He might be their enemy.
She had to keep a clear head. Fend for herself and her family, small though it was. Not let herself get drunk on testosterone fumes. “Where are we going?”
“To my cabin,” Sam said. She was right: he did know what to do. He glanced in the rearview mirror and she knew he was watching Dyadya. “Do they know where you live?”
“This I do not know.” She didn’t turn, but she imagined her uncle’s elaborate shrug. “Perhaps my house is no longer safe.”
“Hiding… hiding will not save us,” Ilya moaned. “He will find me and cut off my balls. It is what he does.”
Maisa turned to stare in horror at the little man in the backseat. He was huddled in the corner, as if trying to hide.
“Who?” Sam demanded.
“Jabba Beridze.”
“The mobster?” Maisa saw Sam’s hands tighten on the wheel. “He’s Vegas, isn’t he? What’s he doing in Minnesota? Why’s he after you?”
“I… I…”
Sam slowed the truck abruptly. “If you want me to help you, Ilya, I need to know what’s going on.”
“I have something he wants,” the pudgy little man blurted.
The diamonds, Maisa thought. Was that was what was in the black suitcase Dyadya insisted be taken from his truck wreckage? Had he put the diamonds in a different suitcase and left her with one containing a bomb? But if so, what was in the second suitcase taken from their truck?
“It is not safe for me,” Ilya insisted. “Beridze will not stop until he has what he wants. Until I am dead. He is mad. I must leave.”
Sam snorted. “Good luck with that. Even if you could find a truck to buy or rent, the roads are probably already closed. Doubt anyone will be going in or out of town.”
“Then I am already dead,” Ilya moaned.
“Not yet you aren’t.” Sam turned into the lane that led to his cabin. Otter perked up, presumably at the prospect of home.
“What will you do?” Dyadya asked.
Sam pulled into his drive and turned to Maisa. “You and George should be safe here. They didn’t follow us and they have no idea who I am.” He was already out of the truck door when she realized he was planning on dumping them.
Maisa opened the passenger-side door and Otter jumped down as if abandoning ship. She scrambled after, the wind catching her breath as she called anxiously to Sam. “Where are you going?”
He was wrestling the two suitcases from the back. Dyadya was already on the doorstep. “I’m taking Ilya to the police station. We can protect him there and I can get backup.”
“But you can’t leave,” she said stupidly, her mind stuck on the fact that he might be going back into danger.
“Listen, you’ll be safe here,” he said. “Ilya’s the one they’re after. I’ll take him into town, that’ll take the danger away from you—and your uncle.”
“It’s not me I’m worried about,” she hissed at him low. For some reason her eyes were watering. “It’s you.”
“Yeah?” He paused, looking at her, his blue eyes boring right to her soul. “Good.”
Her heart clenched. “Sam—”
“I’m a cop, May. I’ll be fine.”
“But…” He was right—of course he was—but she hated to let him out of her sight.
He was tall and muscled and knew how to shoot a gun from a moving vehicle, but he was only a man after all. Only flesh and blood.
Flesh could break. Blood could bleed.
She turned abruptly, making her way to the front door. Otter was already there, front paws against the wood, impatient to get inside to the warmth and shelter.
She was, too, but she paused and let Dyadya walk ahead. Let Sam open the door and set the suitcases inside, disappearing briefly before he reemerged, loading his gun.
Still she hesitated, even as her uncle’s voice faded as he walked inside with the dog. When she entered, Sam would leave. He would have no reason for staying.
She scowled. It didn’t matter. He’d been a one-night fling six months ago. She’d been drinking, she barely remembered that night, truly.
All that was long past—in the past. They had no future together, only a present.
Oh, God, even she didn’t believe her protests anymore.
He was in front of her suddenly, his ridiculous cowboy hat pulled low on his brow against the wind.
“You’re so stupid,” she snapped, teeth chattering. There was ice forming on her eyelashes, but she glared at him anyway. The watering of her eyes was from the wind, nothing more. “This isn’t your fight. They aren’t even your people. You’re a small-town cop, nothing more. That’s what you yourself said.”
