It felt too real. All of it felt too real. She squeezed Igor’s lifeless hand. Her own breath came in quick little gasps. Not enough air. She couldn’t breathe. She was going to suffocate. She was going to die in here from lack of oxygen. Maybe that’s what had happened to Igor.
Or maybe those men had murdered him.
She closed her eyes and focused, as Dr. Shiffman had taught her, on her breathing. In, out. In, out.
Outside, she heard gunfire. She couldn’t ward off the certain knowledge that someone else was going to die tonight.
Dr. Shiffman had told her that at some point soon, she wouldn’t need her medication anymore. She wished that moment were now. She craved the amber bottle in her medicine cabinet at home, the magic pill that would calm her shattered nerves and put the world back to rights. But last night she had taken the last one. She would get no relief from the pressure squeezing her lungs, even if she could magically get home and open her medicine chest.
What pill could help her now anyway?
Someone was out to get her, would kill people to get to her. Why? She’d never harmed anyone. Let it all be in my mind. Another paranoid delusion. Like the time I thought Papa was a spy for the Russian government.
She had to be crazy. Or maybe the truth was staring her in the face.
Igor was dead. Nick might be, too. And then there was the man at the club. The body count was getting too high to ignore. Who else was going to die? And for what?
She clutched Igor’s hand. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.
In the darkness, she made a silent vow. She wouldn’t look away. Wouldn’t doubt her senses. She would look frankly at the world around her and confront it. Even if it meant another prolonged stay at the hospital or worse, a strait jacket.
It was time to face her worst fears.
No more medication. No more numbness. No matter what her parents said. No matter what Dr. Kasparov prescribed or how hard he threatened to send her to an institution.
She refused to be passive in her own life.
She’d been suppressing her own senses, ignoring the signs all around her for far too long, and people, good people, were dying. No more. This time, she’d be brave. This time, she wouldn’t back down. She wouldn’t look to medical experts to explain the mysteries unraveling right in front of her.
If she survived the night.
She felt her way along the boxes and scrambled back to the door. She clawed at the opening. She dug her slender fingers under the edge of the door, expecting it to open only enough to let in a sliver of light and the promise of more air to breathe.
The door opened easily. They hadn’t locked her in. Surprised, she poked her head out in time to see Vlad take a bullet to the chest.
“No!” she screamed.
Heedless of the danger, she scrambled out of the back of the truck and rushed to his aid.
VLAD
ON A PRAYER, Vlad pulled the trigger, forcing Inna’s kidnappers to duck for cover. His reflexes were slower than usual thanks to the zap he’d received from the stun gun, but his shots robbed the men of their opportunity to secure the door of the truck and take off.
Both men were armed with guns. The prudent action, the strategic action, the action the FBI had trained him to take, would be to stop but not to kill her kidnappers. Disable them. Keep them for questioning. Who were they? What did they want with Inna?
On a normal day, Vlad would have disabled both targets easily.
Today wasn’t a normal day. They’d caught him off guard and taken Inna. This was personal.
Vlad wasn’t in strategy mode. He was mad as hell, and these fuckers were going to pay for what they’d done.
Shooting to kill, he easily picked off the first man, the one with the limp. The second kidnapper dove behind the truck to the driver’s side. No way was he letting the bastard get in and drive away with Inna.
I’ll kill anyone who tries to take you from me. He recognized the echo of his old man as he pulled the trigger and missed.
Movement at the back of the truck caught his eye. Inna stood, holding the rolled up door over her head.
In the split second that he paused his fire and registered her standing there about to get free, the kidnapper got off a single shot.
The bullet hit Vlad square in the chest and knocked him off his feet. He slammed into the concrete-encased light post behind him.
“No!” Inna screamed. Out of the corner of his eye he saw her launch herself from the truck and into the middle of danger.
The full body blow made him feel like he’d been hit with the mother of all hammers. His eyes watered, but he stayed focused on his target.
He wouldn’t fail Inna now.
