One Wrong Move

by Shannon McKenna

  Sasha looked strong, restless. Angry. Those were good things to be. Oleg loathed complacency, or anything that smacked of softness.

  Sasha’s woman had not impressed him, at first glance. A mousy nonentity. Then he’d seen her smooth penetration of the hospice, her perfect timing. He’d barely seen her enter, though he had the video to study. Just a gray flutter, and poof, she was gone.

  Of course, he would have wished Sasha a woman endowed with jaw-dropping beauty, not invisibility. But perhaps this girl had other gifts to bring to the table.

  He pushed open the door to Tonya’s room. She appeared to be asleep, but he knew his sister’s tricks. Sneaky to her last breath.

  He bore down on her with all the force of his will. “Open your eyes, Tonya. I wish to speak with you.”

  Tonya’s eyes fluttered, though she stared defiantly at the ceiling. No one but Sasha had ever resisted his will as much as Tonya had. Both had suffered for it. But he could not allow insubordina-tion. Not then, certainly not now, not if he wished to maintain his power and status as Vor. Much as it pained him to be severe with his own family.

  With all his freakish intelligence, Sasha had never seemed to understand how much he stood to gain by giving up on his compulsive resistance. He’d never cared about the power he would inherit if he would just listen and obey. He’d fought Oleg with every breath. He had resisted in his fucking sleep. It had made Oleg angry enough to kill, and even so, he’d been perversely proud of the boy for being so indomitable. Only that kind of steel could possibly hope to run the vast and complex underground business empire that Oleg had created.

  It was a riddle that had no answer, and then Sasha had fled anyway, making the answer irrelevant. His only surviving child, gone. The self-absorbed Rita had given him her perfect body, but it had born no fruit, and Oleg suspected that Rita was quite satisfied with that state of affairs. She did not want to distort her figure with pregnancy, nor did she want to make any effort on anyone’s behalf but her own. Being Rita Arbatov was a full-time job, in and of itself.

  “Look at me, Tonya.” He let steel show through his voice.

  She turned her head. Her dark eyes in her emaciated face were more intense and haunting than ever. And full of relentless hatred.

  “Sasha came to you, Tonya. I have video footage, of him, and his woman. You do not protect them with your silence. You only anger me.”

  She licked her lips. “The closer to death I get, the less power you have over me. You will not catch them, Oleg. Together they are strong.”

  “Are they lovers? Married? Where? Are there children?”

  Her lips stretched in a deathly smile, showing flakes of peeling skin, discolored fever blisters. “You will not put your hands upon their children,” she said. “I have seen it. Dreamed it.”

  Oleg waved that impatiently away. “What name is he using?”

  he demanded. “Who is the woman?”

  “Her name was not important. She is strong enough for Sasha.

  That was what is important.”

  “I do not wish to hurt Sasha,” Oleg snapped.

  Tonya made a wheezing sound, lips drawn back. “No? You never meant to hurt Julie, either, ey?”

  Rage surged inside him. “I never hurt Julie,” he said harshly.

  “You did not protect her,” Tonya forced out, breathless.

  “From what?” he said harshly. “Herself?”

  “You never asked yourself why she was so sad? Why she got so thin, why she ate her fingernails and cut her arms with a knife?

  You never noticed the light in her eyes going out? No, it was enough for you that she obey you. That was all you ever wanted from any of us.”

  “Be silent,” he snarled. “I did not come here to be scolded.”

  She laughed again, harshly. “Then you should have stayed home.”

  He leaned over her, letting his will batter her. Her lips drew back from her teeth as she withstood the gale. When a thread of blood began leaking from her nose, he leaned back in the chair, and waited.

  Tonya could not speak for ten minutes. She dragged air stubbornly into her lungs. Gasp after gasp, rattling, whooping. So painful, so useless. Life, maintaining itself when all pretexts for living were gone. Were it he in that bed, he would have put a bullet in his head long before. When it came to that, he’d made arrangements. His body had declined as far as his dignity would allow. One more sacrifice, one more compromise, and he would be running to meet the reaper, arms outstretched. But first, he wanted his son. Just that.

  “You know where Sasha is,” he said. “You’ve always known.”

  Tonya shook her head. “I never saw much with those drugs pumped into me,” she said. “And you gave the orders for that, brother.”

  “If you had helped, instead of spitting in my face.” His voice shook with anger. “If you had done as I asked, and used your gift to help me find him, I would not have been forced to punish you!

  Stubborn cow!”

  “Why not leave him in peace?” Tonya shook her head. “You and Dmitri, both of you. Obsessed with him. After twenty years.”

  Oleg frowned. “Dmitri doesn’t give a shit about finding Sasha.

  He’s out chasing some new drug. I hope it kills him. Worthless turd.”

