The sounds they would make would be soothing to his soul.
Sam stared at the cadaver on the morgue table, confused.
The stiff was Chinese. The corpse looked greenish in the blazing light. Sam shoved a hand through sweat- and blood-stiffened hair. “It doesn’t make sense,” he repeated. “The guy who questioned Sveti spoke Ukrainian. He asked about a picture her mother took six years ago, in Italy. Why would snakeheads give a shit about that? It’s old, it’s half a world away, and it’s not their stuff.”
His friend Trish’s face was calm, but he knew her well enough to read her body language. Her arms folded across her chest, mouth tight.
“He’s been positively ID’d,” she said. “Jason Kang. Born in Hong Kong. His wife was in earlier. She said he was a vicious, evil-hearted son of a bitch, and she’s glad he’s dead. He got out of the pen three months ago. He worked with Helen Wong before his stint in prison.”
“Yeah, I know. Sveti sneaked into one of their sweatshops with a live camera last year,” Sam said. “They sent her death threats.”
Trish’s shrug told him to do the math. “The wife said he didn’t speak great English. Enough for his dirty deeds, but no more.”
The implication pissed him off, but Trish was doing him a favor, letting him see the body. She’d been his friend for years. They’d been rookies together, he a patrol officer, she a criminologist. She was great; down to earth, funny, smart. She did not deserve to be snarled at.
“They all finished with you, down in headquarters?” Trish asked.
He kept staring at Kang’s greenish face. “They Mirandized me, I gave my statement. We went through it, blow by blow. Many times.”
“Who took your statement?”
“Tenly and Horvath,” he said.
“Ah, okay.” She nodded. “They’re good. What did they think about you burning down the crime scene with two of the perps inside?”
He made an irritated sound. “I was focused on saving Sveti’s life.”
“Of course you were,” Trish murmured. “At least you saved one of them for us. Good of you, to throw us a chunk of meat.”
Sam’s stomach twitched nastily, and his eyes flicked away from the dead man. “They talked to the DA,” he said. “Everybody’s okay with self-defense. It was self-evident, when they saw the shape Sveti was in.”
“Bet the DA wasn’t thrilled. Being tight with Big Daddy and all.”
“Drop it.” He was tense enough without thinking of his father.
“So, back to this girl,” Trish said. “I’ve read her anti-trafficking blog. Amazing. That’s one razor-focused woman. Nerves of steel.”
“Tell me about it,” he said bleakly. “Why the fuck would these guys be interested in Sveti’s mother?”
“Maybe they weren’t.” Trish examined her fingernails. “Does she have emotional trauma associated with her mother?”
Sam paused. “Well, ah . . . it’s hard to find any significant aspect of her life that isn’t associated with emotional trauma.”
“Is that so? Huh. What’s with the mom?”
“Suicide. Jumped off a cliff into the Mediterranean six years ago.”
Trish nodded. “Okay, moving on. Other family?”
“Her dad was murdered by the Ukrainian mob,” Sam admitted. “Concurrent with Sveti being kidnapped by organ traffickers, held for the better part of a year. Rescued just in time. They’d sold her heart. She was on the slab when the cavalry stormed in.”
Trish’s mouth dangled for a moment. “Oh, my God, Sam.”
“But these people are all dead,” he repeated. “The dad, the mom, the mafiya vor. The traffickers themselves are in a maximum-security prison, monitored by her adoptive family. This stuff is dead and buried.”
“Except for inside of her,” Trish said.
“No,” Sam repeated. “She has no history of delusional thinking.”
“She was kidnapped, Sam! And tortured! You said they were drowning her in ice water! She could be excused for being delusional!”
Sam shook his head, his jaw set. Everything Trish was saying was true, reasonable, not even remotely offensive, and yet he wanted to swat it away from himself, as if she’d accusing Sveti of malicious lying.
“Sam, you need to face the facts,” Trish said.
“Just drop it,” he said, more sharply.
Trish’s eyebrows shot up. She twitched the cover over the body and zipped it up. “Whatever,” she said. “If we’re done, I need to scram.”
“Trish,” he said, his voice weary. “I’m sorry.”
