by Bella Rose
Denis started laughing. His low chuckles would have been unnerving had Viktor not already been on high alert. It was time to get moving. Didn’t these men realize that? Katie could be hurt and Viktor might be too late. Beside him, Max was shifting restlessly as if he, too, felt the urgency.
“We told the boss you were the one who opened the van,” Denis informed Viktor. “But the boss likes you, for some reason. He doesn’t want to hear a word against you.”
“Like I said, it doesn’t matter,” Viktor insisted. “Can we hurry up and get out of here?”
Denis seemed to catch the tone of urgency just enough to get him and his men moving a little faster. They gathered out back and piled into an SUV not unlike the one Sasha had been driving.
Without waiting for an invitation, Viktor and Max jumped in along with the other men. Denis gave Max a dirty look. “That dog had better not make a mess.”
“I think that’s the least of our problems,” Viktor muttered.
Denis started the vehicle and roared off into the night. It was a surprisingly short ride to a house a few blocks away where Sasha apparently lived. Viktor realized that in all his time knowing Sasha, the man had never let slip any details about his home or personal life beyond his familial tie to Karkoff. In hindsight, it seemed a little odd.
The SUV pulled up before a very nice townhouse in an older, but still fairly expensive neighborhood. The men got out in a hurry. It was as if the SUV opened and they all just tumbled out, hitting the ground at a run.
Viktor bolted as soon as his boots touched the pavement. He couldn’t let these idiots startle Sasha into shooting the hostages. Not just Katie, but Boris Karkoff too. Beside Viktor, Max had already sprinted toward the house. The dog obviously had a lead on something the rest of them hadn’t discovered yet.
“Sasha!” Denis shouted. “Open up!” Denis shouted it again in Russian while pounding on the front door.
There was no answer. Denis started using his shoulder to ram the door. Finally he and one of his comrades managed to beat their way inside the house. The other four men followed suit, with Viktor bringing up the rear. He had no weapon, but he wasn’t going to need one if someone challenged him right now. He was angry enough to rip Sasha apart with his bare hands.
“Nothing!” Denis called over his shoulder. “The place is empty.”
The men were already starting to file back out of the house. Then Max whined and took off as though he were tracking something unpleasant.
“Wait!” Viktor shouted. “The dog found something!”
Denis’s men turned back, following on Viktor’s heels as he tracked Max’s movements through the house. The dog was definitely antsy. He was whining and sniffing as though he had found something that disturbed him deeply. Viktor could only hope it didn’t involve Katie. If Sasha had left Katie behind, that could mean only one thing.
“There!” Denis shouted, pointing to a closet.
Max scratched and jumped at the hall closet door. The alcove was tucked back into a corner of the house where Viktor probably never would have thought to look. He grabbed the handle, looking to Denis. The big man pulled out his gun and nodded.
Viktor yanked the door open and two heavy thumps hit the floor. Max began barking furiously and Denis and his men were yelling in barely comprehensible Russian. Viktor stared at the corpses on the floor. The only thing that registered was that neither of them were Katie. She had to still be alive.
“He was beaten to death!” Denis’s angry tone could have flayed Sasha alive. “Look at his head. It is crushed. And Igor”—Denis’s mournful tone suggested that he and Igor had been close—“my cousin is dead.”
“I’m so sorry,” Viktor said carefully. “I know this must be hard, but we have to find Sasha. Is there anywhere he might have gone? Someplace he might feel safe?”
Denis spouted off some old proverb about a jackal always returning to the scene of the crime. That was when it hit Viktor. He knew where Sasha would go. Now everything depended upon whether or not Sasha had taken Katie with him.
***
“You should really just let me go,” Katie said in her most reasonable tone. “I’m slowing you down, and at this point skipping town would be your best bet.”
“Would you shut up?” Sasha snarled. “Do you ever shut up?”
