Bargains and Betrayals (30 page)

She nodded and crawled into the bed, pulling the sheets and blankets high up on her body like a shield.

Alexi

Wanda and Leon had come to our party late, but I was glad when they finally arrived. They’d made it clear they’d help incapacitate threats in the bunker, but were against outright killing, except in self-defense. Looking around the table at the mafiosos I knew we had eager killers aplenty.

Dmitri had tried to take over the entire operation and we were already arguing about getting past the doors. The first one, we had a way around, but the door at the bottom of the stairs was a different matter.

Jessie walked past the group of us on the way to load her plate and Amy’s into the dishwasher. For a moment everyone fell quiet.

“If he uses her eyes, why is she here?” one man grumbled.

The question continued to circle, growing in power until Pietr smashed his fist down on the table. “She is much more of an asset than a liability.”

“More like a piece of as—” the same man muttered a heartbeat before Pietr knocked him to the floor.

Leaning over the other man, Pietr growled, “Her skill with a gun may just save
your
ass.”

Dishes clattered in the kitchen as Jessie arranged them in the dishwasher.

I whistled for attention. “Look. Look. We don’t need C-4 for the door at the bottom of the stairs,” I argued. “We need stealth. We need surprise.” I shoved my hands through my hair.

Jessie was suddenly beside me. She looked from me to Wanda. “Remember those files?” she asked.

Wanda nodded.

I nodded—the files Wanda had slipped out of the bunker in a ruse that they were to return to the warehouse.

“You want stealth and surprise? What you really need also starts with an S.”

Wanda nodded sharply and reached around behind her to pull up the filebox she now carried almost everywhere.

“I,” Jessie announced to the group, all the while focusing on Pietr, “am going upstairs for a nice, long, peaceful shower.” She wiggled her fingers near her ears like rain poured down around her head. “
Lots
of water.”

Pietr was transfixed, his imagination running as fast as his heart probably hammered at the thought of his girlfriend in the shower, but I knew what she was getting at and understood the message she was sending.

We’d work out the rest of our plan while she showered, blind and deaf to our plotting, with the nearly guaranteed benefit that Derek’s eyes would probably be on her the whole time, following the soap’s lathery trail.

To have a power like that
 …

I shook myself and looked at Wanda as Jessie climbed the stairs. “S, Wanda,” I prodded. “Pietr.” I snapped my fingers, pulling him back from his brief fantasy.

He blinked and refocused.

Wanda pulled out a file and slapped it down on the table for everyone to see. “S, it seems, stands for
Sophie
.”

Things only got weirder and weirder in Junction.

“Cat. This one’s yours,” I suggested, sliding the file to her. “It won’t be a trip like your usual ones together to the mall and movies, but you can guarantee her it’s bound to be unforgettable.”

I considered what else needed to be done in Jessie’s absence. “We need to move the presents.”

Cat spoke up. “I’ll go. I think…” She glanced at Max. “I think Pietr and I should handle this.”

Max barely reacted but understood as well as he could that Amy didn’t want him around. Not yet.

Cat and Pietr descended and climbed the stairs multiple times, carrying package after package of colorfully wrapped presents filled with guns and bricks of ammo while Max, Dmitri, Wanda, and I argued strategy in front of the mafiosos Pietr had paid for with a promise he was eager to break.

Jessie

I had become a prune in the interest of keeping Derek’s attention away from the group plotting Mother’s rescue. For my own satisfaction I focused on scrubbing my ankles, knees, and armpits and sliding a washcloth carefully between all of my toes. Even after such a long shower, I felt filthy knowing Derek’s eyes had probably seen the same bits of my body as mine.

I slipped into my pajamas and walked to the basement, ignoring the debate still raging in the dining room. Downstairs Amy had been joined by Annabelle Lee. I’d persuaded my father, honest and bright as anyone, to tell Annabelle Lee she’d be tremendously helpful if she kept Amy out from under foot. Amy, Dad had pointed out to her,
didn’t
know about my amazing werewolf boyfriend.

Not only had that amazed Annabelle Lee, but it thrilled her to know something about Pietr and me that my best friend didn’t.

