That Target store?”
Her mouth sagged. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sixty-five dollars worth of stolen makeup.” He shook his head. “And your William, too. I hear he likes high stakes poker, and him only twenty-four.” He clucked his tongue. “No job yet, I hear. I heard you’re refinancing your house to try and cover his debts. That’s how our economy got in trouble in the first place, you know.”
“But I . . . but he—”
“It would be an honor to help,” he said. “So sad, if a promising young man’s future was compromised because of a youthful mistake.” He smiled, his sunken eyes twinkling. “I will buy his debt. Thirty thousand, wasn’t it? It is nothing to me, Ms.
Siebring.”
Fay could not even speak. Arbatov patted her hand. His hand was heavy. Cold. Iron hand in a velvet glove. The phrase popped into her mind, but Oleg wore no glove. It was just a cold, naked, iron hand.
“All I ask is a little help, Ms. Siebring,” he said. “A little cooperation. Can I call you Fay? I feel as if I know you.”
“Ah . . . of course.” Her throat was dry. “Ah, thank you. But that won’t be necessary. About Cass, and Wills, I mean. Ah.” She could have kicked herself, for revealing their nicknames.
He smiled, pleased. “Wills, and Cass. Charming. Well, Fay.
You know who to call.” He pulled out a checkbook, and a heavy golden pen.
“Oh, no. I cannot accept that. If you give it to me, I will rip it up.”
He glanced up, bushy eyebrows steepled into a wounded frown. “Don’t hurt my feelings, Fay.”
When she did not reach out to take the check, he laid it on her desk. It was for fifteen thousand dollars. “Cash it,” he urged. “A graduation gift. A token of my esteem. Clothes, books, sorority fees. Heaven knows we wouldn’t want her forced to shoplift again.” He chuckled at his own wit. “She’ll be able to use it even if she does get the scholarship. Because, of course . . .” He winked. “She will get it.”
Fay clutched the edge of her desk. Oleg laid a card next to the check. “My cell,” he said. “If anyone but the people on my list attempts to visit Tonya, contact me. Do we understand each other?”
Fay nodded mutely.
Oleg rose heavily to his feet. “Good, then. Good luck, for your beautiful children. And good health.”
The whole episode played through Fay’s mind as she stared at the phone. She hadn’t heard from Oleg since. No one had come to see Tonya. She’d begun to hope that the situation would pass without incident, that the woman would just die. And if she just didn’t cash the check . . . it was like it hadn’t happened. A hor-rific story to tell friends at a dinner party, years from now. But she’d been lingering every day until midnight, in terror of missing a possible visitor. Or worse, of letting anyone else on the staff know how shit scared she was.
Do we understand each other?
Oh, yes, sir, Mr. Arbatov, sir. Don’t hurt my babies.
She dialed the number, her belly spasming.
“Yes?” That grating rasp again. She heard it in her dreams.
“Mr. Arbatov. It’s, ah, Fay Siebring, from the hospice.”
He grunted impatiently. “Well?”
No question about his sister, who was one of the most solitary patients their staff had ever seen. “Your sister, ah . . . she had a visitor.”
“Who?” His voice sharpened.
“A man, in his late thirties,” she blurted. “Very tall, big, dark-haired. He said he was her nephew. That his name was Sasha.”
“I thought I told you to let no one see her!”
“I didn’t let him in, of course! I told him there was a short list, and that he was not on it, just as you said! And he left!”
“Go to Tonya’s room,” Arbatov barked. “Do not let him see you.”
“Mr. Arbatov, he’s not here! I told him to go, and he—”
“Shut up. If Sasha wanted in, he is in. How long ago?”
“Ah . . . er . . . maybe about a half an hour ago?”
“Half an hour? Why did you wait so long to call? You idiot!”
She floundered. “I, ah . . . I had business to attend to, and I—”
“Take your cell phone. See if he is there! If so, hide in an adjoining room until he leaves. Then follow him. Do not let yourself be seen! Call me when you know where he is. Understand?”
“Ah . . . ah . . .”
“Move, bitch!’
She leaped to her feet, knocking files off her desk, and bolted, racing past Jolene’s desk without responding to the receptionist’s questioning tone. She sprinted down the hall to the elevator.