“Not when I have something to say that you should listen to.” She swallowed the lump in her throat. It was temping to do exactly as he said and shut up. The man was insane. She was sure of it. Why she was sitting here and poking the crazy person? She simply felt that she could somehow reason with him.
“Why are we sitting at the park?” Katie asked quietly. She was trying not to move around too much, but she was also attempting to loosen the soft nylon rope around her wrists. That meant she needed to keep Sasha somewhat distracted.
“Because I need someplace to think,” Sasha answered. “I like the park.”
“Okay.” Katie felt the ropes around her wrists give a little. She tried to squelch her excitement. If she could just get out of this stupid van, she could make a run for it. Even in the dark, she knew this place better than Sasha did. Katie thought of something mundane to keep his brain moving and busy. “Did you play here as a child?”
“I didn’t grow up here,” he snapped. “My mother was Boris Karkoff’s oldest sister. She moved away from here when she was just out of high school. My grandfather arranged a marriage for her with a mafia man from another city.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t stay there.” Katie’s comment was spontaneous, but the reaction from Sasha was instant and violent.
He turned in his seat to stare at her. “My father died doing his duty! They screwed him over. That’s why my mother brought us back here. That’s why I’m better off in my uncle’s organization.”
Feeling a renewed sense of urgency, Katie slipped her hand free of the ropes. She groped behind her for some kind of weapon. The van was cluttered, but most of it wasn’t particularly useful. Then she found a length of metal rebar. She wrapped her hands around it and waited for the span of two breaths.
A set of headlights cut a swath of light across the field in front of their parked van. It was the perfect distraction. Sasha leaned forward in his seat, trying to see if there was really a car coming or not. Katie took the opportunity to swing the rebar up and over her head. It landed squarely on Sasha’s shoulder.
He grunted in pain, falling forward and lying stunned against the steering wheel. Katie scraped her nails along the inside of the door, looking for the latch. When it finally gave, she jumped headfirst out of the van.
She landed on the pavement with enough force to scrape the skin from her palms. She bit back a curse of pain and scrambled to her feet. Warm sticky blood coated her knees and made the insides of her jeans stick to her legs. She didn’t care. She had to keep moving or a few scrapes and bruises wouldn’t matter a bit.
Katie was up and running through the darkness as though the hounds of hell were right on her tail. She heard the door of the van open and then slam closed. Sasha was screaming at her. Her heart was pounding so quickly that she could hardly breathe. Her lungs burned from want of air and still she ran.
The ground was uneven. She fell several times, skinning her legs and sometimes falling face-first into a copse of thick, damp grass. Crawling the last bit, she found the copse of trees where she and Viktor had walked only a few days before. She stayed on her hands and knees and burrowed her way as far as she could toward the trunks of the trees.
Katie sucked in a deep breath and held it. She could hear nothing over the pounding of her own heart, and she wondered if Sasha had followed her or if he’d stayed with the van to see whom those headlights belonged to.
Then she heard Sasha’s harsh whisper only half a dozen yards away. “Katie! There’s no escaping from me, Katie. I’m going to find you sooner or later.” She heard a strange clicking noise, and Sasha began to laugh in an almost maniacal way. “Even if I have to burn thi
s whole fucking place down.”
Katie froze in her hiding place. Burn? She heard the clicking again. Then a bright orange light began to flicker in the darkness. As she watched in utter stupefaction, an entire tree went up in flames right before her eyes.
Oh. My. God!
Chapter Fourteen
Viktor saw the red hot glow of flames licking their way across the dryer sections of the thick trees. Denis had been charging past him and Viktor reached out to grab the man’s arm. “We have to find Katie! Sasha is trying to burn her out!”
Denis shouted to his men and they all began to approach the fiery copse of burning brush and trees that now occupied the center of the park. Viktor gripped a thick hank of Max’s ruff in one hand, trying to keep the dog from charging right into the flames. Smoke burned his lungs and made his eyes water so that he could hardly see.
“Katie!” Viktor shouted. “You have to get out of the trees, Katie!”