She sighed and relented. “Come on, Sam,” she urged. “Let’s go. You need to get something to eat, get some rest. Relax. You’re wrecked.”
He followed her out. Eating or relaxing were not options. He was fried. Every time the day played in his head, ass-whomping chemicals dumped into his bloodstream, as fresh as they’d been this morning.
She looked back over her shoulder. “One detail eludes me. Why were you driving this girl home at dawn? Has your dry spell ended?”
He grunted sharply in answer. “Let’s leave it.”
Her keen blue eyes narrowed. “Ah. So it’s like that, is it?”
“I wish,” he said dully. “Not on her part.”
“I see. Sorry.” She stopped next to the exit. “What’s Tenly and Horvath’s take on the thug who questioned her in Ukrainian?”
“They think what you think,” he admitted. “Stress flashbacks.”
“It’s not like anyone blames her,” Trish said. “There’s no shame in it. I’d be in a padded cell if a tenth of her shit was mine.”
He was suddenly desperate to get out of the range of Trish’s measured, pitying gaze. “I’m out of here. Going to the hospital.”
“You might want to shower and change first,” Trish suggested. “You walk into a hospital looking like that, they might just admit you.”
Sam looked down. He’d scrubbed off the worst of the mud and soot, but the sweatshirt Tenly had loaned him was stained by his leaking bandage. The shallow trough of the bullet graze over the back of his hip burned, but he knew exactly how much worse a bullet wound could be. He wasn’t complaining.
“Sam?” she called after him.
Her urgent tone swung him around again. “What?”
“This thing, this girl . . .” Her voice trailed off. “It just sounds like a world of hurt.”
Sam was silent for a beat. “That’s a good definition of her world.”
“And you really want to go there? To live there?”
“It doesn’t have to be that way!” he said, defiant. “Her world can change! Anyone’s world can change, goddamnit!”
“And you want to be the one to change it?”
He waved that away. “Let it go, Trish.”
“Just remember. Everybody deals with their own shit. And if she heard our stiff speak Ukrainian, then face it. Her wires are crossed.”
“Our stiff wasn’t the guy who questioned her,” he shot back. “Our stiff was guarding the door. We don’t have the questioner. He’s still inside the smoking wreckage, remember?”
“And did you hear this masked questioner speak in Ukrainian? A multilingual guy like you could tell the difference between Ukrainian and Cantonese, even if you don’t speak either one yourself, right?”
“I didn’t hear him talk,” he admitted. “It wasn’t a chatty moment.”
“So our Ukrainian interrogator is an equal-opportunity asshole. Maybe he has a race quota to fill, you know, for personnel.”
His jaw spasmed. Sarcasm was Trish’s coping mechanism. They all had their favorites. It was stupid and childish to be bugged by it.
Trish shook her head. “Just be careful, okay?”
“I will,” he said. “Thanks, Trish. I owe you one.”
“You owe me more than that, buddy,” she called out after him.
At the car, he dug in the backseat until he found the clothes he’d been meaning to take to the dry cleaner since
before his last bullet wound. The shirt was creased, and had stiff, discolored pits, but it was better than Tenly’s workout rag. He pulled it on. He’d still look like hell for the hospital visit, but a slightly more elevated level of hell.
He made a straight shot for her hospital room, but an elderly woman was asleep in the bed Sveti had used.
Irrational terror zinged through him. He’d left for headquarters after Becca and Nick arrived, with the understanding that she not be left alone. He’d trusted Nick to be appropriately paranoid. He’d left the explaining to Sveti, having a long day of explaining to get through himself, downtown. So where the fuck was she now?
He waylaid the first person in scrubs that he saw, a middle-aged Latina nurse with a long black braid. “Excuse me, ma’am, but where’s the girl who was in this room? Did they take her somewhere else?”
The nurse looked at the door he indicated. “Oh, yes. Her family came for her. She was discharged a few hours ago.”
“Family? Which family?”
The woman’s dark eyes widened at his barking tone. She took a step backward. “I don’t know her family,” she said coolly. “She was not my patient. She was discharged, and that’s all I know.”
