The Siren's Touch (6 page)

So close, so goddamn close after all these years.

Stop after stop, Makar remained where he stood. After a slow journey across town, he appeared at the bus’s rear exit. He scanned the street before he took his first step out of the bus.

“Let me out here.” Dmitri handed the driver a US fifty. No time for change. He vaulted out of the taxi without losing sight of his target. Makar rounded the corner onto an alley.

Where was he going?

Dmitri scoped out the buildings on the street for possible destinations. His gaze settled on the domed towers stretching taller than the other buildings—a church—St. Michael’s Ukrainian Orthodox.

Too bad for Makar. Dmitri didn’t give a damn if the old man had got religion. After what he’d done to Dmitri’s father, he had sins to pay for, in blood. Makar’s death would wipe away a lifetime of wrongs, and Dmitri could finally put the past away for good.

He jogged the length of the block and rounded the corner of the deserted alley, unholstering his Glock. He had a perfect, clean shot of Makar, who plodded down the sidewalk with his head tucked into the upturned collar of a khaki raincoat.

But Dmitri’s finger froze on the trigger. It was too easy, too clean—and it would be over too fast. He’d choreographed this moment three dozen different ways, had waited a lifetime, and he wanted to savor it—wanted Makar to see his face and know he hadn’t gotten away with what he’d done to Ivan, not in the end.

The old man approached an iron gate at the church’s side entrance. With his hand gripping one pointy spike, he raised his head and narrowed his eyes at Dmitri, whose nerves danced with anticipation. The moment of reckoning had arrived. He met Makar’s gaze, nodded, and kept strolling toward him, as if his business were somewhere beyond where the man stood.

Makar smiled absently, no hint of recognition crossing his face before the broad side door of the church opened. A priest came out wearing his cap, an impressive black beard spilling onto his chest. With a voice that could easily fill a large church, he spoke in Ukrainian. “Brother Boris, welcome. I have laid out the board.”

“Good, good. My apologies for being late.”

With a heavy thud, the large door closed, and Dmitri halted, his gut sinking.

A board?

That could only mean one thing. Tension coiled around his bones. Just his luck. Makar had come to play chess. He could be in there for hours.

Dmitri scouted out a recessed entry across the alley. Leaves and trash littered the space. The hiding place allowed him to see the church’s doorway, and it was deep enough he could drag the son of a bitch inside and take his time with him. He slung his pack to the ground and leaned against the wall.

A wave of exhaustion washed over him, and he tried not to think about the sexy ghost waiting for him at his auntie’s house. The moment he’d stepped away from her, insanity seemed more plausible than her existence.

He had to be crazy.

Where his hands rested on his thighs, they shook. His Davidoffs were tucked into his breast pocket. He tapped one out and lit it, inhaling deeply. The richness rolled over his nerves like a woman’s caress. Sure, he could quit the booze, but his love affair with the smokes would never end.

The bright sun forced its way between low clouds, and he cringed. He was a freaking wreck. Even after a shower, he smelled like his father, his sweat acrid with vodka. And it was all Makar’s fault.

Everybody knows a broken father makes a broken kid.

The broad white door of the church swung open, startling him out of his thoughts. A rumbling voice sounded, too low to make out the words. The priest, still wearing his little black cap, patted Makar on the back. Dmitri crouched in the doorway, lining up a nice disabling shot to the thigh.

This was it.

All he had to do was fire.

His hand trembled, and his vision filled with blood—that woman’s tanned and freckled chest became Sonya’s fair skin, covered in a pulsing stream of crimson. He inhaled sharply, trying to clear his mind. Makar was no innocent woman. He’d betrayed Ivan. He deserved this death. And he would be the last one on Dmitri’s conscience. He took another one of his patented, steadying breaths and took aim.

A wall of golden school bus crawled past, blocking his view.

Damn. Makar would be halfway up the block by the time it moved. Guessing the distance, Dmitri re-sighted the shot. The bus cleared, but a child appeared, his thin arm extended to hold his mother’s hand. Quickly, Dmitri tucked the weapon behind him and flashed a smile at the woman. With pursed lips, she cast him a disapproving look.