A dozen yards away, a tree crashed to the earth. The grass beneath it caught fire in an instant. The flames quickly jumped from dry spot to dry spot before hungrily devouring a picnic pavilion near the playground equipment. The air was full of cinders and burning bits of ash.
Viktor turned in a slow circle, trying to locate Denis and the others. He could see nothing but flames leaping into the night sky. Beside him, Max whined and fidgeted, pulling and trying to escape Viktor’s hold.
“Viktor!”
Startled, Viktor let go of Max. The animal bounded away and was instantly enveloped by the smoky night. Then Viktor saw a shape emerge from a break in the burn line. It was Sasha.
“I think you’ll have a very hard time finding your Katie now, Viktor!” Sasha cried out, his voice raspy from inhaling the smoke.
Viktor tried to remain calm. Losing his temper would do nothing. “What have you done?”
“I just lit a fire under your backside to get you motivated!” Sasha howled with amusement at his own joke.
“It doesn’t matter anymore about the women, Sasha.” Viktor sidestepped to keep clear of the flames. In the distance, he could hear sirens. No doubt one of the neighbors had dialed 9-1-1 about the fire.
“I know it doesn’t.” Sasha’s expression looked macabre in the glow of the flames. “Since my uncle is dead, nothing matters anymore. I will take over the family. I am the heir!”
“I somehow doubt Denis and the others will support your claim since you murdered your uncle and Igor.” Viktor pointed at Sasha. “Igor was Denis’s cousin.”
“Then maybe I’ll have to kill him too!” Sasha said boldly.
Denis materialized from the darkness with his men just behind him. “We’ll take it from here. Go find your woman.”
Viktor paused for a moment, probably too much of a hesitation considering the precarious circumstances. But he knew he would never see Sasha alive again in this life. Viktor caught one last glance of the man who had been both friend and adversary. Then Denis raised the barrel of his semiautomatic handgun and pressed it to Sasha’s forehead. Viktor turned before he heard the deafening bang above the crackle of the flames.
***
Katie crawled through the tangled underbrush nearly blind from the heat of the flames soaring overhead. It was hard to hear and difficult to imagine ever being able to smell something other than smoke ever again. She had been trying to head for the wide creek that ran through the center of the park. The water didn’t have a very wide path, but it was quite deep in places, and she needed the shelter from the hot flames.
Sirens blared and Katie wondered if she would make it until the firefighters managed to get this insane blaze under control. She pulled herself a little farther forward, not realizing that she was on the edge of a little hill. With a sharp yelp of surprise, she tumbled down to the bottom of a small embankment.
There was a little less smoke down here, and Katie realized that she could hear something snuffling along in the brush. Fear made her tongue-tied. Then she felt the familiar softness of silky dog fur against her arms.
“Max?”
Her dog’s white-and-blue coat was filthy, but still a welcome sight. Katie flung her arms around him, crying and sobbing as she felt a bizarre sense of relief in having him close.
“What do we do?” she whispered.
The dog seemed to know exactly what to do. He turned and whined, crawling on his belly through the brush in the opposite direction of the way that Katie had been going. Trusting Max, she followed him while keeping his tail near her fingertips as she moved through the confusing maze of shapes that had once been familiar trees, benches, and flower boxes.
“Katie!”
It took her several minutes to realize that she wasn’t hearing things.
“Katie! Please God, answer!”
“Viktor?”
Seconds later, she found herself in the familiar embrace of the man who was both friend and lover. He grabbed hold of her and began tugging her more quickly in the direction that Max was moving.
“He’s taking us to the creek,” Viktor told her. “Hurry, sweetheart. The firefighters are coming, but we need to get out of this heat. Just a little farther, Katie.”
She struggled, letting Viktor half-carry, half-drag her the last few feet. Finally she felt the cool water of the creek on her hands. She didn’t even pause. With Viktor on one side, and Max on the other, she crawled right into the running water. They found the deepest section in the middle and hunkered down as far as they could.
