In For the Kill (39 page)

He was in no shape to pull off a grand rescue, even if he had the faintest idea where she was. He shoved his legs off the bed so that their dead weight would give him some ballast for the push—and sat up.

He almost passed out. Blood spotted his bandages. Thigh, ribs.

The suitcase Connie had brought taunted him from across the room. Fresh clothes, shoes. Twelve feet of floor. It looked like a fucking mile.

And where did he think he was going, once he dressed himself? The only people who might know where she was were Renato and Hazlett. It could take days to track them down. Sveti was all out of days. They were closing in on her. Like they had at the foundry.

That had been bugging him. A puzzle needing to be solved, when he had the time, and the bandwidth. How the fuck had Cherchenko and his mafiya hit squad followed them, after the complicated evasive moves he'd pulled? Someone must have planted a trace, but how, when, and on whom? Simone had bug-swept the car and hadn't detected anything. To be absolutely sure, they would have to dismantle the vehicle to its smallest component parts. Who had the time?

Pavel was dead, and the others. There was no asking a dead man. But what about Misha? Sveti had said he was a tech geek.

Of course, Misha might well have been the one who sold his brother out in the first place, by spilling the info about the
gelateria
. But Sam couldn't blame a fourteen-year-old for being intimidated by a dad who would cheerfully disembowel people. Misha was orphaned, brotherless, maybe stricken with remorse. Nervous about his future. Scared shitless.

Misha might know something useful. And this vague, formless plan was the only possible course of action Sam could think of.

One did not find a mafiya vor in the White Pages, but there were those silent calls Sveti had been convinced were from Misha. He'd chalked that notion up to wishful fantasy. Sveti wanted so badly to save the world, sweeten the bitterness. He'd been such an arrogant prick to rag on her about that. It made him squirm to think of it.

But maybe it wasn't a wishful fantasy. Maybe Sveti had insights from sources he couldn't imagine. Maybe he should have listened more carefully. Been more respectful of her feelings, hunches. In retrospect, it was a marvel she hadn't blown him off sooner, as dickish as he'd been.

He pulled up Sveti's call log. The first silent call had been, what, the day before yesterday? It felt like weeks. He dialed it. It rang four times. The line clicked open. There was a heavy, attentive silence.

Sam clenched his fist. “Misha?”

The line clicked, went dead.

Shit.
Needles of pain stabbed through his temples, jabbing every which way. He opened a message and swiftly texted.

He sent it and sat there waiting. A minute went by. Then two. The phone burped softly in his hand.

He thumbed the message open with a trembling hand

He texted back, getting the letters wrong with his swollen fingers. His thumb so goddamn thick and shaking violently.

Misha's response was swift and succinct.

True to form, arrogant little shithead. But Sam could not afford to get his back up about Misha's manners today. He sucked it up, and texted again.

Another minute passed. Two more. Seconds measured by the thud of his heart in his torn, stitched, bruised, or otherwise fucked-up tissue. The smartphone buzzed. He clicked open the line. “Misha?”

No answer. For the love of God. He hung on to his temper. The kid had just lost his entire existing family in a gun massacre. “Misha,” he said. “This is not going to work if you're just going to breathe into the phone.”

“I am here,” Misha said. His voice was clipped, robotic.

“Good.” Sam groped awkwardly for something to say to the kid. “I know it's a hell of a time to ask for favors. I'm sorry about your father—”

“Don't be,” Misha said. “He was a monster, and I am glad that he is dead. I would have killed him myself, if I had a chance.”

Wow. That was cold. But it was better that they were both on the same page about his father. “Your brother, then. I'm sorry about him.”

“Are you? I was told he died jumping out in front of you. To save you.” Misha's voice had an accusing tone. As if he considered it a poor trade.

“I couldn't stop him,” Sam said. “I would've saved him if I could.”

Misha made a sharp, pained sound in his throat and didn't reply.

Sam was all out of segues. “I've lost Sveti,” he said. “I can't call her, because she left the phone. She's in danger. I think she's with the guy who had her parents killed, but she doesn't know what he did.”

“So why are you calling me?” Misha's voice was utterly remote.

