Final Stand

by Helen R. Myers

  “Okay.” Frank shifted and walked around the room, thinking out loud. “So you got away. Why didn’t you call the FBI then? You were safe.”

  “I don’t think you grasp what I’ve been telling you, Chief. Borodin has assets. He flies in and out of the country regularly in his own jet. How did I know who else he owned, how deep his contacts went? No, first and foremost I had to get my mother out of reach—and that included obtaining a new identity for her, for both of us.”

  “Which brings us to Anna Diaz. I haven’t had time to check on what’s come up on that search I ran. What am I going to find?”

  “She was a friend who died.”

  “Convenient. Well, why weren’t you and—” Frank nodded in the direction of the carnage “—traveling together?”

  Sasha bowed her head and sighed shakily. “It was my one concession to her. She blamed herself for what was happening. At first the idea had merit—Borodin was looking for two women traveling together—but I traded in my vehicle, while she…she couldn’t give up hers. It was too much of a symbol of the new life she’d created for herself. She also reasoned that we needed it to buy her new identity. Most of all she wanted to be sure that if we were followed and spotted, she would be the one who risked identification. On the upside, I figured that it might better allow me to protect her.

  “Needless to say, we traveled as much as possible by night, stayed a few miles apart and didn’t even sleep in the same places. We also arranged a schedule for checking in by phone. Then on Thursday morning I thought we were far enough away from Vegas that I could try to talk to my DC with relative safety. What I didn’t take into consideration was how busy Borodin had been since we’d left. The chief wanted to give orders, not listen to what I had to say.”

  “Busy how?” Frank asked.

  “He set us up, left incriminating evidence that made us look like we were in a little side business of our own. Understanding that I’d said too much and that they might be tracing the call, I hung up, though apparently not in time—at least not for Gloria. She must have passed on the information, because in a frighteningly short period of time Borodin had men on our tails again. I lost them, but got stuck here…and they…they found my mother,” she ended on a raw whisper.

  As Gray discreetly stroked her back, Frank scowled at her. After a long silence he said, “I guess it never crossed your mind that you were bringing your trouble to us?”

  “Damn it, Frank,” Gray began.

  “On the contrary,” Sasha replied. “I was extremely concerned. But you’re the one who put the roadblock in my way, Chief.”

  “I’m about to again because you’re under arrest.”

  “For what?”

  “I’ll let you know after I confirm or disprove your story.”

  Gray couldn’t stand it. “You have a murdered woman on the edge of town, what’s to confirm? You put Sasha in that joke of a cell you have over there and she’s a sitting duck. Besides, you don’t have the manpower to keep an eye on the station and deal with what’s down the road.”

  “So help me, Slaughter, if she runs—”

  “It’ll never happen.” Didn’t he comprehend Sasha’s dedication to her mother yet? “If she does,” he replied, “you can draw on me again—and this time use the damn thing.”

  27

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  3:47 p.m. PST

  Telling Boba to stop the car yards away from the Toyota, Melor Borodin leaped out like the eager lover he wanted Gloria Carney to believe he was. But as he loped to her personal car, he was scanning the empty garage wishing that it was three in the morning rather than an hour before the evening rush. He should at least have come in a different vehicle; however, there was no time. That was his theme song these days—No Time.

  “Have you been waiting long?”

  He asked the question as he folded himself into the passenger seat of the Toyota. There wasn’t enough room for his long legs, but he didn’t reach down and adjust the seat. His cramped legs were the least of his concerns. For her part, Gloria hyperventilated from either excitement or heat. She had the engine off, and the windows were up, so although they were surrounded on three sides by thick, cool concrete, it was like an oven in the vehicle.

  “No, I only just arrived myself. It’s so good to see you.”

  She was lying and it both amused and dumbfounded Borodin that she not only tried but also thought he couldn’t tell. It made it easy to forgo the Clint Eastwood smile that she so admired and catch her by the wrists as she reached for him.

  Gloria looked instantly bewildered, then hurt…then worried. “What’s wrong?”

