Extreme Danger (35 page)

A helium balloon in his chest expanded, puffing out his chest and stretching his spine to its utmost length. It lifted him up. He floated down the mall, suspended a couple inches from the ground.

Anchored to the earth only by the tender contact with Nadia’s baby-soft arm, as she towed him smoothly along to an unknown fate.

Chapter
19

P avel Cherchenko took one freaking long time to get off.

Maybe it was all the vodka Ludmilla had poured down his throat, although you would think a madam wouldn’t serve up dick-killer on the rocks. She’d had a few herself.

He forced himself to watch the screen, jaw clenched. He was as uncomfortable as hell about this, and he had no doubt that Ludmilla was too. But it was Nick’s luckless job to monitor them, just to make sure things didn’t take an ugly turn.

Though watching Pavel’s naked, hairy ass rise and fall, he couldn’t help but reflect upon the fact that ugly was a relative term.

None of them had anticipated when they installed the hidden vid cams that they were going to have to watch her fuck anyone, least of all one of Zhoglo’s men. But there they were, in Milla’s big, lavish bed, grimly going at it. Yikes. Who knew.

They’d gone on screaming red alert as soon as Nick had spotted Pavel getting out of the black Beemer in the parking garage. But so far, Pavel hadn’t made any move to hurt Milla. In fact, he’d made no threats at all. That alone made Nick itchy and nervous.

It seemed more like the guy was in need of a confidante. He’d started out talking about a business deal, a damn lucrative one, from what Nick could tell. Beautiful girls to service the Vor. Lots of them. He liked youth, freshness, variety. He had an unlimited budget. Ludmilla had gotten much more relaxed when they started talking big money.

But as the guy drank, he’d gotten sloppy and sad. Whining about how angry his boss was over the Solokov debacle. Ludmilla crooned her sympathy, plied him with still more vodka, and soon Pavel was weeping boozily in her arms, grabbing at her surgically enhanced tits. One thing led to another and forty minutes later, the guy was still jerking and straining on top of her, a look of pain on his haggard face. Ludmilla murmured encouragement, massaging his ass, trying to help him along. Nick cringed, prayed for the guy to come already. Jesus. Nobody was having any fun, least of all Pavel.

Finally, Pavel threw his head back, jerking and grimacing as if he were being electrocuted. Thank God. His face sagged down over Milla’s shoulder. Milla turned her face squarely towards the vid cam that was hidden in a piece of hideous modern art.

She gave Nick a blood-chilling look.

Pavel rolled off and sat up on the side of the bed with his back to her, shoulders slumped.

Then, slowly, he got up and dressed with the stiff movements of a very old man. Milla rose and pulled on a frilly robe. She followed him into her spacious dining room.

Pavel popped open the briefcase he had carried in, and pulled out two thick wads of cash. He tossed them on the table and shuffled toward the door, like a guy zonked out on anti-psychotic drugs.

Ludmilla waited about a minute after he left before she opened her own apartment door and peered out to make sure he was gone. She swept to the mosaic framed mirror on her dining room wall, behind which another vid cam was hidden, and glared into the lens. She yanked open her robe. Gestured at her large, extremely round bare breasts.

“You liked this?” she demanded, in Ukrainian. “Did you enjoy the show? Did you have a good time? How about your men? Voyeur pigs.”

Nick sighed and dialed the scrambled line they had established for this purpose.

She snatched the cell up from the table. “What?” she spat. “Pig.”

“You didn’t use the code word, Milla,” he said patiently. “I was listening for it, and you never said it. The guys were ready to storm in, if you’d needed them, but he wasn’t attacking you. If we’d intervened, Zhoglo would know for sure that you’d double-crossed him, which would mean going into hiding right now. Taking a new identity. Starting a new life. You didn’t want that, right?”

Milla responded with a foul explosion of profanity, which Nick listened to with half an ear as he watched Pavel, making sure the guy pulled no funny stuff. But he did not. He left the way he came, getting into the gleaming black Beemer, which was now equipped with a discreetly hidden SafeGuard GPS locating device. The car weaved around in the parking garage, narrowly missing some of the other parked cars. Maybe the guy was still drunk, or sick.

