One Wrong Move (51 page)

He walked toward him, crouching to pull the ratchet cuffs from the stash in his ankle holster, never slackening his hold or releasing his gaze. “Put your gun down, and slide it across the deck to me,” he said, punching all the coercive power he could into the words.

Dmitri’s movements were shaky, jerky, but he extended the Beretta, and tossed it. It slid a few inches out of his immediate reach.

Rain pounded down now, mixing with the blood spilling through Dmitri’s fingers. “You’re going to kill me now, Sasha?

Now that you’re a heavyweight mind wrestler like your fucking father, you can crush everyone beneath your feet, just like him.

Does that make you happy?”

“I’m not going to kill you,” Aaro said. “Unless you make me.”

Dmitri laughed, spattering blood. “ ‘Not unless you make me,’ ” he mocked, in a singsong voice. “Fucking changeling.

Oleg’s crown prince, and you didn’t even want the crown. You never gave a shit, did you? About any of it? The money, the power?”

“No,” Aaro admitted. “I didn’t want any part of it.”

“I did.” Dmitri coughed, his breath rapid and shallow. “It should have been me. I would have done anything he wanted.

But he only wanted you. Poor, dumb Oleg.” The laughter clearly hurt him, but he could not seem to stop. “But I got back at you, and good. And you never knew. Asshole.”

“What do you mean, got back at me?” It was a stupid question, but it burst out before he could detach from it.

“Julie,” Dmitri said triumphantly, licking pinkish foam from his lips. “I got Julie, you asshole. Started having my fun with her soon as she started looking like a girl and not a broomstick.

Mmm. Yum.”

Aaro stared, dumbstruck. “No,” he whispered.

Dmitri laughed harder, but soundlessly, tears of pain streamed down his face. “For two whole years! I knew you and Oleg would kill me if she told you, but she never told! Too embarrassed, I expect. Mostly in the summertime. First time, the poolhouse on Long Island. You were at the beach, no one but Julie, reading her book by the pool. Man, she was so fine. It was just so easy, to drag her into the poolhouse and—”

Crack,
the heel of Aaro’s boot connected with Dmitri’s jaw, smashing it. Blood flowed down over the guy’s chin, but he just wouldn’t stop laughing. Aaro hauled off to kick him again—

“Watch out, Aaro,” Nina called, her voice sharp. “Watch out!”

“Yes, Sasha. Watch out.” It was another soft female voice, one he knew, behind his back. He jerked his head around.

Julie stood on the deck. Her skin as gray and deathly pale as when they had found her. Wearing the drenched nightgown she had worn when she swam out to sea. Her long hair snarled with seaweed.

She gave him a sad little smile. “Yes, Sasha,” she said. “It’s me.”

One stunned, blank moment was all Dmitri needed to lunge for his gun. Nina shrieked a desperate warning.

Bam,
Dmitri’s gun went off.

Aaro had been shot before, but it was always pretty damn special. That nasty thump, followed by the heat, dropping blood pressure, and the frantic feeling of
oh, fuck . . .

The deck swung up, slammed into him. Rain hit his face at a new, more intimate angle. Nina was screaming. A bullet whinged off the wood about two inches from his face, releasing a shrapnel of splinters. He jerked around, yanked the Ruger from the ankle holster.

Bam.

Dmitri sagged back again, silent.

Nina knelt next to him, frantically talking, but he just jerked her down behind him. “Get down!”

“But you’re shot! Aaro, let me at least—”

“Get
down!
” He rolled over onto his belly. Blood pooled beneath him, leaving a dark trail as he slithered into position, sighted . . .

Dmitri was not moving. The pistol lay inches away from his slack hand. Aaro stared, waiting. Wary of a trick.

“I’ll get it!” Nina sang out, and before he could muster the breath to tell her to get the fuck back down, she was bounding like a gazelle over the deck, snatching up the pistol. The gun dangled from her fingers as if she were holding a dead mouse by the tail. She stopped to scoop up the syringe, lay the Beretta down on the floorboards next to him.

“You got the syringe,” he said. “Take the drug. Now. Before anyone can stop you.
Now!
” He put all his coercive force behind the word. And she didn’t even blink. True to form. The chick was cast iron.

“There’s only one of them,” she said stubbornly.

She tried to rip her skirt for a bandage, but the fabric was stretchy, yielding too easily to rip, so she peeled off her shrug.

