In For the Kill (42 page)

Light spilled out the front door. Heavy boots crunched the gravel as Josef went to the back of the SUV again. Sam moved as silently as he could in the fucking noisy gravel alongside the SUV.

He leaped up, swung the shovel down.

Josef jerked up and to the side just in time, and grabbed the shovel, whip quick, wrenching Sam off balance. Sam stumbled back, gasping as white-hot pain stabbed through his groin.

Josef took in the fresh blood on Sam's pants, the spreading splotch on his shirt under the jacket, his sweaty pallor. He grinned.

“Idiot goat-fucker scum,” he hissed. “You look like shit. I'm going to break this handle to a knifepoint and fuck you with it.”

He came on like a freight train, swinging the shovel. Sam jerked to the side. The shovel crunched against the frame of the car.

Sam darted in closer, jabbing an uppercut to the guy's huge lantern jaw that rocked his head back, but Josef came roaring back unfazed, kicking and punching. Sam ducked, blocked, and spun. Got in a good one to the arm that he'd shot, back in Portland, but the guy was big and fast, with long arms like an ape, and he seemed to feel no pain at all. Sam skittered back to miss a kick to the ribs and found himself pinned against the Porsche.

He tried to hook his legs to take the guy down to the ground, but the weakened muscles in his injured groin wouldn't respond. He parried a flurry of blows to the face, jerked up his knee to protect his groin—

Not fast enough. A punch to the balls, a sick wave of black—

He came to when the gravel smacked the air out of his lungs like a huge, pissed-off hand. That stinking behemoth landed on him,
oof.

Smash sandwich. Should've shot the bastard. Brain-dead asshole, thinking he could take on a killer like that, as fucked up as he was. He couldn't see, or breathe. Josef's body had blocked the light.

Then Josef jerked, in a strange, vibrating shudder—and sagged on top of him, inert. His dead weight was smothering. Hot blood flooded over Sam's face, his neck, half-drowning him.

Sam tried to shove him off. Josef thudded limply onto his side.

Misha stood over him. The jeweled dagger he'd taken from his father's desk protruded from beneath Josef's ear, at the point of his jaw.

“I did not use the gun,” Misha whispered. “Like you said.”

“Stay out,” he muttered, as he staggered to his feet. Not that he had any hope the kid would do as he directed, but what the fuck.

Showtime.

“Where the hell is Josef? Her people should arrive any minute!” Hazlett fussed. “Oh, look! A car's pulling up, and... yes! It's them!”

Sveti struggled onto her elbow, straining to see. She saw Val, stepping out of a big SUV, his long hair blowing loose in the breeze, his handsome face dark with beard shadow. Nick emerged from the other side, looking pissed off at Rome for harboring criminals that had threatened her. Tam was a ninja vision in tight-fitting black. Becca looked pale and worried. Four of the five people she loved most in the world, fifteen feet away from that lethal Telecom Italia van.

Then another dark, curly head bobbed at the vehicle door. Oh, no, no,
no.
Rachel. Her darling sister, her cellmate, her precious love.

She must have made a sound. Hazlett glanced at the screen and clucked his tongue. “That's a shame. They should have known better than to bring the child, with the adventures you've been having. But they had no way to know how out of hand the situation has become.”

“Please, Michael,” she begged. “You don't need this. Turn the bomb in, to the authorities. Be the hero. The world will love you for it.”

“I don't need the world's love, or to be a hero. That kind of reward gratifies a different kind of person. Well, Renato? Shall we?”

“I still think we should choose a different city,” Renato said sulkily.

“It's too late to change our plans. Call Josef in. I don't want him blundering in at the crucial moment. Did he set up the other TV?”

“I hate dealing with the technology,” Renato fretted. “Josef will handle that. Josef!” he bellowed. “Ah, here he comes.”

The door flew open.

Sam burst through.

C
HAPTER
29

H
e took it in, with crystal clarity; Sveti half-naked and tied on the floor. She was calling out, but her voice was drowned out by Hazlett and Renato's yelling.
Bam,
he shot at Hazlett, but Hazlett was already diving for the ground, jerking Sveti up so that she covered his kneeling body. His arm clamped her bare torso, fingers digging into smooth white skin, the barrel of his gun stabbing beneath her chin, biting deep.

“. . . bomb!” Sveti coughed against the pressure of the gun barrel.

“Bomb?” Sam looked wildly around the room. “Where?”

“Not here,” Hazlett said. “Far, far away. And you can't stop it.”

“Rome!” Sveti choked out. “Dirty bomb! White Telecom van! My family is right there! His phone! Stop . . . his phone!”

“Put down the gun,” Hazlett said. “If you shoot me, my finger will contract, and the top of her head will come right off.”

“Shoot him!” Sveti croaked. “Stop the bomb! His phone!”

A triumphant smile spread over Hazlett's face as he stared at Sam. “You're wasting your breath, silly bitch,” he said to Sveti. “He can't risk hurting you.” He nuzzled the side of her face and licked her neck.