The alley filled with children and parents, suffocating his hope of success. Nothing on earth could make him spill innocent blood. Not again.

At the intersection, Boris turned, looked straight into Dmitri’s eyes and waved like he’d been expecting him all along. Then he ducked into the crowd of students and parents departing a school. When Dmitri reached the corner, there was no sign of his quarry. He ran, bumping children and earning shouts in several languages. Boris wasn’t on the next block. He wasn’t in the café on the corner.

Dmitri punched a wall, the brick cutting into his knuckles. One more failure. The flavor of tobacco turned to ash in his mouth. If there was one thing he hated, it was to lose.

But this was only round one.

Deep in the middle of the night, Kiev lay nearly still. Soon it would bustle with commuters and tourists a distant twenty stories beneath Gregor’s office. But behind thick glass walls, no sound reached him, regardless of the time of day.

His companion waited in absolute silence while Gregor swallowed a handful of pills with a swig of vodka. Only that fiery combination took the edge off the excruciating pressure in his bones, where the cancer cells multiplied, outgrowing the hollow center of his left tibia. If the pain had been this bad when they’d insisted they would have to amputate the leg, he might have agreed. But he’d refused. He was a Lisko. He had to be whole—the picture of strength.

The lawyer watched him set the glass back down on his desk and filled his mouth with air behind closed lips. The coward wouldn’t meet his eye.

Beneath his desk, Gregor squeezed his fists tight. He recognized the look, the one he’d first seen on his doctor’s face.

Pity. Infuriating pity.

He raged, not at the cancer, but at the cowards who couldn’t stare death in the eye. His death, for that matter, not even their own.

He pushed back his chair and stood. “If there’s nothing else.”

“Yes, yes. I’ll take care of everything. Will you tell Dmitri in advance that you’ve left it all to him?” The man pulled at his cuffs, as if they weren’t already white and creaseless and falling the perfect distance past his coat sleeves.

Gregor wanted to shout, but it was rarely an effective strategy. He forced calm into his voice. “Yes. He needs to be prepared to take over the business.”

“Of course. I hadn’t thought of that.”

Gregor wrapped his fingers around a ballpoint pen and squeezed. Why on earth was he paying a small fortune to a fool who hadn’t thought of that? Probably because he was considered the best estate lawyer in Kiev, even if he was afraid of death. And because Gregor’s estate planning required all kinds of contingencies, ever since his nephew had accidentally killed a girl and followed the footsteps of his alcoholic father. Dmitri’s month-long bender had landed him in the drunk tank twice, robbed him of nearly twenty pounds, and God knew how many years of future good health.

The lawyer closed the door very carefully, as if a loud noise might do Gregor in then and there. Just to prove it wouldn’t, he threw his glass at the door, where it banged and then fell onto the thick Turkish rug.

His computer dinged, notifying him of a new message. He didn’t have to see it to know it would be from Makar, the sly old weasel. For years now, that traitor had been emailing him with chess plays like clockwork. Gregor greeted them with a grudging welcome. He never won, and he despised his opponent, but there was a certain comfort in the ritual.

For almost a decade, not one computer expert had been able to track down Makar’s location via the emails—something about encryption like the layers of an onion—until last week, when an unencrypted email had come through. The technology experts thought Makar had accidentally hopped onto a neighbor’s wireless network. Gregor was suspicious his old enemy would be so careless. But with that IP address, they had traced the location of his Internet usage to a square block in San Francisco.

The lead on Makar’s location had sobered Dmitri up from his Ivan impersonation. Gregor hadn’t wanted him to go, but the vengeance had focused Dmitri—given him something to live for again, and Gregor needed him alive.

Of course, Gregor himself would find a certain amount of satisfaction in Makar’s death. As long as Dmitri made a clean kill and came home without dragging up too many skeletons of the past.

Gregor didn’t have time for those old bones, since his own had betrayed him, turning cancerous and eating him alive. He barely had enough time to ensure the future of the family business, and his nephew. And in the handful of weeks his doctors predicted he had left, those were his top priorities

Except there was always enough time to play against Makar. Once Dmitri killed the son of a bitch, Gregor would miss their games right up until the moment he joined that bastard in hell.