Do not let him see you. And how was she to accomplish that? She peered out of the elevator. Hurried, panting, down the hall. Outside Tonya Arbatov’s room, she clutched the doorknob with a sweaty hand, turned the knob, and held her ear to the crack.
Voices. One was deep, male. Her heart banged against her rib cage. Tonya’s voice was too soft to make out, but the man responded, loud enough to hear that he was speaking Russian. She pressed the door shut, and slid into the next room. Fortunately, the occupant was deeply sedated. She punched the “redial.”
“Yes?” Oleg barked.
“He’s in there now,” she whispered.
Oleg gave a noncommittal grunt. “Good. Wait.”
So she did. Seconds dragged by. She twitched, fidgeted. Oleg had no problem with the silence. He sat like a spider, waiting for the bug to hit the web. Her eyes fastened on the IV drip of the sleeping patient in the dim room. Her ears strained for the sound of the adjoining door.
At last, the click of the door closing. “He’s leaving,” she whispered.
“Eh? Well, then! What are you waiting for? Follow him!
Fool!”
She peeked out the door. Sasha was accompanied by a woman.
From behind, she gave the impression of being from another time, costumed. Amish, maybe, with her dull, full-skirted dress, her long, severe braid. Her arm was around Sasha’s waist. She seemed to be steering him down the corridor. Fay did not remember her from the conversation with Sasha. Or did she? Fresh fear jarred her.
Don’t let him see you. As if it were so easy for her to lurk and skulk. She was in her fifties, forty pounds overweight, arthritis in both hips, high heels that she cursed herself for wearing.
She waited until the stairwell door slammed shut, and clattered to the end of the corridor to peek through it. Another tense wait while the woman had shepherded Sasha safely out the exit to the street, and she scrambled after them. She ran out, panicking when she saw no one, running into the street, spinning until she—yes, oh, God, thank you. There they were. Halfway down the block.
The woman pushed him onto a bus stop bench, and sat on his lap, hugging him. Fay eased herself into the shadow of a locked newsstand. She was almost certain the woman had not been there when Sasha made his blustering entrance. She whispered into the cell. “They’re sitting at a bus stop on Mercer, near the corner of Sprague.”
“They? He is not alone?”
“He’s with a woman,” she whispered. “A young woman.”
“Ah. A woman. Hmmph. A bus, you say?” Oleg’s voice was heavy with disbelief. “My Sasha is waiting for a bus? ”
“Ah . . . I think they are just, um, talking,” she said inanely.
“She’s sitting on his lap. What do you want me to do?”
“Wait,” he said. “Watch them. My people are on their way. You watch until they arrive.”
A cramp clutched her belly. “What are they going to do to them?”
“It is not your business. Shut up, ey? Sasha’s ears are sharp. I am hanging up now. Call me if they move.”
She did as she was told, dreading what might happen when Oleg’s people arrived. She just hoped they wouldn’t hurt Sasha and the young woman. Or if they did, that she wouldn’t have to watch it.
But before anyone could arrive, the couple got up and took off again. This t
ime, Sasha no longer stumbled. He slid his arm around the woman’s waist and swept her along so she had to scurry to keep up. Fay scurried, too. They got into a car. Lights flicked on, illuminating the license plate. She held up her phone, clicking for the camera app, but the car was pulling away, and she wasn’t quick enough.
She just stared at the plate, repeating the number to fix it in her mind. She tried to catch the make, the model, but all she could see from this distance was that it was a black Toyota of some sort.
It pulled away, taillights receding. She doubled over, hands pressed to her knees. Her pants had turned into sobs, but she had to make this call before she forgot that plate number, before he decided to punish Cass and Wills because she was such a goddamn, stupid cow.
She pushed “redial.” The line clicked open. “And?”
“It was a black Toyota,” she blurted, and recited the license plate number to him before he could reply. “It’s heading west, on Reading.”
“Are you in a car following them?”
As if. She almost laughed, but that could get her children killed. “No,” she croaked. “I’m on foot. I can’t see them anymore.”