Marcus was ready in another car, and moved to tail Pavel with a handheld. He pulled out smoothly after him, staying a couple of cars back.

So damn easy. Too damn easy. His neck prickled, itched. He was glad that Milla hadn’t gotten hurt, but it seemed strange that Pavel hadn’t thought to blame her at all.

When he looked back at Milla, she was holding the phone between her ear and shoulder, rifling through the wads of cash. She stuffed them into an oversized white purse that lay on the table.

“How much did he give you?” he asked.

“None of your damn business.”

“Everything about Zhoglo is my business,” he said harshly. “Keep the fucking money, Milla, I don’t give a shit about it. I just want to know how much it was.”

“Thirty thousand,” she said sullenly. “An advance. More later.”

He whistled softly as he watched the icon that symbolized Pavel’s car move across the city map glowing on the computer monitor. “It’s a trap,” he said quietly.

She snorted. “Pah. Life is a trap,” she said shortly. “All a woman can hope for is to make some decent money before the trap springs.”

“Don’t send him any girls, Milla,” he said. “Don’t do it.”

“He just gave me thirty thousand dollars, fool,” she snapped. “And don’t you want to know where those girls go? Tomorrow he sends me an address for them, hmm? You interested in that address?”

“Of course I am,” he said. “But you know how he operates. You send him a girl, he’s liable to send you back her head in a box, via bike messenger. I suggest you take that money and run like hell. Today.”

Milla’s painted face sagged, looking oddly haggard in contrast to her surprisingly youthful, voluptuous body.

“Take that new identity,” he urged her. “Take it now. Get the fuck out of town. It’s weird that Pavel didn’t even ask you any questions about having proposed me for the job. And now this contract, and all this money—it stinks.”

She let out an explosive breath. “Stinks? Yes. It all stinks. You stink, Nikolai. New identity, pah! As what? Housecleaner? Hotel maid? Home health aide? You think I want to empty bedpans, wipe dribbling mouths for the rest of my life? That is what stinks!”

“Milla. Goddamn it,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I’m doing my best. I cannot protect your life and your lifestyle at the same time.”

“Fuck your best,” she hissed. “I would rather eat poison.”

She hung up and flounced away, robe fluttering behind her.

Nick dropped his throbbing head into his hands, and rubbed his temples. Dealing with women was way too fucking complicated for him.

Except for Becca. A deep thrill of constant anticipation had hummed in the back of his consciousness all day long. Something inside him bounced madly around like a ball in a pinball machine every time he thought about her. Which was pretty much all the time.

God, he wished he could get away from this to go play with Becca for a couple hours, but he had a feeling that fantasy wasn’t going to play out. Not since Pavel made his move.

The frustration made him grind his teeth. Davy was right. He had it bad. Zhoglo was rolling out the red carpet for him, and he was feeling sorry for himself because he couldn’t keep a hot date.

At any rate, he was glad he’d gotten the hotel room. She was safer there, checked in under his false name, than she was in her apartment. Even if she had to sleep there alone. Fucking waste. Big bummer.

“Uh, Nick? I don’t want to flip you out, buddy, but didn’t you say your girlfriend was working till midnight?

Nick jerked around at Davy’s voice. “Yeah. Why?”

Davy gestured towards the monitor of the computer where he’d loaded Becca’s beacon code. “Uh, looks to me like she’s leaving town. Heading north on the interstate.” His voice was delicately cautious.

“What the fuck—?” The chair Nick had been sitting in shot backwards and crashed into the table behind him when he sprang up to lunge at that monitor.

Holy shit. She was north of Lynwood, moving at a brisk clip. At 9:40 P.M. He grabbed his cell, pulled up her number.

Davy slunk promptly towards the door. “I’ll just, uh, excuse myself,” he muttered. “This kind of conversation makes me tense.”

