Ripped: A Blood Money Novel

by Edie Harris

  Tobias still had faith. Outside of family—and Raleigh Vick—there was no one on earth more devoted to Beth than Gavin. To him, she was family, and Tobias refused to believe Gavin would knowingly allow any harm to come to her while he breathed. “I take it there’s been no word from him yet.”

  “No. And...” Another heavy sigh. “His chip’s been deactivated.”

  The chip in question being the GPS implant all Faraday employees with field missions received, placed beneath the skin behind the ear. The only way to deactivate the chip was to remove it, then destroy it. “Last known location?”

  “Moscow, close to Saint Basil’s. I hate to say it—”

  “Then don’t.”

  “—but we can’t count on him to have our six. Not until we sit him down and get the story on what’s going on with him.”

  “Fine,” Tobias agreed, grudgingly, seeing Casey’s logic but detesting the need to remain wary of a man who’d been nothing but loyal, who loved Tobias’s sister nearly as much as he did.

  Okumura’s voice came over the intercom, instructing them to prepare for landing. Tobias lowered into the chair opposite Casey. “I’ve forgiven Chandler for her role in Beth’s ordeal,” he announced quietly. Simple words, the sentiment behind them just as straightforward. “Nash would’ve done what he did to Beth no matter Chandler’s involvement. She’s as much collateral damage as anything.”

  Casey’s rough hands turned to fists atop the armrests of his chair. “We could have found Bethie sooner. We could have saved her pain and scarring and trauma if McCallister had just told us where he was right away.”

  “We gave Chandler no reason to trust us with that information.”

  “What about the reason of being a decent fucking person?” Knuckles white, Casey seemed to vibrate with repressed anger. “She knew what sort of monster Nash was. She had to know what Beth was going through.”

  From Chandler’s reaction to the video, though, Tobias wondered if she hadn’t. Perhaps all of Nash’s handiwork for the Russians had merely been practice for the grand finale that was Beth in his bunker. “You forget, Casey, that we had to threaten her family to get her to talk.” Shame pricked his conscience, guilt over what he’d implied he would do to Pippa sitting wrong with him now that he knew the young woman in question. Now that Chandler was...was his. “Decent fucking people don’t do what we did. What we do every day. Why is it you expect those whose paths we cross to be any different?” He met his brother’s direct gaze, held it, remembering Chandler’s words. “We are the thing that goes bump in the night. Our monstrosity is simply scaled differently.”

  They didn’t speak again as the jet landed, nor when they were walking across the slick tarmac, their faces lashed by freezing mist. Tobias lifted his phone, listening to the hyphenated ringing commonplace outside the States.

  “This is Yang.”

  “Hello, Colleen.” He climbed into the passenger side of one of the two black SUVs waiting for them, Casey hitting the driver’s side and revving the engine. Henry and Finn jumped into the second Jeep and followed Casey as he drove them through the airport’s rear gate.

  “Faraday. You’ve been borrowing my agents again.” The T-16 section chief sounded peeved. “There appears to be a flu virus going around.”

  “Quinn and Hadad are already back in London. Go ahead and keep them under lock and key for a while, if that makes you feel more secure.” But his cousin and her partner weren’t his reason for this conversation. “You have information I need, Colleen.”

  “Oh?”

  “The real name of the Accountant.”

  There was a pause. “What makes you think I know the name of the Accountant?”

  “Because you sent Chandler McCallister to Moscow specifically to turn him. You and I have a long conversation ahead of us in the days to come, but given that time is of the essence, I’ll settle for the Accountant’s name.” When silence greeted him, his voice hardened. “Now, Yang.”

  “Boris Artyom Ivashov,” she bit out angrily.

  Victory. Whether she knew it or not, Yang had just signed away her position of power at MI6. “I’ll be in touch,” he warned her before ending the call. Texting the Accountant’s name to Adam, he waited for the response he needed and watched the streets of Moscow fly by in the predawn rain. “You didn’t have to come,” he told his older brother quietly.

