Gangsters with Guns Episode #3 (3 page)

Maybe she had never really been paranoid.
 

Her intruder closed in quickly. She couldn’t let him get close enough to zap her. Where was the damn gun? Olga would have put it somewhere in easy reach. Inna pictured the heavyset woman with her enormous glasses taped together at the bridge and the silver duct-tape handbag she proudly carried everywhere. Olga had a crazy love affair with duct tape, which she claimed could be used to fix or make almost anything.
Duct tape!

Inna patted her hand along the wooden shelf and then turned her palm over and skimmed her hand along the underside of the counter. There!

Olga, the duct-tape McGyver, had secured the gun to the counter with a criss-cross of durable sticky stuff. Inna yanked on the gun. The tape reluctantly tore away from the counter. The bands of tape hung from the gun’s barrel, but Inna didn’t strip them away. She had no time. He was too close.

“Stay where you are!” she yelled. She struggled to hold the gun in her unsteady hands. The sight of the gun brought the man up short. He paused only a foot from the counter.
 

“Put zat down and I von’t hurt you.” He spoke with a heavy Russian accent.

“What do you want?”
Keep him talking.
Less than a minute had passed since he had disabled Vlad. Four more seemed like an eternity for stalling him. “Where’s Igor?”

She knew nothing about guns. She had touched one, held it in her hand, for the first time two nights ago, when this whole nightmare had started. Until that moment, guns had been part of a different world—crime dramas on TV and action films—that had nothing to do with her real life.

She had never shot anyone, at least not that she remembered. She still didn’t know whether she was responsible for killing the man who had raped her, although Detective Hersh clearly hadn’t thought so.

She didn’t know if the gun was loaded. Or if she could hit a target even if she tried.
 

“I von’t hurt you,” he said again. “We just go for leettle ride.” He took a step forward.

“Stay where you are!”
 

By the door, Vlad groaned. Her eyes darted in his direction, and in that moment the intruder rushed toward her. She squeezed the trigger.

A loud explosion shot from the gun, and an antique chandelier over one of the display tables shattered.
 

The recoil threw her back. The gun pinched her thumb and sent a surprising shock of pain into her hand. She fumbled the pistol and dropped it.

The intruder rushed around the counter.
 

She scrambled, grabbed the gun, and squeezed the trigger. Her heart beat wildly in her chest. She snapped the trigger again and again in quick succession until a bullet hit his leg and he stumbled and fell down.
 

His cell-phone stun gun dropped from his hand and skittered across the floor.
 

“You fucking beetch,” he swore. He cradled his leg, and she kept the gun trained on him.

“Drop gun!” a new voice yelled from the doorway.
 

Another Russian man, also dressed in a black delivery uniform, entered the shop. This one had a gun. Inna bet he was a much better shot than she.
 

The second intruder pointed his gun at Vlad’s prone body. Vlad groaned again. She could barely swallow against her fear for him. He was vulnerable, utterly defenseless. She wasn’t a good enough shot to fight both intruders off with whatever bullets were left and save Vlad.

Knowing he had her attention, the man said, “Put down gun and come vit me, or I shoot him dead.”
 

She believed him.

Hands shaking and cold, she slid her gun onto the counter.

NICK SAT IN the coffee shop across the street from Koslovsky Imports and struggled to regroup and recover from the tangle of emotions Inna evoked, the deep yearning, the bone-deep conflict.
 

He didn’t understand the immediate connection he felt with her, a connection he had no business feeling.
 

Nick’s whole life had been molded by Artur’s betrayal. He had grown up in the shadow of loss, a grieving that never ended for the family he had lost and a childhood crippled by the gnawing fear that Mimi and he would be sent back to Russia if anyone discovered their deception.

He had finally found Artur Gregorovich after all of these years. Justice was in his reach. He would see Artur exposed for the monster he was and brought to justice in the country that had unknowingly embraced the man and his pretty lies, as Nick’s mother had.

But what about Inna? With only one look, she had slipped past all of his defenses and touched his soul.
 

