Shades of Gray (22 page)

She tossed the bills onto Kristoff’s desk.

Kristoff meticulously counted each hundred-dollar bill and then went to a cabinet
and pulled out boxes of ammo, setting each onto the desk.

“Still providing curb service?” P.J. asked.

“Of course. Can’t have you walking onto the street carrying all that shit. A car will
be waiting at the end of the alley. I’ll have Franz take your purchases.”

“Nice doing business with you, Kristoff. I’ll do my best to make sure you win your
bet.”

His teeth flashed. “See that you do. I’m a very sore loser.”

CHAPTER 34

P.J.
sat at the small desk in the hotel room typing an email to Katia while Cole lay sprawled
on the bed, eyes closed. She doubted he was asleep. She’d known Cole to go without
sleep for days when the situation called for it.

She’d purposely not told him much in the way of details before they’d flown to Vienna
because . . . Well, he wouldn’t have gone, and worse, he would have carried out his
threat to physically restrain her to keep her from going.

Brumley hadn’t just become another target, a mission she had to fulfill. He’d become
an obsession.

When she slept at night, she saw him in her dreams. At times, she could feel the knife
in her hands, and hear the gurgle of blood as he took his last breath. It was an image
that haunted her day and night, and until she made it a reality, it would continue
to haunt her.

She hit send on the email but left her laptop open and her sound up so she’d know
the moment a response came in.

Then she crawled into bed next to Cole and laid her head in the crook of his arm.

As she’d suspected, he wasn’t sleeping. He turned in to her immediately and wrapped
his arm around her body, pulling her in even closer.

“So is this what you did for the six months you were gone?” he asked seriously. “Hid
out in shitty hotels, hung out in back-alley shady businesses with men named Kristoff
or befriended hookers?”

“Basically yeah. I changed hotels every few days. I was always worried Brumley would
find me, especially after I made the first kill and left my signature so to speak.
He’s not dumb. He had to have known it was me. Especially when his right-hand man
showed up the night he raped me with a knife wound to his back, reporting that I’d
escaped.”

Cole let out a string of curses. “I don’t know what pisses me off more. That you got
involved in this at all or that you didn’t trust me or your team enough to let us
in on what was going down.”

“Would you drag the team into a personal vendetta, Cole? Really? If you were planning
to murder someone, would you really ask the team to back you up? Because no matter
how you color it, I’m killing these men in cold blood. It’s not self-defense anymore.
I hunted them down and I cut them to ribbons before killing them.”

He went silent, and she knew she’d made her point.

“I hate that you’re even involved now. I hate that Steele and the others got involved.
It tarnishes KGI as a whole. What happens when Resnick gets wind of this shit? And
you can’t tell me he won’t. The man knows goddamn everything. I bet the president
is even afraid of pissing that man off because he knows so much.”

He put a finger to her lips. “Shut up. It doesn’t matter what you want or don’t want
at this point, because we’re involved. There’s no going back now. And we aren’t leaving
you to do this alone, so just shut the fuck up and deal with it.”

She smiled and leaned in to kiss him when her laptop beeped, signaling an incoming
email.

She scrambled off the bed and hurried to the desk. Her breath caught when she saw
Katia’s response sitting in her inbox.

Must meet with you right away. Important. Come alone.

“This is it,” she said to Cole. “She wants to meet right away. Says it’s important
and to come alone.”

“Fuck that,” Cole snarled.

P.J. held up her hand. “Of course I’m not going alone. If I was, I wouldn’t have bothered
to bring you along, so keep your underwear on.”

He looked slightly mollified, but he rolled out of bed, stuffed the larger handgun
in his shoulder holster, slid the smaller pistol in his ankle holster and then loaded
a magazine into the assault rifle.

P.J. armed herself but placed her rifle into a duffel bag and then reached for Cole’s
so they could get out of the hotel without their weapons being seen.

“You drive,” she directed as she threw the bag into the backseat. “I want you to park
a block away from Katia’s apartment. I’ll go in, see what she has to say and then
be right back out. I’ll need you to watch the building.”

