Forever Mine

by Anna Zaires

  Sara turns into a statue on the bed. “You think we’re not safe here?”

  “I don’t think we’re safe anywhere right now,” I say as I sling the M16 over my shoulder and stuff the other Glock into my waistband. “But it worries me that I haven’t heard from Yan or the others.”

  “You haven’t?” She pads across the room with bare feet and stops in front of me, her face color matching the white T-shirt she’s wearing in place of a pajama. “Could they just be busy?”

  “Anything is possible.” For all I know, the twins are in the middle of a hit, and Anton is having reception issues on the plane. “In our situation, though, better safe than sorry.”

  “But where will we go? Three days ago, you were out of your mind with the fever. You need to be in a hospital, healing—”

  “I’m fine now,” I interrupt softly, raising my hand to frame her delicate face. “Don’t worry, my love. You did your part, and now it’s time for me to do mine.”

  And as she stares up at me with huge, scared eyes, I drop a kiss on her tempting lips, then reach into the closet to take out her clothes.

  40

  Sara

  * * *

  I get dressed while Peter tries reaching Anton and the twins again. My hands are cold from stress, my fingers clumsy, and it takes two attempts to tie the shoelaces on my sneakers.

  “Anything?” I ask when I’m done, and Peter shakes his head, his face dark.

  “Nothing. I’m going to try Kent, see if he’s heard anything.”

  “Oh, that’s a good idea.” I chew on my lip as he punches in some number and waits, his phone pressed to his ear.

  “It’s Peter,” he says tersely. Kent must’ve picked up. “Have you—wait, what?”

  He listens in tense silence as Kent fills him in on whatever’s happened, and when he lowers his phone, I take a step back at his expression.

  “Interpol raided Yulia’s restaurants. All of them,” he says tightly. “Lucas barely managed to get Yulia out before they came to his house in Cyprus. Now they’re on their way to Esguerra’s compound in Colombia—the only place that may be semi-safe.”

  “Oh, God.” I feel a sudden wave of nausea. “Do you think Yan and the others…?”

  “They might’ve already been taken, yes. Either way, we don’t have a minute to waste.”

  Gripping my hand, he leads me out of the room, his strides as strong and sure as if he hadn’t on the verge of dying mere days ago.

  I have to almost jog to keep up with the pace he sets as we hurry down the corridor and into the staircase. “No elevator?” I ask, panting as we briskly head down, and he shakes his head, tightening his hold on my hand.

  “Too easy to get trapped.”

  I want to remind him of his wounds and beg him to take it easy, but now is not the time. If the authorities have gone so far as to come after Kent—Esguerra’s right-hand man and thus another untouchable—Peter is right about this clinic not being safe.

  All the usual rules of engagement are out the window.

  “Where are we going?” I ask, mostly to distract myself from growing nausea. The so-called morning sickness has been striking me at random times of the day and night, and all the jostling from going down the stairs isn’t helping.

  “A safe house,” Peter says without looking at me, and I realize his face is unusually pale, his temples covered with beads of sweat from the exertion.

  He’s not as recovered as he’s pretending.

  It takes all my willpower to bite back a plea for him to stop and rest. Instead, I pick up my pace, so he doesn’t have to exert any effort to tow me along. “You’re not going to tell me where it is?”

  “No.” His gaze cuts toward the ceiling corner, and I see a faint red light glowing there.

  Of course. Cameras.

  I should’ve known better than to ask.

  We go down the rest of the way in silence, and Peter stops when we reach the door to the lobby. Slowly, he opens it a fraction and waits, peering through the crack.

  “All clear,” he murmurs after a minute, and I exhale a shaking breath as we step out.

  “Mr. Sokolov,” the blond receptionist says in surprise as we pass by her desk. “Are you leaving already?”

  “Yes. I will settle up the bill later.”

  She starts to say something else, but we’re already exiting the building into a courtyard that serves as the parking lot. It’s beautiful out here, surrounded as we are by the snow-covered peaks of the Swiss Alps, but I barely notice it as Peter leads me into the parking lot.