With effort, he pulled himself upright and shot again. Mine! Again. Mine! He shot twice more in rapid succession—mine, damn it, mine!—until there were no more answering shots.
“You were hit!” Inna cried out. Her hands roamed over his torso as she checked him over. Her eyes, feverish in their intensity, were wide with concern for him.
“I’m wearing a vest.” He craned his head to get a clearer view of the driver’s side of the van and confirm his kill. His latest victim stared up at him, half of his head blown off.
It was over.
Inna followed his gaze, gasped at the grisly sight, and then threw herself against him. She buried her face against his chest and clung to him. Even through his bulletproof vest, he could feel her trembling.
“Hey, you’re okay,” he soothed. He stroked her head, secretly savoring the silkiness of her damp hair and the faint scent of strawberries, the knowledge that she was safe and in his arms.
“You were shot. They could’ve killed you.” She wrapped her arms tighter around his waist and squeezed.
His throat closed. He hadn’t been hugged in years. He suspected Inna, when she was small, might have been the last person to do so.
He reminded himself that this sudden closeness meant nothing. She merely wanted comfort. She’d had a scare. This was a natural response. He represented safety and security. He was, after all, her bodyguard.
She didn’t know why he was really insinuating himself with her father. She wouldn’t be pressed against him like this if she did. Not for me, he reminded himself. Not for me.
“Don’t worry about me,” he said gruffly. “Danger’s part of the job. You’re what matters.”
“Don’t be an idiot,” she said. “You matter to me. You’ve always mattered.” She looked up at him then, and what he saw undid him.
He had no right to her. No right at all. But he wanted—no, needed—her more than air.
How could he ever let her go? He knew in that moment that he wouldn’t. Couldn’t. No matter the cost. No matter what rules he had to break. Mine. Only mine.
She pulled away abruptly. “Nick,” she said.
He hated the sound of another man’s name on her lips.
“We have to help Nick.”
NICK
NICK STRUGGLED TO sit up. Distantly he heard Inna call, “Nick! Ohmigod, Nick, are you okay?”
Was he okay? Nick lay on the hard ground. His head throbbed. His shoulder stung like a sonofabitch. He touched it with his hand. Wet.
“He was shot, too.” Inna hurried to his side. She pulled his hand away from his wounded shoulder. His palm was slick with blood. “Vlad, he’s losing so much blood.”
Her bodyguard leaned in close over her shoulder. “It’s not bleeding that badly,” Vlad said. “He’ll live. Take off his shirt and use it to apply pressure to his shoulder.”
Inna’s hands shook as she peeled his shirt from his shoulders. He winced at the pain. “Sorry,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.”
“You’re hurt because of me. Because you tried to save me,” she said.
“Yeah, he’s a regular hero,” Vlad said, gun still at the ready and pointed at him. The bodyguard seemed to target him with murder in his eyes. Couldn’t he see that Nick wasn’t a th
reat to Inna?
She pushed a damp hank of hair out of his face. As she did so, Nick caught a glimpse of her wrist.
“What’s that—on your wrist?”
“Are you hurt?” Vlad crowded her, and there was no mistaking a protectiveness that went beyond any paid duties. So the bodyguard was interested in her, too.
Vlad took her hand and inspected her wrist, pushing back the wide sleeve of her sweater and giving Nick a clearer view of a berry-colored mark shaped like a wing. The mark seemed somehow significant, but pain kept Nick from focusing.
Inna laughed nervously. “Me? A few bruises and scrapes maybe. This is just a birthmark.”
She pulled her hand out of Vlad’s with a determined tug. Dare Nick hope she had no interest in the other man?
She turned her full attention to applying pressure to Nick’s wound. He drank her in with his eyes, as if she were the nourishment he’d been craving all of his life. She was here with him and safe. For the briefest moment his world seemed right—despite the intense pain in his shoulder and the gangster and his gun hovering over them.
Sirens sounded around them. “Took them long enough,” Inna muttered under her breath.