Leaving her topless torso gleaming with rain. Heart-stoppingly beautiful. She knocked him out. Not that he had far to go, but—

“Fuck,”
he gasped out, as she pressed the fabric against his wound. “Goddamnit, Nina!”

“Apply direct pressure,” she said, her voice quivering. “That’s all I know. So that’s damn well what I’ll do.”

“The syringe, first! Take it! Now, goddamnit!”

“But there’s only one,” she insisted.

He grasped her arm, and his blood made pinkish trails sluice down her arm. “So there’s only one. Tough shit! It’s day three for you! End of the line! We’ll figure out something else for me.”

She shook her head. “There is nothing else, and you goddamn well know it, Aaro! So don’t play hero with me!”

“Nina,” he said. “Please.”

She shook her head. “No. I might have a tiny margin beyond the three days, like Helga did. We’ll get the stuff analyzed, duplicated, maybe. Or we’ll split the dose evenly between us, and face whatever happens together. Or we’ll—”

“Take it, Nina. Take it now.”

“I won’t!” Her voice wobbled. “You can’t bully me into it.

You’re shot. Don’t bother fighting me. I have to go get help for you now, so you just press this thing down, as hard as you can stand, and I’ll—”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” said a sharp, disapproving voice.

Harold Rudd strode swiftly out of the shadows, and kicked Dmitri’s Beretta. It skittered across the floorboards, and flew off the deck. “Just look at this godawful mess,” he said fretfully.

Nina dropped the hypodermic beside Aaro’s leg, and put both her hands over the wad of bloody fabric, praying that Rudd had not seen it. She dragged her shield up as the man walked toward them, shaking his head in distaste at Dmitri’s still form, at Aaro staring up at him from the bloody floorboards, with his habitual coiled stillness. The kind of stillness that could spring into action in the fraction of a second.

Rudd concluded that Nina was the only one fit enough to scold, so he focused on her. “Do you have any idea how bad this looks?”

Nina could not believe her ears. “Excuse me?
Looks?
”

“I imagine it was you two who sent that irritating fellow Miles to bother me, right? Am I right?”

New fear gripped her. “What did you do to him?”

Rudd’s lip curled in ugly triumph. “Let’s just say, he won’t be bothering anyone else,” he said. “Not for a long, long time.”

Oh, no, no, no. Nina met Aaro’s gaze, horrified.

“All I ever wanted was a little discretion, a little restraint,” the man raged. “And look what I get. Your Miles, carrying on in the banquet hall, destroying my model. We’ll probably have multiple lawsuits coming in from all the people that were kicked and punched. And now, a shootout on the terrace of the Convention Center! Greaves will kill me! You three just had to come to the highest profile event of the year, packed with the most influen-tial people in America, to make trouble? And then proceed to make a bloody mess that I personally will have to explain away!

Just . . . look at you!” He gestured at them.

Nina rose up, spine straightening. “What? What about us, Rudd?”

He gestured toward her bare torso. “People will be swarming out here any second. Do you suppose you could, ah, pull that dress up?”

“What? You’re bothered by my tits?”

Rudd sniffed. “No need to be vulgar. It’s just that with the blood and all, the bare breasts . . . things look lurid enough without you adding the element of orgiastic ritual sex to the mix. It’s just . . . ugh.”

She put her shoulders back. Stuck them out. “Fuck you, Rudd.”

Suddenly, Aaro grabbed her arm, jerked her close to him, and plunged the hypodermic into her arm.

Nina jerked, screamed. The needle burned, and her body jerked and arched, but Aaro held her close, muscles trembling with strain until the thing was empty. He flung the syringe away and collapsed, a faint look of triumph in his eyes. “There,” he said. “Done.”

She stared at him, utterly betrayed. “You bastard!” she shrieked, and raised both hands to whale on him, but she couldn’t hit him, damn it, he was shot, he was bleeding. She smacked her hands down onto the wet floorboards, again, and again. “Goddamn you, Aaro!”

“I love you, too,” he whispered.

The strain of holding her struggling body had made his bleeding worse. She jerked into action, pressing down on the cloth. He winced, but barely had the strength to react.

“It won’t make any difference now.” Rudd’s voice was petulant. “She’ll die anyway, you idiot. I’ll see to that. And now you’ve wasted what I assume was the last of Helga’s B doses on her. There were people who wanted to study the contents of that syringe! Powerful people! I have to answer to them! It’s very awkward for me!”

“Your powerful people can blow me, Rudd,” she snapped back at him. “He needs a doctor!”