I lay down in the bed beside Amy, gently resting my arm over her shoulder as she rested hers around Annabelle Lee. Amy flinched at the contact. “Shhh,” I soothed her, and recognizing her surroundings and friends, Amy fell quickly into a deep sleep.

And I did as Alexi instructed.

I slept.

Alexi

Everyone headed to bed like normal. Cat and I sat up a few minutes longer, I clicking through television channels with the remote while she clutched the popcorn bowl and picked at the kernels.

“They know to set the beds?”

“
Da
,” she said, staring straight ahead at the flickering screen.

I ran through the list of precautions we were taking. The clocks were set wrong. The mafiosos had loaded the presents into several different vehicles and had already left, going different ways to get to the same place at the right time. Jessie, Amy, and Annabelle Lee were curled together sleeping—a curious enough arrangement that a horny teen boy like Derek would want to peek in several times hoping to see something more intriguing than what reality offered. Our beds would be stuffed to give the appearance we still slept while we actually raided the bunker.

“And you have made arrangements with Sophia?”

“
Da
,” she said reluctantly. “It is difficult being a normal American mall-shopping girl while roping a fellow girl—with a fine appreciation of style—into assisting on a bunker raid. My social standing may suffer.”

I snatched the popcorn bowl away from her and turned it over on top of her head.

She squealed and shook her hair, flinging kernels everywhere. “You are the most awful brother!”

“
That
I can live with, Ekaterina,” I admitted as she stomped away, fuming.
Da
. The
most awful brother
was still a brother. And
that
I could most definitely live with.

Jessie

I woke in the Rusakovas’ car, squashed beside Max in the backseat, presents stacked around me and piled on my lap, a heavy vest—bulletproof—hanging on me, holster snug across my chest.

The car was already in motion.

Cat had hopefully gotten to Sophia. There was so much I was blind to for everyone else’s safety. So much I wouldn’t know until it happened.

“I need you to do something very strange,” Pietr said, leaning back from the passenger’s seat. “I’ll be slipping around the building to sneak in with Max and I need you to play decoy in case they have Derek doing the night shift.”

“He may believe you’re asleep,” Max rumbled beside me. “Might start prowling the house with his power.”

“The clocks are set to confuse him,” Alexi reminded us from the driver’s seat. “Hopefully, with nothing out of the ordinary appearing to be going on, he’ll start scanning for you.”

I nodded, my eyes still blurry.

“But,” Alexi said, “to give us a better chance, we need you to use
your
ability.”

He must have seen my expression grow puzzled in the rearview mirror. “That ability all competition shooters and writers have—to focus—
visualize
—give him something creative, detailed—”

“Intense—” Pietr specified.

“To watch.”

“You’ll want to close your eyes in a moment so you aren’t distracted,” Alexi suggested.

“Think about
anything
else?” I considered.

“Feel what you’re thinking strongly. It’ll send up an emotional flare he should latch onto.”

Max adjusted his position in the seat beside me, stretching his powerful legs. “As long as we haven’t already given him something better to watch.”

Alexi caught my gaze in the rearview mirror. “You’d better start now.”

“Something he won’t want to look away from,” Pietr whispered. “Something to remember us by.” His eyes glowed and I felt the smile twist across my lips as the car pulled to a stop and I undid my seat belt, leaning forward to catch Pietr’s mouth with mine. I kissed him hard, my body tightening at his breathless response.

My emotional flare shot sky high.

“The mirror,” I murmured against his lips, closing my eyes and pulling back. And with the experience that came from long hours of visualization practicing as a competition shooter and imagining as an aspiring author, I dropped into a memory Derek would be both fascinated and pissed off by.

Like watching a train wreck, he wouldn’t be able to look away. I shivered, realizing how trains excited him.

Layering back in the details of scent and sound and touch that too easily faded, I built on the memory.

In another part of my mind, the part that kept me breathing and kept my heart pumping, my lungs going, I felt someone pull the boxes off my lap, take my arm, and tug me to a standing position.

