q&A time was over. “What do you want to do with him?” He jerked his head in the direction of the prisoner.
Ashe studied the guy. “I suppose the gators would find him tasty.” He reached down and tore the guy’s shirt off his back and was not surprised to see copious tattoos, including symbols that traditionally indicated kills. “The FBI might enjoy all this pretty artwork, though.”
“I do believe they would. Quite the art connoisseurs, those feds.” Bastien pulled out his cell phone and made a call suggesting that he had a gift for whoever was at the other end of the line.
“They’ll be here in twenty minutes,” he reported.
They used most of that time to search the sniper’s hidey-hole and to copy files off the guy’s laptop computer and cell phone. Regretfully, Bastien left the sniper rig for the FBI to confiscate since it would help implicate the prisoner as a mob assassin.
Sirens became audible in the distance and Bastien announced, “That’s our signal to go.”
Ashe nodded, then bent down to whisper, “Can you walk, kitten, or do you need me to carry you?”
Hank frowned. “I can walk.” But as he helped her to her feet, she wobbled slightly. He wrapped his arm around her waist, and she seemed happy to lean against his side as they made their way out of the building.
They reached the alley and he asked Bastien, “Do you need to stick around and make a statement?”
“Nah. I gave the tip to a buddy of mine. Told him to consider the guy he’ll find inside an early Christmas present from an anonymous friend.”
Ashe and Bastien traded grins.
“You bringing her back to my place?” Bastien murmured.
“Nah. I think we’d better go to ground for the night. Vitaly’s gonna figure out he was robbed any second, and he’s gonna be pissed. When he figures out he’s lost his sniper, he’s going to be doubly annoyed.”
“Keep your head down, Hollywood.”
“You, too.”
Ashe gently helped Hank into the van and started the engine as Bastien’s red Chevelle pulled away from the curb. He steered the van away from the alley and was just turning, a block down the street, when the first federal car rounded the corner.
“Where are we going?” Hank asked.
He glanced over at her, frowning. That was an excellent question. They needed someplace quiet where she could sleep off the rest of the drugs and where no one would find them for the next twenty-four hours. That meant no credit cards, no hotel registers where employees could be paid off to give out guest names. He knew one place that fit the bill, but it was the last place on earth he wanted to go.
Dammit.
Chapter 14
Hank woke up slowly. Stripes of light on a white ceiling spoke of venetian blinds. Not Bastien’s place, then; his bedrooms had no windows. She turned her head and saw that she was in a rather old-fashioned bedroom. The furniture looked like it came from the early 1960s. Sturdy construction, uninspired design. Mid-century American decor, her father would have classed it.
And dusty. Everything in the room was covered in a thin film of gray. How did she get here? Wherever here was.
She remembered being attacked with vivid clarity. Then everything after that went fuzzy. Indistinct. A dark room. A bloody man. And Ashe. He had rescued her. She thought she remembered Bastien being there, too. And then...nothing.
She sat up carefully. She was a tiny bit dizzy, but nothing outrageous. She swung her feet to the floor and stood up. Again, a bit off kilter, but functional. She looked down in dismay at the flannel granny nightie she was wearing. It reached only her midcalves and was yellowed with age. Where on earth had this relic come from? Whose was it?
“Ashe?” she called.
She opened the hallway door and was surprised to see that she was in some sort of house. She wandered down a short hallway, ducked into the restroom, and then continued her exploration. A living/dining room opened up, and she spied a kitchen beyond it. And good smells were coming from the kitchen.
Following her nose, she opened the swinging door.
Ashe looked up from a stove and moved toward her quickly. “I was going to bring you breakfast in bed.”
“I’ll go back to bed if you want.”
He gathered her into his arms, gazing down at her tenderly. “How are you feeling this morning?”
“Physically fine. Still a little shaken emotionally, I guess.”
His jaw tightened. “I could still find him and kill him for you—”
“No. That’s fine. But thank you for the offer. How are you holding up after last night?”
A shadow of something she might call fear if she didn’t know him so well passed through his eyes. “I gotta say, you gave me a scare. When I heard that bastard snatch you...and I wasn’t close enough to save you...I had a few rough moments, there.”
She buried her nose against his chest while he wrapped her arms tightly around her. She held on to his waist almost as tightly. “The worst of it was thinking that I might never see you again. I finally found a man like you, and then I was going to up and die. It just wasn’t fair.”
“Nobody’s dying any time soon. Got that?”
She nodded against his chest wishing she was half as sure as he sounded.
“Sit. Keep me company while I finish cooking breakfast. Here, let me help you.”
“I’m fine,” she protested. But it didn’t dissuade him from treating her like an invalid and handing her into a vinyl-covered chrome chair. She plucked at the voluminous cotton nightgown enveloping her. “Whose nightgown is this?”
“I found it in a drawer. I think it was my mother’s.”
“Should I be creeped out at that?”
“Nah. She was great. She’d have been happy to lend it to you.”
His mother. Which made this his parents’ house. And made her a wee bit slow on the uptake this morning. She asked, “Is this the house you grew up in?”
He glanced around the room. “Yup. I guess it belongs to me, now that my old man is gone.”
“No brothers and sisters?”
“Nope.”
Intrigued by this glimpse into his past, she leaned forward. “Tell me about your family.”
His expression closed up tightly. “Not much I haven’t told you already. My dad was a jerk, and my mom was a saint.”