“Hush,” he said, and his mouth was on hers, hot and alive, his tongue thrusting into her mouth as if he had every right. As if she hadn’t just eviscerated him with her sharp words.
Stupid, stupid man.
She clutched at his heavy Minnesota coat and opened herself, kissing him back angrily. He tasted of pine and snow and the winter wind, and she hated him suddenly with a passion she never even knew she had.
It wasn’t fair that it had to be this man. It simply wasn’t fair.
He pulled back and used one gloved hand to pull her black beret over her ears, the gesture so tender she wanted to scream. “Go inside, May, and lock the doors. Try the landline. I doubt it’s still working—the lines have probably blown down—but if it is, call Doc first. Tell him what’s going on, then call the next county. Maybe they can get someone through to us.”
Then he was striding toward his truck, tall and broad shouldered and brave and every woman’s dream.
No. That wasn’t right. Her dream. Maisa’s dream.
She was so fucking screwed.
Chapter Nineteen
Karl Karlson pulled his pickup into the parking lot of the Coot Lake Inn and stared. It’d only been two hours since he’d left this morning to go to breakfast, but in that time apparently World War Three: Alien Invasion had broken out. The snow was all churned up, three of the motel room windows were shot out, and Norm’s check-in door had a wobbly line of bullet holes across it.
What the actual fuck?
Even his dogs seemed to sense something wasn’t right: they’d stopped barking as he’d pulled in. Now, though, there was a familiar yip from Cookie, his lead dog, in the back, and an answering bark from two of the dog trucks parked to the side of the lot. A pause and then the full chorus started.
Norm’s head poked out around the bullet-hole-riddled lobby door.
Karl climbed down from his truck and slammed the door.
Norm flinched and turned wide eyes toward him. His hair was sticking up all over and there were white flecks in it like crumbled drywall. “Is it over?”
“Is what over?” Karl asked.
Molly’s forest-green Red Earth Ojibwa Indian Reservation Natural Resources truck pulled in beside his and Molly rolled down her window. “What’s going on?”
“I dunno.” Karl shrugged and turned to Norm.
Who was still looking spooked. “Bunch of yahoos, yelling and shooting. Sounded like automatic gunfire.”
Karl’s jaw dropped. “For real?”
“Realz, man.” Stu Engelstad emerged from the back of his custom truck bed, slapping his hands on his thick, jeans-clad thighs. “Three SUVs, bunch of assholes in each, don’t know how many shots fired. Went peeling out of here not five minutes past.”
The passenger side of Molly’s truck opened and Walkingtall got out. The idiot hadn’t been able to back his sedan out of the Laughing Loon parking lot after breakfast, and Molly’d offered him a lift back to the motel. Apparently the guy couldn’t ride in Karl’s truck, because he was allergic to dogs. Who the hell was allergic to dogs? Karl half suspected Walkingtall had made up the allergy so he could ride with Molly. Dick.
Now the idiot held up a cell phone, doing an impression of the Statue of Liberty—if the Statue of Liberty was an Indian guy, had a cell, and was frowning at it.
“I’ve got no signal.”
“None of the dogs were hurt, though, thank God,” Stu said, getting down to the important stuff. “Motherfuckers were shooting at anything that moved.”
“Does anyone have cell phone reception?” Walkingtall asked, waving his cell.
“Jesus,” Karl said again. He looked around, but except for the snow and Walkingtall still poking his phone in the air, nothing seemed to be moving. “Who do you think it was? Meth cookers?”
They’d had a real problem with meth dealers on the rez about three years back, although Karl had heard that the worst of the druggies had been sorted out.
“They were asking about the Russian,” Norm said. “Just before they took off.”
“The Russian?” Karl’s eyes widened. “What, that little tubby guy? That Russian?”
“That was Old George’s truck they were chasing, wasn’t it?” Stu turned to Norm. “Isn’t he Russian?”
“Doesn’t anyone have a phone that works?” Walkingtall asked plaintively.
