Sergei groaned. “It’s not fucking Taylor.”
Nikolav spun around to face him. “How the hell would you know? As far as I’m concerned, every single person we’ve ever spoken to could be the mole. FBI or otherwise. Hell, some people we’ve dealt with could have been FBI and we didn’t even know it. Or vice versa.”
Sergei shook his head. “It’s not Taylor. Think about it. She’s done nothing but help us for weeks.”
“Help us?” Ivan shouted. “How helped are we? We’re standing here fighting among ourselves while Alena and Belinda are God only knows where under the supposed protection of God only knows who.”
Sergei ignored Ivan and turned his gaze back to Nikolav. “What else did she say when you spoke to her?”
“Some shit about us meeting here and waiting to hear from her.”
Mikhail gasped. “Do you think we’re being set up? All of us gathered in one spot? Maybe we should get the fuck out of here. Separate, at least.” He reached for Haley and tugged her against his side.
Katie cleared her throat. “Calm down. Everyone. I agree with Sergei. It’s not Taylor. I’ve met with her more than any of you. I don’t believe it for a moment. Let’s give her a chance.”
“Do we have any other choice?” Nikolav shouted. “We don’t even know where she took them. We’re totally at her mercy.”
“And that’s a decision we have to assume the two of them made,” Katie continued. “Think about it. They both know the level of danger they’re in. And they were both present when two more of Yenin’s men were killed this morning. Yenin’s got to be livid. He’ll want retaliation. He’s likely to hire a hit man to pick us all off one by one. So, yes. We have to trust Taylor. And we aren’t dispersing. We’re gonna stay right where we are until we hear from her.”
Ivan spoke next. “I’m not buying that Alena readily agreed to head to a safe house without calling me.”
Mikhail spun toward Ivan. “I’m her brother. She didn’t even call me.”
Ivan pursed his lips.
Nikolav couldn’t unclench his fists or his tight jaw.
Katie continued to speak. “The important thing is they’re both safe.”
“Really?” Nikolav yelled. He didn’t seem to be able to lower his voice for any one sentence. His neck burned. “How can we know that? There’s a mole inside the FBI. Someone is fucking feeding information to Yenin. Could be the agent who drove her there. If he even did drive her there. Fuck,” he screamed. “I’ve never felt so goddamn helpless. Yenin’s probably already got someone watching that safe house.”
The idea tore through him like a knife, gutting him. No fucking way was Belinda safer under FBI protection than she was with him. He wasn’t buying it. And Ivan wasn’t buying it either, because his friend turned around and did exactly what Nikolav had avoided.
He punched a fist right through the drywall in Katie’s clinic. The group of them were gathered in one of the patient rooms. It was too small for all of them, even if they had been there for a game of twister, but under the circumstances—with everyone’s wrath out in the open—the space was way too fucking tight.
It was the only option, however. Standing in the waiting room out front where every single eye outside could clearly see them through the entire wall of windows wasn’t an option, either.
So they’d made do. And now there was a hole in the wall.
And apparently Alena was more important to Ivan than Nikolav realized.
Mikhail said nothing. He simply stood there with his lips pursed.
“Calm down. All of you,” Haley declared. “We don’t have other options right now but to wait this out. Arguing and punching things won’t change anything.”
Nikolav fumed.
“She’s right.”
Nikolav twisted around to find Leo leaning against the far wall, casually, legs crossed. He had one arm around Katie next to him.
“Pardon?” Nikolav asked.
He uncrossed his legs and stood taller. “Spoke to my contact before you got here. Both women are safe.”
Nikolav threw his arms in the air. “Great. Your contact. How the fuck do we know your contact isn’t the goddamn mole? Huh? Do you even know who the fuck your contact is?”
Leo leveled his gaze at Nikolav. “Don’t you dare fucking doubt me on this, Nik. You know me. We’ve been friends for a dozen years. I’ve been an informant for the FBI for over two years. I know my contact. And I trust him. So, you’re going to have to take my word on this, get over yourself, and accept the fact this one is out of your control.”
