But maybe they were there for the documents? If her brother hadn't handed them over yet… it could be why they were there. Karl had been taking his room apart, it was probably for that reason. So, whoever had come, they'd probably keep Karl alive for a little longer.
It gave them a sliver of a chance. Small, but better than nothing.
Terrified and knowing she couldn’t help Karl on her own, Laurie tried to hide in her room, locking the door and moving to sit between the bed and the wall. Her hands were frantic as she tried to type out a message, texting Mickey briefly for help. She would have made a call, maybe to the police, but it would only make the situation worse if they even got there in time.
Mickey was trained for this sort of thing, so he should be able to handle it alone, right? She just had to believe that, or she was going to break down and do something stupid.
About a moment later, she realized there was no need to. She could hear heavy footsteps out in the hall, and she caught her breath when they stopped outside the door. Then there was a squeak as the door handle was tugged.
She knew, then, that there was no point in hiding. She pushed her phone under her bed, lay down on her side facing the wall, and covered her ears with her hands as she squeezed her eyes closed. There was no way she could escape. Not unless she wanted to jump out the window, and there wasn’t anything that could catch her there. She'd just get herself injured for no reason, and then she couldn’t get away.
Not that she had any hope for that, now. Unless Mickey was smart enough, good enough at his job to do something, she would die here. She and her brother.
There was a loud slam against her door, probably the person on the other end trying to break it. Laurie could tell just from that first attempt that whoever it was must have been strong. She had no luck that the door would hold.
She squeezed her eyes harder against the sting of tears. Whoever had come for her brother had just found her. Another slam on the door and Laurie made a small sound when she heard the splintering of her door as it gave way. Then the footsteps were getting closer, no longer muffled by the wall. Even with her hands on her ears, she could hear it, could feel the thumps of those footsteps as they shook the floor. She curled into herself, trying to make herself seem as small as possible, when the steps made their way over to the foot of the bed, to the side where she hid.
Her body trembled as she waited for whatever would happen next. Would she die there? She didn’t want to see, but she kept picturing a gun aimed at her, then the man pulling the trigger and she'd be dead just like that. Of course, if he didn’t aim for anywhere vital, she would just be in pain before she died, and that scared her more than dying. Laurie hated pain, and she never wanted to know the pain of a gunshot.
That didn’t happen, though. Instead, a large hand closed in on her hair, and she gave a short scream as the hand tugged, ripping out some small hairs. He pulled her to her feet by her hair, and Laurie kept her eyes squeezed shut even as she let out a small sob as she was dragged out to be used as his next hostage.
Chapter 18
Laurie was terrified out of her mind.
She couldn’t remember if she had ever been this scared in her life. Even though her father was intimidating, it had never gotten this bad. It had been nowhere close when she finally decided to leave home, even knowing that she had no experience out in the real world and she would virtually be out on her own.
Nothing could probably be as scary as the situation she found herself in.
Laurie had faith that Mickey would rescue her again like he did on the promenade. She had to because it was the only thing keeping her together. Silent tears tracked down her face, whimpers wanting to get out of her chest as she panted harshly through her nose. She just needed to believe Mickey would get her out of this, or she would be screaming her head off and sobbing. It would probably just annoy the man with the gun and get her killed. But she was still pretty scared as Viktor held a gun to her head and ordered the blubbering Karl to keep searching through the bags of garbage he accumulated trying to clean up and find the papers while too high to function.
Laurie almost felt sorry for her brother. Hell, scratch the almost—she did feel sorry for him.
Karl was in way over his head. It was possible he hadn't even known who he was dealing with, and that it could lead to all of this. It in no way excused what he had done, but it did make her feel a little better that her brother hadn't knowingly aligned himself with criminals. In a way, though, it also made her feel worse, that her brother could be this much of an idiot.
She thought of all the ways this situation could have been avoided. If her father had trusted her a little more, not looked down on her because she was a woman while still holding onto his own expectations of her. If he hadn't been so forgiving of Karl's behavior in the past. If he hadn't treated her brother special because he was male. Laurie was the eldest, and her dad should have let her play the role, instead of turning her into her brother's maid.
Maybe, if she'd toughed it out at home, things would have been different. She'd always been under the impression that her father favored Karl, so of course, he had to have the better life. But something must have gone wrong somewhere for him to end up like he did, and not the beloved son and heir of the general.
Of course, he also deserved some blame, most of it. Karl was too old to still be acting like a child, his tantrums had grown old a long time ago. He should have done something on his own, something sane before they ever got to this point. He'd be lucky if all that happened was he ended up in jail for what he'd done.
But he was still her brother. And looking at him, it was probably starting to sink in for him. He was a wreck, moving around frantically, throwing stuff around as he looked for the papers that were the cause of all this. Her brother rarely ever thought ahead, she wouldn’t have seen this situation coming either. He probably just made the wrong friend with all the wrong connections when it came to his drugs and it was coming back to bite him.
