The Darkest Hour (Running with the Devil Book 1)

by Jasmin Quinn

  And then Anto. “That’s just one finger, Dean. On her right hand,” he said coldly, no hint of hostility or anger. “For every hour you make Lukov wait here at the warehouse, I will do another finger. Until they are all broken. Then I will start cutting them off. One by one. On the hour. Then I will start on her left hand.”

  “Fuck you, Anto,” Dean said. And the line went dead.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Dean sat in the pathfinder, twisting the phone in his hands, looking at it, but not seeing it. His mind was racing. He was a good cop, he knew how to handle himself, he knew how to adapt to any situation, and he knew how to fuck with the bad guys. But he also knew when the bad guys weren’t buying his act. He’d had to try to convince the Russians that Kelsie was just a means to an end, maybe buy him some time, but they weren’t fooled by his show of bravado.

  He’d made a mistake when he gave up the Russians to the Chinese pawnbroker. That was stupid. He didn’t do stupid very often. A bad lapse in judgement. And now he had some serious damage control to do. He started the pathfinder; he wasn’t going to make the meeting with his handler. That was no longer the most urgent “to do” on his list. The priority was getting to Kelsie, somehow getting her to safety. Then he could go from there, if he made it out alive.

  He started the pathfinder and shifted it into gear, pulling away from the curb and heading to the dockyards.

  He glanced at his watch, it was just after 9pm. He could be there in 40 minutes if he stepped on it and if nothing got in his way. He made a sudden lane change and accelerated. Kelsie needed him to be there in 40 minutes. That’s all he needed to know.

  Dean pulled over a couple of kilometres from the Russian’s warehouse – about a mile he estimated. Obviously, it wouldn’t do for him to drive right up to the front doors. He threw the burner cell on the passenger seat, then got out of the pathfinder. As he closed the car door softly behind him, he reached for his gun. He wondered about his stamina, the wound in his side was healing, but it was going to be one fucking ugly scar. He exhaled grimly. That would be a fitting eulogy.

  He looked at his watch, 45 minutes gone. He had 15 minutes to get in and get to Kelsie. He started to jog. Dean could run a 6-minute mile if he had to, but that would leave him winded and vulnerable. So he slowed his pace, a 10 minute mile would be nothing to him. If he didn’t make it, at worst, they’d break another finger. His stomach twisted at the thought of that happening to her, the thought of her being alone with those bastards and so vulnerable. It wasn’t right that he finally found a woman he wanted to be with, only to lose her so quickly. He could feel his anger growing; his rage propelling him forward.

  He had the warehouse in his sights when he stopped and looked at his watch. 7 minutes. He reigned in his emotions. Rage, sadness, love – none of these was going to save Kelsie. He needed to be impassive, cool, deadly. It was back to business; the lovesick outraged jackass would have to wait in the wings.

  He bent over at the waist to make himself smaller, holding his gun in both hands so that he had a better aim should he need to shoot. As he silently moved closer to the building, he ran over the layout of the property in his head. He’d been there many times, enough to know entrances and exits, the few possible hiding places. It would be guarded so he’d have to approach carefully. He didn’t want to have to shoot the guards – that would give him away. They’d know he was here. Fuck, they knew he was here anyway.

  But if he could sneak up on the guards, he could take them out quietly. He approached the parking lot – there were two cars and a rusted old van that had been sitting there since he’d gone undercover. The cars were parked directly in front of the entrance, the van was a little off to one side, near the side of the building. It would be a good cover for him as he approached the building. He did a quick scan, and then ran swiftly and silently to the van. As he dropped down behind it he took a quick look under it, then peeked in the windows. Looked empty. Another glance at his watch. 3 minutes.

  Where were the fucking guards? There were usually two here, patrolling. They’d be expecting him. Or did Lukov call them off – did the Russian bastard think he was going to just walk into the warehouse? He sat down and leaned against the van, rubbing his forehead with his free hand. That’s exactly what Lukov expected him to do. Walk into the warehouse, exchange his life for hers. It would buy him some time if he did that. Savisin was out of the country, wasn’t that what Anto said – and they were going to have to wait to finish him off until he got back.