  Tonya shook her head. “Dmitri is hunting them. They have something he wants more than life. I’ve dreamed it. He will kill for it.”

  Tonya’s predictions, when her eyes had that unfocused glow, were to be heeded. Tonya had dreamed Oksana’s breast cancer long before the doctors had diagnosed it. “What did you see?” he asked.

  “I saw Dmitri creeping into Sasha’s dream,” she rasped.

  Tonya’s sepulchral whisper had begun to annoy him. “Don’t play oracle with me. I’m not in any mood to interpret fucking metaphors.”

  “Last night, he sneaked into Sasha’s dream,” Tonya insisted.

  “And he will attack again. Sasha is my heart’s treasure. You expect me to give him to you? When you have never done anything but punish him?”

  Oleg coughed. “I do not wish to hurt him.”

  “Then stop Dmitri,” she said. “That is all you can do.”

  Oleg took out the cell phone he had taken from Dmitri the night before. He held it up where Tonya could see it. “Dmitri is hunting the woman who owns this phone. Her name is Nina Christie. Have you ever heard of her? Have you seen her in your dreams?”

  Tonya shook her head. “I do not know the name.”

  “There is a great deal of senseless babbling on this phone that I wish to have explained,” he said. “Some of it in Ukrainian, of all things. But this speaker, I believe, is the woman herself.” He punched the audio file, set it to play on the speaker.

  “. . . Helga. Oh, God. Helga?” The female voice was low, quavering with shock. “What was . . . wha—why did you do that?

  Wha—what the fuck was in that needle?”.

  Startlement flashed in Tonya’s eyes. Oleg clicked the file off.

  “Who is she?” he demanded. “Do you know anything about this needle attack? Who did it, when it took place?”

  Tonya shook her head.

  His teeth ground in rage. “You will tell me. Now. ”

  “Or what?” That silent, wheezy laugh again. “Or you will kill me? Do it, Oleg. You’ve kept me locked in a cage for long enough.”

  “Is this what you want?” He lifted his hand to the knob that regulated the morphine drip. A little turn to up the dose would depress her respiration, and she would be dead in hours.

  Her eyes fixed on his hand, her mouth a martyr’s clenched grimace. “I would not sell my darling to you, even for that.” Her mouth worked. Spat at him, with surprising energy.

  He wiped the spray of spittle that had stained his snowy shirt cuffs, and reached up to the knob. He turned it, but not to increase the drip. The other way. The drip slowed, stalled, and stopped. Oleg grasped the call button that dangled from the head of the bed, and looped it over the IV rack. Out o
f her reach, unless she stood, and Tonya could not stand. The tumors had metastasized to her spine, fracturing it. She did not have the strength to scream. She could barely croak.

  Tonya’s eyes filled with dread. “That will kill me, too.”

  “Of course.” He gave her a wide smile. “But the death will not be gentle. But why should death be gentle, when life never is?”

  “Fuck you, Oleg,” she whispered.

  He leaned over her, staring into her eyes. “That woman. How do you know her?” He let his will bear down, and this time, she cracked.

  “Came . . . came in, with Sasha,” she gasped out.

  He was jolted by the unexpected implications. “This is Sasha’s woman? This is she?” He shook the phone. “Dmitri is hunting her?”

  “Both . . . both.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Both of them.”

  The door burst open. Fay Siebring bustled in, a bright, nervous smile on her face, prattling about a call from the scholarship board, but Oleg’s attention was elsewhere. His sister tried in vain to get Fay Siebring’s attention, plucking the woman’s jacket, begging in her broken English for help, but Fay ignored her, and focused only on him.

  Oleg held up his hand to forestall the spew of words. Leaned to kiss Tonya on her clammy forehead. “Good-bye, little sister,”

  he whispered. He took Siebring by the arm, and led her toward the door. “Excuse me, but I must be on my way,” he said. “Will you see me out?”

  The door swung closed on Tonya’s breathless sobs.

  He escorted Siebring down the hall, pretending to listen to the nonsense the woman was spouting. It occurred to him that Tonya might well die, if he did not say something to a staff member before he left. He did not know how dependent upon morphine she was.

  But the equation was so simple, he could not understand why Tonya never seemed to learn it. No opposition meant no pain, no punishment. Plus everything her heart desired, or at least everything that money or fear could buy. Which was quite a bit, in the end.

  So simple. So fair. It was not his fault if the woman was too stupid to make the connection. To protect her own best interests.

  He left Fay Siebring in mid-sentence, and walked away, saying nothing about Tonya at all.