He couldn’t use her to ruin her own father. He couldn’t walk away from her either.
 

She had tried, politely, to send him away.
Thank you, but …
But what? Surely she couldn’t have looked into his eyes and found him wanting. Not when his feelings for her were so strong and overwhelming. Didn’t she feel their connection, too?
 

Inna had been through a lot in the last few days. A better man would respect her wishes, give her space. Yet, his whole heart rebelled at the thought of abandoning her to her evil father and the menacing goon with a gun.
 

Did Inna have any clue who her father really was or how he ruined innocent lives?

Nick didn’t have to stretch his imagination to think that what had happened to Inna the other night at the nightclub was related to her father’s crimes. She was the latest casualty, another good person hurt in the wake of Gregorovich’s deceit.

I love you, too, Papa
, he had heard her say.
How could she love such a monster?
She couldn’t possibly know the truth. Gregorovich undoubtedly kept her in the dark, deceiving her the way he’d deceived Nick’s mother.

He glanced in the direction of Koslovsky Imports, his thoughts full of Inna and her beautiful dark hair and soulful eyes. And there she was. In the street. In the drizzling rain without a coat. Without her formidable bodyguard.

She was walking to the back of a delivery truck next to a man in a black uniform. He couldn’t see what was happening clearly, but the scene struck him as wrong. He couldn’t say how, but he knew. With every fiber of his being, he knew. Inna was in trouble. Not sparing the time to grab his coat, he dashed for the door.

“Call the police,” he instructed the cashier. Then he sprinted into the street, dodging past cars.

He saw the gun in the man’s hand as he approached.
 

Nick was fit, but from running, not body building. He had never been a fighter, not physically anyway. The kidnapper outweighed him by a good thirty pounds.
 

None of that mattered or gave Nick a moment’s pause. There was no room for doubt, only one thought in his head—
save her!

He launched himself at the man from behind and jumped onto his back. He wrapped one arm around the man’s neck in a chokehold. Inna tried to pull away from her kidnapper, but the man jerked her arm hard. She gasped as her kidnapper pulled her up against him.

Trying to throw Nick off, the man raised his gun. Nick grabbed the barrel and wrestled for control of the weapon.
 

Spectators huddled together under the shop awnings on the street. No one rushed to their aid. He supposed that was the way among the Russians. No one had helped his grandparents in their time of need, either.

Inna jabbed her captor with her elbow. She kicked and flailed. The man couldn’t fight them both, and she wrestled herself free.

“Run!” Nick yelled.

The kidnapper fired in his direction, but missed. The car window behind Nick shattered.
 

Nick clamped his hand even tighter around the gun, determined to keep the man from taking aim again.

Inna didn’t run. She came into close range.
 

“Run!” he shouted at her again. But she didn’t run.
 

She screamed for help that didn’t come and added her hands to the fight for the gun. Nick’s heart pounded with fear for her.

The kidnapper kicked at Inna. She grunted with pain but only tried harder to wrench the gun free.
 

Nick refused to suffer another loss on Artur’s doorstep. He squeezed his forearm against the kidnapper’s throat, ready to snap his spinal column or cut off his air supply. Ready to kill with his bare hands.

Drizzled rain poked like little needles onto his back and shoulders as they struggled with the kidnapper to gain control of the gun. He could feel the muscles in the man’s throat straining against his forearm as he squeezed. Their hands were slick from the rain, and the assailant’s grip was weakening. Still, the bastard clung to his pistol.

Inna kneed the kidnapper in the groin. The man’s body folded as he curled inward from the blow with Nick still on his back.
 

He had his first glimmer of hope. The bad guy was going down. They’d get the gun. Inna would be safe.

There was a loud pop as the gun fired unexpectedly. Pain exploded in Nick’s shoulder. Inna screamed his name.
 

Another set of hands grabbed him. Ripped him from the kidnapper’s back. Threw him to the ground. The impact as his head hit the wet cement blinded him with pain.
 