  “Of course I did,” Casey retorted grumpily. “If you had your way, you’d be a mountain unto yourself 24/7, leaving the rest of us to grapple over your jagged edges, trying to get a glimpse at what’s going on above the clouds. Stop being such a fuckin’ shithead, bro.”

  Tobias’s phone vibrated abruptly, snaring his attention with an email alert. Grim satisfaction spread through his body as he read the subject line from Adam: SCURVY BILGE RATS, YO. The email contained two sets of coordinates, one near the famous Saint Basil’s cathedral, the other linking to the current location of Karlin Kedrov’s phone, along the south river port.

  Tobias’s memory sparked, Chandler’s voice filling his mind like a cool breeze. An old shipbuilding warehouse—that was where they’d taken her for her first test, to discern if she was truly the Slasher’s spawn. A quick internet search later, he had an address, even as he rattled off the first coordinates for Casey to input into the vehicle’s GPS. The warehouse address he sent to Henry and Finn in the trailing Jeep, with instructions to survey the site without setting off any alarms, and to not move in until Tobias and Casey arrived.

  Soon enough, Casey had parked on a winding side street at the foot of a century-old brick building. “Where are we, Tobias?” he asked as they exited, locking the ride behind them with a beep of the alarm.

  Jaw clenched tightly enough to make his pulse pound in his temples, Tobias used the key he’d found in Chandler’s luggage to get them inside the narrow foyer, swiping a key card at the elevator bank a few feet beyond the entrance. “Someplace we need to be.” He hit the button for the seventh floor, and stood in silence with Casey as the elevator rattled around them, dragging them ever upward until it halted with a creaking groan.

  There was only one apartment on the seventh floor, owned by Boris Artyom Ivashov, as Adam had discovered a few minutes ago. Tobias knew that Chandler had lived in a flat held by the Accountant during her stay in Moscow, and there was a chance she’d been taken here again. “Are you carrying?”

  Casey snorted, and the familiar click of his Glock’s safety disengaging filled Tobias’s ears.

  Well. That answered that. Withdrawing his own weapon from the holster hiding beneath his suit jacket, he inserted another stolen key into the apartment’s front door, tensing as the latch gave way. The brothers moved swiftly into the unit, clearing the empty rooms one by one and reconvening in the square living area with its large grated window, through which Tobias could see the colorful domes of the cathedral gleaming in the ambient city light. Rain pattered softly against the glass, and he felt suddenly chilled, though he wasn’t cold at all.

  Casey fussed with one of the many pockets of his utility pants before pulling out a small flashlight, the thin beam instantly revealing what the black of night had previously hidden. “Holy fuckin’ shit.”

  Blood. There was blood, rusted with age where it stained the carpet, the wallpaper. A couple of arterial sprays dotted the ceiling as Tobias followed the trajectory of the flashlight around the room. Barely any furniture lived in the space, the kitchen showing little sign of use—except for the set of butcher’s knives in a wooden block on the countertop, and a trio of scalpels tossed into the sink, dried blood still clinging to the blades’ edges.

  Tobias knew, deep in his gut, that if they tested the scalpels for prints, it would be Chandler’s they’d find. “Go into the bedroom,” he ordered hoarsely, unable to slow the racing of his frantic heart.

  Casey led the way, and Tobias fol
lowed, his breath leaving him on a punch of stolen oxygen as he stared at the brass bedframe—and the iron shackle attached to the footboard. It was so damn small, fitted for a tiny ankle. He reached toward it, hand freezing when he noted the faint blooming of old blood that had soaked into the mattress, just beneath that cuff. Similar splotches of red ran the entire width of the foot of the bed.

  They’d chained his woman like an animal, for months. They’d made her bleed.

  Casey joined him at the edge of the bed. “Fuck, man.”

  “I’m going to kill them all.” Every goddamn one to lay a hand on her.

  “Is this...did McCallister stay here?”