But Davy needn’t have bothered. The cell service informed him that the party he was trying to reach was out of area.

Wild-eyed, he stared at the icon moving on the screen. What the hell? Why would she lie to him? For what goddamn purpose? Why?

She could have panicked and skipped town, no one could blame her, but why then all those flirty, sexy text messages? A build-up? To throw him off the scent? Jesus, could she be running away from him?

An unwelcome memory started playing in his head, making him abruptly sick to his stomach. His mother. Her many attempts to run away from Dad. At first she had run away with Nick. Later on, as things got worse and worse, she’d tried to run away without him.

She never got far. Dad had kept her isolated, way out there on the endless Wyoming grasslands, so she had no friends. She did not drive. Her English had been close to nonexistent. She’d had no money. She’d always looked so defeated when Dad brought her back. It made Nick feel guilty for being so pathetically grateful that Dad had caught her.

Until the cancer had put her permanently out of Dad’s reach when Nick was twelve.

He still remembered holding her hand, the look of dumb relief on her face as she finally slipped away from the relentless pain of her illness. And the stress of enduring Anton Warbitsky. A state which could be classified as a chronic illness in and of itself. He should know.

She had died whispering Nick’s pet names. Kolya. Kolyuchka.

His stomach hurt, a hollow, awful ache. He’d spent his life trying to run away from this feeling, and here it was, large as life, bad as ever.

Aw, fuck this. Now was not the time to rake up old, harrowing memories. He had enough to feel like hell about here and now.

He programmed his phone to alert him the second Becca turned her phone back on. She had to pull this shit while he was chained to a goddamn chair, watching Milla and Pavel? He couldn’t even follow her.

He was rattled, scared. And sad. Feeling sad made him angry. He was going to be interested to know exactly why Becca had lied to him.

In fact, he could not fucking wait for that explanation.

Becca speeded after Diana’s receding taillights on the northbound interstate, wondering nervously just how dangerous this wacky impulse to tail Mathes’s mistress actually was.

She was comforted by the sense that Diana was at least as inexperienced at this sort of thing as Becca herself, judging from all the whining and sniveling in Marla’s office. Chances were, she wouldn’t be on the alert for someone following her. At least, so Becca hoped.

Asphalt rushed beneath her wheels. Her eyes watered with the strain of keeping Diana’s taillights constantly in sight. Every time they disappeared around a curve, she panicked until she found them again. Sped up to check the make, color, plates of the car, so she could drop back again and breathe, more or less. And drive.

She must be nuts. She should give this information to Nick. He was trained to deal with it. She herself, on the other hand, was trained to plan memorable menus. She knew six great recipes for stuffed mushrooms. She was the queen of artichoke dip. She could serve wine without dripping a single drop. She knew where to find great deals on table linens. What was she doing on the road, following a criminal?

Maybe it was because she’d been fired. Her full-time job now was to do everything possible to get out of this nightmare trap she was in, because until she did, she had no hope of anything even resembling a normal life. And besides, she believed in fate. The opportunity to follow the woman had presented itself like a flashing neon arrow. It wasn’t like she could freeze frame, call Nick, pass the job off to someone else who was more qualified for it. It was her or nobody, now or never. She would have to have been a gutless wimp not to jump on it.

Problem was, she felt alarmingly like a gutless wimp. Was that a true instinct she’d followed when she ran down the hall after Diana? Or just a random electrical impulse from the depths of her frazzled brain? Crossed wires, blown circuits—how could she tell?

She tried to talk herself down. After all, she was following a woman who didn’t have a whole lot of backbone, judging from the way Mathes had bullied her. Becca wouldn’t have had the nerve to follow one of Zhoglo’s gun-toting goons, but Diana was another matter. From the sound of that conversation, Diana was some sort of health professional, not a career criminal. Not armed. As clueless about this kind of thing as herself, Becca hoped.

Hell, if it came down to a physical confrontation, God forbid, Becca might even be able to hold her own in a catfight, if the weapons were swung purses, fake nails, insults, bitchslaps.