“You called them?” Vlad asked.
“I hit the panic button under the counter.”
“Good thinking,” Vlad said.
“Some good it did.” Her mouth fixed in a grim line. She pressed his shirt against Nick’s bleeding shoulder with renewed determination, and he gritted his teeth to keep from gasping with pain. He could feel the shaking of her hands. “You could’ve gotten killed. Both of you could’ve gotten killed. And they’d be too late.”
“We’re both okay,” he said, even as the pain in his shoulder threatened to drown out everything around him. He struggled to keep his eyes open, to fill his eyes and heart with Inna.
“I think he’s about to pass out,” Inna said, and her voice was far away. She shook him gently. “Nick, stay with me,” she urged.
“Always,” he mumbled.
MAYA
“LET’S MOVE,” DATO’S sidekick said. “We don’t want to be here should the cops show up.”
Dato turned to Maya. He waved his knives, smeared with Stan’s blood, in front of her face. His eyes glittered with menace. “You,” he said, “are going to come quietly. Understood?”
She closed her eyes—against the fear, against the insulting sense of helplessness, against the glorious moment stolen from her and now crushed beneath Dato’s leather boot—and nodded.
His companion snatched up the backpack and scooped the pile of money inside with his sleeve. He didn’t make prolonged contact with the tainted cash, and Dato didn’t touch it at all.
Without her poison, her wits were no match for Dato’s knives.
What terrible fate awaited her? She swallowed, and the sound was loud in her ears.
Maya scanned for escape routes, seeing none. Lights were on in the neighboring houses. Someone might see her being hustled down the driveway. Would anyone come to her aid if she screamed?
By the time they did, she might be dead.
At the end of the driveway, a black SUV with tinted windows waited. “Get in,” Dato said. He brandished his long knife. The metal was stained red with Stan’s blood.
She shook with what she guessed was terror. She’d never been gripped by this particular emotion. She felt stripped to her very essence, raw and achingly vulnerable. This man could hurt her irreparably, and there was precious little she could do to protect herself.
She complied with his request. What other choice did she have? She slid silently across the seat and shrunk as far away from her captor as she could. Dato climbed in beside her. He placed a bloodied hand on her knee and smiled at her with a predatory gleam.
Artur wouldn’t even know she was missing until it was too late.
More alone than ever, she had no clever trick to get herself out of the mess she’d blithely helped to create.
Dato didn’t restrain or gag her. He relied on the force of his own menace to keep her in check, and it did. She wasn’t brazen enough to cross or confront him.
She didn’t say a word. The car sped away from Stan’s house and the mutilated body Dato and his man had left there in its own pool of blood.
The image of those knives cutting cleanly through Stan’s jugular wouldn’t stop playing behind her eyes. Her natural confidence bled away.
Stan’s murder was supposed to have been nice and neat, designed to look like a heart attack, a common tragedy that wouldn’t arouse questions. But this Georgian barbarian had barged in, ready to eviscerate anything and anyone, and left a scene the police would mine for easy clues.
Dato obviously didn’t care. He didn’t prize subtlety. He didn’t pretend to be something he was not.
All her life, Maya had thought her secrets gave her power. She had held her own with her quiet manipulations and potions, using stealth and patience to shape her world to her liking. Now, she realized, men like Dato had true power. They did what they liked, took what they wanted when they wanted it, and they didn’t hide; not like her, not like Artur.
Could Artur really win a war against this man? She had bet on her husband’s power and tactical genius. Maybe she’d been wrong.
The car sped down side streets. On a Sunday night, few pedestrians were out. With unease, she noticed they were leaving behind the rundown apartment buildings and humble single-family homes of Stan’s neighborhood and moving into a more familiar part of town. Mini mansions dominated nearly every inch of lot after lot.
“Where are we going?” Her voice was embarrassingly tremulous. She thought she had already guessed the answer.
Surely, Dato would take her home so that he could confront Artur. With his knives.