Everyone looked at him in surprise, even Molly, still in her truck.
Norm shook his head. “Landline’s dead in the office. Power lines must’ve been blown down by the storm.”
Stu was peering at his own battered cell phone. “No bars.” He shrugged and pocketed the phone. “Cell towers are probably down as well—will be for a couple of days at least. Who you got to call anyway?”
“The police?” Walkingtall replied in clear exasperation.
“Station’s not a mile down the road in the center of Main,” Norm said helpfully. Walkingtall was a paying customer, after all, and Norm liked to say he was in the hospitality business. “But I expect Doc and Sam have figured out by now that there’s strangers running around town shooting the crap out of things.”
“But… but…,” Walkingtall sputtered. “We can’t call for help. What’ll we do if they come back?”
Molly sighed and got out of her truck, kind of hopping off the running board—Molly had short legs. She walked back to the covered bed and unlocked the tailgate.
Stu spat into the snow and reached into the cab of his truck. “Son, if they come back, we’ll be ready for ’em.”
He brought out his compound bow as Molly straightened and racked her shotgun.
Karl grinned at Walkingtall’s appalled face and said in his best Mexican accent, “Badges? We don’ need no stinkin’ badges.”
Chapter Twenty
May would be safe at his cabin. Sam clenched his jaw and reminded himself of that fact. There was no reason for this Beridze guy to look there. He didn’t even know who Sam was. Sam’s job was to get Ilya to safety, alert Doc to what was going on, and secure the town. That was it. He had an entire community to take care of, not just one fiery woman.
Even if her eyes had been full of tears for him.
The problem was that George was a wild card. He tightened his grip on the wheel at the thought. Had George kept in touch with the mob this whole time? Had he called or talked to them since they’d hit town?
Could George somehow have let the Russians know where he—and May—were now?
Sam made himself slow as he hit the highway. The snow was building here, slick and compacted. He shifted down, going no more than twenty.
“How many were there?” he asked the silent man beside him.
Ilya’s face was slippery with sweat, his complexion a sickly yellowish white. His chunky glasses sat crookedly on his face, and there was a crack in one lens. “I… I don’t know. There is Beridze and he had the three big black trucks.”
Two SUVs now. Say four men per vehicle, that was twelve men, including Beridze. Of course that was only an estimate. He could have more or less. Some could have been wounded or killed by the crash.
Either way though, the Coot Lake police force was most likely outnumbered. Way outnumbered.
They needed backup.
After half an hour more of crawling along the road, the visibility getting ever poorer, Sam pulled into town. Main Street was practically deserted now. Haley Anne’s little silver hatchback was still outside the Laughing Loon, nearly covered in snow. She’d probably been picked up from work by her mother, who had a four-by-four and lived closer to town—unless Dylan had picked her up. That was another thing: they needed Dylan and Tick back in town. Both were on duty today, but Doc had probably sent them out to deal with the snow and people getting stuck.
There was a little parking lot around back of the cinderblock municipal building, and Sam parked there. No point in advertising their presence if the Russians happened to cruise through town.
He hustled Ilya into the building, one hand on the man’s upper arm, the other holding his drawn Beretta down by his thigh. He let the back door slam shut behind him and locked it.
Inside, was a small reception room with two plastic chairs, a plastic table, and a plastic plant. To the left was a counter. Usually a receptionist sat there. Today, the counter was abandoned. Everyone had probably gone home at noon while they still could. Beside the counter was a set of wide stairs leading to the upper floor and the police department. Sam crossed the room and flipped the lock on the front door before leading Ilya upstairs.
The entire upper floor—what there was of it—was the police station: a big desk for Doc, a couple of smaller ones shared by Sam, Dylan, and Tick, a free-standing barred cell with a toilet and cot in case they had to bring in any drunk-and-disorderlies for the night, and Becky’s dispatch station. There was a row of windows to the north, overlooking Main, and a smaller row to the south, overlooking the municipal parking lot. The entire room could be crossed in five strides.