  But could he get Kelsie out – could he trust Lukov to let her go? He glanced down at his watch. 2 minutes. He had to decide now, he had to move. He took his gun and slid it under the van, where he could get to it later. Then he moved silently away from the van and into the shadows of the building. He took a deep calming breath, straightened up to his full height, raised his hands and placed them on the back of his head. Then he stepped out of the shadows. He made it only three steps before the guards were on him. One holding a gun to his head while the other patted him down. No weapons, no nothing. They were talking loudly in Russian as they hurried him inside.

  As Dean was shoved into the warehouse, he did a quick scan. No smell of blood, a good sign. No Chinese, just Lukov, Anto and Viktor. And the two guards behind him, guns trained on him. And Kelsie, tied to a chair, deathly pale, eyes closed, head limp. His heart ached for her. His head told his heart to stand down.

  “Dean!” Anto shouted merrily. He was standing close to Kelsie, holding pliers in his hand, but now he dropped them on a table and strode away from her, towards Dean. Kelsie jerked her head up and looked across the room, at Dean, into his eyes. Her expression was as impassive as his. He couldn’t tell anything about her – how badly hurt she was, if she was in shock. All he could see were her eyes, assessing him and then they cleared, and he could see her relief and her fear.

  His attention was dragged away from Kelsie as Anto approached him. “You’re just in time. I almost had to break another finger.” He walked directly up to Dean, grabbed him by the shoulders and kneed him in the testicles. The pain shot through Dean as he pitched forward onto the floor, curling into a fetal position while he grabbed his groin and tried his best not to vomit. He dimly heard Kelsie cry out and then Anto squatted next to him, close to his ear and quietly said, “I owed you that. The rest will look like a fucking cake walk now.” Then he stood up.

  Lukov was standing over him now too. He said to the guards in Russian. “Get him up. Take his coat and shirt off, tie his hands and string him up. Gag him. If he fights you, shoot him in the foot.” He walked away then, back to where Kelsie was sitting. The guards stripped him of his jacket and his shirt, tied his hands with a rope, then hooked it to a chain that was strung up over a beam. They stretched him up so that his toes were just touching the floor, preventing him from using the concrete as leverage to kick out with his feet.

  Dean said nothing, did nothing, kept his face impassive. His balls hurt like hell and he hoped there would be a little more time between that last kick and the next one. This beating he was about to take, he understood. He had done it to others in the past. It was not the frenzied brutal deaths dished out by street punks. It was a way to stretch a man’s death out over days, not minutes, not hours. It was brutal way to die, but it also bought him some time. Dean understood that. And he hoped that by submitting to it, it bought Kelsie back her life.

  Dean could hear Kelsie sobbing in the background, pleading with the Lukov to let Dean go. Then Anto, slapping her face, telling her to shut the fuck up. Which quieted her, she was still crying, but softly, locking her emotions back inside. Dean grimaced. He was going to have a long talk with Anto when he got the chance. He didn’t dare look at Kelsie now. Not because he was ashamed of being this vulnerable – this was just another day at the office for him. But if he saw her vulnerability, he would lose his composure. And he needed it now, more than anything. He needed all his mental and emotional reserves for what was about to happen. />
  Lukov and Anto were speaking in Russian about Kelsie. Lukov handed his phone to Anto and said, “Call The Judge. I want her out of here.”

  Anto stepped away from Lukov, and walked towards Dean, stopping a few steps from him. He dialled a number and put the phone to his ear. His hard, icy eyes stared into Dean’s as he spoke in English into the phone. “It’s Anto. She’s here. Come and get her. Now.”

  The Judge said something and Anto shook his head. “No. We can’t meet. We have our hands full with her boyfriend. You come here.”

  His cold gaze never wavered from Dean’s as he listened and then said. “To the back of the building, by the overhead doors. No one will see.”

  The Judge replied. Then Anto asked, “When?”