She hadn’t confided in Artur nor consulted him, instead seeking solace in her secrets and choosing to manipulate him as punishment for his neglect. Another tactical error?
With her as prisoner, Dato would be able to make all kinds of unreasonable demands, provided he took Artur by surprise and that her husband cared enough about her to make concessions.
Fear ripped through her mind and heart, until all she could feel was the raw, animalistic clenching and tremors of her own body.
She had lost Artur’s love. She’d never be able to win him back or punish him. No, she was going to die, a victim of his apathy toward her.
Dato was talking. She barely made out his words as she sank deeper and deeper into her own despair.
“…pay a visit to your son’s nightclub,” he said.
“My son?” she gasped. The fear took on new dimensions. Would Dato kill Aleksei the way he had Stan?
Icy premonition crept from the tips of her fingers up her arms, raising gooseflesh. Jagged shards of desperation stabbed her belly. She pressed her lips together, determined not to say another word and to pretend her usual mastery over her emotions. She couldn’t let Dato see her appalling weakness.
“I have a busy night planned. Starting with cocktails at Troika.” He bared his teeth. The gold across his bridge caught the light and set off his malevolence. “Molotov cocktails.”
His evil grin widened as if he had amused himself with his own cleverness. When she didn’t react, he asked, “You do know what a Molotov cocktail is. Don’t you, Mrs. Koslovsky?”
He reached over the front seat and grabbed a dark amber bottle. It looked like a beer bottle, except for the stopper and wick at the top. “Highly flammable liquid that explodes in a fire ball when lit,” he said. “Cheap and very deadly.”
Her heart momentarily seized as she imagined this monster lighting her gorgeous son on fire. She had already seen the kind of carnage the man wreaked with his perilously sharp blade. She could scarcely contemplate what he might do with a blunt weapon designed for maximum destruction.
“Troika will burn to a crisp. I’ll put it out of business for weeks. Maybe months.” He seemed to relish torturing her with a clear picture of the violence he pla
nned.
She could no longer control her breathing. Fear choked her until her breath came in almost sobbing gasps.
Dato touched her cheek. His brown eyes glowed with a demonic light. Then he mocked her. “And here I thought you were an ice queen. Nothing and no one touches you.”
His hand trailed down her neck and over her collarbone. She forced herself to endure his touch, knowing she had to if she hoped to survive, but she shriveled inside with each stroke of his fingers.
He wrapped his hand around her throat and applied the gentlest of pressure, deliberately letting her know that he could choke her or snap her neck…or kiss her. Armed with his knives and firebombs, holding her prisoner, he could do whatever he liked, and she would be forced to bear witness to the destruction or suffer it herself as it pleased him.
Her soul cried out for Artur.
In this, her darkest moment, she doubted he would come for her. She doubted he would care. An icy wave of fear crashed over her and threatened to pull her under.
Artur didn’t know her or see her. He would never imagine that she was here in danger. Needing him in a way she never had before, she hated him more than ever, feeling the biting double edge of her unrequited love.
The car turned onto Brighton Beach Avenue. It moved at a leisurely pace under the overhead train tracks, stopping at the lights. The windshield wipers swished softly, pushing away the clinging bits of drizzle that blew onto the glass. There seemed to be no hurry, but she found no solace in the slow progress toward Troika. She had no way to warn Aleksei of the impending threat.
The car pulled to a stop, double parking along the curb outside the nightclub, along with two similar vehicles with tinted windows. Dato cupped the back of her head with his palm and forcibly turned her head. He pressed her face to the window. “You will watch.”
A man got out of the car behind them and strolled to the double glass doors of the club. No one on the street seemed to take any notice of him. Once she lost sight of him, Dato pressed on the back of her head. He shifted her so that she was forced to view the large picture window at the front of the restaurant. As Dato’s driver rolled down his window, she spotted Victor at one of the tables in front.
Gangsters with Guns Episode #3 Page 6