  My stomach is now in full-blown revolt, and I have to swallow repeatedly to avoid throwing up.

  Suddenly, he stops and crouches between two cars, yanking me down with him.

  “Someone’s coming,” he whispers, reaching for his M16, and a second later, a black SUV screeches to a stop in front of the clinic.

  41

  Peter

  * * *

  I expect Interpol agents to jump out of the car, but instead, I see a bearded man dressed all in black.

  “Anton!” I stand up and wave, letting him see me. He spins around, relief breaking out on his face.

  “Get in,” he shouts back, jerking his thumb at his car. “We have to go!”

  Sara is already on her feet next to me, and I grab her hand as I half run, half limp toward Anton’s SUV. My calf burns like hell, and I feel like I tore some stitches in my side, but none of that matters.

  Anton doesn’t panic easily, and he looks more than a little on edge.

  He jumps back in behind the wheel as we reach the car, and I throw myself into the back seat, gritting my teeth against a wave of pain. Sara climbs in beside me, and we peel out of the parking lot before she even closes the door.

  “Yan and Ilya?” I ask when the worst of the pain subsides, and Anton gives me a grim look in the rearview mirror.

  “Interpol crashed their meeting in Geneva. I haven’t heard from them since.”

  “Fuck.” I close my eyes, feeling sick to my stomach. My body is still on the fritz, weak and shaky—definitely not in any kind of shape to take on a slew of armed agents if they come for us next.

  Opening my eyes, I glance over at Sara and find her taking slow, deep breaths, her delicate profile a greenish shade of white.

  “You okay, ptichka?” I murmur, and she gives a short nod.

  “Morning sickness,” she says in a barely audible whisper, and I squeeze her hand, my chest tightening with a mixture of fury and guilt.

  My Sara is pregnant. This is the time in her life when stress is most toxic. She should be resting in the comfort of our home, being coddled by me and her family—not running from the authorities, having witnessed her parents’ deaths.

  I never should’ve agreed to spare Henderson’s life. That ublyudok needed to pay—and this time, he will.

  I’m going to tear him apart, piece by bloody piece.

  First, though, we need to get out of this alive.

  “I tried getting in touch with you,” I tell Anton as he turns onto the road leading toward the private airport reserved for the clinic’s patients. “Did you dump your phone?”

  He nods. “I had just landed and was on the phone with Yan when Interpol stormed their meeting place. So I destroyed it, just in case.”

  “Good.” Our phones are untraceable, the signal bouncing off satellites all over the world, but it’s best not to risk it. “Any chance they got away?”

  “Anything is possible,” he says, but it doesn’t sound like he believes it.

  “Anton…” Sara’s voice is strained. “I’m so sorry, but can you stop the car?”

  “Pull over,” I tell him, and he swerves off the road, hitting the brakes. The car is still moving when Sara opens the door and leans out, heaving. I wrap one arm around her waist and gather her hair in the other hand, holding it away from her face as she vomits.

  “So sorry,” she murmurs when she’s done, and I hand her a water bottle from the case
on the floor.

  “Nothing to be sorry about,” I tell her as Anton gets back on the road. “This is perfectly natural.”

  I keep my voice calm, as if I’m not the least bit bothered by seeing my wife puke her guts out on the side of the road while we’re running for our lives. As if rage isn’t like acid in my veins, tinting my vision a bloody shade of red.

  “Are you sick, Sara?” Anton asks, and I realize he doesn’t know about the baby yet. And why would he? We’ve just found out ourselves.

  “We’re expecting,” I say, and despite my best efforts, I don’t sound anything but tense.

  If something happens to the baby because of this, I’ll never forgive myself.

  “Oh.” Anton seems at a loss for words. “That’s… Congratulations.”

  “Thanks,” I mutter, and then I hear it.

  A wail of sirens in the distance.

  Fuck.

  “Step on it,” I tell Anton, but he’s already flooring the gas, his face grim.