“Fucking amateurs,” he grumbled. “Twenty years, and my Sasha is driving a fucking Toyota? What a joke. Are you sure it was a Toyota?”
She gabbled for a moment, at a loss. “Ah, um, er, yes, I think . . .
I . . . I think it was a black Toyota four-door, I’m almost sure I saw—”
“Never mind. Shut up, Fay. Go home.” His voice was benevo-lent now. “I will let you know when you are needed again.”
Her legs wouldn’t hold her. She sank down, shaking, like a junkie having d.t.’s. People avoided looking at her, just as she herself avoided looking at people reduced to trembling on the sidewalk. She thought of Tonya Arbatov, hooked to her morphine drip. A turn of the dial would up her dose, until her organs shut down. And it would all go away.
Fay held strong opinions about physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. She was a crusader for pain control and quality end-of-life care. Now look at her, tempted to abandon her cherished ideals. Tempted to go to Tonya Arbatov’s room, and end it. Oleg would have no more reason to remember her existence. Or Cass’s, or Wills’s.
Except that then, instead of just being a mafia stooge, she’d be a murderer, too. And if Oleg ever found out what she had done . . .
The very thought made her queasy and faint.
“Why did you disobey me, Dmitri?”
Oleg’s voice seemed gentle, but every cell of Dmitri’s body knew better. It literally hurt, to stand in front of Oleg and with-stand his disapproval.
“I gave you orders to watch the hospice. Did you not take me seriously? Did you think, ah, foolish old Uncle Oleg, he is just a stupid old man, ey? He will never notice. Did you think that of me?”
No. Dmitri could not make the word loud enough to be heard.
“No, nephew? Then this stupid, tired old man is even more confused.” Oleg’s eyes glittered in his sunken eye sockets. Dmitri could not look him in the eye. He’d topped up, and he regretted it. When he used, there was no protective barrier of incomprehension between him and Oleg’s derision. He felt it all. . . . junkie scum is stoned . . . a blessing that my poor brother is dead . . . cannot see what a worthless turd his son has become. . . . It made his eyes sting, his nose run, his nerves twitch.
“You were not at the hospice when he came. I had to use that cow Fay Siebring to trail him, which she succeeded in doing for exactly two hundred fucking meters. Where were you, Dmitri?
Drinking, gambling? Shooting up one of your drugs, fucking one of your whores?”
“No,” he said.
“Then what, Dmitri? Tell me.”
Oleg was not a telepath, but he had power. Certainly the power to make Dmitri feel lower than a cockroach.
“Tell me, nephew!” Oleg’s command reverberated through him.
He had no choice but to tell the truth. “I was, uh, on another job.”
Oleg’s thick eyebrows twitched up. “Ah! You should have told me, nephew, that you no longer work for me, just as a professional courtesy. So, then. A new boss? Tell me about him. He must pay well. This Versace suit, those Ferragamo shoes; is this new boss a billionaire? This new job is more important than the task of waiting for your cousin?”
The impulse to babble was overwhelming. “Not a boss,” he blurted. “A business partnership that I’m, er, exploring. An incredible opportunity. A man I know is producing a unique designer drug—”
“A drug,” Oleg repeated heavily. “Ah, yes. They are all so unique.”
“He, ah, had an urgent problem today, and needed some support with personnel, so he, ah, called me.”
“Ah, yes. Ivan and Mikhail were your personnel support, no?
Both dead, I hear. A detective came to talk to Yevgeni and Ste-fan. Their bodies were in the house of, what was the woman’s name? Nina Christie? He is very interested in talking to you. But of course . . .” Oleg made an expansive gesture. “We have no idea where to find you. You are as elusive as the wind, nephew.”
“Thank you, Uncle. I—”
“Fuck your thanks.” Oleg’s voice crashed down. “You are using this drug, no? You dare come to me stoned, and think I will not see?”
“I—I—”
“Are you addicted?” Oleg thundered. “Tell me the truth!”
“It’s not like that! It’s a different kind of—”
“I see. You are not working for me, or this other man, either.
You are his bitch, Dmitri. You are just a drug whore now.”
Dmitri kept shaking his head. “No. If I got a steady supply of this, it would make you more money than you could even imagine.”