Nikolav tried to shoot daggers at his friend. “Accept the fact this is out of my control?” His voice rose with each word. “Are you fucking shitting me? Would you be all accepting if it were Katie the FBI sequestered somewhere without your knowledge? Huh?”
Leo blew out a breath, his shoulders falling. “No.”
“Then stop lecturing me about your fucking goddamn contact. Because as far as I’m concerned, the guy is no different than any other agent, guilty until proven innocent. Including Taylor.”
The last person he wanted to accuse of being a mole was Taylor, but he wasn’t thinking rationally. He was only thinking about the fact that his woman, the woman he’d finally taken to his bed a few days ago, was somewhere out there. Vulnerable. Exposed. Alone. And the agency protecting her couldn’t possibly do as good a job as him.
Sergei spoke again. “I don’t think it’s necessary to shoot the messenger.”
Ivan flipped out again. “The messenger? As far as we know, she’s the executioner.”
Sergei narrowed his gaze. “Has Taylor ever once given you a single reason to doubt her?” He stepped into the center of the room and spun in a slow circle to look at everyone. “Huh? No? Nobody has anything to say to that?
“I think you all need to calm the fuck down. I know I was the last person to meet Taylor, but you all have been extolling her virtues for a month now. It sounds to me like she has done nothing but run around protecting your asses night and day for that entire time.
“She has organized dozens of agents to follow you all over this fucking city for weeks. Yes, we all know there’s a mole. But that isn’t her fault. And she’s doing the best she can. Now, if she says she has this under control, and Leo confers that his contact has this under control too, then I say we give this poor woman the benefit of the doubt and cut her some fucking slack.”
Nikolav swallowed.
Sergei was right. There was no reason to accuse Taylor of sabotaging this situation. They had no evidence to suggest she wasn’t on their side. She had their best interests at heart.
But that didn’t soften the blow. Nikolav didn’t like the idea of Belinda spending even one night away from him. Ever.
He might not have been totally certain of that before, but he was damn sure now. He was totally in love with Belinda Gallo. And if anything happened to her…
“Sorry about your wall,” Ivan said to Katie. “I’ll fix it, of course.”
Katie nodded.
Haley tentatively wrapped her arms around Mikhail’s middle. “I’m sure Alena’s fine. Taylor said her wound was superficial. She’s a strong woman.”
“Damn right,” Ivan muttered, not lifting his gaze.
“Now what are we supposed to do?” Nikolav asked.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Anton had better shit to do this evening than chase a fucking journalist all over the city. He had only been back in Chicago twenty hours, and he needed to be in his lab making arrangements for himself to receive his own drug, not sitting in a dingy hotel room across the street from a safe house where a most irritating woman was holed up.
He couldn’t take the risk of Belinda Gallo escaping his clutches any longer, however. She needed to be permanently muted. The bitch was digging too deep. He had no doubt the FBI was right on her tail, but Gallo was an immediate threat. Besides, she’d pissed him off.
He’d expected her to arrive at her cousin’s house a
nytime between when she received that letter and five o’clock. What he hadn’t expected was that she would be stupid enough to go to the FBI first. And certainly not wily enough to slip through Millings’s and Dayton’s hands at her office without them knowing.
Her damn purse had a locator on it. Her computer had been hacked. And yet, she’d slipped out the door, leaving all her belongings behind.
He never should have underestimated the reporter.
He had no intention of intervening in tonight’s exploits. He’d hired men to handle the task of snatching her from the safe house. But after the number of fucked-up instances lately, he wanted to watch.
Another two men dead that morning. Idiots. It was beginning to seem that everyone he hired was incompetent.
The four men he’d contacted to raid this safe house and kidnap one, single, hundred-pound woman tonight could easily get the job done.
