When she saw it, she froze where she stood, gaping at the sight in front of her. Her brother was too much of a lazy bastard to be moving that fast, doing the one thing he'd never felt was his job. Because of how their dad raised them, Karl had grown up believing it was a woman's job to do this sort of thing, so when she was there, he'd never done any of it himself.
She had wondered how he and her father had managed once she'd left home. Neither of them knew how to cook, Laurie was pretty sure neither had stepped inside their kitchen at home in all the time she'd been there if it wasn’t to get already made food. They must have had someone to help them.
Still, he was actually making an effort. She could have gone in there to help, but what she'd just learned kept her at the door. Karl cleaning was so unusual that she wondered if he had realized he was being watched.
It would be too much of a coincidence otherwise, wouldn’t it? For whatever reason, he was acting suspiciously, and Laurie moved away from the door before she was found out. She went to hide out in her room and texted the information to Mickey because they'd exchanged numbers the night before while they were still on their date. He answered almost immediately, telling her that he would look into it. Laurie would just keep an eye on Karl in the meantime.
Back at his place, Mickey started going through last night's surveillance recordings from around the time he left. He hadn't called anything in yet, but he wanted to have all the information available. Then he'd send the recordings along. He could have just called in right then, but then he'd have to admit to having left his post.
But more than problems from his superiors, Karl's actions were worrying him. If Laurie thought it was so surprising that it was worth mentioning when she wasn’t really happy with him right then, it must have been something serious.
What really worried him was that Karl could be idiot enough to have the papers in his room, at Laurie's house. After telling his friend that he'd moved there, he'd also given the address away. He was just idiot enough to have done it, he probably didn’t even realize who he'd been dealing with.
Randy Ostrovsky, a twenty-five-year-old, junior member of a local Russian Bratva with ties to the Moscow mob—and the Russian government. Mickey still didn’t know how the kid had been suckered into going through his father's files in the first place, but it was probably out of some stupid reason. But the kid was too low on the totem pole, himself. He probably didn’t know what he was doing either because from what Mickey had seen when he'd been spying on the both of them hanging out, he was pretty sure they were both of a like mind. Meaning Randy was about as much of a loser and an idiot as Karl was. Which also meant, there was probably someone else Randy was in contact with that would pose even more of a threat. Randy was as much a tool for the Bratva as Karl was a tool for him.
As Mickey went through the old recordings, he quickly caught a big cell phone argument between Karl and Randy. It happened not long after he and Laurie had left for their date, and he berated himself for going out at all. He should have listened to common sense, stuck to his rules and stayed at home. He'd have called this in and reinforcements would have been on the way already.
Just how idiotic could one kid be? To get himself involved with such dangerous people…
Karl had put the phone on speaker while lying down on his bed. Though the equipment would have caught it anyway, the words were louder.
"I said I'll get you the papers, so just wait, would you?" Karl was saying. "I got them before the old man kicked me out, I just don’t have them on me right now. But I definitely got ‘em."
"You don’t understand, I need those papers soon. You've been telling me you'll get the papers for over two weeks now. Just bring them over here."
"I can't get them right now. You'd have to wait a bit—"
"No. no more waiting." Randy's voice sounded hard, and almost a bit desperate. "Get the papers, I don’t care where you left them, and bring them over immediately. You'll get us both in trouble."
There was a short silence.
"What's that supposed to mean?"
Randy sighed an impatient sound. "Look, man, the pot I got you isn’t from a grower friend at all," he explained. "I mean, I could probably have found someone, but the guy I usually went to got caught by the cops and he hasn’t been around. I couldn’t find anyone else. The stuff was from the Russian Mob, and they got me a little something, too, but they're expecting those papers within twelve hours or the both of us, and that sister of yours, will be in big trouble."
There was a longer silence. Then some rustling sound as Karl moved around.
"Dude, what the hell do you mean the Russian Mob, you never mentioned anything about that before!"
"Of course not, you idiot," Randy sneered. "It's not something you just go around telling people. But you wanted the stuff, I wanted a little some myself. I don’t know how but they found out who your father was. They thought it was a done deal when they gave me the pot. We can't just not give them anything after we've already used it all up. The guy they'll send… he's bad news."
"Who is he?"
"His name… is Viktor Koldovnik. He's a little older, thirty-three, and I don’t know how long he's had the job but he's an assassin for the Bratva."
Randy's voice held both awe and terror, and Mickey could understand why. Because he recognized the name as the legendary hitter from the Bratva. Not much was known about him, really. Mickey wasn’t sure they even had a picture of the guy. He just had a reputation that got around and was probably second after Karl on the top threats to the country at the moment. Of all people, Karl had to get his attention without even realizing it. Mickey was starting to think that maybe the kid just had bad luck, to go with his bad attitude.
The guy, Koldovnik, was a cold-blooded sociopath operating on direct orders from Moscow to make sure the pipeline of sensitive US government intelligence stayed open. The Bratva had been using the young, naïve, stupid and rebellious kids of government operatives to take advantage of such operatives' bad habits of taking sensitive files—or access to them—home with them.