Katie grabbed hold of Max and held his soaking wet, furry body up against hers. It felt so good to be cold again. She knew she shouldn’t hang out in the water for too long or they would get hypothermia, but for now it felt heavenly.
***
Viktor felt the cool water envelope his body and experienced an instant sort of relief. He groped in the murky orange glow for Katie. She was holding Max. He wrapped them both in his arms, then pressed his face to Katie’s hair, smelling soot and a remaining scent of her shampoo.
“Katie,” he whispered in her ear. “I thought I had lost you.”
She turned in his arms, still holding on to Max who was floating quite calmly. “Viktor, you will never lose me. Never.”
“I’m sorry for everything I said last night.” Viktor pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I can’t believe how foolish and stupid that all seems now.”
“What? Now that we’ve come so very close to dying?” Katie was actually giggling.
“You’re such an incredible woman.” Viktor gazed around, noting that the fire had begun to burn itself down. The major fuel had all been eaten up. The only thing left was the wood and brush still damp from the early spring rains several months back. “I love you. I think I have always loved you, Katie McClellan.”
“I love you too, Viktor.” She nuzzled his chest. “I always have.”
It occurred to him that without the work Karkoff had provided for him, he had absolutely nothing but himself to recommend him. “I have no right to ask you this,” Viktor began slowly. “I have nothing but a handful of dreams.”
“I’ve never wanted any more than that,” Katie told him.
Viktor pressed a kiss to her lips. “Then marry me.”
Her laugh was like music. She gestured to the scene from the Inferno surrounding them. “You ask me a question like that right now?”
“Can you imagine a better moment?” he protested. “At this rate, we’re running out of time!”
“Hello down there!” someone shouted.
Viktor turned, seeing the yellow of a firefighter’s uniform standing on top of the embankment. Three others with fire hoses accompanied the first man who carried an ax in one hand and waved with the other. Viktor lifted his hand to show that they were okay.
“It’ll be just a bit longer,” the fireman called. “We need to get this shored up before we bring you up here.”
“We’ll be fine!” Viktor shouted. “Did you find others?”
The fireman didn’t answer, but something in
his countenance suggested they’d discovered a corpse or two while they’d been tramping through the burning brush. The men worked together like a specialized unit, the first one chopping a firebreak as the others beat the flames back with their hoses.
“Back to my question,” Viktor prodded. “Since our rescue seems to be imminent, I don’t want to miss my chance.”
“You don’t want to miss your chance?” Katie teased. “What was it we were discussing? I feel like there’s just been a lot going on lately with all of the freaking abductions I’ve been dealing with.”
“Well that’s not going to be a problem anymore, is it?”
She shuddered delicately, and Viktor was reminded that Katie had very likely witnessed the murder of two men only a few hours earlier. He held her close to his chest and gently stroked her back. As they continued to stand in three feet of water, she began to shiver.
***
Katie did not mean to torment Viktor by not answering his marriage proposal right away. She was simply trying to digest everything that had happened. Viktor had showed up so suddenly out here. What had happened? Where was Sasha? And what was going to happen to Viktor now that Karkoff was dead?
“All right,” a fireman yelled down to them. “Let’s get you two out of there. Can you walk to the base of this embankment?”
“Let go of Max. He’ll find his own way up,” Viktor urged.
Katie unwrapped her arm from the dog’s neck, realizing that her elbow had become almost locked in that position. It was nearly painful to let go. As she gazed at the distance between the embankment and the creek, she wondered if she would make it. Then, before she could even try to slog through the water, Viktor swept her off her feet and into his arms.
“What are you doing?” Katie asked with a squeak. “I think I can walk!”
“But you don’t have to and you must be exhausted.”
She looped her arms around his neck, grateful despite feeling a little ridiculous. Katie inhaled the familiar scent of him. He set her at the bottom of the embankment. One of the firemen had dropped a rope down to them.
