Clinch (The Underground Book 2) (25 page)

“Guy also came into the clinic. We were in the back. He came in calling out Katie’s name.” He tipped his head to one side quizzically. “Katie, is it? That’s what you call Dr. Kathryn Schwan?”

Leo ignored him. “You took Pierce hostage right out of the clinic?”

“Yep. Held my gun up and told him to leave with us quietly, and the bastard walked right out the door with us and got in the car. It was too easy.” He lifted his Ruger to emphasize his point.

Of all the people with eyes on the clinic, how had none of them mysteriously been present for this series of events?

Then again, Leo and Katie weren’t there. They were at his apartment at the time. Whoever was tailing him—from either side, good guys or bad guys—probably stayed with him and Katie for the day. Why would anyone stick around to watch the empty clinic?

Another thought occurred to Leo. “Yenin didn’t send you to get these samples, did he?”

“None of your damn business,” Erik declared.

Leo looked around dramatically. “No way in hell would Yenin send either of you on a mission of this magnitude. And kidnapping random strangers isn’t his style, either. Since I don’t see Yenin, or anyone serving as backup, I’m gonna assume he isn’t the one who sent you.”

“Who sent you?” Ivan asked.

“Don’t tell him anything,” Erik muttered as if Boris was too stupid to make the decision on his own.

Leo stepped closer. He was steaming by then. “Who the fuck sent you?” he repeated.

Boris lifted his gun. “Step back, Leo. I
will
shoot you.”

Leo didn’t move an inch. No way would Boris shoot him. If he did, he’d be dead in less than a second.

Instead, Leo had a new idea. He reached into his pocket and retrieved the vials. He held them out. “You want them? You release Marshall right now. I’ll give you about thirty seconds, and then the deal is off and I smash them on the ground. If you don’t believe me, try me. I could care less about Pierce.

“You do realize he’s my woman’s ex, right? I mean you’ve been following me all over Chicago for months. Surely you know who’s sleeping with whom. I did not come here to trade anything for Marshall Pierce. I came here to satisfy my curiosity about who your allegiance is with.

“Now I know. It’s not with Yenin,” he hedged. “You’re obviously working for someone else behind Yenin’s back.” He was totally toying with Boris, but it was working.

Boris’s ears were beet red. His face twitched.

“What would Yenin say if I went to him with this piece of information?”

Shocking Leo, Boris suddenly smiled. “You’re clueless, my friend.” He snapped his fingers at Erik. “Let Pierce go. He’s useless.”

Erik scrambled around the car to release Marshall from the far side.

Leo exhaled in relief when he saw the man was able to walk on his own. His hands were tied behind his back, and his mouth was taped, but he ran toward Ivan, who was closest.

Ivan reached out and jerked Marshall behind him.

Leo stepped forward, knocked Boris’s gun out of the way so it pointed at the ground instead of one of his friends, and set the three vials in his other hand. “Good luck with that. And stop tailing us. You suck at it. Tell Yenin if he wants a tail on us, he needs to hire someone more competent.”

There was little doubt Yenin knew that and intentionally used Boris and Erik as a decoy. Especially now.

Boris yanked open his car door. “Let’s get out of here,” he yelled at Erik.

Erik still stood by the rear passenger door. He slammed it and pulled the front open.

Boris already had the engine running. He gunned it and peeled out of the vacant underpass.

Leo counted to five, and then he spun around with the others and took off running toward Ivan’s sedan, shouting over his shoulder. “Follow that asshole. Leave Marshall here. Someone else will pick him up. I’m getting my wheels. Be right behind you.”

Leo jerked his phone out of his pocket and called his contact.

“On it. Two agents are tailing Boris already. Wherever he’s going, he’s bringing an entourage. Don’t suppose you’re going to stand down.”

Leo ran faster. He didn’t want to lose Boris, and he didn’t trust anyone else to keep up with him, either. This was their chance. They needed to know where Boris was going with the fucking blood samples. “Fuck no. Can someone pick up Marshall? I don’t want to leave him in the street.”

“Already done.” He gasped. “Shit. You aren’t going to like this.”

“What?” Leo shouted into the phone as he rounded the corner, spotting his baby up ahead. It wasn’t the nicest neighborhood. He was lucky no one had stolen her while he’d been playing cat and mouse with fucking Boris and Erik. “What?” he repeated.

