Play Nice (21 page)

Anna jogged down the catwalk, quickly hitting the outside door. She pushed it open, eyes squinting against the sudden onslaught of light as she scanned the grounds for Shelli. She spotted her quickly, staying close to the side of the building as she made her way across the dirt property, toward a gate in the chain-link fence. She walked purposefully, completely unaware of being watched. Anna followed, keeping to the shelter of the building, the abandoned forklift, the shadow of a lone tree hunkering in the corner of the property to avoid being out in the open should Shelli turn around.

But she didn’t.

She made her way to the street, following it east to the corner, then turning left. Anna held her gun to her side, trying to make it as inconspicuous as possible to passing motorists as she followed Shelli, turning onto a street filled with single-story machine shops and mechanics’ garages.

Shelli was half a block ahead when she paused at a small brick building and slipped into an alleyway between the structures. Anna jogged toward the alley, pausing to peek around the corner before following. She made it as far as the back of the building before Shelli jumped out from behind the brick, a gun pointed straight out in front of her.

Anna froze, watching as Shelli’s upturned nose wrinkled in disgust, her eyes hard, cold, and flat.

“Anya,” she said.

It was one word, but it told Anna all she needed to know. Shelli knew who she was. There was no doubt she had been hired to spy on Anna. And that she was working for someone from Anna’s past.

Anna’s fingers tightened around her Glock.

Shelli must have noticed, since she yelled, “Drop it!”

Anna did, hearing it clatter to the pavement beside her. “So, it’s true,” she said. “It was all a lie.”

“You’re one to talk,” Shelli countered. “
Anya
.”

“I left that life a long time ago.”

Shelli smiled. “You should know better than anyone that you can never leave that life.”

Anna swallowed, a sudden lump in her throat reminding her just how true that statement was.

“Who?” Anna asked. “Who are you working for?”

Shelli opened her mouth.

But Anna never heard the answer.

Instead, pain exploded behind her ear, her vision blurring, blackness closing in on all sides as the ground tilted up to meet her.

*   *   *

Anna blinked her eyes. Or tried to. Pain shot through her head with the effort of moving, every breath in her chest pounding against her skull. She lay perfectly still, trying to get her bearings. The floor beneath her was cold, concrete if she had to guess. She could smell the Bay nearby, and hoped that meant she hadn’t been moved far. Voices came from very far away, speaking in a foreign language, though they sounded garbled, as if her reception needed tweaking. She took deep, slow breaths, trying to fill her brain with enough oxygen to gather her wits without letting the nausea in her stomach take over. She slowly wiggled her fingers and toes. Nothing felt broken or beyond repair, though she quickly ascertained that her wrists had been bound behind her back with something thin and plastic that bit into her skin. Slowly she cracked one eye open, ignoring the pounding behind her eyelids. Through slits of light she could see boxes, dust, a dirty floor. The warehouse. Shelli had brought her back here.

Shelli and her partner, she realized. The man. He must have followed Anna as Anna had followed Shelli. Shelli’s partner? Employer? Anna blinked, opening the other eye, her gaze scanning the warehouse. She was laying on her side on the floor, dumped beside a tower of boxes. The voices were coming from a few feet away, she realized, the forms of Shelli and her companion taking shape. Shelli was again waving her arms, shouting. The companion was quiet, calm, his voice a low hum as he responded. It took Anna a minute to realize what was wrong with their garbled speech, but when she did it hit her with shocking clarity. They were speaking Serbo-Croatian. Or at least a variant of it, throwing in Slovenian and Albanian words to make their own bastardized version of the language. Anna was familiar with all three, a long-dead portion of her brain clicking on to translate the conversation. She was slow. Rusty. It was her native language, but she hadn’t used it for years. And coupled with the fog still slowly lifting from her head, she missed half of what they were saying. But Shelli was clearly angry. She hadn’t expected Anna to come here. The other man? He had. He’d been ready for her. “Waiting” was the literal translation of the word he used. She wondered if she had somehow telegraphed her movements that clearly or if he was just experienced enough that he always expected the unexpected.

As Anna strained to hear more, she realized they had stopped talking, were facing her. They’d noticed she was awake.

The man mumbled something to Shelli, and she turned around, her green eyes flashing at Anna as if somehow all her troubles were Anna’s fault.

Who knows, maybe they were.

“She’s awake,” the man said in English. “We should have a little chat with her.”

Shelli stepped toward Anna, but the man put a hand on her arm to stop her. “No. Let me.”

Shelli looked disappointed, something flashing behind her eyes again. She shot a look of disdain at Anna, narrowing her eyes.

But she stepped aside, allowing her companion direct access to Anna. He stepped close, the tip of his black, leather shoes coming to the tip of Anna’s nose before he crouched down and tilted his head to the side to match her angle.

“Hello, Anya,” he said, his accent thick, his voice hauntingly familiar, as if years and lifetimes had not hung in the air between them.

Anne swallowed. Her eyes adjusting to the unreal sight of the person before her.

“Hello, Petrovich,” she answered.

Her former trainer. Goren Petrovich.

The most dangerous man she had ever met.

CHAPTER 15

Anna blinked, staring at the ghost. That was the best word she could think of to describe him. Goren Petrovich was supposed to be long dead, killed years ago, half a world away.

After Anya’s last hit, she’d spent a month in Switzerland, recovering from the burns she’d received after setting the car bomb. She’d had an escape planned well before she’d killed Fedorov that night, but even following her best laid plans, she knew she wouldn’t be getting away unscathed. It hadn’t mattered. A few burns, a sprained ankle, and a bullet lodged in her shoulder had all been a small price to pay for the hope of a new life. To be honest, she’d been prepared to pay higher.