“Because someone must have planted a trace on us, at some point,” Sam pressed on. “Maybe your father. They caught up with us and Sasha at that old foundry, and I can't see how he could have followed us otherwise. Unless he already knew where Sasha was.”

Misha was sullenly silent.

Sam's knuckles were white. “Did he know? Did she have a trace?”

“He did not know,” Misha said heavily. “And, yes, she did.”

His heart thudded, like a horse galloping downstairs. “Where? Shoes, purse? Where?” His voice was getting louder.

“Not in her clothes,” Misha said. “On her body.”

His control snapped. “What the fuck are you talking about? How could it have been on her body? No one's touched her body but me!”

“On her head,” Misha said.

Sam gaped. “Huh? Her head? How . . . ?”

“They put a trace under her scalp, day before yesterday,” Misha said. “I listened in on a phone conversation. Seems strange to me that she did not notice. Such a thing should be painful, no? The incision ?”

“Wha . . . but who? Who?”

“I do not know his name. He is a man who has worked with my father for many years. The client and my father both wanted something that they thought Sveti could find. My father wanted Sasha, and The Sword of Cain. They put a trace so they could follow as she searched for these things. Perhaps she is out finding them right now.”

It smashed into him, head-on. So fucking obvious. “That fall, in the atrium. They said she fainted. Bumped her head. They drugged her and tagged her. Those fucking bastards. I'm ripping their arms off.”

Misha grunted his approval. “Do something more permanent.”

“I'm on it,” Sam promised. “Do you have her frequency?”

“I could have found it for you,” Misha said. “But not anymore.”

“Why not?” he bellowed. “You have to!”

“I am bolted inside a basement room in my father's house,” Misha said. “Papa locked me in before they came after you and Sveti. Josef came to tell me Papa was shot through the heart, and Sasha ripped apart by bullets. All Papa's men have gone. He said I would die of thirst, unless the police found me. If I had the strength left to call out when they arrive. Then he left. I yelled for help. But it's true. I am alone.”

“Wow,” Sam said inanely. “They let you have a phone in there?”

Misha snorted. “No, fool. I keep my SIM card taped to my leg. I hid a charged phone in this room. I knew I might end up here. He's locked me in before. Sasha spent months in here sometimes.”

One life-threatening disaster at a time, for the love of Christ. “So why haven't you called someone to let you out? You're just sitting there? Doing what, Misha? Sulking? When you have a phone on you?”

Misha was maddeningly silent.

“Damn it, Misha!” he yelled. “Talk to me!”

“I do not have anyone to call,” Misha said. “Only Sasha and Mama would have cared enough to come and let me out, and they are both dead. There's no one left. They're all gone.”

Sam felt it settling over him, like a smothering blanket. The unwelcome load of fresh responsibility. He could not field this right now. He had Sveti to worry about. Lord knew, she was enough of a job.

“Not possible,” he snarled. “No one?”

“No one that will risk it.” Misha's voice was eerily tranquil. “Knowing my father's men, what they are capable of. I called Sveti, but I did not talk to her. She could not help me, I know. She has problems of her own. I just called to hear a voice in the dark. She said nice things.”

He was being jerked around, big time. And he knew just exactly where this was going. “So call the cops! They'll get you out!”

“They don't give a shit about me,” Misha said.

“They're bound by oath and law to protect the citizenry, no matter who their father is! And it's better than starving to death in a closet!”

Misha made a noncommittal sound, clearly not convinced of this.

“You're going to sit there in a cage with the charge on your phone dying because the world hurt your fucking feelings?” Sam bellowed.

Misha's stubborn silence made him frantic.

“Call the cops!” he urged. “I'll make a deal with you. Ask for their help, and I promise, I will personally make it my business to make sure that from now on you will always have someone to call if you're locked in a hole.”

“Bullshit,” Misha said. “No one can make such a promise.”

“Kid, I just did. And I meant it.”

“You are a cop,” Misha said. “You come and get me.”

“Jesus, Misha! Right now? You catch me at a bad time!”

“Hah, do not talk to me about bad time. Forget Sveti's trace if you cannot be bothered. Besides, I cannot call them now anyway. The charge on my phone has finished, and I cannot—”

Suddenly, he was gone. His phone's battery was dead.

