Into the Shadows

by Carolyn Crane

  HE'S WORKING UNDERCOVER FOR THE GOOD GUYS.

  THAT DOESN’T MEAN HE’S ONE OF THEM.

  HE’S A KILLER.

  Thorne McKelvey knows exactly how Nadia sees him—as a brute and a killer just kinky enough to play her sexy games. And that’s how it has to stay. Leaving her was the hardest thing he ever did, but his undercover mission could blow up at any second. No way will he drag Nadia down with him.

  SHE CAN’T RISK HER HEART.

  Maybe it was foolish to fall in love with her late father’s deadliest henchman, but Nadia Volkov’s not sorry; without Thorne she wouldn’t have their beautiful little boy. There’s nothing she won’t do to protect Benny, which means she must hide his identity—especially from his father.

  Now Thorne has burst back into her home, searching for clues to a gangland mystery…and stirring a hunger Nadia hasn’t felt in two years. But Benny’s identity isn’t the only secret she’s keeping, and things are turning deadly. Can Thorne and Nadia trust each other long enough to stay alive and have a chance at happiness?

  Copyright ©2014 by Carolyn Crane

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the author. This copy is intended for the purchaser of this ebook only, or sharing as permitted by your ebook vendor.

  Cover art: Bookbeautiful

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or business establishments, organizations or locales is completely coincidental.

  Into the Shadows

  The Associates 3

  Chapter One

  Nadia Volkov flattened her back against the rough outer wall of the warehouse, face mask hot and scratchy on her cheeks, heartbeat banging in her ears. She held Arty, her tranquilizer dart pistol, loosely in her hand. Lizzie, her Glock 42, was tucked inside her shoulder holster. The guys had encouraged her to name her guns because that made it easier to talk about them in public. They all used names like Westy and Siggy. She’d teased them about it, but she liked the naming thing. It made doing these raids a little less scary.

  Be loose, she told herself, shaking her shoulders.

  The waiting was boring and tense at the same time—a difficult combination. The minutes felt endless, with nothing to do but anticipate the danger that would explode at any given moment.

  She sucked in a breath. In and out.

  And she had the simple job. If the crew were a rock band, she’d be the tambourine player. But she had to be here. She could never face herself in the mirror if she didn’t make this right. Most important, she could never look her little boy in the eyes if she didn’t make this right.

  A shriek. She froze, pulse pounding.

  Night bird.

  Breathe.

  The sheer amount of nighttime wildlife in this industrial park just outside of Tampa, Florida had shocked her the first time they’d staked the place out. The crickets chirping, the toads croaking, the rats and raccoons rustling around, the sparrows and hawks swooping. And, of course, the call of the katydids, the animal kingdom equivalent of the guy who plays his electric guitar with the amp pointed out the window. On top of that was the noise of all the cars and trucks and motorcycles on the distant streets, all with their different timbres and octaves. Sounds seemed loud when you were tense.

  “Psst.”

  Alarm speared through her as she spun around.

  Richard.

  His face mask sat like a tall mushroom cap on his head, shaggy badass hair wild underneath. “Gimme your phone.”

  She handed it over. He punched buttons, scowling as he changed the IM code. Did he think there was trouble? But he’d tell her if it was anything.

  She and Richard had developed a warm, jokey friendship over the past months, but she knew not to joke with him during a raid and not to ask extraneous questions. Like most guys in the life, Richard got into a kind of zone when danger was afoot, all scary and focused and ultra-aware, with predatory eyes that saw everything. In his gangster place, she sometimes called it. He’d been like that back when he’d worked for her father as her bodyguard. She’d once seen him break a man’s arm like it was nothing—his expression didn’t even change. Just, snap.

  He handed the phone back and left without a word.

  She looked to the far corner. One of the mercenaries had taken up his post there—the one who called himself Gold. They went by colors: Green, Blue, Black, Orange, and Gold, like in that Tarantino movie, Reservoir Dogs. Not the most original names, not that they’d care. Their measuring stick was all about how effective a thing was. As it should be, considering they were ripping off the scariest and most dangerous group of gangs imaginable. There would be no mercy if they were caught.

  She gave Gold a quick, businesslike nod and turned away, smooth and cool. She knew how to act cool when she wasn’t feeling cool, and it was something guys like Gold and Richard needed to see out of her. She’d grown up around guys like them; she understood the nuances of caper culture deep in her bones, understood how you could have fun and be loose off the job, but you had to be professional on the job. She’d even gone through a phase where she imagined cultivating the pro side in herself by getting really good at shooting—as if that would have won her father’s love.

  Her father.

  Victor, she called him now. She’d kill him herself if he weren’t already dead.

  Yelling in the distance. She looked over at Gold. He gave the level hand sign. It meant, stay cool. No problem.

  Nadia pocketed Arty and took Lizzie from her shoulder holster and checked the safety, hoping Gold didn’t notice that she’d done it a few times already. She put Lizzie back. She liked to know Lizzie had her safety on.