  A humorless laugh rasped from him as he pointed toward the cuff. “Do you really think ‘stay’ is the appropriate word?” He had to get out of this place before he burned it to the ground, and the entire city block along with it. “They didn’t take her here. We need to move.”

  “Jesus.” Scrubbing a hand over his jaw, Casey followed him out of the apartment—which Tobias only locked because until he could get a team in to scrub the unit of Chandler’s DNA, she wasn’t safe from persecution of whatever crimes she’d been forced to commit in that hellhole—and into the elevator. As they made their descent to the ground floor, Casey clapped a hand to his shoulder and, thankfully, said nothing more.

  The drive to the warehouse was made in silence, as Casey didn’t seem inclined to speak after the horror they’d just witnessed. Tobias’s pulse sprinted, thumping against his eardrums and tripping through his veins, because he’d lied to Casey on the plane. Or perhaps it was more accurate to say he had told the truth, then lied around said truth.

  He had no intention of negotiating for Chandler. The Polnoch’ Pulya enforcers wouldn’t let him go two steps if he said he was there for a woman. Besides that, it wouldn’t be in Chandler’s best interest if he revealed her ties to British Intelligence, as there was still a chance Kedrov didn’t know her status as an undercover agent. Tobias would hate himself if he gave them more reason to hurt her, torturing her for details about a government to which she had spent her entire adult life in obeisance, repenting for the sins of her father in the only way she knew how. A government that had abandoned her just when she needed it most. If they made it out of Russia alive, he planned to ensure MI6 never abandoned Chandler McCallister again.

  So, no, he couldn’t go in for her, no matter that Kuznetsov had likely reported their association by now. Only a bang would get him through the warehouse door.

  They passed Henry and Finn loitering against the hood of their Jeep, then turned the corner and slowed to a stop along the wharfs. The scent of unclean water slapped his nostrils as he stepped out of the vehicle and took in the empty docks, the lack of security lamps, the sagging chain-link fencing standing between the street and the hulking mass of the abandoned warehouse that had once housed gargantuan sea vessels in all states of progress.

  Casey met him as he rounded the rear of the Jeep. “You going in armed?”

  Tobias shook his head, having stowed his pistol in the passenger-door pocket during the drive. “They’d relieve me of it within thirty seconds. So be sure you’ve got more than just your one piece out here. They are weapons dealers, after all,” he said wryly. No doubt the Polnoch’ Pulya would be all about firepower.

  “When have you ever known me to only carry one piece, Tobias?”

  “Take my phone.” He’d never willingly permit sensitive data or contact information to fall into enemy hands.

  Casey glared at him but took the phone anyway.

  Unwilling to part ways on a sour note, not now that he knew how easy it was to lose those you loved, Tobias gripped Casey’s shoulder, squeezed. “I go in alone, and you go around the block, back to Henry and Finn, in case they monitor my arrival.” No point in giving away the punch line if he came calling with three former soldiers in tow.

  With a grunt of assent, Casey pulled him into a bear hug, slapping his back hard as he whispered, “Come back alive, asshole. I don’t want to be the one to tell Mom that you were the idiot who went to visit one of the most dangerous criminals in the world without so much as a pocketknife.” One last back slap, then Casey climbed into the vehicle, headlights off as he eased down the abandoned road.

  You matter.

  Tobias thought of the shackle, thought of her expression, so poignantly sad for the split second before she let the Priest cart her off from the Lupine and away from Tobias. You matter, too, sweetheart. So goddamn much.

  Slipping through the fence surrounding the crumbling structure, he made his way toward the building. An unlatched garage-type door beckoned, faint light creeping out through the crack between door and cement. Crouching down, Tobias gripped the handle and heaved, the door flying upward with a screeching clang of metal on metal.

  Well. He’d wanted a bang.

  Straightening, he strode into the warehouse, his footsteps echoing in the cavernous space. All of a sudden, light from all sides blinded him, glaring and fluorescent, and he squinted against the sting as his pupils shrank to pinpoints. The ominous click of several guns being cocked hit his ears.

