His attacker kicked him in the chest, and he went down.
Get up, get up!
He could almost hear the chanting, voices from the past.
He rolled, found a shoe, and flung it at the attacker, scrambling to his feet just in time to ward off another hit. He landed a right—the man grunted, and Wyatt grabbed him, whirling him to the wall. The man hit the table—the vase of roses went flying, crashing in shards against the wall.
The man bounced off, grabbing Wyatt’s shirt.
Then he slammed his head into Wyatt’s and threw him back.
Wyatt stumbled, pain exploding through him, dazing him. He hit the nightstand, fell off it, blinking fast.
Had the presence of mind to get his hand around a book that had fallen and slammed it against the man’s head as he jumped on him.
It barely slowed him down.
Wyatt caught the attacker’s fist, throwing his own, kneeing the man over his head, into the nightstand.
Get up!
The lamp had fallen and he swiped it up and threw it at the attacker, who had bounced away. It smashed against the wall as he rolled away to his hands and feet.
Too late. The man jumped on his back, his arm around Wyatt’s neck, pressing against the carotid and jugular and in a second, the room dimmed.
No! He jerked back, putting everything into his movement, and his head hit the man’s face.
By the shout, he’d broken something. Hoo-yah, as Ford would say.
The man fell, and Wyatt turned and sent his fist into his face.
The man stumbled, hit the balcony door, and Wyatt threw up a protective arm as the door shattered.
The man rolled out onto the cement.
“What the—”
Jace’s voice came barreling into the room just as the man on the balcony climbed to his feet.
His face was bloodied, his nose gushing, his eyes hard.
Then he smiled and held up the USB drive.
Oh— Everything else dropped away, Jace’s shouts fading as Wyatt leaped through the door at the man.
But the thief took two steps and jumped off the balcony.
“No!” Wyatt lunged toward the edge but hands around his waist pulled him back.
“Guns—breathe!” Jace, bigger than him, holding him, dragging him to the corner of the balcony.
“He’s got the drive!”
Then Deke and Kalen were there, eyes big, Deke staring out into the night.
“Who was that?” Kalen asked. He had just enough wild-eyed crazy in his goalie genes to go after him, maybe.
“Let me go, Jace,” Wyatt said, elbowing his coach.
Jace barely grunted, but let him go. “You’re not going over that balcony.”
Deke was staring at the room. “You did this?”
“No!” Wyatt let out a dark word and didn’t care. He stood at the edge of the balcony, searching.
Lights lit up the path, but the man had vanished.
“Did you see where he went?” He looked at Kalen.
“Yeah. Out into the parking lot.” Kalen pointed down the path into the darkened lot.
Wyatt hung onto the rail, breathing hard. Yeah, now he hurt. His back, his ribs, and he’d taken a shot in the jaw.
“What did he want? Money?” Kalen asked.
“No—it’s…nothing.”
“Paparazzi.” Jace growled. “What did he steal? Pictures?”
Wyatt looked at him, and he must have worn horror in his expression because Jace held up his hands. “I was just…it’s a guess.”
“Who do you think I am? What—nude photos? A sex tape?” He spit out a gathering of blood in his mouth. “Wow, I thought you knew me better than that.”
“I thought I did.” Jace’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “But you’ve been acting so off. What are you into, Wyatt?” He glanced at the destroyed room.
And that’s when the door banged open. In strode three black-uniformed guards, guns drawn. “Militia!”
“Great,” Jace said and put his hands up. Deke and Kalen did the same.
Wyatt too, only he stepped forward. “Vso. Okay.” The little Russian he knew.
But apparently it wasn’t all okay, because they came forward and ordered the four onto their knees.
Then he was zip-tied and hauled up beside Jace, Deke, and Kalen.
“I guess you’re going to give that interview after all,” Jace growled as they led them out of the hotel room.