  “I cannot risk it, blini. I think of excitement to see you and…” With a reluctant sigh, he took her hand and brought it to his crotch.

  She not only relaxed, she giggled like a school-girl. She looked like one, too, with her damp curls sticking to her shiny, flushed face. “You are so good for my ego. I can take care of that, um, problem for you.”

  He let her stroke him so he wouldn’t lose what he’d achieved himself driving over here to fool her. But when she began to reach for his belt, he again stayed her hands. “My Glory, it is impossible and you make me to weep thinking of what I must resist. You see, after I speak with you, I get news of water leak in restaurant kitchen. Five pounds of caviar is looking like sturgeon pissing in Volga River. I must go make serious discussion with system contractor to fix before customers come.”

  Gloria tsked in sympathy. “You have too much on your plate. I hate that this mess with Sasha and that mother of hers is dragging on, too. To think she always pretended to be so nice to me. Of course, unlike the rest, I knew she wasn’t what she pretended to be. And stuck up…well, you should hear them now about the drugs. Suddenly everybody saw it coming, her mother having that expensive car and all. Champagne tastes and beer budget, it’ll get you every time, my daddy always said. Hopefully it’ll be over soon, though. It sure sounds like it is. Here’s the printout of the ID on that Diaz woman.”

  Borodin accepted the paper but barely gave it a glance. He was more interested in what else was being said at the station. “What is news on arrest? And what of Tatiana? They say nothing since you and I speak?”

  “It’s been oddly quiet. But unless the files in Louisiana incriminate this Diaz person, it will be our warrants for Sasha and her mother’s arrest that they’ve been trying to keep out of the media that will allow Bitters to keep her. And I have to relay him this ID and let him know they have her as soon as I get back.”

  Borodin could not allow that to happen. Time, he thought again, reaching into his jacket. Drawing out Boba’s borrowed Glock, he pressed it against Gloria’s forehead and replied, “Alas, I think not.”

  The noise of the blast was deafening as the .9mm bullet, as well as the force of her head slamming backward, shattered the driver’s window. Cursing the roaring in his ears as much as the stupid cops in Bitters, he reached into his other pocket and drew out the handkerchief containing a small plastic bag of cocaine.

  Careful not to touch it with his bare hands, he shoved it into her gaping mouth. Then he used the cloth to wipe down the door handle and hurried back to the idling Cadillac.

  28

  Bitters, Texas

  5:50 p.m. CST

  The silence in the wake of Frank’s departure was welcome, although Gray doubted it would last long. Sasha needed time—far more than he suspected she would be allowed.

  “I haven’t thanked you,” she said, breaking into his thoughts.

  Incredulous, it took him a moment to reply. “What for? You were right from the start. If it wasn’t for me, none of this would have happened.” In fact, when he looked at how well his behavior had helped the people hunting her, he didn’t know why she wasn’t aiming her Smith & Wesson on him right now.

  But Sasha shook her head and her unfocused expression indicated she was fixating on an internal chronicle. “If I hadn’t been consumed with making Anna’s final months as full a
nd easy as possible, I would have paid closer attention to what was happening to my mother. When I did see, I should have gotten her out of there first and asked questions later.” With a groan, she covered her face with her hands. “She backtracked. Oh, Mama, why?”

  Gray understood the emotions she’d been holding in check weren’t going to stay contained for much longer, but he was willing to listen and help for as long as she needed him to. “Your mother was supposed to be ahead of you?” he asked gently.

  “Always. This way, if she had trouble, I would be there as backup. Then Borodin’s men spotted me as I was leaving a service station, and I had to get off the interstate. I hid for over an hour. Believing I’d lost them, I started off again, keeping to this smaller highway. I planned to get back on the interstate after Bitters, except…they weren’t fooled.” She shot him a brief look. “You saw the black Suburban, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah, but when it didn’t show up again, I tried to convince myself I was making something out of nothing.” Seeing the misery in her eyes, Gray had to do something to keep from putting his arms around her, and picked up the glass that Frank had tainted, bringing it to the sink. “It’s not your fault that your mother came back looking for you.”

