In For the Kill

by Shannon McKenna

  “No! You don’t have to hurt Sam! Call your man off! He won’t look for me! We broke up, understand? Badly! He hates me now!”

  “It’s probably already taken care of by now, Svetlana. Resign yourself.” Hazlett’s eyes were gloating. “And don’t lie. I saw the way he looked at you. You excite violent feelings, as you did in me. Renato, too. Even Josef. He wants to do the honors himself, when the time comes. You have panting admirers right and left.” He patted her cheek with the hand not holding the gun. She twisted, tried to bite him.

  He yanked his hand free and whacked her in the face with the hand that held the gun. “Snotty bitch,” he hissed. “You never learn.”

  She reeled for a second, head ringing, but lunged to spit in his face as soon as she could see straight. He punched her in the belly.

  She pitched off her chair and thudded to the floor on her side, gasping for air. Hazlett’s flushed face hung over hers, the sour tang of wine heavy on his breath. “We’re going for a drive. What Josef has in mind for you requires soundproof walls. Lucky you’re so tiny. You’ll fit perfectly in my rolling suitcase. Like a helpless little rag doll.”

  She struggled frantically, kicking and flailing. Hazlett pinned her while Renato knelt down by her, grinning. He brandished a spray bottle.

  “I love it when they go limp,” he said, with relish.

  He squirted. She gasped, sputtered. His hideous face swelled like a balloon, distorting until it filled her entire field of vision.

  Huge wings, beating. The harsh shriek of a raptor rending her ears, as it swooped down to rip and gouge and feed on fresh hot flesh.

  And then, nothing.

  The shotgun blast from the Saiga 12 that knocked out the lock on Pavel Cherchenko’s back door was deeply satisfying.

  Sam swung open the ruined door. Grateful to the departed mafiya asshole Sveti had gut-shot yesterday for posthumously donating his shotgun and his sintered breaching rounds to the cause. Thank God he’d urged Sveti to take the new car. The old one was waiting for him, right where Sveti had left it, with its bloodstained arsenal still in the trunk. The shotgun really should have been part of the evidence collection.

  Tough shit. He needed it more right now.

  The house was dimly lit. No alarm went off, no one challenged him. He was almost disappointed. Putting a slug into someone’s chest would suit his mood. But the rats had abandoned the burning ship. After years in police work, he knew just how cruel people could be to one another, and it still chilled him to think of them leaving a kid locked in a basement to die alone in the dark. That was unfathomably cold.

  He kept the gun at the ready as he kicked doors open, calling out, making lots of noise. He found a staircase leading down, and finally heard the kid’s muffled voice through the walls and doors.

  “Here! I’m here!” Misha yelled.

  At the foot of the stairs was a long corridor. The doors that opened off it led to storage rooms, a huge garage with multiple vehicles cloaked in canvas, and what appeared to be a data center full of computer equipment. At the end of the corridor was a door with a barred steel gate mounted on it. A jail cell for rebellious sons.

  To think how he’d whined about his own tragic daddy issues.

  “I’m here! In here!” The kid’s voice was high and trembling. The door rattled as he pounded on it.

  “Stand back,” Sam instructed. “Way back. As far as you can.”

  He heard scrambling footsteps. “I’m against the back wall now!”

  Sam slid the last sintered metal breaching round into the shotgun, slid back the bolt. Boom.

  There was a twisted hole where the lock had been. The door inside had a knob lock that yielded to a single violent kick, which ripped the stitches in his inner thigh. A flash of agony, and blood flowed, staining his pants. Fuck. Onward. He staggered forward into the dark hole.

  The light did not go on when he flicked it. It was a storage closet, pitch-dark, with no ventilation. The stench of urine made his eyes water. What father would do this to his own child? It defied biology.

  “Misha?” he called out.

  The boy shuffled into the light, squinting. There were some bottles of water, a few packages of junk food lying on the floor. Nothing else.

  “Are you okay?” he asked. “It’s Sam. It’s all right now.”

  Misha covered his eyes with his arm to block out the light. “I did not think you would really come.” His voice quavered.

  “Come on,” Sam urged. “We have to get out of here. Fast. Move it.”