His lips tightened but he didn’t argue.

They drove across town, gradually getting into an area that had deteriorated over
the years. Many of the buildings were in disrepair and most of the businesses had
moved closer to the city center.

Katia’s apartment was actually a nice place. On the inside. The outside was a crumbling
building with graffiti on the walls and iron bars covering each of the windows.

She had told P.J. that the rent was next to nothing, and with the money she pulled
in from servicing her wealthy clients, she could afford to make the inside a palace.

After instructing Cole where to park, P.J. armed herself and opened the passenger
door.

“Give me half an hour. I don’t know what all she has to say, but if I’m not out by
then, come in after me.”

“I’ll give you twenty,” Cole said bluntly. “She can’t have
that
much to say. I don’t like this place. I don’t like this whole situation. My gut is
screaming like a motherfucker.”

“Okay, twenty,” P.J. agreed.

She wouldn’t admit it, but her gut was doing its own bit of bitching. She was uneasy
about this whole thing.

She got out, closed the door and hurried toward the entrance to the building. She
wasted five minutes waiting for the service elevator to grind to a halt on the ground
floor. She rode it to the sixth floor and got off, making a beeline for the end of
the hall where Katia’s apartment was.

She knocked softly, and the door squeaked open an inch the minute P.J. knocked.

P.J. made a grab for her handgun and carefully pushed the door open so she could see
inside.

“Katia?” she called softly. “It’s P.J. You here?”

She stepped inside, gun up and pointed as she swept the living room. The television
was on. Some European soap opera. She entered the kitchen and found nothing out of
order so she headed for the bedroom.

The door was ajar and P.J. nudged it open with her toe, staying back before swinging
around, gun aimed inside.

Katia was lying on the bed in a pool of blood.

Son of a bitch!

P.J. raced over, reaching for Katia’s neck to try to find a pulse, but drew up when
she saw the macabre sight before her.

The woman was naked, with slashes to the insides of her thighs, under her breasts
and one down her midline.

Her throat was so horribly slashed that but for a small piece of flesh at her nape,
she’d been all but beheaded.

P.J. bent over, nausea so overwhelming that she had to suck in breath after breath
through her nose to keep from emptying her stomach.

On the desk, her laptop was open to P.J.’s last email.

P.J. touched a finger to Katia’s arm to find it cold and stiff. She’d been dead for
a lot longer than when P.J. had received that last email.

Her blood ran cold. This has been a complete setup.

It was then she noticed the note lying on the bed, blood smeared over the paper.

She picked it up and her stomach bottomed out.

If you have any interest in keeping your teammate alive, you’ll come to me tomorrow
morning at ten a.m. Alone. Unarmed. It’s your choice. You or your teammate. If you
don’t show, I’ll assume your choice has been made.

—B

What the fuck? No way they had Cole. It was a complete bluff. Did they think she was
stupid? She turned and ran from Katia’s apartment, not bothering with the elevator.

She flew down the six flights of stairs and burst out of the building, at full sprint
as she ran down the street to where Cole was parked.

But the car was gone.

Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

No way they had Cole. No fucking way.

She yanked out her cell and punched in Cole’s number.

“Come on, come on,” she said anxiously.

But it wasn’t Cole who answered. It was a voice she’d heard in her nightmares every
night for the last six months.

“Didn’t believe me?” he asked in amusement. “I have your boyfriend here. He’s pretty
pissed. He’ll be lucky if I don’t kill him before you get here, but a deal’s a deal.
You for your teammate.”

“Where?” she croaked.

“Be watching your email. I’ll provide the location at nine in the morning. Until then,
sleep well, P.J. Rutherford. And remember this. If you’re so much as a minute late,
your friend here is dead. If you show up with anyone, if I even
think
you have backup, he’s dead. If I find a single weapon on you, he’s dead. Are you
getting the picture now? I have no use for this man. But you . . . You, I have use
for. We have unfinished business. Get here on time and follow my directions. Do that
and he goes free. Understand?”