Sam saw in his peripheral vision that Misha was holding his gun on Renato, and Renato was frozen, hands up.

“Put the guns down, both of you,” Hazlett said. “Or she dies.”

Sam stared at Sveti's eyes. It hurt, like staring at the sun. The intensity of her burned a hole in him. Light would blaze through it forever. He crouched and laid the gun down.

“Kick it away.” Hazlett's voice quivered with excitement.

Sam did so. The gun twirled as it slid away on the mosaic tile. Hazlett reached out with his foot, nudging it toward himself.

“You too,” Hazlett said to Misha. “Put it down.”

“Do as he says,” Sam said.

Misha muttered something disgusted in Ukrainian and dropped his gun, but he kicked it out of Renato's reach.

They were all frozen for a moment, as Sam stared into Hazlett's glittering eyes. Wondering how long he could spin this out, playing this guy's huge vanity. Hazlett was not going to kill them until he was done gloating, and this scumbag loved a good gloat.

Hazlett held up his phone. “I'm going to shoot you, as I am sure you know. But first, I'll let you watch the show. Should have had Josef put the number on speed-dial. Who knew I'd have to dial it one-handed?”

He started punching in the number.

 

Sveti looked at Sam. The words came out, strangled but comprehensible, in spite of the gun barrel pressing her throat.

“I love you,” she said.

“Aw! How sweet,” Hazlett crooned. “That's all that was missing. Now, scoot over so we can see the screen.” He shifted, pulling her.

Sveti jackknifed. Hazlett tumbled backward onto his ass as his center of gravity abruptly shifted, and dropped the phone. Sveti's legs shot out, sending Sam's Glock skittering toward him.

Sam lunged for it.
Bam, bam, bam.
The picture window shattered. Splinters and shards rained down, glinting in the thin morning light.

A cold breeze swirled in, and the huge murmur of the sea.

Sveti lurched to her feet, overbalanced, and fell to her knees again. She dove to the ground, rolled. Kicked the phone out of Hazlett's scrabbling grasp, out the shattered window onto the veranda. It slid on the smooth terra cotta tiles and onto the rocky ground beyond. She barely noticed broken glass crackling beneath her body.

Hazlett bellowed with rage and charged after it, glass crunching beneath his shoes. She rolled to her feet and pelted after him, barefoot.

Bam. Bam.
Sam shouted behind her, but she couldn't hear him. She wanted that fucking phone. Hazlett was ahead, trotting down the steps with frantic haste. She hurled herself off the veranda, hit the ground rolling up again. She got to the phone before he did. Kicked it off the path, onto the jagged rocks by the edge of the eighty-foot cliff.
Bam, bam.
Hazlett was shooting, but the shots went wild. He wasn't pausing to take aim.

This time Hazlett got to the phone first. He dove for it, howling in triumph, but Sveti was possessed with white-hot avenging fury. She ran headlong, screaming like a bloody maenad. He glanced up from the keypad, eyes widening as she hurtled toward him.

She smacked into him head-on before he could lift the gun.

He tottered. His costly, gleaming shoes slid on the slippery rocks. They rolled, tumbled. She smashed her shoulder on a rock, and pitched into the open air. The world spun, whirled. Down, down, endlessly down. He was below her, mouth open, screaming, arms and legs wide and flailing as he fell. The phone fell, too. Turning, over and over.

She sliced deep into the churning foam. A slap of freezing cold, salt stinging. No up, no down, just an airless, milky, roaring blur of cold, pounding wet. Her legs pumped frantically, but without her arms, she had no control over how the churning maelstrom tossed her.

She fought her way up for a gulp of air, and a fresh wave pounded her down into the bubbling darkness again, legs pumping.

They started circling her. Mama was there. Sad, but proud.
Tato,
too. Sasha. The little girl clutching a toy bear, smiling shyly. A crowd of angels to lead her home.

Ow.
Fresh pain blazed through her hyperextended shoulder, making her twist and writhe. A strong hand on her upper arm. Pulling.

She broke the surface, choking. Astonished at the air.

Sam popped up, hair slicked back, bobbing in the churning foam.

“Do you want to live?” he yelled.

She nodded. A wave broke over them, but his grip was relentless. He towed her, backstroking. Everything hurt. Death had seemed so soft, gentle. Living hurt. It burned and pinched and kicked and stung.

She tried to kick, to move them through the water, but her legs didn't even feel like they were hers. Her crowd of angels had gone away.

All except for Sam, but he was enough. Her fierce, angry angel.

 

Sveti seemed barely alive when Sam finally maneuvered them to a place where the waves crashing onto the jagged rocks wouldn't batter them to jelly. This devil's cauldron might have drowned him even if he hadn't been full of holes, and down to one arm, and struggling to keep Sveti in such a position that she had a hope in hell of an occasional gulp of air.

He dragged her up onto the rocks. Her arms were still bound. He dug his pocketknife from his jeans, surprised that it was still there, and sliced the plastic ties. He turned her over, pounded on her back.