Sam wanted to howl. He could call the cops for Misha himself, but everything in Cherchenko's house, most particularly the computers, was possible evidence in any number of crimes. He could explain the situation, get the local cops' help, but it would take time to straighten things out, get an all clear. He didn't have time. The only way to keep Sveti absolute top priority was to collect Misha and the trace himself.

He made a guttural, barely human sound as he lurched to his feet. Agony made everything go black . . . then the lights flickered back on in his mind, just in time to catch himself from falling. He launched himself toward the suitcase. So far away. The pain was sickening.

But the fear was worse.

C
HAPTER
27

M
ichael Hazlett's smile was no different than it had ever been. It was her vision that had changed. A filter had been lifted. Now she saw him with the stark, torn-open clarity of the twelve-year-old girl she had once been back when they were about to tear out her heart.

It seemed impossible, that she had not seen the ice in his eyes.

She ignored the gun pointed at her face, intensely conscious of the Micro-Glock, pressing against her hip inside her jeans.

“It was you,” she said. “You had my mama killed. You built that lab. You murdered all those people.”

He kissed his fingertips in a mocking salute. “You clever, beautiful thing. I have been struggling with this all day.”

“Struggling with what?”

“Letting you go,” he said. “I've become so attached. That doesn't happen to me often. I don't bond easily, you see.”

Bond? She would have laughed if she hadn't been frozen in stark horror. A leech or a louse did not bond with its host. It just fed.

But there was no point in saying it. He only heard his own voice.

“Renato and I have been arguing,” he said. “He's put out with me, letting base animal desires stand in the way of business. But reason has prevailed.”

“And just in time, too, I see!”

Sveti turned as Renato strode into the room, and gazed at his scowling face for a long moment. “I always thought you were a prick.”

Renato's eyes flashed. “As I thought you were just like your lying cunt of a mother. But are you as good in bed? Shall we find out?”

“Renato.” Hazlett looked pained. “Such language. Please.”

“I knew you were a human bloodhound, just like her. Willing to lie and cheat and fuck your way in a straight line toward whatever you wanted. So she told you about the lab somehow? We monitored every scrap of paper she sent, but she coded it for you, eh? Slippery
bitch.
”

“So you saw her last letter,” Sveti said softly.

“Of course,” Renato said. “We were still waiting and watching at that point, trying to see what she was up to. We waited too long. I didn't want to make the same mistake with you. I wanted you killed years ago, but Michael said no, Sonia's daughter is just a sad, insignificant little twat who will waft along into some unremarkable, mediocre life and not give us any trouble. But no.” Renato shot a furious look at Hazlett. “Why risk it, you said! But I was right this time! We waited just long enough for her to come stab us to the heart!”

“We had also been informed that running afoul of your American protectors could be problematic. Calm down, Renato.” Hazlett's apologetic smile was weirdly incongruous behind the pistol. “You'll have to forgive Renato his venom. Your mother had him fooled for some time while she gathered information about our project. He never saw or met her in the Ukraine, you see, so she targeted him when she began snooping in Italy. She introduced herself using her maiden name. She was very charming, very beautiful. Very seductive. It was months before I put it all together and told Renato what she was really up to. He's still upset with me. He got his feelings very deeply hurt.”

“Whore,” Renato said through his teeth. “Lying whore cunt. You look like her. You whore like her. You'll die like her, too.”

“Yes, yes, Renato. Not now.” Hazlett sounded bored. “We were fortunate that the lab was already closed when she discovered it. None of our research was compromised, like last time. It was just a matter of silencing her, making sure she hadn't told anyone.” He shrugged. “I thought it was handled. But she slipped something past us evidently.”

“We should have killed her sooner,” Renato snarled. “And you just had to lure the daughter here, dangling the bait. Self-indulgent fool.”

Hazlett looked wistful. “I was so glad, back in the day, when your fierce protectors gave us an excuse to wait to kill you. You were such a lovely little cream puff. They say, keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, right? You're an enemy I wanted to keep oh, so close.”

“I would never have had sex with you,” she said.