  I turn to Sara. “My love, put on your seatbelt.”

  She scrambles to obey, her hazel eyes dark in her colorless face as I check my weapons.

  The sound of sirens is coming from behind us—from the direction of the clinic—which means my intuition was right.

  They came for us.

  The roar of a helicopter soon joins the sirens, and Anton speeds up further, taking a steep curve in the road at a hair-raising speed.

  “Slow the fuck down,” I bark as Sara convulsively grabs my hand. “We can’t crash, you understand?”

  If it were just me and Anton, I’d risk it, but not with Sara here.

  Not when she nearly died in a crash on a road much like this one.

  Anton lets up on the accelerator a bit, and I bring Sara’s hand up to my lips. “It’s going to be okay, ptichka,” I murmur, kissing her knuckles. “We just need to get to the plane.”

  “They might already be waiting there,” Anton says. “Since they know about the clinic, they might know about the airstrip too.”

  “The clinic is on the map, but the airstrip is not,” I say, squeezing Sara’s hand reassuringly when I feel it tense in my grip. “They’d need to get its location from the staff.”

  Or so I’m hoping.

  Because we could be heading into an ambush.

  Anton doesn’t respond, just floors the gas again as we reach a straighter stretch of road. We’re just a few minutes from the airstrip now, but the chopper’s roar is growing louder by the second, drowning out the adrenaline-fueled hammering of my heartbeat.

  Finally, I see it pop up behind us as we take another sharp turn.

  “Get down,” I bark at Sara, pushing her flat on the seat, and then I open the window and lean out, ignoring the sharp pulling pain in my side as I aim my M16 at the chopper.

  It swerves behind the trees before I can open fire.

  I wait, not wanting to waste my bullets.

  A second later, the chopper pops up again, and I fire off a round.

  It fires back, then swerves away again.

  Fuck. We’re almost at the airstrip now.

  I wait until the chopper appears again, and then I open fire, squeezing the trigger until my gun clicks empty and the chopper falls back in an effort to avoid my bullets.

  Dunking back into the car, I swiftly reload, then lean out the window again.

  This time, though, the chopper hangs back.

  That’s not good.

  We can’t take off with these fuckers shooting at us.

  The car turns sharply, and when I glance at the front, I see we’re already on the airstrip, heading full speed for the plane.

  “RPG’s inside,” Anton yells, slamming on the brakes. “I’m making a run for it.”

  We screech to a halt a dozen yards from the plane, and I grit my teeth as my side slams into the sharp metal edge of the car window.

  If we survive this, Sara will be upset that I fucked up the stitches.

  Anton jumps out of the car, sprinting for the plane, and I provide cover fire as the chopper approaches. The sirens are getting louder too; they must be right on our heels.

  “Get on the plane, now!” I order Sara, and out of the corner of my eye, I see her scramble to obey.

  My M16 clicks empty, but there’s no time to reload, so I grab the Glock from my waistband as the chopper swerves away, then comes back, spraying the car with bullets. The glass around me explodes, the shards biting into my face and neck. Gripping the Glock, I push my door open and tumble out, rolling away from the car as I shoot back.

  I need them to focus on me, not the plane or Sara.

  Bullets hit the ground all around me, sending bits of asphalt flying in my eyes. I can smell the gunpowder, feel the burn of lead as it whooshes by.

  This is it.

  I won’t make it.

  My gun clicks empty just as a black van barrels onto the airstrip, screeching to a stop next to our car.

  42

  Sara

  * * *

  I’m already by the plane when I see the black van.

  Interpol.

  They’ve caught up to us.

  “Anton!” I shout over the gunfire and the chopper noise as he reappears in the plane’s doorway with a rocket launcher propped up on his shoulder. “They’re—”

  Boom!

  The flash of the explosion burns my retinas, the sound so deafening my eardrums nearly explode. The sky seems to turn into a ball of fire, and burning bits of metal rain down.

  Holy fuck.

  Anton shot down the chopper.