  Darkest before dawn, she thought as she shifted on her feet, shaking out one leg, then the other, and stretching her neck. God, it was humid. She hadn’t gotten to do her preventative pee, dammit. If worse came to worst, she’d drop her pants and pee right there. Gold wouldn’t even bat an eyelash. With these guys, it was all about taking things in stride. Off the job, they talked about shooting and lawbreaking casually, with the same weight as something stupid, like how you’d eat an Oreo. Back when Victor was running his empire out of the mansion, you’d hear guys sitting around and saying things like, “Let’s pop this guy, and then I need to stop at the post office. Or should we stop at the post office first?”

  She’d tried that in the van on the way to the first raid, going on about her love of curly fries while loading Lizzie. All it had done was to make her sound like a psycho, and when she’d looked up, Richard was laughing silently. He saw through everything.

  Well, she’d do what it took. She’d be what it took.

  Her mother needed her. Nadia wouldn’t stop until she found her and rescued her—if the woman was still alive. She had to be alive.

  Nadia tried to focus on the positive. Her own mother could be trapped right on the other side of the very wall she stood against. What would she be like? What would she look like now?

  The warehouse they were about to raid had once been part of Victor’s empire, but now it was in the hands of the Quartet, the four gangs that had divvied up her father’s lines of business after he died. It had a functioning garment distribution front like all of the Quartet co-ops, and there would be four loading bays. Those bays would lead into four locked sections. One section belonged to each criminal gang. Totally separate lines of business bunked down together in a perfectly machined underground railroad for everything il
legal.

  The garment distribution front made it seem legit.

  Nadia had taken an animal life class at the college she’d attended. She’d picked the class because it seemed easy—that was how she rolled back when she was the Party Princess. The class was actually interesting. She learned, for example, that cats that would normally fight each other over territory would drop their territorial squabbles in the face of a large food source, such as a fisherman’s wharf.

  If the Quartet gangs were cats, the co-operative warehouses would be their fisherman’s wharfs. Shared territory, an economy of scale, and convenience too good to fight over.

  A crunch in the distance.

  Gold put out the level hand, and she nodded. The crunch was one of their guys. Weird that the warehouse guards were off schedule. Over weeks of watching, they rarely saw the guards deviate from their schedule.

  The mercenaries hadn’t been eager to work with a woman not in the life, but she felt like she’d proven herself. Anyway, she had to come along.

  If she weren’t along, there would be no way that they could identify her mother. Nadia didn’t have any actual memories of her mother, but she’d found a photo of her after Victor was killed. She’d stared at it for so many hours that she felt sure she’d recognize the woman even though it had been taken thirty years ago.

  More important, her mother would recognize her birthmark and know that Nadia was her daughter, and that the men with her were good guys, rescuers, and people to cooperate with.

  Six months ago, Nadia found the bewildering photo of the girl in the dingy slip holding her as a baby. She’d recognized herself as the baby right away because of the fist-sized birthmark on her shoulder blade. She recognized the love in the young woman’s eyes, too—it was the same way Nadia looked into Benny’s eyes. But Victor had always said Nadia’s mother had died in childbirth, and that he’d burned all photos. So fierce was my grief, he would whisper violently, all bushy black eyebrows and bald head. Questions about Nadia’s mother would put him into a sullen rage. He wouldn’t even reveal her name. Suzy, he called her. But there was no record of any Suzy Volkov. Nadia had learned early on to stop asking.

  So, who was this poor, bedraggled girl looking at her with such love? Her nannies had never looked like that. And what were they doing in some dirty basement?

  The longer she stared at the photo, the more questions arose. Finally she’d called Richard, her former bodyguard, to see if he could explain it. Could this babysitter know something about her dead mother? Nadia had always been desperate for any information about her mother. As a new mother herself now, it was even more important.

  Richard had come by a few days later. He’d taken a look at the photo, and his face had gone pale. Shit, he’d said.

  Just that. One word.

  She’d pressed him, and he’d mumbled something about rumors. He wouldn’t tell her until he’d checked out his suspicions. Richard had called in a few favors and had even threatened an old boyfriend of his—a runner in a rival gang—to get the leads. A week later, he had the story.

  The good news is that your mother is possibly alive. They’d been out on the front porch of the mansion when Richard had told her.

  Nadia’s heart had lurched, and tears had filled her eyes—tears of joy and disbelief. He told her that the young girl in the photograph was her mother. Her mother! She’d had dozens of questions, but Richard stopped her and filled her in on the rest of it. In addition to money laundering, drugs, and guns, Victor ran a deeply buried side business of brothels of illegal immigrants. Victor had taken one of the girls for his own for a spell—Nadia’s mother. The girl had became pregnant and given birth. Victor had taken Nadia away from the girl when Nadia was just weeks old, leaving her mother inside that brothel system, with an extra incentive for her overlords to keep her alive as a potential organ donor for Nadia, just in case.

  The brothels fed into sweatshops when the women got too old to turn tricks. That’s where her mother would be now.