She choked, coughed. Vomited water. All her cuts and slices from the broken glass started to bleed, mixing with the water until there was a pinkish, salty slick over her skin. It was hard to get a grip on her.

He hoisted her up, let her head dangle over his back, and clutched her jeans-clad bottom half. Wet denim was easier to hang on to.

It was slow going. Pink tinted water dripped over his hands. At some point in his climb, he saw Hazlett sprawled on some sharp rocks, the ones he and Sveti had just barely cleared. He was on his back, eyes and mouth wide open, as if he'd gotten an unpleasant surprise. Sam crossed the guy off his list of current problems. No energy for triumph.

The easiest route up the cliffs also happened to be the longest, winding across the steep mountainside, but finally he made it back to the scrubby trees behind the house, nearly crawling with exhaustion.

He peered in the window, saw Misha on his feet. A good sign. Of course, he could be at gunpoint, so Sam approached as cautiously as he could, but he staggered with Sveti's weight loaded on his shoulder, slight though it was. Too tired for a tiptoe ninja walk.

Misha heard him and gave him a thumbs-up. Thank God. He had no fight left. It was not too cold, but the wind on his wet clothes made him shudder, and Sveti was shaking violently. She needed blankets.

He kicked the door open. Was greeted with the sight of Misha, holding his gun on Renato, who was on the floor, sobbing. His knee was a bloody pulp. “He tried to call himself, to detonate the bomb,” Misha explained. “I shot him. And smashed his phone.”

Sam glanced at the broken pieces of the phone scattered across the floor. “Try not to look so smug about it,” he said.

“I did not shoot him in the face,” Misha pointed out, affronted.

“What do you want, a medal?” Sam looked at the monitors. The image had not changed. A street scene, in Rome. An entrance to a hotel lobby. The white Telecom van that Sveti had told him about was parked there, in clear view, completely intact. Cars drove by. No smoking rubble, no sirens, no bodies.

He turned to Misha. “You have a phone still, right?”

“Yes. I charged it in the car. Why?”

“All the others are trashed, smashed, or drowned. Give it to me.”

Misha dug it out of his pocket. Sam dialed in Val's number with Sveti still draped over his shoulder.

Val answered.
“Pronto? Con chi parlo?”

“Val. It's Sam.”

“Sam! We have been trying to call! Where is Sveti and—”

“Listen up. There's a white Telecom van parked outside your hotel that has a dirty bomb in it. Pulverized strontium-90. Rigged to blow with a flip phone. Call a bomb squad and deal with it.”

“Cazzo,”
Val muttered. “Sveti?”

“Banged up, sliced up, and half-drowned, but still alive. We're a couple hundred kilometers from you, on the coast. When I know where the ambulance takes her, I'll call you again.”

“Sam—”

He hung up and handed the phone to Misha. “You talk to him when he calls back,” he said. “Tell him to get on that bomb. But first call the ambulance. Sveti's going into shock. I'm looking for blankets.”

There was a bedroom down the hall. The mattress was covered with plastic, but there were down comforters in the standing wardrobe.

He laid Sveti on the bed, jerked out two comforters, and rolled her onto one. His fingers were so stiff, he could barely undo her wet jeans. She shook. Dead white. Lips blue. He tossed the other comforter on top of her and went back to the front room. Renato was curled up, whimpering. Sam ignored him. “Ambulance on the way?”

“I told them there was a beautiful, wet, naked girl going into shock from the cold,” Misha said. “They will be here soon, I promise.”

“If they don't decide it's a prank. You're a manipulative bastard after my own heart, kid.”

He headed back to Sveti and lay down. He'd do skin-to-skin, but he was so cold, he had no warmth to give her. Blood was seeping through the swaddling of white cotton. If only they could just stop. No picking through the wreckage. He just wanted to flip a switch. Go dark.

They'd won. He should be happy, but he just shivered, numb and blank. So alone. She was so far away. Always behind her steel-reinforced walls. Her tower was so fucking high. She would never let him in.

Med techs bustled in some time later, chattering in Italian. Sveti's eyes fluttered open as they began to peel the comforter away.

“Sam?” she whispered groggily.

“Congratulations,” he said. “You won.”

“Bomb?” she croaked.

“It never went off,” he said. “I talked to Val. He's on it.”

Tears welled into her eyes. “Rachel? Tam, Nick, Becca?”

“Fine,” he assured her. “They're fine. You did it, babe.”

She blinked furiously, eyes overflowing. “I love you,” she said.

He flinched. Turn the fucking knife in the wound, why didn't she. He pulled away. “You thought you were about to die when you said that,” he said. “It's like saying it when you come. It doesn't count.”

“Sam—”

“Don't. Please. Don't sweat it. I'm not holding you to it.”

One of the med techs tried to push him back down onto the bed. He shoved the guy away so hard, he bounced off the far wall.

The rest of the medics swiftly gave way as he made for the door.