Before she could respond, Brumley cut the connection, leaving P.J. standing on the
street corner numb to her toes.

CHAPTER 35

P.J.
returned to her hotel, packed her shit and immediately checked out. She moved to a
hostel across the city, provided a fake name, and paid cash—more than triple the cost
of the room so she didn’t have to provide her passport.

She was a wreck. A complete and utter wreck, and she was so pissed that she knew she
had to get a grip or she was going to get herself and Cole killed.

She didn’t believe for a minute that Brumley was going to let Cole walk away once
P.J. surrendered. The dumbass must think she was a complete moron to swallow that
line of bullshit.

The first thing she had to do was call Steele, and it was a call she dreaded with
every fiber of her being. But for Cole, she’d do anything. Even if it meant never
working for KGI again. And this would likely do the trick. She could only push her
team leader so far. He wasn’t exactly known for his understanding.

He expected you to obey orders without questions and do your job. You did those two
things, you got along fine. If not, there was a serious problem.

She made the call with a huge knot in her stomach. He answered on the second ring.

“Steele,” he said shortly.

“Steele this is P.J. We have a situation.”

Steele immediately became alert. “Give me the rundown.”

Never one to mince words. He wanted things short and concise and to the point. No
unnecessary bullshit and no excuses.

“Cole and I came to Vienna to follow up on a lead from a contact I made while I was
over here. She led me to believe that Jakarta was a false lead and that something
big was going down over here. Cole and I planned to check it out because my contact
will only talk to me. After we learned what there was to learn we were going to call
in the team.”

P.J. had to hold the phone away from the ear as blistering obscenities poured through
the other end.

“What the fuck were you two doing going off without telling me a damn thing, and furthermore
why the hell did you two go alone?” he demanded.

She didn’t have time to answer his questions.

“My contact was dead when I went to her apartment. Brumley’s calling card. Brutalized
and she had her throat slashed. Just like I killed three of his men. It was a clear
message to me. And he left a note saying he had Cole.”

“Son of a bitch. You went in alone? Without backup? Have you lost your goddamn mind,
P.J.? You’re acting like a wet-behind-the-ears rookie recruit and I expected better
from you.”

“Look, we had our bases covered. We went in prepared. Brumley set us up. He got to
my contact first, killed her and then sent me an email from her laptop. While I was
inside, they nabbed Cole, who was parked a block away waiting for me to come out.”

“And what now?” Steele snapped.

“He wants me to trade myself for Cole.”

“Over my dead body,” Steele said icily.

“Look, I don’t believe for a minute he’ll let Cole go free once he has me. Which is
why I’m calling you. I’m not stupid, Steele, even if you think so. I’ve thought this
through. If you and the others get on a plane now you can make it pretty damn close
to the time I’m supposed to meet Brumley. Problem is I don’t know where yet. But I
have a tracking device I’ll wear so you’ll know how to find me. I need you to get
your asses here as quick as possible so we have backup. I can’t wait for you before
I go in because I do believe he’ll kill Cole out of spite if I’m so much as a minute
late. But if I get there, I can stall for time until you guys make it in. I’ll do
whatever I have to do, whether it’s seduce his sorry ass or let him take another shot
at me. As long as Cole survives, it doesn’t matter what happens to me.”

“You aren’t trading yourself for Cole,” Steele said tersely. “Do you honest to fuck
think he’d ever be able to live with himself if you did that?”

“At least he’d be alive,” she said softly. “No one on my team is going down for me.”

Steele cursed again.

“How soon can you be here?” P.J. demanded. “I meet him at ten in the morning. I figure
it’ll take you guys all night and into the morning to get here. We’ll be cutting it
close. I need you there as close to ten as possible. I don’t know what his plans are.
He may just kill us as soon as I show up. I’m hoping to play with his ego a bit to
buy us some time. Just be here, Steele. I’m counting on you.”

“We’ll be there,” Steele snapped. “You just stay your asses alive until we kick some
fucking ass. You got it, Rutherford? That’s a goddamn order and one I expect you to
follow.”

It was one order she had absolutely no problem following.