Once she’d left the private hospital, she’d traveled Europe as a “student,” staying a week in a hostel here, a couple weeks camping there, always on the move, always alert to being followed. Always conscious of the KOS’s shadow looming just behind her.

She’d known when she left that the government who’d sponsored her actions was on the brink of collapse. If her line of work had taught her anything, it was when to get out. Factions began to break off, unity crumbling, a central KOS disintegrating from the inside out. Several people she’d known to be agents had been captured as prisoners of war. Some “disappeared” at the hands of their captors, some were traded as currency between warring factions. Others were tried for crimes against humanity and executed. Odd to think of it when they had believed their actions were executing those whose crimes had been inhumane.

Or maybe that had just been a line they told their young recruits to help them sleep at night.

After six months of constant travel and constant looking over her shoulder, Anna had read about the body of a business owner from Belgrade being found. He’d been shot dead in his store, a local bakery, seemingly a robbery attempt.

Seemingly.

But Anna knew better. She’d recognized the store as a front, the owner as Petrovich. She cried for a full a day, expelling a host of conflicting emotions. He’d trained her to kill, sent her to what could have been her death several times, had been the monster at her back the last six months, spurring her to move forward, never stop running because he could have been a step behind her. He’d also been the only father she’d ever known. Protected her, trained her to survive in a world where few did. His death had left a confusing taste of love and hatred in her mouth and had also served as the final severed tie between Anya Danielovich and Anna Smith. Anna had left for the United States after that.

Only, it appeared, so had he. Because here he was. Standing over her. Very much alive.

“Untie me,” Anna demanded, her voice holding much more bravado than she felt.

Petrovich smiled, shook his head slowly from side to side. “I’m sorry, Anya. That wouldn’t be prudent.”

She looked from Shelli to Petrovich. “What do you want?”

He crouched down low, making himself comfortable at her level. “You.”

An answer that inspired all sorts of paranoia to gather in her stomach. But she stuck her chin out defiantly. “You have me. Now what?”

“Now, now. Fifteen years and this is the greeting I get?”

Considering he’d been the one to knock her out and bind her, she didn’t think he was in the position to lecture on manners. However, she let the comment slide. Mostly because she was too well bound to do otherwise.

“Let’s go into the office where we can talk,” he said. Though clearly it was not a suggestion.

He nodded at Shelli, who hauled Anna up by her armpits, her strength surprising for someone so petite. Anna looked into her former friend’s face, trying to gauge her. But Shelli didn’t look at her. Wouldn’t turn her face toward Anna at all. She was stone.

Anna glanced at Petrovich. Had he trained Shelli, too? Was this who she worked for? Who had been stalking her like prey?

Petrovich led the way back up the metal staircase and down the catwalk to the open office again. A metal desk and nondescript fabric-covered chairs filled the room, along with a couple tall filing cabinets that looked like they’d been collecting dust for some time. On the desk sat Anna’s Glock.

One bullet.

If she could just get to it, she would make the most of that one shot.

Petrovich gestured to one of the chairs and Shelli deposited Anna into it.

She couldn’t say that the vertical position was any more comfortable than lying on the floor, but at least it put her eye to eye with Petrovich as he sank into a chair opposite her.

He smiled at her, a fatherly gesture that was completely at odds with their current situation.

“How have you been, Anya?” he asked, his voice low and soothing.

She shook off the tingle of familiarity, tried to ignore the inappropriate sense of nostalgia that accompanied his voice. How many nights had she arrived back at her training camp, getting away from a job with barely her life intact, to hear the comforting murmur of that same voice telling her she’d executed a job well?

“I’ve been better,” Anna answered truthfully.

Petrovich smiled. “You always did have a sense of humor.”

“You are supposed to be dead,” she said. Not that she really wanted to walk down memory lane with the man, but considering her current position, she knew the more she could get him talking, the better.

He nodded. “I am.” He paused. “As are you.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “Are you talking about the car wreck in Kosovo or the attack on the hotel last night?”

He grinned again. “What makes you think I was behind that?”

“The fact that you didn’t just ask ‘what attack.’”

He laughed out loud, his voice rumbling off the walls. “Very well done. All right, I admit, I had a hand in that. But you misunderstand my intention, Anya.”

“Anna,” she said. “It’s Anna now.”

He cocked his head at her, then the corners of his mouth tugged upward in a patronizing grin. He reached one hand out and trailed the back of his knuckles down her cheek. “Oh,
dragi,
you will always be Anya to me.”

His hands were rough, cold, the contact making her shiver.

“What do you want?” she asked. “Why am I here?”

“You’re here because I didn’t want Shelli here to shoot you.” Petrovich sent the redhead a look that was clearly laced with reproach. But Shelli didn’t answer, a slight sneer of her upper lip her only response.

“You didn’t want Shelli to shoot me, yet you hired men to kill me?”

Petrovich shook his head. “No, no. You misunderstand. I never wanted you dead. I wanted to get your attention.”

She raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, you have it.”

He sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Right. Enough with pleasantries. Down to business it is. I did hire men to attack your shelter. But not to kill you. I had you attacked because I needed to see you in action again. I needed to know if you had really lost all that I’d taught you, or if it was just buried behind a veil of civility.”

She clenched her jaw. “It was a test?”

“If you want to call it that.”

“So did I pass?”

He grinned. “You’re alive, aren’t you?”

“And if I had failed?”