“Thanks,” he called as he loped away.
He pulled out the burner phone he’d picked up this morning before going to headquarters. He’d wanted to be able to place calls, but not receive them. No scolding rants from his father, no hysterical shit fits from his sister, no stern lectures from his grandmother. He plucked Kev’s phone number out of his unassisted brain, after a few false tries.
Kev picked up. “Whom am I speaking with?”
“It’s Sam,” he said.
“Jesus! It’s about time! Where the hell have you been? Why aren’t you answering your phone? We’ve been calling all day!”
“My phone’s AWOL. I left it with Sveti by accident this morning. I’ve spent the day in an interrogation room, sorting it all out.”
“So I heard,” Kev said.
“Where did they take Sveti?” Sam demanded.
Kev paused, too damn long for Sam’s nerves. “Um, listen, Sam—”
“Nick and Becca’s? Miles and Lara’s? Cray’s Cove? Where?”
“I think Tam and Val were the ones who ended up—”
“Later, Kev.”
“Stop! Wait! Don’t go racing up there right now. Tempers are high, people are being irrational, so just chill and wait a couple of—”
“They’re pissed at me? I put my ass on the line today!” he yelled. “I killed three men for her, and they’re giving me attitude?”
Kev coughed delicately. “Your ass on the line might have counted for more if she hadn’t spent the previous night in your bed.”
Sam stopped in the corridor. People veered sideways to give him a wide berth. “You are fucking kidding me! The only reason I saw them take her was because she’d spent the night with me! She’d have been tortured to death if she’d been home alone!”
“Don’t freak. I’m not judging you. Sveti’s a big girl. She can do what she wants with any man she wants as far as I’m concerned. I just don’t want your ass kicked when you’re all wound up. Avoid the scene for a day or so. They’re protective of Sveti, and Tam’s freaking—”
“I’m not the one who was hurting her!” he shouted.
“I know that, and you know that, so chill,” Kev soothed. “There’s no place in the world that’s safer for her than Cray’s Cove, Sam, so relax. I’m heading up there with Edie tomorrow, and so are a lot of the others, so stay clear of the meeting of the clans if you—”
Sam hung up. Kev called back immediately, but he let the phone buzz unanswered. Enough of this shit. Granted, Sveti, Tam, and Val didn’t have the number of his burner phone, but none of them was stupid. They could have called Horvath or Tenly, or even the main switchboard.
He probably wasn’t fit to drive, he reflected, as he got on the road. His hands vibrated on the wheel. But he wasn’t going to fall asleep. He might never sleep again. His body tissues were marinated in adrenaline.
It was a long drive. He peeled off the interstate onto a series of smaller highways to get to Cray’s Cove. He’d been there only once, not long after the bullet wound to the lung, the one he’d gotten following Bruno Ranieri around. Tam had hosted Bruno and Lily’s engagement party, and since he’d taken a bullet in their service, he’d scored a pity invite. Tam had a visceral dislike of anyone who represented the law, but he’d been too curious not to check the place out. And anxious to get another glimpse of the remote Svetlana in her lofty tower. Way up there where the air was so thin. Just stars and clouds. The occasional bird.
She’d refused to speak to him that day, of course, being mortally pissed at the way he’d conducted his investigation. Hadn’t stopped him from looking. Staring, even, until she blushed and fled the room.
His obsession with detail, underscored by lust, had burned the directions into his brain. He reached the driveway at midnight. There it was. Tamara Steele and Valery Janos, stenciled boldly on the mailbox.
He drove up the long, winding access road, which wended along the crest of a coastal hill. The house was an architectural marvel, parts carved right into the mountainside, parts jutting out over the cliff that overlooked a private beach in an inaccessible cove.
He bypassed the small parking lot below the house and parked next to Val and Tam’s cars up in front of the garage.
The door opened as he approached. Tam’s slim form was backlit in the entrance. She held a shotgun, though she knew damn well who it was, with all those cameras on her access road.
“Where’s Sveti?” he asked.
“What are you doing here now? It’s the middle of the night!”
“I’m not in the mood for bullshit,” he said. “Take me to Sveti.”