  He listened then nodded. “Yes.” And then added, for Dean’s sake. “Don’t worry. He didn’t hurt her.”

  He walked back to Kelsie as he hung up the phone and threw it over to Lukov, who deftly caught it and put it on the table. Anto said in Russian, “He’ll be here at 11. He asked us to wait until she was gone. I told him we would.”

  “Why the fuck did you do that?” Lukov snarled at him, tossing back another shot of vodka.

  “Because he asked us to, Boss.” Anto grinned as he reached for the bottle of vodka and poured a good measure into his glass.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Kelsie sat very still, as the hour ticked slowly by. She couldn’t look at Dean. They hadn’t let him down, they kept him strung up. It was torture and she couldn’t bear to see him like that. She wanted to scream at them, at everyone. They’d sent the guards back outside, at least she assumed. Everything was in Russian now, no English. Viktor left too after a brief exchange with Lukov, going upstairs to the offices. There was a pecking order with these Russians, she thought, filing that away – but she had a little trouble understanding why Lukov was the boss and not Anto.

  She wasn’t afraid for herself any more, The Judge was coming to get her and take her away. And it was very clear that the orders were that she be unharmed. Anto had pushed her dislocated finger back in place, which hurt almost as much as when he dislocated it. But she didn’t scream this time, just gritted her teeth as he popped it back into the socket. Then he splinted it to her other finger and wrapped it. Lukov sneered something in Russian to him, but Anto just shrugged.

  And then they waited for The Judge. Malcolm. The Judge. It made sense to her. He ran the Vancouver region, he had a lot of influence, a great way to line his pockets. If what Dean suspected about him was true, that he saw her as something more than his assistant, then she could leverage that once he picked her up. She could promise him whatever he wanted in exchange for Dean’s life. Then when the dust settled, when she knew he was safe, she’d turn the son-of-a-bitch in. Her dad would help her. He was a hard man, but he wouldn’t overlook something this offensive.

  She heard the soft purr of a motor, and both Anto and Lukov rose quickly. “He’s here,” Anto said as he cut her hands and feet free. He reached up and brushed back her hair, looking into her eyes. “Behave yourself.”

  He grabbed her by the upper arm, pulling out a gun with his free hand. “A precaution,” he told her when he saw her startled face. Her eyes flew to Dean’s and she saw his look of relief as she was dragged out of the warehouse. Lukov was standing outside already, next to a sleek, black town car. As they approached, he opened the back door, took a quick look inside and then nodded at Anto. Anto shoved her into the car as Lukov closed the door behind her. Not a single word was exchanged between anyone. The car was already in motion.

  Kelsie looked at the driver and then the man in the back seat, sitting beside her. “Oh my god,” she gasped. “Dad. I don’t understand… you’re The Judge?”

  Randall was looking at Kelsie’s face, looking for signs of trauma, indecision written on his features. Then he made up his mind. He nodded, “Yes, I am The Judge.”

  Kelsie turned in her seat, staring straight ahead, trying to comprehend the situation. She crossed her arms defensively as the pieces clicked into place. Her father, her father, was in bed with the Russian mafia. “How long –” she started but Randall stopped her.

  “Shut up, Kelsie. We’ll talk when we’re home.”

  Randall closed the front door behind them as he and Kelsie stepped into the foyer of his house.

  “What do you need?” Randall asked, the concern in his voice not reaching his eyes.

  Kelsie spun around to face her father. “I need answers, dad!” Her voice came out hoarsely. She tried to not to betray the emotions whirling around inside her. She hadn’t had a drink of water in hours, she felt dirty and nauseated, her finger throbbed with pain, and she was sick with fear for Dean’s life.

  “Kelsie, let’s get you cleaned up first –”

  “No, no, no!” Kelsie cut him off desperately, hearing her voice crack. “Dean is going to die! We have to go back. You have to talk to them, get them to let him go!” She was so exhausted, she was swaying on her feet.

  Randall grabbed Kelsie by the upper arm and pulled her out of the foyer into his den, pushing her gently onto a leather sofa. “Take a breath, Kelsie and pull yourself together.” He stood in front of her, hands on his hips. “What makes you think I have any influence?”