“Nick!” Inna screamed. Her terror sliced him to the bone. He had to do something. He had to save her. He struggled to get up, and the world went black.

THE STUN GUN hadn’t dampened Vlad’s awareness. His body rioted with pain that dissipated slowly. He heard the gunshots in the shop and the threats designed to gain Inna’s compliance.
 

Vlad couldn’t control his muscles enough to crane his neck so that he could see Inna, but he heard the
thunk
of her gun as she placed it on the counter and the soft sound of her footsteps. She walked straight into the arms of a kidnapper to save him.

Get up. Get up! Don’t let him hurt her.

Vlad struggled to gain his feet and failed. The shock from the stun gun had scrambled his muscle control. He couldn’t make his hands and legs move.

“Be a good girl. That’s right,” the kidnapper said.

Vlad raged against his own helplessness. Time seemed to warp, and he was back in another scene, twenty years ago, the past and the present in an eerie sympathy with one another.
 

“Be a good girl, Nadia. Tell me,” Ivan said, voice low and threatening. When she didn’t answer immediately, he backed her up against the wall, the steps to their passionate dance familiar and achingly wrong.
 

No matter how many times Ivan hurt her and Vlad or how many months passed, she always took him back, inviting him into the apartment, into her arms, into her bed.

Vlad hated Ivan.
 

Ivan’s bare arms caged her. Dark tattoos of daggers and crosses flexed as he leaned in close. “Who was he? Who was that man you were talking to?”

“No one. He was no one,” Nadia said quietly.
 

Maybe she thought she could placate Ivan, but Vlad knew better. He had seen the devil in his father’s eyes tonight and caught the unmistakable scent of liquor on his breath, long before Ivan had starting pouring shots for himself from the bottle on the table.

“Leave her alone.” Vlad’s voice started with the power of a man’s and ended with the sound of a squeaky child’s. Ivan didn’t even spare him a glance.

“Who was he?” Ivan grabbed Nadia by the shoulders and shook her hard. “Tell me. Tell me!” When she didn’t answer, Ivan smacked her across the cheek.
 

Vlad felt the blow in his own body. “Get your hands off of her!”
 

He charged Ivan. He threw himself against his father with all of his strength.
 

Ivan flicked him off as if the whole of his weight and anger were a mere nuisance. With the barest flex of his arm, Ivan threw him flying across the small room.

Vlad landed hard on his back and jumped to his feet.

 
“I’m sorry,” Nadia sobbed. Was she apologizing for herself or for Vlad? She cowered against the wall, arms raised in a hopeless attempt to fend Ivan off.
 

“I’ll make you sorry.” Ivan rained blows on her small body. “You talk to no one. No other man. Only me. Only me!”
 

“Leave her alone!” Vlad was going to make the bastard stop, make him pay. He looked around for something—anything—harder than his fists.

“Say it!” Ivan demanded, ignoring him.

“Only you,” she choked.

He grabbed a wooden chair and rushed Ivan.

“Vlad, no!” Nadia pleaded. Pleaded with him, not with his abusive old man. “He’ll kill you!”

He couldn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop. They’d suffered too much at Ivan’s hands. Tonight, it would end one way or another.

He swung the chair with all his might and landed a blow that only made Ivan grunt.

Not hard enough. Not strong enough.

With one hand, Ivan snapped the leg off of the chair and swung. Vlad ducked and blocked the blows with the chair until Ivan cracked the leg against his knuckles and wrested the broken chair out of his grip.
 

Ivan pounded him hard with the chair leg. He slammed it against Vlad’s legs and knocked him off balance.

“You worthless weakling.” Ivan hit him on all sides with the stick, until he couldn’t stand, until he could hardly breathe for the pain in his ribs. Ivan smacked him hard across the head. The chair leg broke in Ivan’s hand.
 

“Hard-headed like me.”
 
He heard Ivan laugh. His father’s voice sounded far away. “Get this lesson through your hard head. When you take on the Devil, be sure you can win.”

 
Unconsciousness beckoned. Vlad refused to close his eyes and give in.