  Misha could not move faster than that dreamy shuffle. He flinched when Sam seized his upper arm. He was so thin. Nothing to him but bones and skin. As he lurched out into the corridor, Sam saw that he’d been badly beaten. Nose broken, both eyes blackened.

  “Misha,” he said more gently. “You’ve been through hell and you’re all messed up, but I need your help, and I don’t have much time. Can you pull it together? Can you help me find that signal, for Sveti?”

  Misha nodded. “I can do it,” he said hoarsely. “I’ll find her.”

  “Then let’s get to it.” Sam got behind him, nudging him along.

  Misha led the way, shaking off Sam’s helping hand.

  “Where are we going?” Sam asked, as they climbed the stairs.

  “My father’s study,” Misha said.

  The study was a big, wood-paneled room with a huge desk of polished mahogany. A slim laptop sat upon it. Misha sat down in front of it and punched the keys, his pallid, discolored face eerily lit with the computer’s glow. His fingers were a chattering blur. Sam stared over his shoulder and ground his teeth, until he saw the map. An icon, blipping.

  “She’s moving,” Misha said. “The Autostrada. Near Salerno.”

  She could be in the trunk. Or joyriding with Hazlett in his fucking Ferrari, scarf fluttering behind her, no clue about her mortal peril. “Here’s how this is going to work,” he told Misha. “Charge up that phone and sit down, because we’ll be on it nonstop until Sveti is with me. You don’t take your eye off that icon until I tell you that you can.”

  “No, I am coming with you, with the chiavetta.” He held up a router. “We will get coverage on the way with this.”

  Sam’s blood roared in his ears. “You aren’t going anywhere,” he said. “You’re staying right here, where it’s safe. You are a kid.”

  “Kid?” Misha’s voice dripped with irony. “Me? Safe? Where?”

  Sam hissed through his teeth. “Okay, so you’re not a normal kid, that I’ll concede. But you’re still fourteen, and I’m responsible for you.”

  “I’ve been responsible for myself since before my mother died.”

  “I don’t give a fuck who you think is responsible for you. I let you out of that room, so I’m responsible now. And I say you stay here.”

  Misha’s fingers clicked. The screen went dark. He snapped the laptop closed. “Okay,” he said. “Take the laptop. Guess my father’s password. Figure out how to use the program. Find the code for the RF frequency of Sveti’s tag, all by yourself.”

  Sam’s jaw dropped. “You manipulative little shithead.”

  Misha crossed his arms over his thin chest. His eyes blazed defiantly from his pallid face. “I have been called worse.”

  “I’m sure you deserved it. Do you want to help Sveti or not?”

  “Of course I want to help Sveti,” Misha said haughtily. “Sasha would want that. But if you want my data, you cannot leave me here.”

  Sam pulled out the Glock and pointed it at Misha’s thigh. “Not happening, kid. Sorry.”

  Misha stared at the gun, then at Sam’s face.

  “I won’t kill you,” Sam said. “But I will turn your quadricep into red paste. And trust me. It will never be the same again, no matter what they do to it. You have ten seconds to pull that icon up again.”

  Misha gazed at him for a long moment, his face expressionless. “Do you remember the man who was with me when you and Sveti came to the house a fe
w days ago?” he asked.

  Sam did not lower the gun. “Yeah,” he growled. “Why do you ask?”

  “That was Andrei,” Misha said. “He was the closest thing I had to a friend. Of course, he would have put a gun in my mouth if my father had told him to. But I do not blame him for that.”

  “That’s big of you,” Sam said grimly. “What about him?”

  “My father was angry when he found you had been here. Andrei was just a warm body, not very smart. No one told him anything. But I knew. Papa had Andrei beaten to death in front of me. To punish me.”

  “Jesus,” Sam muttered. “And you’re telling me this exactly why?”

  A smile flashed over Misha’s face. He opened a drawer in the desk, pulled out a dagger with a jeweled handle, and laid it down. Then he took out a Walther PPK and a full magazine. He slid it into the gun, locking it in place. As if he didn’t give a fuck whether Sam shot him or not.