Admittedly, this wasn’t exactly how York wanted to die. Hands behind his back, his neck cinched tight in a noose that hung from one of the grimy overhead pipes, his feet balancing on the rickety arms of an old office chair.
No, he had hoped—maybe it was a crazy thought, really—to die in his comfortable bed, maybe sixty or so years from now, surrounded by a family. That was the crazy part. Family. A home. Which included a wife.
So maybe it was just a crazy dream after all. Besides, a man who lived by the sword died by the sword according to his deceased preacher father, so maybe this was a fitting end.
“The Bratva doesn’t bluff,” said Slava. Yeah, York had managed a first-name basis with his torturers. Why not? Because they certainly knew him.
Of course they knew him—he’d been on the trail of assassin Damien Gustov for the better part of three years and had finally gotten close. Too close.
So close Gustov had sent in a few thugs to slow him down.
Which, at the moment, was working if York couldn’t get the last of the plastic severed from the zip tie holding fast his wrists. He’d been working on it with a piece of chipped cement for nearly an hour.
Quietly.
While Slava and his buddy Vasily hit him.
While York slowly fed out the information they thought he was so keen to hold on to.
Yeah, he knew that the Bratva was behind the assassination attempt on Russian General Boris Stanislov, one of the troika who had his finger on the Russian nuclear missile system. Thankfully, Stanislov was a moderate, more interested in American capitalism than conquering the world.
It wasn’t that hard to figure out the grand plan—take out Boris. Into his government cutout would step Arkady Petrov, hardliner, comrade, believer in the Communist way.
Aka, today’s mafia boss. One with long political strings and a taste for global expansion.
York let all that information trickle out in grunts and pieces as he concocted his escape plan. Because while he always knew he’d die like this, frankly, he had things to do.
Like find Ruby Jane Marshall and tell her that she’d changed him.
Or at least gotten far enough inside that he’d started to wonder if he could, possibly, change.
She’d opened up a tiny fissure of hope within him, one that had released some pretty long tamped-down desires. Home. Love. A fresh start that didn’t include lies, living with one eye over his shoulder, and the perpetual screaming in his head that he’d long learned how to hide.
She made him feel free, and shoot, after a decade in his own cruel prison, he needed that like a man needed air.
Um, and literally, he needed air, because the noose had this inconvenient way of landing on his windpipe and shunting off his breath.
Too bad they’d gotten tired of hitting him and had shortcut to the finale because he had plenty more in him. But no, they’d thrown a rope over the four-inch pipe above him, forced him onto the chair, and issued their final questions.
York kept his voice easy. “I’m not lying to you, Slava. I’m telling you, we have proof that Gustov tried to kill the general. Not just emails from him to the American woman he set up, but I saw him myself.”
Only a little white lie. He hadn’t actually seen the shooter the night of the assassination attempt. Mostly he’d been looking at naive RJ standing in the spotlight for the world to blame as the shots rang out.
He’d had to do something. Which ended up being a rescue from the FSB and an epic escape from Russia.
There. He’
d gotten one wrist free. And that was all he needed. But he didn’t move, just held the cement piece in his fist.
“Where is the woman?” Slava was leaning against an ancient desk, his foot precariously placed on the chair, ready to kick it out.
York tasted the blood pooling on the side of his mouth. His bruises had calmed to a dull ache rather than the sharp pain from movement. That would all change as soon as he figured out just exactly how he was going to wrangle himself out of this moment, incapacitate Slava and Vasi, escape the abandoned office building probably located on the outskirts of Moscow, and hightail it to the airport in time to intercept Kat in Khabarovsk.
Tell her to leave the country.
And stop the very bad person who’d been sent to kill her.
That thought alone could cause a prayer, albeit thin and desperate, to the Almighty to watch over her. Not that York really had any pull with God anymore, but Kat was a good person. And she deserved protection.
Which meant he needed to keep it cool with Slava. “What woman?”
“The one on the train.”
