"Ain't no mistake Katy. Keep moving."
He went to push her but she shoved his hand away.
"He's not finished with me. I know it."
"Keep. Moving."
"I'll scream."
Angel looked at her. Gauging the situation. He had considered just chloroforming her or injecting her with a sedative while she slept but the CCTV footage showing him carrying her unconscious to his car would have been hard to explain. He needed her to walk out of that house on her own two feet, without a struggle, and to all intents and purposes of her own free will.
"You want him dragged into all this shit with you? Is that it? You want him to save you from the mess you made of your life?"
Her defiance faltered. It was true. Whatever she felt for him was outweighed by her need to be protected. She had always looked after herself and his desire to protect her was just foolish male pride. He would never be able to hide her and the mob or the government would bring him down as well.
But what if she were to protect him? If she worked for him she could cover her own tracks. No-one would ever know. She could stay with him, contribute her expertise to his business and his technology. She had hidden herself from the Mafia and from the NSA without any help for nearly three years. With the resources of the Clayton Robotics corporation she could hide forever and be with the one man she had ever met who could… God damn it, the one man who could…
"You want to know what happened to Louise?"
Katy's mouth dropped open. That was her mother's name.
"Keep going." Angel shoved her again and this time she complied without a word.
Chapter Two
Clayton woke early with a knot of inexplicable anxiety twisting his stomach. The last twenty-four hours had been bizarre, even by his standards. He considered going to Katy's room to check on her but changed his mind and set to preparing breakfast instead. She hadn't eaten much the day before and had been under enormous emotional stress. He was sure she could use the extra rest and the food when she finally came to. He went down to his personal gym at ground level and got on the treadmill to begin warming up. What he saw outside stopped him dead in his tracks.
Angel's parking spot was empty.
He threw his headphones to the ground and sprinted back upstairs to Katy's room.
The door was open.
He bit down hard, the muscles in his jaw tensing as he approached, knowing already what he would find, but hoping against hope.
The covers were thrown back on the bed. Her bag, the one possession she had arrived with, was gone from the bedside table where he had placed it the night before.
He walked over to the bed and sat down, staring at the light dent in the pillow from her sleeping form.
He took a deep breath and then lay back down across the bed, his eyes shut tightly shut.
After several seconds he released a long, slow howl of anger and regret.
********************
Angel hadn't said a word since he had gotten into his car with Katy and they had been driving for a full hour already. She had been in shock since he had spoken her mother's name and her mind was still racing a thousand miles a minute trying to figure out what his connection could be, what he might know. He had made it clear he wasn't interested in conversation and as they travelled further south on back roads it became clear that he had no intention of volunteering any more information to her than he already had.
After a long interval of staring out the passenger window she finally figured she knew what was really going on.
"You're not going to drop me off anywhere I want to be, isn’t that right Angel."
He didn't answer.
"In fact, you don’t care about your boss or so-called friend at all."
He still didn’t answer her.
"I bet you don’t even answer to him, isn’t that right?"
"Shut up Katy." He shouted so violently at her that she jumped in the seat, but she wouldn't be cowed. If this was her last journey then she would speak while she could and wouldn't go down without a fight.
"You know you're completely fucked, don’t you?" She said.
"Last warning Katy. Next word and you're in the trunk."
"You can do whatever you want to me Angel. Put me in the trunk or put a bullet in my head and bury me by the side of the road. It won't stop them tracking you down and locking you up for the rest of your natural life."
Angel threw his head back and laughed.
"You really do want to ride in that trunk, don’t you?"
"Not really. In fact, I'd much prefer it if we could come to some arrangement that would benefit both of us."
"I've already got an arrangement, but the only benefit will be to me. Don't break a sweat though because I'm not gonna hurt you. Not unless I have to."
"So who are you selling me to? Because that's it, isn’t it? You tell Clayton I walked out of his life, asking you to go to the grave with the secret of where you left me, but in reality you just hand me over to the highest bidder."
Angel nodded his head and smiled.
"It took you a whole hour to figure that out? You may be good with machines honey, but kidnapping and crime is not your thing."
Katy took a deep breath.
"It's the Mafia, right? My old employer? Well at least you could tell me how they found you."
Angel smiled but didn’t answer.
"Oh, of course. You found them. How silly of me. Clayton hasn't done enough for you over the years, in fact he has demeaned you by hiring you as his top goon; all muscle and no brains and now this is payback time. He told you all about me, confided in you as a friend and you saw your opportunity. Nice."
"You can talk all you want Katy. Won’t change a thing. We'll soon be there and you can tell Mikhail and his boys all about it. Maybe they'll give a damn about your bullshit."
"Honestly Angel? When I first met you I knew you had the strength of a gorilla and I thought you had the intelligence of one as well. Now I see how wrong I was because even a great ape wouldn’t be dumb enough to try and get away with a stunt like this."