  My stunned gaze falls on the van, and I see two familiar figures jumping out.

  “Yan! Ilya!” I’ve never been this glad to see them—especially when they bend down to drape Peter’s arms over their shoulders and sprint together for the plane.

  “Hurry!” Anton yells, and I hear the sirens getting louder. “We have to go now.”

  He disappears back inside the plane, and I rush after him, with the twins and Peter on my heels.

  The police cars appear just as our wheels lift off the ground.

  “So they were pursuing you, not us?” I ask Yan as I wipe the dirt and blood off Peter’s face before removing a few shards of glass embedded in his skin. I feel bizarrely calm, as if I’m performing a routine Pap smear instead of treating my husband’s injuries after a harrowing escape.

  I’m either getting used to life on the run, or I’m still in shock and the adrenaline crash is about to hit me.

  “Yeah, and we barely made it,” Yan replies from the seat next to the couch where Peter is stretched out. “The chopper was flying ahead to trap us, but then you must’ve drawn their attention.” As he speaks, he holds up a mirror to apply an antibiotic salve to his ear, where a bullet grazed it, leaving an ugly gash.

  “Glad we could serve as your inadvertent decoy,” Peter says dryly as I raise his shirt to inspect the bandage at his side. His color is still off, but he’s conscious—and apparently feeling well enough for sarcasm.

  “Hey, it was a team effort,” Ilya says, a grin splitting his broad face as he lounges in his seat—somehow completely unhurt. “Couldn’t have gone better if we’d planned it.”

  I shake my head, trying not to think about what it felt like to run for the plane while Peter was pinned down by the chopper’s fire. It’s a miracle that he survived—that we all survived and got away.

  My hands start to tremble as I unwrap Peter’s bandage, and I realize it is hitting me.

  Peter could’ve been shot again.

  He could’ve died.

  “Where are we heading now?” I ask to distract myself from the awful thought. I can’t focus on what could’ve been; that way lies disaster.

  “That’s a good question,” Yan says, putting down the salve and picking up his phone. “Let me see if our Turkish contact has come through.” He swipes across his screen a few times and grimaces. “Fuck.”

  “What?” Peter tries to sit up, but I push him b
ack.

  “Lie still,” I say, glaring at him. “I’m not done yet.”

  “Our air control guy is in jail,” Yan says as Peter obeys, letting me clean around his torn stitches. “Someone’s sniffed out his extracurricular income.”

  “So Turkey’s out.” Peter doesn’t sound surprised. “What about Latvia?”

  “Let me see.” Yan punches in a number, then begins speaking in Russian.

  Whatever the person on the other line is saying must not be good, because Yan’s frown deepens more each moment.

  “What is it?” Ilya asks when Yan hangs up. “What did that bastard tell you?”

  “Apparently, every airport in Europe is on the lookout for our plane,” Yan says. “That includes private airstrips as well. Interpol has put a ridiculous price on our heads, and all four of our faces are splashed all over the news as the suspects behind the Chicago bombing. I wouldn’t trust anyone right now; they’re as likely to turn us in as to help us.”

  “Fuck.” Peter tries to sit up again, and this time, I let him. The shock-induced calm has completely worn off, and I’m cognizant of a bone-deep weariness combined with gnawing anxiety.

  We might’ve escaped, but we’re far from safe.

  “If Europe is out of the question, our best bet is Venezuela,” Peter says as I tape a fresh bandage to his side on autopilot. “Do we have enough fuel to get there?”

  “Let me check with Anton,” Yan says, getting up from his seat. He disappears into the pilot’s cabin, then reappears a minute later. “Yes, but barely,” he reports. “If anything goes wrong, we’re fucked.”

  “I say we go for it,” Ilya says, scratching his tattooed skull. “At least it’ll be warm there.”

  “Give me your phone,” Peter says to Yan. “I’ll reach out to Esteban. In the meantime, tell Anton to set course for Venezuela. One way or another, we’re landing there.”

  43

  Peter

  * * *