They were cooperating with the Russian government, who were paying through the nose for the privilege—and the deniability.
"Just… how bad is this guy," Karl said hesitantly.
"Dude, he's bad. That's all you need to know. Get the damn papers before he gets all of us. He's not going to want to talk if we get past the time limit, all right? I don’t wanna die. I don’t care what you do, just get here with those damn papers quickly."
The call was abruptly cut off then, but Mickey didn’t bother to check if there was more. He checked his watch and calculated the time, realizing the recording was made fourteen hours ago.
Fuck!
This was why he wasn’t supposed to do stupid things during missions! If he'd just been there to hear the whole thing instead of making stupid assumptions and going off to have his fun, he could have called it in already. Some action could have been taken and a lot of problems could have been avoided. Eventually, he'd have to give his report and it would have to be completely honest. It was going to get him in trouble with his superiors.
But right then, he had a bigger problem.
Unless someone had been watching over Randy, the idiot was probably dead already. When messing with the Russian mob, time was something to be taken seriously. The time limit had been two hours ago, which meant… once he was done with Randy, he'd go after the siblings.
Realizing that his new love interest was in mortal danger, Mickey grabbed his guns and raced next door.
Chapter 17
Karl was stoned, high, drunk, scared, and still couldn’t find the papers.
He made a frustrated sound, kicking aside another bag full of trash that he'd just picked up. Where the hell were they? He was sure he'd had the papers somewhere in his room. He carried them in his backpack when his dad threw him out, and he had the thing on him the entire time until Laurie let him stay at her place. After he’d left, he'd had
some stuff sent to him by their family's maid. She was intimidated by their father, but because she'd been there for him since his sister left home, she did whatever Karl wanted.
Because he had a room of his own then, he didn’t bother hiding anything, and most of his stuff had been strewn all over, what he'd bothered to unpack, anyway. Still, there shouldn’t be so much stuff that he couldn’t find a bunch of papers!
Fuck! They have to be here!
How long had it been since he'd started searching? He couldn’t tell anymore. But he knew this was something serious, and he couldn’t treat it like he did pretty much everything else. This wasn’t a problem that was going to go away quietly on its own. Randy had already warned him that running was pointless, so his best bet was to find those papers.
Did he throw them out without realizing?
No. He didn’t think so. Granted, he wasn’t particularly careful with them, to begin with, but he wouldn’t just toss them by accident. They were put away because he didn’t have any need for them any other time. Hell, he would have put the info on a memory stick or something, but he hadn't had one handy. Who even still used papers, besides his dad?
But dammit, this wasn’t what he signed up for! Randy didn’t mention anything about the Russian mafia before. When he told Karl to hack his dad's computer and take some files, he'd done it on a stupid dare!
Of course, he'd done it for more than just the dare. He was just sick of his dad always telling him what to do. He was tired of it, but ever since his sister left home, his dad had been slowly growing stricter, like closing him in a cage so he couldn’t leave like she did. Hell, he wasn’t so screwed up back then, and maybe if his sister had taken him with her, he wouldn’t have been so screwed up. She might have let him have his way, she always did. But that didn’t happen, and here they found themselves.
Besides, he didn’t think what he'd gotten was that important. Not anything to die over. If Randy had just given him those details earlier, then he'd have handed the papers over before he went to his sister's house. Now they had some assassin after them and they would all die if he didn’t get those stupid papers!
Where the hell were they!
As Karl continued tearing apart his room, Laurie tried to ignore the noise as she sorted out how she felt about Mickey, Mickey concealing his motives from her, and the fact that her brother had managed to steal government secrets, humiliating and compromising their father and endangering both himself and her, but still seemed barely capable of tying his own shoes.
Part of her still wanted to think of it all as a lie. Her brother was too much of an idiot. Yeah, enough to be taken advantage of, and he ran with the wrong crowd, but surely it couldn’t be as bad as this. He was just a lazy bastard with a low IQ, high libido, and a bad mouth. How could her brother single-handedly cripple the entire country's security being stupid?
Another part of her was so angry at her brother, that she wanted to march into his room and hit him. Anger for the stupid things he'd done trying to play the rebellious heir. Also for being the reason Laurie even met Mickey, since whatever they'd had from the moment that they met had been a lie. For making her feel so stupid she could just die.
But the greater part of her mind still refused to let go of Mickey.
She felt things with him she'd never felt with anyone before. Just the thought of never seeing him again made her heart hurt. Could she really just turn her back on him and never talk to him again? She didn’t think she could.
But he lied to her! More than that, he had spied on her and her brother. How could she believe anything he had said when he'd been sent for the specific purpose of getting dirt on them? Specifically, her brother, but if she had truly not been a part of it, would he have approached her at all?
She didn’t think so.
But… it was technically his job.
Whatever Mickey felt about it, he had been sent there, he didn’t do it to himself. And she didn’t really see how going out on a date with her and taking her home had been of help to his job. If anything, it had done the opposite. Laurie had gone snooping around his house and found him out. And he'd admitted to everything instead of making up some story, though, she wouldn’t have been happy with him if it had been anything else.