"You are beginning to annoy me now Katy. Trust me, the trunk fits two people comfortably. I know from experience. I'm going to pull over now."
"Aren’t you curious to find out why what you're doing is so incredibly stupid?"
He sighed loudly, but the truth was, he had to hear what she was going to say.
"Go on then. Shoot. I'm all ears. What is this great mistake I've made? Because the way I see it, you don’t exist. When I hand you over you disappear forever and no-one is going to come looking for you. No cops, no missing persons bureau, no relatives. You've taken care of all that a long time ago by being the invisible girl. Clay will think you walked out on him because of all that creepy shit he does with chicks he likes and he won't think twice about you once he starts hunting down the next sucker to land in that screwy bedroom scenario of his. So tell me genius, MIT grad, what am I missing?"
"Mikhail wants me dead. Or maybe he wants me alive for a little longer. Who knows? He also wants no witnesses, no paper trail, no nothing. Hell, I'll probably live longer than you will."
Angel snorted.
"I thought you said I would be locked up, now I'm going to get whacked?" He pulled the car over. "You can make your mind up in the trunk."
"I told Clayton last night that I would never leave him."
"You didn't. I was listening. Now I'm serious. Get in the trunk. Just in case these guys don't kill you, I don’t need you knowing where any of this shit went down."
"Are you serious?" The bluffs hadn't worked.
"It's not as bad as you think. Now come on, don’t make me have to force you."
The trunk closed with a clunk and to Katy it sounded like the end of everything. Things had come full circle. Soon she would be looking at Mikhail Boyevik again, the man she had tried but failed to put behind bars, but who's billion dollar company she had ruined. At least it would put an end to her running
and at least no-one else would be hurt because of her.
It was crazy to think Clayton could protect her. After all, she had no idea when or if those black outs would return and what she would do if they did.
Her one regret, never having taken the time to track down her natural father. If she made it out of this alive she would do it. She would use everything that she had learned about running and hiding to track down the man whose ghost haunted her childhood memories.
Tears welled up in her eyes, but she choked them back. That man, whoever he was and wherever he was might be the only living relative she still had.
She couldn't give up. Not yet. Not until she had found him.
She felt around in the dark, trying to find tools for a spare tire change. As soon as Angel popped the trunk she would lash out and knock him unconscious. She visualized it in her mind but soon abandoned the plan. The guy was huge and he was a trained body guard. Plus he would be with Mikhail's men the next time he opened the trunk so even if she did manage to somehow take him out she would hardly be able to fight off whoever else was there with him.
Her hands stopped at something that felt familiar. It had to be her getaway bag. Angel must have put it into his car when he had picked her up in the woods or maybe later when her car had been collected by Clayton's staff. How it got there didn’t matter; the important thing was that there were one hundred thousand dollars in there and obviously he hadn't brought it along for her benefit.
She had locked the hard surface suitcase and would need to put in her combination to get it open. In the pitch black of the trunk, bouncing around on the back roads she might as well have had no idea what it was. She would have to get out the tools from underneath her and see if she could pry it open. In the darkness it seemed to take forever but eventually she found something sharp enough to wedge in underneath the locks and pop them open.
She found the small bag of money inside ordered together in neat stacks of one hundred dollar bills. That would make one thousand notes in all.
It would have to be enough.
She set to work right away - this shindig wasn't over yet.
**********
The emptiness that Clayton felt was unlike anything he could recall. Normally he was unshakeable but something wasn't adding up. The woman he had comforted and put to bed the night before had been ready to open up to him completely, so why would she change her mind and run? He considered calling Angel but that wasn't part of the protocol. If a woman said she wanted to leave then she had every right to go without any interference from him or from anybody else. No meant no on both sides and he had promised her there would be no questions asked.
But Katy was different.
She was in real trouble, unlike anything he had come across before; she might have made a decision without thinking it through completely.
He checked his watch. Angel had been gone a long time. He went to the living area and clicked his fingers to make a huge, curved screen TV rise up from the flooring and then lay down on the sofa holding his customized, secure Blackphone. There was zero tolerance for security breaches at Hargrave Robotics so essential elements of the phone had been designed and manufactured in-house. The feature he considered accessing now was one he had created himself but he had never used it live before and he now he hesitated. Ethically there was no question; it was absolutely wrong. He had promised to let her go this was a breach of that agreement.
There was also the possibility that it could compromise Katy's, or more accurately, Nadia Komerov's anonymity.
He swiped the screen on his phone and activated the tracking software. She needed his protection. If he didn’t do this the consequences for her could be far worse than.
For several seconds there was nothing on screen.
"Shit." He hissed. Maybe Katy had been clever enough to find the device.
"Impossible." He whispered to himself. "It's undetectable, untraceable." It wasn't a question of intelligence or not, she would have no idea the device was even on her.