Hazlett did not appear to hear her. “I was disappointed when you soiled yourself with your pit bull. It compromised your virginal glow. But girls will be girls. Everyone needs a range of sexual experiences. That way, they can appreciate true skill when they finally encounter it.”

She hated the turn the conversation was taking. The speculative way both men were looking at her body made her stomach flop.

“Lift your arms into the air,” Hazlett said, getting up and walking slowly around her. She could smell the sharp citrus perfume of his aftershave, then the cold, hard circle of the gun barrel against the nape of her neck. “And do not think for one instant that I am not capable of putting a bullet into your brainstem if you move.”

“I do not think that,” she said, thinking of the lake of bones.

“Renato, take the gun from her waist holster. And search her for other weapons. I know you've been itching to put your hands on her.”

“Certainly.” Renato's voice was an oily ooze. He stuck his hands into her waistband and took out the gun, but left his hand under her shirt, stroking her belly, sliding up to cup her breast. “So warm and soft.
Bellissima.
” He ran his hands greedily over her chest, squeezing and probing. Sveti clenched her jaw, swallowed. Stayed motionless.

“Renato, stop fondling her and get that envelope she's holding,” Hazlett said impatiently. “It holds what remains of Sonia's photos.”

Renato snatched it out of her hands and shook the pictures into his hand. He shuffled through them, making angry, petulant little noises, then grabbed the silver bucket that the white wine had chilled in. He dumped the ice into the small sink in the bar, placed the bucket on the table, then grabbed one of the tapers out of the candelabra.

He set the sheaf of photographs on fire and held them in front of her as they burned. When the flame threatened his hand, he dropped the charred, blackened scraps into the bucket, darting Sveti a spiteful look. “She looks a bit the worse for wear today, Michael. Her glow has dulled. It happens to them all, my friend. Sad, but true. Beauty fades.”

“She'd shine right up again, if not for those pesky moral principles,” Hazlett complained. “Those are what dull her. Just like both her parents. It must be genetic. Such a pain in the ass.”

“Both parents?” It jolted her like a cattle prod. “You knew my father, too?”

“Of course,” Hazlett said. “That's where it all began, back in my impatient youth. I was looking for shortcuts to fame, riches, and glory.”

It all crashed together in her mind. “The lab my father blew up, in Nadvirna,” she said. “It was yours. Zhoglo was supplying you with test subjects. The orphans and mental patients.”

He sketched a theatrical bow. “
Mea culpa.
It started decades ago late one night over a bottle of wine. Renato was researching a compound that blocked a certain molecule from binding to its cell surface receptor. If pretreated, the compound completely protected tissue, skin, muscle, bone marrow, from lethal doses of radiation. The implications were stunning. So that night we came up with a plan.”

She felt as though she could see right through the flesh of his face. She saw his naked skull, with that wild, pale blue light blazing out of his eye sockets. A death's head, babbling cheerfully on.

“We went with a two-pronged approach. On the one side, Illuxit Transnational would set up random controlled medical trials for cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy, in Brazil, India, the Ukraine. In the Ukraine, I started considering Vadim Zhoglo as a possible partner for the second prong of our plan. He saw the possibilities right away. An intelligent man, Zhoglo. I was sorry when he died.”

“I wasn't,” Sveti said woodenly.

“Well, of course, you wouldn't be,” he said vaguely. “Anyway, we went ahead with the legitimate, slow and plodding development of the Milandra line of cancer treatment drugs, and they're a big cash cow for TorreStark, I'm proud to say. Zhoglo organized our shadow lab, where we conducted our more . . . well, aggressive research, you might say. He provided materials, and we—”

“Materials? That's what you call the people you murdered?”

“Don't be self-indulgent,” he scolded. “You know how the world works. He provided test subjects—until your father stopped him.”

“Papa,” she whispered. For the first time, she saw the nature of this monster her father and mother had battled so bravely. She finally saw why they had felt so driven, so compelled to stop him at all costs.

They'd been willing to sacrifice themselves, and ultimately, her too. It didn't make it less painful, but she understood them now.