Oleg snorted. “I can count somewhat higher than you, nephew. Drugs are money, Dmitri, nothing more. But you know what kills the money? Using them. Use them, and you have un-fastened your pants and bent over. But I should not talk to a junkie. They cannot hear.”
. . . piece of shit . . . cannot be my heir . . .
“This drug is different,” Dmitri insisted. “It lets me read minds.”
Oleg began to laugh. “Why on earth would you want to do that? People’s minds are full of garbage! What is the profit in reading them? I would pay to be spared such a thing!”
“It’s not always telepathy!” he protested. “Different abilities manifest for everyone who takes it! Telepathy happened to be mine. It augments whatever natural latent ability that—”
“Shut up. A drug is a drug, and I have never seen any natural ability in you, latent or otherwise.” He reached down, finding the spot on his nephew’s thigh where the bullet had grazed him beneath the suit pants. His uncle’s big fingers clamped.
“Uncle, I’m sorry,” he began. “I . . . oh, fuck . . . ”
Oleg squeezed, until blood soaked through the dressing, his pant leg. The room swayed. A sound came out of him, thin and anguished.
Oleg let go. Dmitri fell to his knees. Oleg examined the stamp of blood on his hand and wiped his hand on the front of Dmitri’s dove-gray shirt. “The pursuit of this drug is a dangerous activity?”
“You don’t understand.” Dmitri couldn’t stop the bleating words, though he knew it was futile. “It’s like . . . like a super-power, uncle.”
idiot . . . fucking cockroach . . . got men killed for his dose . . .
To his horror, his uncle reached out again, plucked open the lapel of his suit jacket, and pulled Nina Christie’s cell phone out of it. How the hell had the old man known?
“This phone is not your style, Dmitri. Over two years old.”
Dmitri shook his head. “It’s mine. I have many phones.”
“Then you will not mind if I crush this one, under my foot?”
Oleg dropped it on the ground, poised his heel over it.
“No!” Dmitri yelled.
“I see.” Oleg picked it up, and tucked it into his coat. “Don’t worry. I will keep it safe, and Yevgeni will
ferret out all its secrets tonight, ey? Don’t try to be a superman, Dmitri. Go out, and look for Sasha, like all the rest of my men. He drives a 2012 black Toyota. Memorize this plate number.” His uncle passed him a small slip of paper.
Dmitri pocketed it, watching his death play out in several different ways in his uncle’s head. . . . strangulation, drowning, faked suicide, from a drug overdose, perhaps . . . believable . . . yes, past time . . .
“Reading minds,” Oleg scoffed once again. “Show me how you read minds, nephew. Read mine right now. What am I thinking?”
Fresh blood trickled down his leg, hot and ticklish. “That I am scum,” he said. “That you wish me dead. And Sasha here in my place.”
“It does not take mind reading to guess that much. Get out of my sight. Be the first to find your cousin.”
Or else drive into a lake and save me the trouble.
Chapter 12
Enigmas made Aaro’s teeth grind, which knocked him into standby default mood. Pissed off.
True, weird things had tended to happen around Aunt Tonya, which was why she’d spent so much of her adult life locked inside various institutions. She freaked people out. Made them feel the way he felt right now. Nervous, twitchy, tossed ass over head. Not good.
Like he and Nina hadn’t already got a big enough dose of shock and awe that day. He’d only just gotten comfortable with the hypothesis that Nina was whacked out on some garden variety drug trip, that it would pass and be no more than an unnerving memory. But no.
He’d considered himself good with weird, but he couldn’t make the ends match on this mess, no matter how he turned and twisted it. So what the fuck. He’d use his usual technique. Put a big, heavy iron lid on the subject, and bolt that fucker down.
“A question, please.”
Nina’s voice had that prim tone that set his teeth on edge. He struggled to keep his voice even moderately civil. “Ask it.”
“I asked you this before, but we got distracted by the, um, foreign language thing,” she said. “I still think you’re remembering wrong, and that she was speaking in English, because it’s the only—”
“Drop it, and ask your damn question.”
It took a few moments to get her pump primed again. “Why in God’s name did you let your aunt think we were a couple?”
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