  “My name is Tobias Faraday,” he called out, his voice ringing and strong. He raised his arms to either side of his head and smiled, coldly. “I’m here to kill Karlin Kedrov.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  She wanted to say she was in hell, but hell was being a nine-year-old trapped in a closet and listening to your father rape and murder an innocent woman over the course of three days, all the while trying to keep your sister from crying and not daring to make any noise, the only things keeping you alive the apple juice and chocolate digestives you’d hidden in the closet a week earlier when you were playing Secret Fort.

  So perhaps being in the Moscow warehouse again, seated on a sofa next to a nightmare, was as close to hell as Chandler was likely to get.

  He didn’t touch her, didn’t reach out with his scarred hand, the joints misshapen and fingers gnarled from the burns he had sustained. She had seen pictures of his face before the explosion—attractive in an austere sort of way, with a heavy jaw and thick brows, silver hair combed away from his high forehead. Now he was twisted, maimed by the bomb blast, and nearly unrecognizable beneath the scar damage.

  His voice grated viscerally against his throat, his shoulders stooped, his frame overly thin, but thank fucking God he didn’t touch her. That thanks was her mantra as they sat in silence in the plush, gilded office so out of place in this echoing graveyard of a building. Thank you thank you thank you please don’t touch me thank you thank you thank—

  “You injure the svyashchennik, Mary,” Karlin Kedrov rasped in his broken English. “Apologize.”

  From across the office, where he lurked like a gargoyle at the window overlooking the hangar space below, the Priest turned his head, waiting for her to heed his master’s command.

  She was tired. She was hungry. Her head ached, inside and out, and she felt Tobias Faraday’s absence like a hole in her chest. As though someone had plunged a hand between her ribs, grabbed her heart and torn it from her body with brutal force. The assault on her body came from within, and her attacker was relentless.

  Chandler’s attacker was herself.

  It didn’t matter that she knew she’d made the right choice, the only choice available to her at the time. She had wanted to stay in the land of the living, and allowing Kuznetsov to whisk her away and toss her into the hold of a cargo plane for a bumpy flight to Russia had seemed the obvious choice. She’d bought herself, and Tobias, some time.

  She’d also, perhaps, won him a victory, where he needn’t stain his hands with blood. Had Tobias ever killed another person? Somehow, she doubted he had, and she cared too deeply about the state of that brilliant mind of his to put a life on his conscience. Even the life of a bad, bad man.

  Kill
ing Kedrov she could do. Hell, she was within arm’s reach at this very moment, with nothing but a giant priest and Artyom, the bratva’s accountant, bearing witness. Kuznetsov had disarmed the moment he brought her to the office, allowing the Accountant to tend to the ugly blue-and-black bruise Chandler’s bullet had put on his chest. Only the protective body armor he’d worn beneath his robes had saved the Priest from certain death.

  Oh, look. We match.

  Snapping Kedrov’s neck would be the work of a second, maybe two, but then her life would be over. Done. Snuffed out forever between the Priest’s ungentle paws, and Chandler... Chandler wasn’t ready.

  Her apprehension shamed her. She was a soldier, damn it. For years, she’d been “ready” to die for her country, and no fear had ever assailed her in uniform, nor when she was recruited by MI6, serving queen and country and Colleen Yang in new and different methods. The dangers weren’t new, or even all that different, but she was, now.

  She was different. She was new.

  Being with Tobias, falling for him, had changed her at a molecular level. The heart she reserved for her twin alone had made room for the man who, she saw now, had saved her life. She had left Moscow on the brink of shattering, her mind unclear, her emotions violently unsteady, and thrown herself into Nash’s vendetta without fully comprehending all that was at stake. When Tobias Faraday had taken her into custody and held her prisoner in the Underground, he had provided her with an opportunity to reset the parameters of her psychological state.

  Without him, she would have spiraled. Without him, she would have recklessly tumbled into the seething morass of the spy world, still totally fucked up from her months undercover, and made a mistake. One mistake is all it would have taken to end her life.