“That girl is like my daughter, and she’s sleeping. It’s an indecent hour. Get back in your car. Go to the motel on the highway. Come back in the morning. Maybe I’ll find it in myself to be civil to you then.”
“I was there for her when she needed me, Tam, so put down your goddamn shotgun and get out of my way.”
She racked it back. The sound was loud in the gloom.
“Stop,” she warned. “I decide who walks into my house, and when. And I am absolutely capable of filling your ass with buckshot.”
“My ass isn’t pointed in your direction,” Sam said. “If you want to shoot me in the face, do it. But I don’t think Sveti will thank you for it.”
“He has a point, love.” Val appeared behind Tam.
Sam was close enough now to see Tam’s face. Her mouth was tight, her eyes and nose red and swollen.
“Val, would you just back me up for once?” she snapped.
“Of course,” Val said. “Always. Just not when you are wrong.”
Rachel appeared in the hallway, a toddler in her arms. “Mama?”
Tam’s eyes did not waver. “I told you to take Irina upstairs.”
“Mama, don’t be mad at Sam!” Rachel said earnestly. “He saved her! Sveti said so! She’d be dead if he hadn’t gone after her!”
“Go upstairs, Rachel,” Val urged.
Sam pushed past Tam and her gun, and stood there, stymied. It was a large house, and the search would be long and slow and stupid.
He turned to Val. “Where is she?”
Val’s eyes flicked to his wife and back, resigned. “East tower.”
“Goddamnit, Val,” Tam hissed.
“Face it,” Val said with a shrug. “If you are not prepared to hurt him, you cannot stop him. He saved her life. You are being foolish.”
“Fine, then,” she snarled. “I’ll just hurt you instead.”
“I was afraid of that,” Val said wryly. “I think that tonight will be a very long night.”
“This way,” Rachel said excitedly. “I’ll show you.”
The girl scampered on ahead down the corridor. Sam followed, his heart thudding. Tam and Val were on his heel
s as Rachel led him into a door that revealed an open, metal spiral staircase. Rachel’s bare feet flashed at eye level as she spiraled up, light-footed even with Irina in her arms. The toddler twisted to look down over her sister’s shoulder at Sam, making inquisitive gabbling sounds.
“Don’t wake Sveti, Rachel,” Val called. “She’s exhausted.”
Rachel pushed open the door at the top with exaggerated care, and put her finger to her lips. Irina pointed helpfully into the dark room. “Setty,” she announced, her voice shrill. “Setty sweeping.”
He was lucky there were children here. Even the thorny Tam didn’t have the stomach to blow him into bloody chunks in front of her daughters. Though she clearly considered Sveti one of those daughters.
But the thought evaporated when he entered that room. Rachel snapped on a desk lamp. Tam hissed a sharp reproof from the door.
The slender figure curled beneath the blanket on the bed stirred at the snap of the light, and turned. Her eyes looked huge and bruised in her face. She jerked up onto her elbow. The blanket fell down. She wore a thin, tight tank top, loose flannel pajama trousers. “Sam?”
His tongue felt thick, taking up too much space in his mouth. “Yeah,” he said hoarsely.
Her face crumpled. “Oh, God. Oh, Sam.”
“Setty cry?” Irina sounded worried.
“Okay. You’ve seen her,” Tam announced briskly. “Satisfied? We’ll take it from here, Sam. She needs rest. Come on. Out.”
Sam ignored her and walked toward the bed. His throat felt hot and tight, like a screw was turning in it. Every step tightened it up, to that last quarter turn that threatened to shatter the whole mechanism.
Her arms lifted up, welcoming him.
He thudded to his knees by the bed, and fell into them. He forgot Tam, the kids, Val, the rest of the world. There was only Sveti, taut and trembling. Her arms, wound around his neck, pulling him hungrily.
He pressed his wet face against her hair. For the first time all day, he could breathe.
“Out, Rachel, Irina. Go. Now.” There was steel in Val’s voice. Even Rachel responded to it. Sam barely heard the padding of little bare feet.
“Tamar,” Val urged gently. “My love. Leave them. Come on.”
In For the Kill Page 12