Then she felt ashamed of herself. Mickey let her into his house, and she broke whatever trust he'd had in her by snooping around his house. It had been innocent when she'd done it, but it was technically wrong, even if he was spying on her.
Why was she thinking so much about this? She could think all she wanted about whether she wanted to be with Mickey or not, but what about what he felt? She thought back to the conversations they'd had—was it all really just the night before? It seemed like it should be so much longer—she did remember him saying something about a long-term relationship that ended because she couldn’t agree with his job. It wasn’t the body guarding she'd thought before, but this made more sense, didn’t it? And he hadn't dated anyone since then.
If Laurie didn’t like his job, would Mickey not want to be with her, no matter what her decision was?
The thought had her heart squeezing hard in her chest. She didn’t like that, even more than not getting to see Mickey. That Mickey would not want to see her… that she could hurt him so much he'd throw her away… she didn’t want that.
Another noise from her brother's direction brought her out from her musings.
And Laurie realized she was falling for Mickey, and that she was tired of Karl getting away with everything while leaning on and hurting others.
She had to resolve her feelings for Mickey quickly and tell him before he had to leave, or she'd lose her chance. There was also her brother to deal with, and she couldn’t keep running away from him. He'd done something stupid, and he needed to be taken to task for it. Then she could help him do whatever he was doing so it could go faster, and she would talk him into turning himself in to the CIA. He'd gotten their father into trouble, and he had to take responsibility for his actions, for once in his life.
She was getting up, deciding to contact Mickey and agree to help him, when she heard a gunshot in the front room downstairs.
Viktor had arrived with a terrified Randy, asking for the papers. Whatever Laurie was doing, she'd been too preoccupied to open the door, and Karl had rushed for it frantically, thinking it was his buddy at the door. He just didn’t expect him to be with the assassin guy he'd been talking about.
As soon as Karl caught sight of him, he knew he was in trouble.
The guy was enormous, with a broad chest, full beard, round gold-rimmed sunglasses and thick black hair. But as soon as he saw Karl, he took off the sunglasses, and he couldn’t help but shiver. His eyes were tiny, grey and empty. Randy, standing beside him, being held by the shoulder, looked so scared he could have pissed himself.
Karl backed away as they both walked into the house. He was struck with the need to turn and run, but he knew it would be pointless. If anything, it would just get him killed. He didn’t see a weapon on the guy, but he probably had one under his heavy coat.
"Are you the boy that was supposed to get the papers?"
His accent was thick, thicker than Randy's, but the words were easy enough to understand. His voice was also hard, and as empty as his eyes, and it had Karl trembling harder.
"Uh, yeah. It's me. But see, the thing is, I have the papers upstairs I just don’t know where upstairs they are. I do swear I have the papers, though, printed and everything. I've been looking for them since yesterday if you could just give me—"
"Shut up," Randy screamed, cutting him off. "I told you to just hand over the damn papers, man. No more of this stalling bullshit. Hand them over already!"
Dammit!
Randy should have just stayed out of it. They were in a bad enough situation as it was, the last thing they needed was to make it worse for them. There had to be a way out of this. He definitely had the papers. If he could just buy more time…but looking at the big guy, Karl r
ealized why his friend was screaming at him.
He just looked unimpressed by Karl's speech.
"Go get me the papers," he ordered, voice a monotone, but the order unmistakable.
"I have them in my room, I'm just not sure where—"
"Then go upstairs and bring them."
Karl gulped. How the hell was he supposed to reason with this guy? Was it even possible? "As I just told you, I've been looking for them. I haven't found them yet. If you could just give me some time, an hour at least, I'll have them for you. I swear it was with my stuff. I'm just having some trouble finding it."
The guy didn’t make any sort of movement, not even to blink, and Karl let himself feel hopeful. Maybe they could all get out of this, the guy just wanted his papers…
But Viktor wasn’t stopping like Karl assumed. He just got annoyed by all the arguments and the stalling. He wasn’t there to chat, he was giving an order and this kid was taking him lightly. So he pulled out his gun, put it to Randy's head. He ignored the squeal of fear the boy made, tightened his hand on his shoulder when he went to move, and shot him, making an example of him. Then he pointed his gun at the desperate Karl, whose eyes had gone impossibly wide, his face paling as his jaw dropped, eyes looking down at the body bleeding on the floor. Viktor waited until he looked back up.
"Search faster."
Laurie barely heard what was going on downstairs. After the gunshot, there's been a ringing sound in her ears, and shouts of panic in her mind. She did hear her brother scream, though, only she didn’t catch the words.
But she could guess what had happened without going to take a look herself. She remembered her dad telling her about people being after her brother, and not all of them from the side of the law. This was probably what he'd meant. Someone had come for her brother.
A part of Laurie screamed to go and see if he was okay. That had definitely been a gunshot, but she'd heard her brother's voice after the shot, so he was probably still alive. But for how long? Whoever it was, was either there for the documents, or there to prune off any links to their organization. Whichever it was, if Karl wasn’t dead yet, then he soon would be if nothing happened.
Deadly Seduction (Romantic Secret Agents Series Book 2) Page 9