  “Put that down,” Sam scolded. “You’re fourteen, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I would like to reach fifteen,” Misha said. “I grew up around men who would shoot me in the leg if it was convenient for them. I know these men. You are not one of them. You cannot shoot my leg, Sam Petrie. Do not tell me that you can. It makes you look stupid. We are wasting time, and Sveti is in danger. This argument is finished.”

  Sam lowered the Glock. Christ, his groin hurt. His jeans were blood soaked to the knee, starting to dry stiff. “Fuck,” he muttered.

  “It is not a bad thing,” Misha said, by way of consolation. “I did not mean it as an insult.”

  “That makes me feel so much better,” he growled.

  CHAPTER 28

  The heavy drone in her head hummed beneath the images of blood and bones. Not until the drone lowered in pitch and she began to bump and lurch did she pull it together consciously. She was in the trunk of a car, and they’d turned off the highway, onto a smaller road, with stomach-churning twists and dips. She was folded up, arms still bound. Her shoulders hyperextended. Her hands were almost numb.

  Liv’s ring. She struggled to get the little blade snapped out, but no matter how she twisted and strained, she could not get her forefinger positioned so that she could get the blade near the plastic ratchet tie.

  She snapped the blade back into position as the car slowed and finally rolled to a jolting stop. Car doors popped open. She heard the rumble of masculine voices. They were arguing. What a surprise.

  The lock mechanism rattled. The trunk popped open.

  Hazlett and Renato gazed down. The look on their faces reminded her of the hot glow that had always been in Yuri’s eyes after beating her. To think she’d scolded Sam for playing dominating power games in bed. With what breath she had left, between one screaming orgasm and the next. But she’d scolded Sam out of sheer habit. To keep him at a distance. To keep her feelings for him in a little locked box that she could open or close at will. Embarrassed by her desire for him, ashamed of his power over her body. Now she could see Sam’s passionate generosity so clearly. It shone in her memory like a star, compared to the less-than-human emptiness that squirmed in these two men’s eyes.

  She closed her eyes against it. She had no one to blame but herself. She’d fucked up colossally. She’d failed everyone: Mama, Papa. Her Seattle family. They were flying blind into a death trap, just because they loved her. The little girl in the cave, flowers twining around her rib cage, abandoned and unavenged. The entire goddamned city of Rome, for fuck’s sake. She’d failed them all.

  And Sam. She wondered if the killer had gotten to him yet. If Sam were sedated, or even aware enough to defend himself. He would have no reason to suspect someone in a lab coat, handling his IV.

  Oh, please, Sam. Stay sharp.

  “Awake already, I see,” Renato said. “I gave you less than a half dose. I want you awake when we detonate the bomb.”

  “Fuck you,” Sveti croaked hoarsely.

  “Oh, please. A young lady of culture can do better than that. Josef, take her inside.”

  Josef sauntered up between them. The distilled malevolence on his scratched, swollen face made her shudder. One of his eyes was bandaged. “I am going to make your death last a long time, cunt,” he said in Ukrainian. “And I will pay special attention to your eyes.”

  She looked up at Hazlett. “Sam?”

  Hazlett frowned. “Your pit bull does nothing but give me trouble. When my person stopped by, he’d already left the hospital. And in his condition! The man is deranged!”

  Tears sprang to her eyes. It made her dizzy. Hope, fear, in equal measure. The more hope roared up, the more fear tried to quench it.

  If Sam was on his feet and moving, he had a chance. Oh, please.

  “I will find that son of a bitch,” Josef rasped. “I will do things to him that you could not even imagine.”

  Unfortunately, with her background, her imagination was unusually fertile. But that was a road she didn’t want to go down.

  Josef stuck his enormous hand between her legs and got a painfully tight grip on her crotch. He hoisted her over his shoulder.

  Her face bumped Josef’s massive back. She twisted and strained to get a sense of her surroundings. They were at the coast. She smelled salt in the air. She caught glimpses of a house. More modern and more modest than the Villa Rosalba. She heard the dull, faraway roar of waves crashing before she was carried indoors.

  Lights flicked on, assaulting her eyes. She was tossed onto the floor, smacking her skull against the tiles so hard, she almost fainted.