As the pathway started mapping out on the screen of his phone he breathed a sigh of relief and then frowned in confusion as he examined the route they had taken. It was an erratic line, heading south and clearly following only back roads. Then abruptly they had veered off towards the highway and began making a beeline towards New York City.
He closed down the app and picked up the phone next the bed. Dialing zero put him in contact with his property manager.
"Get the chopper ready. I'm flying today."
********************
Angel rapped heavily on the trunk.
"No funny business Katy. I'm gonna open up now so I need you on your best behavior. Knock once if you understand."
There was a dull thud from the inside and then as the lid lifted Katy peered out, momentarily blinded by the high midday sun until her eyes could adapt.
"Get out."
She climbed out and looked around to get her bearings. She was in the middle of a forest on a small dead end road. There was a shack nearby.
"Walk." Angel said, pushing her in the back with the muzzle of his gun.
"Where are we going?"
"You'll see."
The one hundred yard walk to the small building was the longest of her life. Stark reality was beginning to hit home.
This would be it.
The game was over and justice hadn't been done. She would never see her mother again and never know what had happened to her. She would never find know who her father was. Never get to say goodbye to him, just as she had never said goodbye to her mom.
In her darker moments she had often pictured this scenario in her mind and wondered why people walked meekly to their doom. Why didn't run? Just make a last ditch break to get away?
Now she knew why.
If she ran then Angel would surely catch her, probably beat her, maybe even kill her. If she walked then at least she was guaranteed a few more seconds of life, maybe even find something unexpected to fight back with. Walking was the only smart thing to do, whatever the outcome.
They reached the warped wooden door of the shack and she stopped, looking surreptitiously from side to side, but there was nothing. No object within reach to be turned into a weapon.
"Open the door and go inside Katy." Angel said with another shove.
She put her trembling hand to the door and pulled it slowly inwards. There was a sound of soft, regular grunting from insides - it was sickeningly familiar. As her eyes re-adapted to the shadows she made out the figure of a man, prone, in the push-up position, slowly counting out his reps.
He was up to eighty-seven.
Three other men stood around watching him.
Katy looked at Angel but for the first time he seemed uncertain as to how to behave. He had already holstered his weapon.
"This is her." He finally said.
"Shut up." One of the men reprimanded him in a heavy Slavic accent.
The old man doing push-ups continued his slow count. As he approached one hundred his count became excruciatingly slow, but nobody said a word.
Finally he reached his goal.
"One fucking hundred." He said as he collapsed to the floor and then reached for a towel to mop his brow.
"Not bad for old man, eh Nadia?"
Katy would have liked to say something but her fear was visceral. She had always been intimidated by Mikhail Boyevik, but in the old days she had thought it was just because he was her boss. When she realized how evil he really was and how violent his past had been, she had been terrified that she had spent so much time together with him, sharing her ideas with him, unknowingly betraying her own country.
He jumped up from the floor with the energy and agility of a man a third of his age and began toweling off his naked, glistening torso. He was in good shape for someone over sixty but still his body was that of an old man's.
He put his hand out and took a hold of Katy's chin, then held it firmly as she tried to turn her head away from
him.
"Still as pretty as ever. Brains and beauty." He paused. "And of course treachery. Aren't you pleased to see your old mentor again Nadia?"
She was trembling too hard to give a reply.
"There will be no attempts to follow her Mr. Boyevik." Angel said, breaking the tension. Mikhail didn’t acknowledge the remark. Instead he took a shirt handed to him by one of his men and began to get dressed.
"I said there would be no attempts--"
"Get rid of this guy." The old man muttered in Russian.
"They're going to kill you Angel." Katy said softly. She had learned some Russian from her mother and then more from working with Boyevik. It wasn't perfect but enough for basic comprehension.
Four sets of hands went to shoulder holsters.
"Don’t listen to this little traitor Angel." Mikhail said calmly. "If you do, you are dead man. I guarantee. If on other hand you leave with Piotr and Stefan then you will have your money and you can go home to your boss, pretend like nothing ever happen here."
A gun went slowly to the back of Katy's head.
"Of course, this girl will also die, so there is nothing for you to worry about." He added.
Angel's hand slid back down by his side.
"The deal was she would go to work for you."
"She will. But only if you follow my instructions and leave now."
"They're going to kill me and they are going to kill you too." Katy said, her voice rattling with fear.
Mikhail smiled at her.
"Nadia never knows when to keep mouth shut." He said with a smile.
"You should have listened to me Angel. We should never have come here."
The smile left Mikhail's face as Angel stood, frozen with indecision.
"You are beginning to try my patience bodyguard." He said. "If you do not leave now then you are dead man."
Katy watched him, from being a scary figure he had suddenly become her last lifeline. Once he walked out that door she was on her own. He was going to have to fight for his life whether he stayed or went, but at least she had tried to warn him.
Her Sweet Satisfaction: Billionaire Secrets - Book Two Page 3