He’d had hours to make arrangements. According to Millings, Gallo was brought to this safe house at noon. It was after ten now.
He glanced out the open window again. He was situated in the hotel across the street from the apartment Millings insisted she was in. The blinds were closed on the window he knew to be Gallo’s hideout. The lights were on. But he could detect no movement. Not surprising. It was a safe house, after all. She wouldn’t be dancing in front of an open window.
Anton had opened his window halfway—in part because it was stiflingly hot in the crappy room he sat in, and in part to hear anything from outside that might be valuable.
One unmarked car sat on the pavement below with two men in it. They would be agents. He’d watched them for an hour.
His phone rang. “Chaz. What’s your time frame?”
“Moving in now, sir. Shouldn’t take more than a few minutes. We’ve surveyed the entire area. The two agents out front are the only ones guarding the apartment. We’re coming in from the roof. Set up our operation on top of the building next door. In through the roof. Back out through the roof.”
Sounded reasonable. But so did the last operation, and those men had failed miserably. “Get it done.”
Chaz ended the call. At least that was the name Anton knew him by. Could be anything, really.
Anton lifted his gaze through his binoculars to the roof. He saw nothing. As he would expect.
Silence. Long interminable silence. Deafening.
Not that Anton would be able to hear anything related to the abduction of Gallo, but waiting in such solitude seemed to last much longer than actuality.
Anton lurched forward when he heard a gunshot. And then a second shot.
“Son of a bitch,” he muttered, lifting his binoculars again as if he could see something.
This was not in the plan. There should have been no noises.
The men in the car below him jumped out, guns drawn, spanning the area in a crouch. One of them spoke into a mic at his shoulder and raced toward the building. He flattened himself at the entrance as the other man ran toward the side of the building and disappeared into the narrow alley.
Anton was surprised to see the man at the front entrance waiting, showing no signs of entering the building. Why?
Two police cars pulled up silently, coming from both directions in seconds, stopping in the middle of the street. Four SWAT members jumped out of each car.
What the fuck? How had they managed to get there so fast? And why eight of them?
They scanned the area, guns also drawn, full gear on.
Anton jumped to one side of the window when he realized they were examining the entire surroundings.
Fucking God dammit.
When he dared to inch his face toward the window again, he found officers entering the building. Two joined the agent out front. Two entered. The other four must have circled around to the back.
“Fuck.”
Anton gathered his shit, stuffed it in his duffle bag, and exited the room. There was every chance the entire building would be crawling with agents in minutes. He needed to head out the back and get away from the scene before he got trapped.
“Fuck,” he repeated.
»»•««
An hour later Anton stood outside his office on the second floor of his lab, staring down at the dimly lit expanse below him. No one was currently working. The place was silent. He squeezed his cell phone in his hand. Furious didn’t describe his state of mind.
He’d been unable to reach either Millings or Dayton all evening.
After several moments, someone answered, but it wasn’t Millings.
Anton ended the call without a sound. “Shit.”
He’d been unable to reach Chaz, either. At this point, he had to assume the man and his partner were both dead. Not a single person had contacted him to let him know they had their hands on Gallo.
Two other men had been working with Chaz, but they didn’t have direct contact information for Anton.
“Fucking fuck.” He needed to speed things up. It was time. One way or another, that drug was going into his own blood system ASAP.
»»•««
Belinda flopped onto the couch, tipped her head back, and stared at the ceiling. They were on the fourth floor of a single-building apartment complex in a small two-bedroom filled with everything they could possibly need to hide out for a while.
She knew from the number of words Alena had spoken since Belinda arrived that her new friend was at least as displeased as Belinda with this arrangement and possibly twice as worried about what Mikhail’s and Ivan’s reactions would be when they found out she had gone into hiding.
Belinda hadn’t spent a single night without Nikolav since she met him twelve days ago. And although their relationship had grown to what it was now faster than reasonable, she still didn’t relish the idea of sleeping alone.