  Josef knelt next to her. “I don’t think you’re tied tight enough, bitch,” he said. “Let’s turn you inside out. Make those pretty tits pop.”

  He seized her feet and cuffed them with one of the plastic ties, ratcheting it tight. He jerked her ankles up and fastened them to the bindings at her wrists, bending her backward into a bow. She couldn’t curl up to protect herself if he kicked or stabbed her. He sat back on his heels and pulled out a knife. Held her shirt out taut, slicing the fabric. Buttons popped and rattled on the floor.

  “This is just the beginning, you sneaky whore,” he whispered as he spread her shirt open. “I can’t wait to play with you.”

  The tile was so cold against her bare skin. It burned, like ice.

  He cupped her breast. Pinched her nipple until she cried out.

  “Not now, Josef,” Renato snapped from somewhere across the room. “You’ll have all the time in the world to play later, but you have to set up this video equipment for us! Stay focused!”

  Josef snorted in annoyance. One final, horrible pinch that made her writhe and flop, and he left her, shuddering with horror.

  Facing away from them, she couldn’t see what they were doing. All she could do was stare out through glass doors that opened onto a veranda. Some minutes later, Renato and Hazlett strolled over to look down at her twisted, exposed body. Both were sipping brandies.

  Hazlett clucked his tongue. “Josef, Josef. What have you done,” he chided. “Embarrassing the poor girl.”

  “What a bad, bad boy,” Renato said.

  The two men exchanged glances and sniggered.

  “Nothing like a pair of lovely breasts to greet the day, hmm?” Hazlett offered.

  “A chi lo dici.” Renato lifted his glass. Clink. They laughed.

  Sveti had never hated them more violently than in that moment.

  “It is finished,” Josef said, from the other side of the room.

  “Excellent. Josef, lift Svetlana up, so we can all see the setup.”

  Josef’s hard fingernails dug into her armpits. He hoisted her up, giving her a swift glimpse of the terrace before she was turned to face the rest of the room. It was large, extending out onto a rocky headland. Beyond that, nothing. The sky had lightened, from black to deep blue.

  The place had the air of an abandoned vacation house, deeply chilly, with the faint hint of damp and mold. A large monitor was set up, connected to a laptop on a nearby table. It had a split scre
en. On one was a view of the Spanish Steps, and the Trinità dei Monti church at the top. Near it was a handsome flesh-toned building, presumably the Hassler. The other screen’s vantage point was from an angle. It zoomed in on the hotel’s elegant but understated lobby entrance on the street.

  “We’ll know the minute they arrive,” Hazlett said, sounding pleased with himself. “That will be our cue.”

  Sveti coughed to loosen her throat. “Where’s the camera located?”

  “An apartment owned by Cherchenko,” Renato said. “Conveniently located to give us this visual. Isn’t that handy?”

  “Do you see that white Telecom Italia van parked by the gate?” Hazlett asked. “That’s our bomb. Josef assures us it will take out the entire hotel and a good bit of the buildings around it. It’s wired to a phone inside the van. All I do is dial a number, and ka-boom.”

  “All that death and destruction, just to entertain you.” Her voice cracked with loathing. “You sick, perverted son of a bitch.”

  “Not at all,” he said. “I’m as clear as a bell. Destruction is not necessarily a bad thing, my dear. It’s always good for someone. I’m just careful to make sure that someone is invariably me.” He sipped at his brandy and glanced at his watch. “Almost time. It’ll be so stimulating to watch this with you, Svetlana. You have the biggest stake.”

  “And me?” Renato asked sourly. “I have a beautiful apartment and two priceless Picassos that will be worthless in a half an hour!”

  “I said I’d compensate you, Renato. Don’t nag and carp, please.”

  “You can’t compensate the loss of a Picasso!” Renato bitched. “You have no soul, Michael. You cannot possibly understand that kind of loss.”

  Hazlett waved that away and turned back to her. “Although I don’t feel emotions the way you do, I enjoy watching them. The dread, the terror, the buildup.” He chuckled. “Rather sexual, come to think of it.”

  “You call the destruction of irreplaceable property and priceless artwork sexual? I call it stupid and wasteful!”