  “She drove right into their grasp.”

  “You expected her to do less for you than you were doing for her?”

  “What could she do? She was no good with guns, and worse with directions. She knew that, except for the destination we agreed on each day, she should simply drive. She wouldn’t have gotten off except to use the service road to make a U-turn for refueling.” But the fact that something else happened had Sasha raking her hands into her hair and gripping her scalp. “They brought her car here for me to find because they know where I am.” She met Gray’s grim gaze. “I don’t want to bring any more trouble to you.”

  Everything that could be done at the moment was. Before Frank left, Sasha had described the Suburban to him and what she’d seen of the two men inside. Frank hadn’t gone through any metamorphosis after his inadequacies at the fire scene, even so, Gray hoped the police chief understood what he had to do now. To Sasha he simply said, “You’re here and you need rest. More important, you need privacy. Go lie down.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  “You can’t afford not to.” Then more tentative, because she had no reason to put what little faith she had left in him, he added, “I know how to use a gun…and you can trust me to let you know the moment anything happens.”

  Her eyes filled, and for a second she reached out her hand as though she was imprinting on a frosted windowpane. But she said nothing as she turned around and disappeared along the hallway. Gray took the quiet closing of the guest-room door as an answer, though.

  “‘And miles to go before I sleep,’” he quoted softly. With a sigh, he picked up the bottle of scotch and put it away without pouring himself a drink.

  29

  Las Vegas, Nevada

  6:11 p.m. PST

  “Sons of bitches.” Melor Borodin slammed down the phone in his office. Would nothing go his way and stop the landslide of all his hard work? In a burst of rage, he picked up the elegant boxed unit and flung it across the room. It struck the crystal cobra on the teak coffee table in the center of the room, sending it crashing to the floor.

  Seconds after the eruption, the connecting door to the warehouse opened and Yegor stuck in his slick head with a less certain Boba behind him.

  “Stop acting like timid women. Get in here.”

  Slim Yegor, dressed in black and always looking one meal away from being malnourished, had been with him some seventeen years—since they’d tried stealing the same car back in Moscow. The Great Boris had been found shortly thereafter. Borodin wished it had been Boba with him instead of Yuri when he’d first gone to silence Sasha. Boba would have taken the bullet and kept after her. In any case, it was only fitting that, as he faced the disintegration of his small kingdom, he should keep these two close.

  They entered, but after shutting the door behind them, stayed put. Veterans of more than one Borodin tempest, they’d learned by experience to stay out of the line of fire.

  “Tatiana is dead,” he announced to them.

  Only Yegor reacted, and that was with the slightest lift of his left eyebrow.

  “Yes, yes, I know that was the point,” Borodin snapped. “But what did I tell those two? Did I not say first to use her to draw Sasha out of hiding? Sasha…not the entire fucking town.” He swept the rest of the items off the top of his desk, but fortunately for Yegor and Boba the direction was toward the opposite side of the room. “They say she provoked them, and then have the balls to confess Sasha has been whisked into some kind of protective custody. They had her in the open—” he sliced the air with his hand visualizing the scene “—and they acted like they were out of bullets. Why? Because she was not alone, they tell me. Can you believe it? They were so concerned about making it to their vehicle, neither considered the alternative. Now what am I supposed to do, level the whole goddamn town? Boba, where did you find these two again?”

  “They were with Perstev.”

  “Perstev blew up over Lake Michigan. They’re probably the reason.”

  While the big man tried to recede into the wall, Yegor did what Borodin always expected of him when his boss’s passions stirred toward the extreme—he got the focus back on the main issue.

  “We are finished here,” he murmured.

  “Da. Perhaps we can keep the restaurant running, but even if the feds don’t steal it from me, that pretty boy Kopelev will rob me blind. How do things look outside?” he added, nodding to the warehouse.