“Sergei had us fooled, right up to the end,” Hazlett said. “He cost me years of research. I wouldn't have been forced to open the lab in Italy at all, if not for his meddling. All those lives could have been spared. But as it was, we built again and developed our secret compound. We piloted the legitimate research right where it needed to go, too. It's all legal and aboveboard now. One injection of ABR2B-88 before total body radiation completely protects the subject from both gastrointestinal and hematopoietic acute radiation syndrome. The possible applications for the military, for industry—”

“And the black market,” Sveti said.

Hazlett shrugged. “We'll see. We haven't launched it yet. Renato, get the cuffs from my briefcase and bind her hands, so I can relax.”

Renato complied, opening the case that lay on a table. He jerked her hands together, and Hazlett pressed the gun under her ear.

“Bitch,” Renato muttered, as he ratcheted it brutally tight.

“I was there when your father died,” Hazlett said. “A memorable anatomy lesson. He deserved it, for inconveniencing us. But in the end, Cherchenko's solution was better than Zhoglo's.”

“The boats from Africa,” Sveti said.

“Exactly. Perfect test subjects. Undocumented, illegal, invisible. Through Pavel's Italian mafia contacts, he could broker hundreds of them at a time. All sizes, all ages. So efficient, so smooth. No one noticed, no one talked. The Camorra had the local people well trained.”

“They gave everything they had in the world to get their families away from war and genocide,” Sveti said. “And they found you.”

“Yes, I know their stories are heart wrenching, taken individually. But I console myself by the fact that the Milandra product line will improve cancer outcomes for hundreds of thousands of people, and our compound could pull the teeth of terrorism's most vicious threat against civilization. That's worth something, don't you think?”

“Don't,” Sveti said faintly. “It's grotesque when you try to justify it. Be honest about your sadism.”

Hazlett looked affronted. “I'm not sadistic! I simply don't suffer from the awful torment of empathy, like you do, and thank God for it. You're a slave to it, Svetlana. It's just agonizing to watch you suffer. It's so much simpler to be me. I don't actively enjoy anyone's suffering. I simply don't waste my time on guilt or remorse. I get on with it, see?”

“So you're a sociopath, then,” she said.

Hazlett made a face. “I don't like labels,” he replied with distaste. “They're limiting. Don't put me in a box. I won't fit.”

“You're not even human,” Sveti said. “Not if you can't feel.”

“Don't be melodramatic,” he scoffed. “I feel many things! I'm feeling disappointed right now, for instance. Cheated out of what's rightfully mine. That's a perfectly valid feeling!”

“Cheated of what?”

His eyes turned soulful. “You. If only you hadn't made the connections. If you'd been less stubborn, less obsessive, I would have taken you for my lover. Maybe even my wife.”

Renato snorted and rolled his eyes.

Sveti suppressed a burst of bitter laughter. If there was a path through this experience that did not terminate in her grisly death, making this man angry and offended was definitely not on it.

“But I was stubborn,” she said. “I was obsessive. And so?”

“It's not the first time I've suffered this way,” Hazlett confided. “I'm not married, and not because I didn't want to be. I like intelligent, fascinating women as much as any man, but after a time, they start complaining. They want something that I can't give them. I could make do with stupid, unperceptive women, or gold diggers, but they bore me. I can't bear their presence for more than the time it takes to fulfill my biological needs. Then I want them escorted back to wherever they came from. But you would have been different, Svetlana. For you, I could have felt real feelings. We could have had something special.”

He looked like he expected her to mourn what might have been. But she was incapable of playing along with his fantasy, even to save her own skin. “So it's all about you,” she said. “All the time.”

He looked politely blank. “Who else?”

A pointless discussion if there ever was one, so she abandoned it. “What are the dirty bomb materials for?”

“Oh, that.” Hazlett chuckled. “That was random. Isn't that funny? This Sword of Cain was not my doing. That was Pavel Cherchenko's bright idea, foiled by your mother. She certainly got around, I give her that. We knew nothing about it until Pavel told us a few days ago.”

“But . . . then why was he—”

“Presumptuous idiot,” Renato said coldly.

“His plan was to proof his people against radiation with our drug, then set off a dirty bomb and have freedom and leisure to loot and pillage,” Hazlett said. “The idea has merit, in a bestial sort of way.”