No. There was no way their lives would just end here. Where was Mickey, anyway? She'd texted him a while ago but he wasn’t there yet. Or was he looking for an opening? Either way, so was she. But the guy kept a hold on her with a gun pointed at her and had been standing still as a statue behind her the entire time, there was no way he would let his guard down.
Wanting to create a distraction, she picked an argument.
"How the hell did you manage it?" Her voice was low, but Karl heard her and glanced up with a small frown.
"The fuck are you talking about," he snapped back, sounding stressed, not even pausing what he was doing.
"How the hell can you be such a complete screw-up?" she demanded to know. "That you could steal documents that could threaten national security in return for some weed when you could have just stolen the money or borrowed it. Only to lose the papers in your room so thoroughly because you are such a slob that you can't find them even when an assassin from the Russian Mob has a literal gun to our heads."
Her brother shot a glare at her, becoming even more frantic. He stopped for about a second, made a strange noise before tossing some stuff aside.
"Do you think I wanted this to happen?" he said back. "I just wanted to make Dad angry, I didn’t plan on doing anything for the Russian Mob. Yeah, I sold out the country for weed, but I swear I didn’t do it on purpose."
"I don’t care what your 'purpose' was in all of this, why take Dad's stuff in the first place? Was the weed even worth it? Because, seriously kid, you're only more pathetic the longer I look at you, so what had you been thinking? Tell me why."
He sent another glare her way, and she noticed this time the tear tracks on his face that he must have been trying to hold back.
Karl, still whining and crying, finally admitted, his voice gone strained and quiet, "I don't know."
"What?"
"I don’t know, okay?" he snapped, throwing up some more stuff as he went through another bag. "I just wanted to get back at Dad
, I didn’t know this would happen."
Viktor found the whole argument hilarious. He didn’t care that they were making too much noise. They wouldn’t be for much longer. The only reason he was having the boy look for the papers instead of offing them both and doing it himself was because it was too troublesome to do it himself when he had someone else to do it for him.
Finally, he went from machinelike to chuckling, distracted enough that he was caught unprepared when Mickey busted in.
Chapter 19
The interruption from someone new was unexpected. He hadn't heard the police sirens, and from the information he got, the house was lived in by the girl and her brother. Viktor hadn't been expecting anyone else, especially not when he'd just let his guard down, so it came as a bit of a surprise, enough to distract him, at least.
Viktor was startled into shifting his aim from Laurie to Mickey and thus loosening his grip on her.
Laurie felt his loosened grip and felt it was her chance. Though Mickey just bursting in had scared her momentarily, thinking that another enemy had come, but was too impatient to keep waiting. Then she saw Mickey there and the relief she'd felt was indescribable. She managed to squirm out of the big guy's grip, no longer leverage to be used for his demands.
Viktor tried to bring his gun back to her, but it was too late. The man at the door had a gun pointed at him, and it would be fatal to point his own gun elsewhere.
Mickey was just glad he'd arrived on time, and just at the right moment. He didn’t want to think of what would have happened if he'd been too late. He glanced over at Laurie, who'd gotten away from Viktor, but was moving farther into the room instead of out like he needed her to. He didn’t keep his eyes on her too long because he couldn’t lose focus on Viktor. Somehow, they were all going to get out of this alive, and Viktor was going to get put away for a long time. He hadn't called anyone in, and he needed to have this standoff be just between the two of them so he could subdue the bastard.
"Laurie," he said quietly, hearing her gasp and taking it as a response that she was listening. "You and your brother get out of here, go through the back." It would be a disaster if she went into the front room and saw the body of who Mickey assumed had been Randy. "There's a car outside. The key's in the ignition. When you're both inside, drive as far as you can, but don’t go to the cops. I'll call you, or someone else will."
Laurie followed Mickey's order, nodding her head as she hurried around both the men with guns and ran down the hall. She didn’t have to think about why he'd told her to go through the back, even though she'd have to circle around the front to get to the road. She remembered the gunshot from earlier and made a whimpering sound, shoving the thought from her mind. If her brother hadn't died, it was either a warning shot or there had been someone else, but thinking that would be the opposite of helpful just then.
Mickey and Viktor held each other at gunpoint. Mickey could see the big man follow Laurie with his eyes as he left, looking decidedly displeased, but his hand didn’t waiver where he had the gun pointed at Mickey.
At least Laurie had gotten out, and Mickey could feel the vise in his chest loosen just a little. But then his eyes slid to the other occupant in the room and he wanted to curse. Of all people to be in this situation with, it had to be this idiot? Mickey could tell he was still high, so he must have gotten a hit of whatever stuff he had before Viktor showed up. The situation going on had only made him more unstable, or he would have done the smart thing and run when left with a couple of people with guns that looked like they knew how to use them.
Karl was supposed to follow his sister, but he was so emotionally overwrought that he made a fatal mistake. Instead of running, he got in the way as Mickey and Viktor squared off.
Mickey wanted to curse. He wanted to call the kid an idiot in every language that he knew, and then kick his ass down the stairs and out of the house. But Viktor had recovered from his momentary distraction. One wrong move and this would be all over. He was just looking for an opening, and like hell was Mickey going to hand one over. He couldn’t just let Viktor Koldovnik get away, not even for Laurie's idiotic little brother.