Yeah, Slava needed to be more specific because technically, there’d been two women on the train with him from Moscow to Siberia last month. Kat, and the other, Ruby Jane, the woman they were most likely talking about.
Since RJ was safe in America, maybe that was a truth that wouldn’t cost him. “She’s back in America. Safe. Where you can’t touch her.”
It was the way that Slava smiled, the way he looked at Vasily, who was leaning one shoulder against the grimy wall, that raised the little hairs on the back of York’s neck.
But no, there wasn’t a chance that Gustov could track RJ to the remote Montana ranch where she was hiding.
No. Way.
“Listen, we know it all, and you’re not going to get away with any of it. We know that the Bratva hired Gustov to kill General Boris Stanislov last month. That after it failed, you pinned the attempt on an American tourist, RJ Marshall.”
Well, not exactly a tourist, because she technically worked for the CIA as an analyst, but she’d been here on a tourist visa. Okay, procured illegally, thanks to a contact she found through the agency, a contact who had given her York’s name.
He owed Roy for that. At the moment, he didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. “We know that you chased us through Moscow and tried to kill us on a train to Yekaterinburg. Alas, she got out of the country.”
Taking a terribly large piece of his heart with him. A loss he was still trying to figure out, not to mention cope with.
Shoot, he had vowed to himself he’d never be in this place again. Caring about someone, worrying about them, fearing someone like Gustov might hurt them.
Admittedly, it had him off-balance. Which was why, probably, he hadn’t heard Slava and Vasily get the drop on him in his safe house.
The same safe house where York had kept RJ for a week while he was trying to figure out how to save her life.
A big part of him regretted not going with RJ when she’d begged him to leave the country with her. Shoot, what was his problem—
Oh wait.
Anger.
Revenge.
Justice.
Protection.
Yeah, all very good reasons to stick around and make sure Gustov was out of the game, for good.
Then maybe he could go back to being the guy he’d always thought he’d be. The son of missionary parents. The good guy.
Except, there was that small issue with the CIA. But he’d have to face it sometime.
Until then…
“Let’s get this over, huh?” He glanced down at Slava’s foot, back at the guy, then up at the pipe above him, maybe two feet.
Vasily frowned.
Slava rose, as if to kick out the chair. Or at least threaten him.
York was tired of being threatened. Of feeling helpless, of only getting to fight back.
Now.
He leaped from the chair, both wrists finally free, and wrapped his arms around the pipe overhead, kicking away the chair.
Slava fell forward, and York grabbed him around the neck with his legs. He ripped the rope over his head, pulling himself free.
Then he dropped, slamming his fist into Vasily’s already jacksaw nose on the way down.
Vasily roared. Yeah, it hurt, didn’t it?
He landed hard with his knee in Slava’s face, turned and sent his fist into his chest, right below the sternum where he could empty Slava’s breath.
Then York turned to the raging bull.
Vasily roared, launching at him. He slammed York back, onto the grimy cement floor, and for a second, York’s head spun, the hit so hard it felt like it had turned his bones to dust.
He managed to get an arm up to protect his head from Vasily’s fists and in the meantime, lifted the knife from Vasily’s belt.
Yeah, he’d seen that, and since Vasily wasn’t using it…
Two quick stabs to the kidneys and Vasily howled, jerking back.
He ended it fast, with the knife to the man’s jugular, then pushed him away.
Slava was still gasping for breath and York debated a second before he walked over, looked into Slava’s eyes, and shook his head. “Tell Gustov that I will find him.”
Slava’s mouth was moving, but York didn’t stick around to listen just in case the two had friends. He swiped his phone and his wallet off the desk and headed out of the building.
Vasily’s fist had opened up the blood at his mouth, and his jaw burned, but he hustled down the hallway, pushed through the door, and found himself on a side street somewhere in Moscow.
Past midnight, given the waning of the stars, although they were hard to see against the lights of the city. A wind picked up the dust and grime littered in the alleyways, and not far away, he heard the rumble of a tramvai, the city train.