  “Most profitable inventory is gone.”

  It was a hedge, but Borodin didn’t blame him. “Who’s likely to get shortchanged?”

  “Volodya in Seattle.”

  “Finally, some decent news. He’ll be willing to work it out with us. All right, Boba, get back out there and do whatever else you can. Yegor, get hold of our pilot and tell him to prepare the jet. Then start cleaning up everything you can here. Leave no compromising paperwork.”

  “Where do I tell Travis we’re going?”

  “The Caymans.” For now anyway, Borodin thought.

  Yegor accepted that with a pragmatic nod. “We’ve been working too hard anyway. So now, what about the daughter? She will talk. That could still hurt us.”

  True, Borodin thought. He had been explicit in his instructions to Lev and Akim: the women were to be dealt with and disposed of so that their graves would never give up their secrets. The incompetents had achieved the barest fraction of that.

  There was no point in denying he would miss Tatiana for a while. She had been like a flaming peony in a gulag, reminding Borodin that there were things he would miss of Russia, or at least should respect for their impact on his life. He would always be grateful to her for that. They used to converse for hours of their homeland…never politics, rather their profound sense of the land, books…those endless, gray winters in Moscow. That was what he would regret in losing the elegant, romantically melancholy Tatiana. That and an acute sexual passion he’d never known before. What a shame that her conscience got the better of her.

  What a pity that she’d spit in Lev’s face.

  This was all on Sasha’s shoulders, and Borodin intended for her to pay. She could not be left behind to gloat over his failure.

  “Tell Travis to find the nearest landing field near this Bitters that’s long enough to handle the jet,” he said in answer to Yegor’s comment. “I will deal with Sasha myself.”

  Yegor studied him for a long moment. “We don’t leave for some time yet. She’ll have time to prepare.”

  “Don’t give her more credit than she deserves.”

  Hesitating yet again, Yegor added, “And of Lev and Akim?”

  Borodin picked up the cobra that had broken into two pieces, its head cleanly severed. “I prefer not to duplicate Perstev’s fate. If we’re fortunat
e, their future won’t be an issue. If they are…well, see that they aren’t.”

  30

  Bitters, Texas

  Saturday, August 26, 2000

  1:22 a.m. CST

  The calm night didn’t deceive Gray as he kept watch by the picture window in the living room. He appreciated the quiet, all right, he just didn’t trust it, which is why there was no light in the house, not even the picture light he usually left on. He’d turned off the outside lights, too. Sitting in his recliner hidden by the sheer draperies, he relied on what illumination came in from the streetlights, and that created a landscape of ghostly shadows rarely interrupted by traffic. News had apparently spread fast, and it appeared few remained ignorant of what had occurred here only hours ago.

  Beside him, Jessie whimpered in her sleep. She, too, seemed to be having problems dealing with the heightened tension, or else her stitches were bothering her. Gray reached down to stroke her silky length, and after a slight start, she relaxed with a prolonged sigh.

  Gray felt like sighing himself. It had been hours since Sasha had retreated to the guest room, and although he’d paid close attention, things had remained eerily quiet on that side of the house. He had continuously checked to make sure her van was visible, but it remained where she’d last put it, and his truck was here by the house, leaving him fairly confident that she hadn’t tried anything reckless again. Even so, he was concerned. It would have been more natural to hear something, at the least the muffled sounds of grief.

  A strong woman, he thought. He knew he’d never met anyone more self-contained and resilient. He doubted all her fellow officers in the LVMPD admired her for that. One for sure didn’t. Had Sasha’s been a lonely life? She had to be feeling alone now, and it wasn’t just the orphan thing.

  Something out on the street caught his attention. Leaning forward he made a slight part in the sheers and recognized Frank. There was a first—Frank at the station at this hour. It was odd that, except for the EMS personnel, no one else had arrived from Sonora. Surely he’d called for help. Then again, Frank being Frank, it was entirely possible that he’d concluded if Sasha could evade those men in Vegas, he could handle them here.