  Nadia had gripped the carved stone railing, stunned by the horror of it, by the idea of her father doing that to women—the unimaginable misery and degradation of forced prostitution, and then to work in sweatshops. And all the while, Nadia and her half sister, Kara, had grown up in luxury. She nearly vomited when she got it that even the clothes she wore would have been earned in part through the enslavement of women like that—including her own mother. Not only that, but to have her baby ripped from her arms!

  Nadia’s little boy had been just over a year old at the time, and Nadia couldn’t comprehend the horror of somebody taking Benny from her like that.

  What was left of the Party Princess had died that day, along with her love for her late father.

  The picture had turned up in a hidden strongbox discovered during HVAC repair work. The box also contained a CD of computer files—the full operational details of Victor’s empire. She’d wanted to turn it over to the police or the Feds and get their help finding her mother, but Richard had cautioned her not to. Victor had been protected at all levels of government, including the very highest levels. The Quartet had that protection now.

  It’s the fastest way to get your mother killed, he’d said.

  Then I’ll tear the fucking Quartet apart myself, she’d vowed.

  Richard had convinced her to take the time to plan it right, and Nadia had quickly seen the wisdom of it.

  Plan slow, strike fast, Victor had always said.

  She’d begged Richard to help. She’d promised him her part of the sale of the mansion—millions of dollars—to be her ally in the search, and he’d agreed. He’d moved into the place and they’d started hard-core planning and training. Along the way, they’d developed a fierce and unexpected friendship. He’d been such a silent hard-ass as her bodyguard; she’d never known how smart and fun he was. Of course, she’d been a shit back then.

  Nadia had longed for a mother all her life. She’d felt so alone—as a little girl, as a teen, as a new mother herself. But it was her mother who’d needed her all along. Her mother was alone, frightened, and maybe even sick and broken. Could she still feel joy? Could Nadia begin to help her repair? How much could a woman go through?

  All these years!

  Her mother needed her to be fierce now. And her boy, Benny, deserved better than a sadistic criminal for a grandfather, a murderous absentee father, and a mother who was too cowardly to make things right.

  She and Richard pulled together the best in the business and planned down to the last detail. It was still dangerous as hell, of course. If anything did happen, Benny had Kara, who was a second mother to him. Possibly even a more competent mother, in some ways. And Kara loved Benny beyond reason. They both did.

  On the first raid, she and Richard pulled fifteen women out of a dirty barracks. Half slept on cots, and half were shackled to industrial-sized sewing machines. She and Richard used the bolt cutters to free them. They had hunches in their backs and wore clothes they’d clearly made themselves, bright and simple.

  She’d been heartbroken that her mother hadn’t been among them, but her family money had come off their backs, too. The debt she owed them could never be repaid, but freeing them was a start. On the way back, she’d shown the women the photo of her mother with her as a baby. None of them recognized her.

  Maybe tonight.

  A car engine. She looked over at Gold. He held up one finger this time.

  She strapped Arty into her belt holster and touched Lizzie’s cool steel. The car circled the building slowly. Two men. Her pulse shot up. The crickets and katydids screamed. The wind pushed the clouds across the moon.

  A few minutes later, the car came around again.

  She always had the weird sensation that lights and colors got brighter when the action started.

  The guards had their car windows open, which was good. The knockout darts couldn’t go through glass, which would mean moving to plan B, which made more noise.

  At the signal, Nadi
a took off running. This was her part of the job.

  Gold shot—one, two, three. The men slumped in their seats as the car rolled on. No horn sounded, which was a boon. There was always the danger that the driver would hit the horn with his head.

  She caught up to the still-moving car and yanked open the door. It was up to her to move the car and guards out of the way while Richard and the hired guns headed in.

  She sat on top of the driver to get at the brakes. It was uncomfortably intimate, sitting on a passed-out man’s lap and fumbling between his legs to get her foot on the brakes. She stopped the car and put it into park. She ran around and lowered the passenger seat, then went back around and heaved and rolled the unconscious driver over onto the passenger seat on top of his companion. She’d rehearsed this with the guys, sitting on each of their laps to stop the car. Then they’d play dead, and she’d muscle them over to the passenger side and take over the car. They’d needed to see that she could do it as much as she needed the practice. The timing had to be right, too. One screwup, and they were in trouble.

  Once he was out of the way, she took the driver’s seat and drove the car over to the shadowed end of an outbuilding. Quickly, she checked her phone. No IM from Richard. He should’ve IMed.

  Was something wrong?

  Go forward, she told herself. She texted that her part was done, took their walkie-talkies and guns, and stuck all the stuff in her cargo pants pockets. Then she took off running back to the warehouse.

  Back in her days as Party Princess, she’d sometimes worn cargo pants with sparkly tank tops. She’d roll the legs up to mid-calf and pair them with outrageous heels and jewels—everything tight, hot, and bright to offset the baggy, masculine look of the pants. She never would have imagined she’d be wearing cargo pants for what they were intended for—to carry knives, flash grenades, night vision goggles, and hooks and lines and things. Stuff for handling the unforeseen during a raid.