He needed a taxi to the airport because right now Kat was meeting Wyatt Marshall, handing over life-, no, world-saving information, and he needed to convince her to go with him.
Back to America.
Find RJ. Stay safe.
Let him handle Damien.
Except, he had this gut feeling, given his call to Kat some twenty-four hours ago, that she had a different escape plan.
“Wyatt? I’m meeting Wyatt?”
He wasn’t sure why this was such a big deal—according to RJ, they were family friends. So, “Yeah, meet Wyatt. Give him the USB drive, and do what he says.”
Maybe it was that last part. Kat failed the Takes orders well part of her kindergarten evaluation. She had her own mind—and a quick, sharp one at that.
If only she’d stayed on the phone longer, he might have convinced her. After all, at the time she was giving him Damien Gustov’s hidden home address, something she’d tracked down from the massively hidden but hackable IP address on Gustov’s emails to RJ, the ones where he set her up to be accused as a killer.
York had tucked the phone in his pocket, attached his earpiece, and quietly broken into Gustov’s high-rise apartment building. Five upscale rooms, with a kitchen that looked out of the space age. Black furniture, brass lamps, spare, tidy, and precise.
Exactly what he expected for the private domain of one of the world’s most lethal assassins.
He’d found the burner phone in a safe in the office, one that Kat had helped him hack into, thanks to the digital entry, and that’s when he hung up.
Because he’d found a call list and needed the help of David Curtiss, or more specifically, his wife, Yanna, who yes, had the initials FSB in front of her name, but was as invested in finding the killer as York was.
He’d returned to his safe house to wait while Yanna tracked down the contacts—all five of them—and discovered one of them had booked a flight to Khabarovsk in the last twenty-four hours.
She’d sent York pictures on his cell phone and it turned him cold. The woman had long dark hair, tattoos up her arm, and right in the center of the back of her neck, an eight-pointed star.
A Bratva woman—rare and lethal.
A closer look at the tattoos on her arm—a rose with barbed wire wrapped around it—told him she’d been in prison before she was eighteen.
He’d been dialing Coco again when Slava tased him.
His not-so-gentle wakeup came at the other end of Vasily’s beefy fist.
York hadn’t a clue how long he’d been down, but he looked like he’d spent the night in an alley. So maybe no decent cabbie would pick him up.
As he ran toward the metro station, he knew three things in the pit of his gut.
If Kat wasn’t on a flight to the US, then she was in serious trouble.
Damien Gustov was in the wind.
And York was going to survive this and find the woman he loved—no, not loved, but maybe needed—no matter what it took.
Now Coco felt like a fugitive. Funny, it wasn’t until she packed her backpack—her only possessions her laptop, external hard drive, a handful of necessary cables, headphones, a sweatshirt, and change of clothing—that she felt as bereft as she appeared to be.
Wounded. Her hair dyed a raven black, and she’d lost weight. A glance in the hall mirror told her that it only turned her more gaunt. No wonder Roman was worried about her when he dropped her at the train station. So worried that—
“Listen, I told you about how Sarai and I finally got together—that I had to sneak into a part of the country that was under siege to pull her kicking and screaming out of trouble. And she hated me for it—but it saved her life. Eventually, she forgave me and she realized that I did what I did because I loved her.” He took a breath and looked her in the eyes. “Are you sure you don’t want to take this chance to go with Wyatt? Because it feels like the same crazy thing.”
“And what about Mikka?”
“I can get Mikka, get him out of the country—”
“What kind of mother would that make me—leaving my son behind in Russia for others to rescue?”
Roman’s mouth tightened and yes, she could hear the weird hypocrisy in her statement. Hadn’t she let other people, for the most part, care for and raise her son? But no—she’d sent him packages every month. Went to visit regularly. Called and told him she loved him. It was no different than sending him away to boarding school.
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