“Your woman’s on your heels.” If his contact knew that, he was watching from somewhere close-by.

Leo spun around a few yards from his car and found Katie running at least as fast as him to catch up. “Shit.”

He hung up the phone, slid into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and waited the five extra seconds it took for Katie to yank open the passenger door and join him. One second later, he shot away from the side of the road and nearly collided with Ivan’s Buick in front of him as he rounded the corner.

He spotted a man in dark clothes under the overpass cutting Marshall’s hands free.

“Woman…” he shouted, not looking at her. “I’m going to spank your ass so hard you won’t be able to sit for a week.”

“Promises, promises,” she returned.

He shot her a hard glance. “You do realize I’m going to follow those assholes, and now your life is in danger.”

“You do realize my life has been in danger since the moment I met you, and I don’t rightly give a fuck.”

He glanced at her to find her glaring at him. He shook his head and returned his gaze to the Buick he was following, not wanting to lose Ivan and wishing he would push the pedal on the right a bit harder.

“I don’t have a clue where we’re even going, babe.”

“Me neither. But you’re not going there alone.”

God, the woman had spunk. “I should stop this car and push you out the side.”

“If you wanted to do that, you would have left me at the scene. You waited for me. You could have left me standing there to be picked up by whoever snagged Marshall.”

He gritted his teeth. His cock swelled. The situation was dire, and his damn cock didn’t care. He wanted this woman who sat next to him with more balls than most men he knew. He wanted to own her, possess her. Cherish her. For the rest of his life.

He gripped the steering wheel and tried to slow his heart rate with deep breaths.

Katie held on to the dash and the console so that every time he spun around another corner, she didn’t slam into the door.

So many words were on the tip of his tongue, but he held them back. He shouldn’t be making rash declarations of undying love in the middle of a crisis. He wasn’t in his rational mind. Not thinking clearly.

Another glance in her direction didn’t help. Her blonde hair had escaped the pony tail to spill around her shoulders. She wore her standard unflattering uniform of scrubs—purple today. She’d never looked more beautiful.

He jerked his gaze back to the front and adjusted his cock, hoping she didn’t notice. He could see Boris ahead of them. Several cars were in between, but he was in Leo’s sights. Thank God.

They hit Chicago traffic and had to merge in and slow down. But so did Boris. A glance in every mirror told Leo there were at least four cars in pursuit. His. Ivan’s. And two others.

“Who are you?” she whispered.

“Leo Gulin.”

“Ha ha.”

“Look, it’s not that complicated. I got picked up by the FBI a few years ago.” He shot her a quick glance.

Her eyes widened. “What do you mean they ‘picked you up’?”

“It’s complicated, but they’d been following me, and I ran an errand to Yenin’s lab outside Vegas one day. They pulled me over, took me to another location, and gave me a few options. Long story short, they hired me to essentially nark on Yenin.”

“And you accepted?”

He chuckled. “Accepted is a loose term. I didn’t have a whole lot of choice, but I knew for many years that Yenin was up to something sinister. Still don’t know what it is, but I don’t trust the man. He’s Bratva no matter how you slice it. He brought me over here, and he can take me out in a heartbeat. If I can help the FBI nail him, then I will.”

“What if anyone ever finds out?”

“You gonna tell them?” he teased, tapping the steering wheel, impatience over the traffic flow making him nervous.

“Jesus. Of course not.” She sounded appalled.

“I was kidding. Honestly, today’s the first day I’ve been in a sticky situation like this. I’ll have to share at least part of this with Mikhail and Ivan by the end of the day. They’re gonna wonder who pulled up to pick up Marshall. They’re also gonna want to know what the situation is with the blood samples. But they wouldn’t dare rat me out in the meantime.

“We’re like brothers. Family. The only family we have. We stick together. They aren’t any more pleased with Yenin’s antics than I am. That’s why they came to Chicago. They left Vegas while Yenin was in prison for six months.

“It wasn’t a stretch. His father, Grigory Yenin, came from New York to fill his shoes in his absence. The man didn’t give a shit if we had fights arranged or not. He only cared about his damn lab.”

“Lab?”