Not that he thought the man would just leave, anyway. Mickey only had the rumors, and the facts that other agents had managed to get about this guy, but now that Laurie and Karl had seen his face, Mickey was pretty sure he'd had no intention of leaving either of them alive even after he got what he wanted.
He was about to shout at the kid to get out when he started doing some talking on his own, and Mickey could only curse at how stupid this kid had to be. It was a wonder he'd lived this long as the son of a general when he'd clearly been targeted by the mob for a while now.
Laurie, hiding in the car waiting for her brother to join her, heard him starting to yell at Viktor.
The first thing she thought, was why her brother wasn’t taking the easy way out for once and leaving when given a free out. He had to have known they couldn’t get away from that situation by themselves. He couldn’t possibly think that a man that had been sent to kill them over a bunch of papers that may or may not exist, or be of value, could even be reasoned with.
Her second thought, was why hadn't she grabbed him with her as she ran? All she'd had on her mind was getting away once Mickey told her to. He'd said she and her brother had to leave, so she'd assumed Karl had gotten the message and followed after her.
She should have realized something was wrong when she made it to the car and she couldn’t see her brother behind her.
What had she done? She hadn't thought her brother would need someone to hold his hand even through something like this, but just leaving him there, unarmed, while she ran to safety had been unacceptable.
Laurie jumped out of the car in horror, running toward the door. She didn’t bother going around the back this time, the front would be quicker.
Mickey, on the other hand, could do nothing but stand and watch the horror show. He wanted to grab the kid and shake some sense into him or scramble his mind so he was capable of following simple instructions. He was just shouting on his own, Viktor standing like a tall rock and not even reacting to his babbling that only grew more incoherent.
Karl couldn’t think straight. There was no rational thought in his mind, everything was getting all jumbled. All he could think was that he hadn't meant for anything to end up like it had. He'd made a mistake, but it was way bigger than he had thought at first. And then there was this guy, who had shot someone he considered a friend while he watched, who had held a gun to her sister's head while he just watched. A man who had come here to kill him.
He wasn’t sure why his sister's new boyfriend was even there with a gun of his own, but he had all his attention focused on Viktor. He wasn’t even paying attention to whatever words were coming out of his mouth. All he knew was his sister was outside, and this bastard was still there, in his room, with a gun. He didn’t even look at him as he shouted in his face.
Karl had snapped and lunged at Viktor and was trying to wrestle the gun away from him while screaming emasculating insults.
Mickey could only stand by and gape for a second, too amazed by the display in front of him. He hesitated, not sure what he was supposed to do in that situation. Doing nothing would get the boy killed, but they were moving around too much and he might end up hitting the kid by mistake. He wasn’t sure getting closer was a good idea, either, it might just make the big man take action faster.
Mickey hesitated.
Viktor didn’t even seem fazed, like Karl was just an annoying insect getting in his way, irritating but not a threat. He held onto the gun even as the kid grabbed his arm and scrambled for his hand, scratching and coming away with bloody fingertips for the trouble. Somehow, the boy couldn’t tell just how outmatched he was or didn’t care. Mickey was pretty sure he just wasn’t in his right mind.
Then Mickey got hold of his vocal chords.
"Kid, get away from him, now! He's not someone you can handle," Mickey shoute
d, trying to warn him off. "Just get out of here and go help your sister. Stop fucking making this all about you!"
But Karl, as usual, was not listening. It was only a matter of time, seconds before it would be too late, but Mickey wasn’t sure what to do.
Viktor finally tired of this. The kid was being too loud, and the scratching was stinging his hand and damaging him. His attention deviated from the other man in the room with the gun and turned to the boy who clearly wanted to die. He raised his other hand, knocking the kid in the head and off balance just for a moment. It was long enough to pull his arm from his hold, point the gun and shoot him in the head before Mickey could stop him.
It happened too fast for him to react. Viktor's other hand coming, up, hitting Karl in the head, then taking the shot, straight in the head. Mickey was moving, mouth opened to shout something as he watched that arm raise the gun. But he was just a second too slow, and he heard the gun shot over whatever he could have said, cutting him off.
The distraction cost Viktor his life as Mickey shot him twice in the chest, almost immediately after he'd taken the shot on Karl. They both fell, like broken marionettes, legs tangling together on the way down. Both of them dead.
As Mickey stared around in horror and regret, Laurie ran in—only to scream when she saw the carnage.
Dammit!
Mickey reached for her, wondering why she even came back. The obvious answer was she must have done it for her brother. He grabbed her and hid her face against his chest. This wasn’t something she needed to see. A dead body was one thing, and that would be bad enough but one of those bodies had been her brother. As much trouble as the kid had caused her, Laurie had cared about him, and she was hurting.
All he could do was curse himself. He was trained to react in situations like the one he was in just a few moments ago, yet he had hesitated. If he had moved faster… done something smarter…
Deadly Seduction (Romantic Secret Agents Series Book 2) Page 10