  Kelsie looked up at him. “I’m sitting here, aren’t I?” She settled her voice again, having learned from a very young age that crying and yelling wouldn’t work on her father. She needed to maintain her composure to get what she wanted from him. She blinked the tears from her eyes.

  Randall walked over to the bar and pulled two whiskey tumblers toward him. He poured himself a measure of scotch, added a splash of water, then filled the second glass with water. He picked them both up, walked back to Kelsie and handed her the water.

  “Thank you,” she said automatically as she took the proffered glass.

  “Kelsie,” Randall sat down beside her, he reached toward her with his free hand, took her hand in his, ran his thumb gently down the splint. “You’re nothing to them. They got what they wanted, there was no need to keep you.”

  Kelsie looked around her father’s den. Big windows, covered in heavy expensive drapes, a large masculine oak desk, a wall of bookshelves, soft expensive leather chairs. She suddenly felt sick.

  “So why didn’t they just kill me? Why hand me off to you?” She knew the answer, but she wanted to hear him say it.

  “Because Kelsie, I told them where they could find you.”

  “Why?” Kelsie asked, a quaver in her voice, but she kept her emotions reigned in, the way her father liked it. “Why did you do that? No one else knew where we were.”

  Randall ran a hand through his grey hair. He was a tall man, not yet 60, still a full head of hair, even if it was thinning. “It was only a matter of time. They had your plate number, that Chinese punk saw the two of you together.”

  “So, they called you?”

  “Yes.” Randall nodded. “Malcolm had already called, he was worried about you. I told him to stand down – that if you said you needed the time off, then you needed the time off. At that point, I assumed that if it were anything serious, you would have reached out to me.”

  He sounded so calm, so clinical. His face betraying no emotions. No reason to call Kelsie, no reason to be concerned about her health. Same old story with her dad. But he kept running his finger up and down the splint – perhaps a small betrayal of his worry.

  “What did they say to you? To get you to do this?”

  Randall removed his hand from hers and shifted slightly on the couch, taking a deliberate mouthful of scotch and swallowing it down, savouring the burn. “They told me I had two options. I could call you and trace the call, then tell them where you were. Or if I didn’t, when they found you and that cop, they’d send you back to me in pieces.”

  Kelsie studied her father’s face as he spoke. He was not a young man anymore, but also not an old man. As long as she’d known him, his eyes were always hooded, nothing in hi
s face, in his voice, ever betrayed what was going on inside him. She remembered joking with her friends that her dad was either an alien or a robot. And her friends would laugh even though they all had little crushes on him because he was tall, handsome, mysterious and extremely wealthy. But she knew, in that moment, that whatever emotions he was hiding from her, his words betrayed him. He was lying to her.

  “Why didn’t you call the cops instead?” she asked causally as she got up from the sofa, glass of water in hand and walked a few steps away from him.

  She’d behaved herself, no hysterics, no tears – calm and composed. And that had gotten her nowhere. He wasn’t going to tell her the truth and he had no intention of helping Dean. It was time to quit playing his game and start playing hers.

  Randall considered her, his eyes filled with concern as he spoke. “Because Kelsie, I couldn’t risk your life.”

  “You are so full of shit, dad,” she hissed at him. “It’s too late to play the ‘worried parent’ card. Do you have any idea what they did to me? They stripped me naked, threatened to rape me. They tied me up and threw a bag over my head.” She held up her splint to him, shaking it at him in fury. “One of them tried to choke me to death, and then the son-of-a-bitch took this finger and used pliers to dislocate it. And then he said he would break them all and then cut them off one by one.”

  “Kelsie, stop.” Randall tried to interrupt her.

  “You had so many other options – call the cops, come find me yourself, tell me to get out because the Russians were coming. But you didn’t. You told the Russians where I was at so they could use me as bait!” Her words were spilling out faster as she talked, and she could hear her voice increasing in volume. She wasn’t shouting though, not yet. She paced back and forth in front of him and continued hurtling accusations at him.