Alexi
. My arm was tugged around his waist and he pulled me along, carefully guiding me, blind as I was as my mind reeled under the power of bringing a memory to life again.

In the foremost part of my mind Pietr and I were again in front of the mirror in his bedroom in the precious minutes before we tumbled into bed together. Opening my eyes, I willed the memory to play on.

The breeze brushed by us, snaring a single tendril of my hair and pulling it loose from both my ponytail and knit black hat. I tucked it back in and scurried forward with Alexi into the thick of the aromatic plants and hedges, things planted to help cover the company’s scent from the Rusakovas’ patrols as they searched for their mother. Rosemary and the curled and crunchy leaves of neglected basil snatched at our jackets, marking us with desperate final bursts of scent.

Dmitri crouched ahead of us, watching me with quiet curiosity, three of his men at our backs. Alexi looked at me and carefully unwrapped my arm from around him. Even with a Rusakova beside me, I doubted there would ever be a moment I felt safe with the Mafia nearby.

Alexi nodded sharply to Dmitri. I was back—aware—the time to go was now. Dmitri turned, pointed his fingers to his eyes, and then turned them to us, announcing a changing of the guard. Tapping the silencer on his gun, he reminded us all stealth mattered especially in this initial phase of our attack.

Two of the three men nodded understanding, looking at us.

Even in the dark I knew Alexi’s jaw twitched as we nodded grimly back. A deal with the devil. That’s what we’d all been thrown into.

Dmitri looked at the remaining man and signaled. The two of them moved forward, down the freshly broken path I guessed Pietr and Max had made.

Together we sprinted forward and Dmitri checked his watch. He nodded and he and his man raced around the house’s front as we ran with our two Mafia men toward the front door. We paused, hugging the shadows, and I peeked around the corner.

Dmitri’s man held an army blanket to the window and Dmitri whacked it with his arm as Alexi pulled me back around the corner. The sound of breaking glass was muffled, but the sound of shattered glass landing inside was still clear. Moments of difference—but we needed every moment we could get.

As Dmitri rolled inside to fire on the surprised agents, we heard the echo of more glass breaking all around the house. Dmitri flung the front door open and I felt people press in behind us.

“Jessie,” Sophia whispered, “tell me this is
not
my life.”

I ducked down, tugging Soph down with me and covering her head with my arms, Cat flanking us as our guards stepped around and, with Dmitri and his man, cleared out the first bunch of agents. The only cameras in the narrow hall of the Colonial farmhouse were pulled from their roosts high on the walls. “Don’t look,” I suggested to Sophie, and I wrapped my hands like blinders around her face to shield her vision from the agents lying dead on the floor.

On silent feet Max and Pietr raced to the second floor, quickly checking rooms and calling, “Clear!” The floorboards above creaked and I heard the distinct
thump
of a body hitting the floor.

Feet pounded up the stairs from the bunker below and I nudged one of the Mafiosos forward. “Latch that door.” I pointed to the one at the top of the bunker’s stairs. It wasn’t much, but hearing the latch fall into place, I felt a little better. It bought us a moment more, and with the Rusakovas, every moment mattered.

By the time Max and Pietr returned, we’d backed away from the door leading down, ducking and covering as agents on the other side sprayed the door with bullets. But even guns with big clips needed reloading and every few minutes the pitch would change and one or two guns would stop for a refill.

Wanda found me. “We’re going through the Grabbit Mart entrance,” she explained, nodding at Dad. “Things look covered here.” More bullets sprayed the door.

“Really?
This
is covered?”

She chuckled. “We’ll try and hunt down Derek and his new pet.” To my astonished expression she simply said, “Yeah, you’ve been replaced.”

There was no time for me to even wonder by whom.

Pietr and Max slipped behind us and I caught a quick glance as they peeled out of their clothing and dropped to all fours. Stretching, howling, and welcoming the change. For a moment the shooting stopped, the agents surely frozen for a heartbeat.

A heartbeat was all it took.

In their wolfskins Pietr and Max charged the door, splintering its pocked surface as they bowled the agents down the stairs, knocking them out of the way of their advance. Fast on their heels, the Mafiosos made quick work of the stunned agents.