When he entered the room, Doc was leaning over Becky’s shoulder. Becky was at her dispatch station, muttering under her breath and stabbing buttons like she wanted to disembowel the radio.
“Nothing?” Doc asked.
Their dispatcher scowled. “Lots of static. The storm must’ve knocked down the tower.”
“Well, shit,” Doc said, straightening. “We got no way to communicate with Tick or Dylan. Just have to hope those boys have enough brain cells to realize the situation and come in on their own.” He looked at Sam, eyes narrowing at his drawn gun. “Thought it was your day off, Sam. What’s up?”
“We got a situation. Russian mafiya boss named Jabba Beridze and his goons, three vehicles—black SUVs—though probably one is out of commission. They shot up the Coot Lake motel.” Sam shoved Ilya gently into a chair. “According to Ilya Kasyanov here. Found him and George Johnson in George’s wrecked pickup. Was helping them when we were chased and fired on by one of the SUVs. Lost them up on County W when they skidded out and I shot the grill and their front tires. Put May and George in my cabin and brought Ilya here.”
“Well, heck, Sam,” Doc said. “Good thing you weren’t on duty.”
“Take it the radio’s not working?” Sam nodded at Becky’s station. “I couldn’t get anything from my handheld earlier.”
Becky looked disgusted. “Radio’s kaput.”
“The phones out?” Sam glanced at the old rotary dial sitting on Doc’s desk.
“Yup.” Doc already had his cell out, fiddling with it. “My cell isn’t doing anything. Becky, you have a different carrier. How’s your’s?”
Becky shook her head. “It’s been out since noon.”
“So we’re on our own,” Doc said thoughtfully.
“Oh, God, oh, God,” Ilya moaned quietly, rocking back and forth in his chair.
“Nothing to worry about,” Doc said. He unhooked a bunch of keys from his belt and went to the gun cabinet. “Either those boys are already gone, or if they’re smart at all they’ve gone to ground until the weather clears.”
Sam nodded. “Okay. So we just sit tight, you think?”
“ ’Spect so,” Doc murmured, taking down a shotgun and handing it to Sam. “Ammo’s in the second drawer down, right side, underneath those firecrackers Tick seized last week.”
He tossed the keys and Sam c
aught them on the way to Doc’s desk. He pulled open the drawer and shoved shotgun shells in his pocket, then took a handful and gave them to Doc. “I’m going to check back on May at my cabin—”
Someone pounded on the front door.
Ilya shrieked and ducked.
Becky looked up, eyes narrowed.
Both Sam and Doc raised their weapons.
“Il-ya!” sang an accented voice from below outside. The wind made the sound faint and eerie. “Il-ya! I’ve come for your testicles.”
Chapter Twenty-One
“What possessed you to put a bomb in my suitcase?” Maisa hissed at her uncle as soon as the door to Sam’s house closed.
She plucked Sam’s phone from the wall and listened, but there was no tone. Damn it. She slammed the phone back in its cradle, trying not to think about Sam going into town all by himself. The other policemen would be there, wouldn’t they?
Wouldn’t they?
When she swung on Dyadya, all jangling nerves, she saw he was squatting, making clucking noises at Otter the Dog as if he hadn’t a care in the world. As if he hadn’t just been in a shoot-out with insane mafiya thugs, a car accident, and—oh, yeah—left her literally holding a bomb.
Otter sniffed at Dyadya’s hand and then licked his fingers, confirming Maisa’s low opinion of the dog’s intellect. “Dyadya!”
He rose, shrugging. “I did not want anyone to tamper with the suitcase and I did not want to leave you defenseless while I saw to the diamonds. I am sorry to have frightened you, my Masha.”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” She saw with a pang that the blood on his face had smeared. “Sit down.”
She stalked over to the door nearest the kitchen, discovering the little bathroom Sam had told her about this morning.
That seemed a very long time ago now.
“And what about those other suitcases, then?” she shouted as she rummaged under the tiny sink. “The ones you and Ilya had. Do they have bombs, too?”
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