And then there was her boss. She prayed Taylor had indeed taken care of that situation in a way that saved her job. She also needed to know that her family was safe. And Nikolav. The man was probably punching things. Or people. Hopefully not Taylor.
Had he believed her lame breakup? God, she hoped he hadn’t gone apeshit crazy and thrown in the towel on her in the last few hours. All she needed was the all-clear from Taylor, and she’d be back in his face…explaining her actions.
“You want anything to eat?” Alena asked quietly from the kitchen area.
Belinda rolled her neck to one side and forced a smile. She knew she should eat. In fact, there were a lot of things she should be doing, like talking to Alena, who was probably at least as freaked out as Belinda. Perhaps more so.
She pushed herself to standing and hauled her sorry ass into the kitchen. Maybe if she made small talk… “Please tell me there’s an assortment of frozen dinners, because the thought of cooking makes my stomach roil.”
“There is.” Alena grinned, but her smile was just as forced, and her hands shook as she opened the freezer and pointed at the contents.
“You haven’t been separated from your friends or your brother for over a year, have you?”
“No,” she whispered into the freezer.
Belinda gently shut the small door and met Alena’s gaze. She glanced down at the bandage on Alena’s leg. “How are you feeling?”
Alena shrugged. “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
“I’m sorry about all this,” Belinda said softly.
Alena took a deep breath, but tears welled up in her eyes. She wiped them with the backs of her hands. “Not your fault. In fact, I’m sorry you got messed up with us.”
“I’m not.” She nodded toward the couch in the attached living room and steered Alena in that direction, pointing at one end for Alena to sit.
Alena cocked her head to one side and frowned. “Why not?”
“Because I met Nikolav, and I can’t imagine life without him,” she admitted.
Alena smiled. “Yeah. There’s that. I can see where that would be a benefit.”
“You’re into Nikolav too?” she teased.
Alena’
s gaze shot wide. “Of course not. I’m totally…” She shut her mouth, pursed her lips.
Belinda laughed. “Alena, you don’t have to hide it. Anyone can see you’re with Ivan. Why is this a secret?”
Alena’s eyes went wider, as if that were possible. “Please tell me you’re kidding.”
Belinda frowned. “Why?”
“Because we’re trying to keep things low key so my brother won’t freak out. The last thing he needs on his plate is worrying about his sister being in love with his friend. That’s why.”
“Are you?”
Alena fiddled with her hands in her lap, her face dropping to hide her expression. “Do you think it’s that obvious?”
“Yes. To me it is. Probably the other women too. But not to the guys. They aren’t as sharp.”
“I hope you’re right.”
“Has Mikhail said anything?”
“Yeah. We’ve talked. I just don’t want him to think it’s too serious yet. He’s overprotective.”
Belinda smiled. “Mikhail? Overprotective? Shocking,” she added sarcastically. Obviously all six of the guys were overbearing. “What about Ivan?”
“What about him?”
“Is he aware of your feelings?”
Alena rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah. He’s aware.”
The burner phone in Belinda’s pocket rang, and she extracted it to answer. “Hello.”
“Making sure you two are okay,” Taylor said.
“We’re fine. What’s going on?”
“Our plan worked.”
Belinda almost smiled. At least something was going right. “Yenin sent men to that first safe house to kidnap me?”
“Yep. Unfortunately he didn’t go himself. But that was to be expected. He hired at least two men. They came in from the roof. The second they kicked the door to the apartment in, they were dead.”
“So how was that helpful? You sound elated about it. You still don’t have Yenin, and now two more people are dead.”
“Never expected to grab Yenin tonight. That wasn’t my goal. My goal was to clean up the department.”
Belinda gasped. “Did you ferret out the mole?”
“Yes. And though I’m glad we no longer have to worry about who’s passing info to Yenin, I’m not happy to report who the nark was.”
Submit (The Underground Book 4) Page 25