He opened the email and read its customary three characters—BF4—to indicate the movement of his bishop. But the message contained an unprecedented second line—
“Dmitri looks just like his father.”

Gregor’s eyes blurred. That was not good.

If Dmitri had succeeded, Boris would never have lived to email about it. Something had gone wrong.

Damn it. If Dmitri asked Boris the wrong questions, the boy would learn things he didn’t need to know, things that might keep him from coming back to Kiev. Ever.

And that meant everything Gregor had worked for—the business he’d built for his family—would be lost.

Gregor sent Dmitri a text. “
Boris knows you’ve found him.”

Minutes stretched out long and silent as Gregor waited for Dmitri’s reply, watching the sparse headlights travel through Kiev’s city center below.

Dmitri hated to lose, but he was well practiced at it. So even though his head felt like an anvil on top of his neck, he held it high. That way, strangers and Elena, and even Sonya, wouldn’t know he was a loser. If his auntie asked about his
euphemism
, he would explain he simply hadn’t taken care of it yet.

But she didn’t ask. She burst through the front door with her brief case in hand just as he dragged himself to the top step. “Oh good, you’re here. I hate to leave our guest alone.”

He sidestepped to avoid getting knocked over. “Guest?”

“Yes, your ghost is making my house shiver incessantly.”

Damn. So much for being crazy.

“Where are you going?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I have a seminar tonight. I’ll be back around ten.”

“Please—” He reached for her arm but pulled back at the last second. She wasn’t much help when it came right down to it.

“You’ve got it under control,” she said, echoing his thoughts.

But sometime during his several rounds of hurry-up-and-wait, he’d thought of a question. “Hold on—”

“Can’t. I’m late as it—”

“Just tell me. Where did you get the teapot? “

“Ah.” Elena halted halfway down the flight of stairs. “Good point. It’s our only clue about who she is, isn’t it? Gregor gave it to me as a going away present before I went to University in Moscow.”

Dmitri’s heart jolted out of rhythm. “Gregor? Did he say where he got it?”

“From a shop near the Opera House. Now I really must go.”

It was past time he checked in with Gregor anyway. Hopefully, his uncle could provide him with a lead.

He got his story straight before he pulled out his phone to place the call. He pictured Gregor’s impatient stare down his long nose, his mouth straight and neutral. He hadn’t wanted Dmitri to come, and any complication would just irritate him.

He pulled out his mobile phone. The bad news was spelled out on its screen—Boris had seen him. Damn.

“Lisko.” Gregor answered on the first ring. He had that old-fashioned habit of identifying himself, in spite of the fact their phones named them both. He sighed into the phone. “What the hell happened?”

“Found the package, then lost it again.”

“Damn it, Dima. He saw you.” Gregor’s words reverberated over their connection.

Dmitri had expected Gregor’s anger because he was furious at himself. But instead, Gregor only sounded…tired?

“Don’t worry. I know its general vicinity.” Dmitri sure hoped he sounded more convinced than he felt.

“Unless you spooked him, and he’s on the run.”

Yeah. That was exactly what Dmitri feared.

“What happened, son?”

Dmitri tensed. The endearment itself was sandpaper down his spine. He wasn’t Gregor’s son. He was Ivan’s—Ivan who Makar had betrayed and ruined.

He ran his hand over his scalp, its stubble rasping on his calloused palm. “Let’s just say it got lost in the crowd, but I’ll take care of it.” His bet was on a regular chess game, every afternoon. That’s how Gregor played at least. If Dmitri couldn’t find Makar at the bus stop again, the old man would show up at the church. Unless he split town.

“Did you see a ghost?” Gregor spoke in the gentle tone he reserved for Dmitri alone.

A shudder seized him. How could Gregor know?

A reedy laugh escaped Dmitri’s constricted throat. “What?”

“It’s the first time you’ve been sober since you…since that woman died, Dima. Of course you would think about her when you got a gun in your hand again.”

Tension melted from the muscles of Dmitri’s neck, and he very nearly smiled. His uncle knew him well and had spared plenty of sympathy over the death of the woman, including another offer of a desk job. But Dmitri wasn’t ready to quit, wasn’t ready to lay down his weapon yet. Not until Makar’s debt had been paid.