“Yeah, Yenin’s real baby is his lab—the one in Vegas, at least. No idea what he does there or why it’s so fucking important, but I presume that’s what the FBI is trying to find out too.”

“You mean like a drug lab?”

“Probably. Though I doubt he’s only cooking meth. Meth, or some other drug, might be a cover. It might be making him money in the short run, but I’m going to go with an experimental drug he’s been tweaking for years.”

“Huh…”

He could almost hear her mind working.

“You think your blood anomalies have anything to do with it?”

He hesitated. “Hate to admit it, but I’m betting so.”

Ivan swerved into the right lane, and Leo set his arm on Katie’s headrest to twist his neck around and make sure it was clear for him to do the same.

“So, not a drug he intends to sell to the public to make people high, but rather a medical drug.”

He jerked his gaze to see her face. “Jesus. You think?”

She scrunched up her face. “What other conclusion is there? You all have strange antibodies in your blood. Either he gave them to you, or you got them in Russia as a child.”

“I don’t think he gave us anything. He has drawn blood on occasion, or had his doctor do it rather, but I’ve never been stuck with anything. Not to my knowledge.”

“Maybe Ivan had a good point then. Maybe he needs these samples because he doesn’t have you available to draw them himself this year. Why did you think he was drawing blood all these years? Why’d you agree to it?”

He shrugged. “Seemed like routine physicals. That’s how he presented it. It’s not like he took them at gun point. He has a physician we all went to. Doctors draw blood. That’s not strange.”

“That makes sense.”

Except he still didn’t believe it was that simple. If Yenin wanted those blood samples, he would have found another way to get them. Sending Boris and Erik was a total fuck job.

Either Yenin didn’t really want the samples and had an ulterior motive for making this weird trade, or he knew nothing about it.

If someone did want the samples, they were going to be seriously pissed when they found out all three belonged to one man.

But the real question—who the fuck had taken the blood from Katie’s clinic? Her friend Ted? The signs pointed to him. After all, who else could have opened the front door without setting off the alarm and then gotten into the back room?

Ivan merged onto the highway. Leo followed, noting in the rearview mirror that the non-descript silver Honda was still on his tail, and the black SUV was still in front of Ivan.

Boris was several car lengths in front of them all. If that man didn’t know he had four people following him, he was a bigger idiot than Leo gave him credit for.

“Look, I don’t have a clue what we’re walking into here, but you’re not getting out of the car. Are we clear?”

“Crystal,” she responded in a sing-songy tone that dragged the word out into far more than two syllables.

“I mean it, Katie. This is dangerous. Did you notice every man had a gun?”

“Yes.”

“And there are FBI agents following us. And the police. You get that?”

“Yes.”

He groaned. He should let her out. Anywhere. But he wouldn’t. Doing so would just make him worry about her the entire time anyway. He felt better having her by his side. “Totally gonna spank your ass when we get home.”

“Counting on it.”

Leo’s phone rang. He hit the hands-free without looking. “Yes.”

“Leo, my boy.”

Leo’s blood froze. He looked over at Katie and put a finger to his lips.

She nodded.

“Anton. What are you up to?” He glanced out every window and in every mirror, imagining his old manager and keeper was right on his tail. His heart pounded in his chest. He kept his voice light.

“I’m in town for the week. Thought we might get together. Have a drink or two. I hear you have a hot new piece of ass. Heard she’s quite a looker. And a doctor. Bring her along. I’d love to meet her.”

What the fuck?

Katie set her hand on his thigh and squeezed. In support?

“I’m kinda busy this week,” he hedged. “Got a new job and been working hard at the gym,” he lied.

“Oh, that bites. Sounds like you’re in the car. I’ll let you go. Give me a call. You have my number. I’ll be here until Sunday. Just wanted you to know there was no bad blood between us, or any of you guys for that matter.

“I think of you as my own sons. I totally understand why you decided to fight for Abram in my absence. I would have done the same thing. If you ever want to come back, the door’s always open. I can line up some good fights for you. Weather’s certainly better in Vegas.” He chuckled.

Leo stiffened. What the ever-loving hell was going on? Could this possibly be a coincidence? He thought not. But he’d play along. “Yeah. I do miss the weather. But I’m pretty established here.” He wasn’t about to point out his relationship with Katie. Besides, the man made it clear he knew everything there was to know about her.