Rudd shook his head. “No. I’ve had quite enough of you people. It’s time to cut my losses.” His eyes darted around the deck.

“Let’s see. Looks like a murder suicide. Lover’s triangle. That works with the bare breasts. Caught by one lover while passion-ately involved with the other. The spurned one threw you over the edge, and then they shot each other to death. Is that squalid enough to suit you, my femme fatale extraordinaire?”

She pressed the cloth against Aaro’s wound. He seemed to have fainted. “He’s not going to die,” she said, as if repeating it could make it more true. “He’s not.”

“He’ll be dead by the time the medics get here.” Rudd smiled thinly. “Count on it. On your feet, Nina. Walk.”

The sensation began. Just like it had been in the cabin, but harder. The roaring pressure of his psi power, battering her shield.

It swelled, until it became an unbearable, head-splitting pain.

He grabbed her arm, jerked her to her feet, and began frog-marching her toward the railing. She resisted, but the mental pressure increased. Every separate cell in her brain was going to explode. There was an enormous hive of gigantic wasps inside her skull.

When the noise and the pressure suddenly stopped, she was draped over the railing, splintery wood digging into her chest.

“Climb,” he said.

She put her foot on the first two-by-four riveted to the logs, and climbed onto it. The wind gusted, making her skirts flap and whip around her knees. The darkness beyond the railing was a sea of endless nothingness. Wind whistled and howled. The voices of the damned.

“Another. Keep climbing,” Rudd said.

“Stop,” someone else said, from behind.

It was a deep and rasping voice that she did not recognize, but the roaring pressure, the head-splitting agony suddenly ceased.

She stared out into the void. Afraid to move, to even think. The wind lifted her hair. Rain gusted in her face. She swayed, precariously, as Rudd let go of her. She heard him suck in a sharp breath. Almost a squeak.

She turned to look. Rudd clutched his throat. His eyes were wide, panicked. Gasping for breath, but he could not seem to get any.

“I’m not allowing his lungs to expand, you see,” a voice said.

That croaking rasp she’d heard before. She turned, swaying dangerously in the wind. Her knees were locked. She couldn’t feel her legs.

“Careful, my dear. Here, let me help you.” A large hand seized hers. She placed one wobbly bare foot on the lower slat, then the other, and then she was standing on the boards again, staring at a burly, stooped old man in a tuxedo, with a cane. He had a broad face, sunken eyes, pitted skin, but fierce intelligence burned in his slanted green—

Green eyes. Those eyes. Those cheekbones. Of course.

“Hello, Oleg,” she said.

“Nina, isn’t it?” He kept hold of her hand, pulling her to where Aaro lay. “My Sasha’s brave and lovely bride.”

Nina dropped to her knees at Aaro’s side, fumbling for the cloth to press against his wound again.

Rudd finally sucked in some air. “Who are you?”

The old man’s head whipped around. He fixed Rudd with a cold stare. “You,” he said. “You did this”—he pointed at Aaro—

“to my Sasha? You beat and terrorized and abused his bride? You have hunted and harassed him, and for what? For a stupid, fucking drug? You will soon see who I am, turd. And it will be the last thing you ever see.”

Rudd’s face tightened into a grimace of concentration.

Oleg began to laugh. “Oh, no, no, no. You are one of those junkie scum who think that power can be swallowed in a pill, ey?

Power is a gift of God. You don’t even know what power feels like.” Oleg turned to her. “I am about to call the crowds, my dear, so you might consider—”

“Crowds?”

“Of course. We want witnesses for what is about to happen.

But as I was saying, people will soon be flooding out here, so you might want to pull your dress up, my dear, before—”

“What is it about my dress?” she shrieked. “Like I give a flying fuck about my dress! Aaro needs a goddamn trauma surgeon, right now! This instant! So if you’re going to call a crowd,
do
it!”

“As you wish,” Oleg said mildly. “Be as bare-breasted as the angel of liberty, if you prefer. I’m sure no one will complain.”

He straightened up, squaring off his body so he was staring at Rudd, still transfixed by the railing.

Soon, Rudd began to move. Stiffly at first, but then smoothly, as if it were of his own volition, he began to climb the railing.

Meanwhile, voices and the noise of running feet began to sound behind them. Shouting.

Nina turned to the people arriving. “Call an ambulance!” she yelled. “A man’s been shot! Go ask if there’s a trauma surgeon in the room! Or any doctor! Fast! Please! Now!”