  Chapter 19

  With all Rudd had to worry about, he had to clean up for his cleaning crew, too. That idiot Roy, the only one who could have followed the two fugitives, had gotten his head smashed, and the resulting trauma had put him out of commission for hours, at which point the runaways were hundreds of miles out of range. Anabel had barely had the presence of mind to get her colleague loaded up and away before the cops showed. A bloody corpse. Hysterical witnesses. God, what a mess.

  Back to doing things the old-fashioned way. Using his naked and unassisted intelligence. Fortunately, he still remembered how, unlike his assistants. He gazed up from his car at Nina Christie’s house, still festooned with crime scene tape. A cop stood sentinal, looking bored and hot. He dragged a pack of cigarettes out, tried to shake one out. It was empty. The guy tossed the pack to the porch floor in disgust.

  Rudd estimated the distance between himself and the cop.

  Right on the edge of his range, but he could do it. He’d waited until just before peak dose to try. One had to time these things just so.

  He reached, harder, farther, stretching . . . contact. He was only a rudimentary telepath. At peak dose, he could catch random glimpses, or follow thoughts if they were strongly projected with intention, if they were emotionally charged, or if he knew the context well. Otherwise, not so much. But this guy was easy, even for him. Simple, predictable. He was hot, he was bored, his ass itched, he was frustrated at pulling this kind of duty and being passed over for better assignments. Irritated at his wife over some long-standing fight. His thoughts flowed through Roy’s mind, fuzzy and staticky, but clear enough.

  . . . fucking hot . . . kill for a cold beer . . . need more smokes . . . wonder how long I’ll have to wait to get laid again this time . . . go find me a friend with benefits, that’ll teach the snotty bitch to give it up. . . .

  And so on. Rudd hung on to the contact, and began to funnel his coercive energy against the guy’s mind, like he did to punish Roy, but harder. And suddenly, full force.

  The policeman doubled over, clutching his head. His thought processes disintegrated into shock, terror. Pain. He groped for the walkie-talkie at his belt. Rudd ramped it up before the man could say anything into it. It felt good, to unleash the full range of his abilities. Like a full-body stretch after sitting in a cramped plane seat for hours.

  Rudd got out of the car. Time to get on with it. The man dropped the walkie-talkie. It tumbled down the steps. The man thudded to his knees, tipped. Rudd heard a crack as his head hit something.

  Rudd nudged open the gate, kicked the walkie-talkie with his toe to where it was not visible from the sidewalk. He ran a practiced eye over the cop. The knock to the head plus the previous trauma Rudd had inflicted should keep him quiet. He nudged the man’s legs, bending them at the knees so that they were hidden behind the low wall that bounded the porch, and could not be seen by a casual passerby, and ducked under the yellow tape.

  He’d waited for the evidence techs to finish up with some follow-up work, and was reasonably sure now that the house was empty, but who knew for how long. He’d keep this quick.

  The place was a mess. Trashed by Roy and his mafiya thugs in their search for Psi-Max 48, then worked over by the forensics types. He was under no illusion that he would find Psi-Max 48 here. The drug was with Nina Christie and her brawny protector.

  But he would walk through, look, think about her. People let down their guard when they were home. Weaknesses were revealed. He had an excellent instinct for weaknesses. There was a zen to it. He’d been pretty good at exploiting weaknesses even before that happy day he’d discovered psi-max.

  He started with the upper floor. Several rooms were empty, in-cluding the master bedroom. Odd. The bathroom was a heap of glass from the broken shower stall. Meatheads, breaking things for the sake of breaking them. The medicine cabinet’s contents were scattered in the sink. Face cream, body lotion, Advil, as-pirin, antibiotic ointment. Dental care items. No cosmetics, no contraceptives pills or devices. No antidepressents, antianxiety drugs, opiates, or medication of any kind.

  But a woman in Nina Christie’s line of work was often compensating for something. Do-gooder crusaders always were.

  He was all the more convinced of this when he looked over her bedroom. It was a much smaller back bedroom, looking over an alley. A narrow, antique bed, plain white sheets, a somber quilt. A hard, matted-down futon mattress. A veritable nun’s cell.

  And that closet. She’d hidden in a false-backed closet, Roy said.

  He stepped over voluminous, dull-looking clothing to take a look at it. Fine work, custom made. The back panel was torn up with bullet holes. No casual hiding place, but carefully planned. This project had cost her money.

  The clothing was all in flat, neutral colors that disappeared when you looked at them. Grays, beiges, taupes, the occasional daring navy blue or olive drab or charcoal. She even avoided true black and true white. Evidently they had too much pop.

  He nudged at the crumpled rose petals, broken ceramic. A, seventies-era picture of a smiling, pretty woman, probably Christie’s mother. No jewelry box. What young woman’s bedroom was de-void of jewelry? So very austere. His foot crunched over a picture frame. He picked it up. A photo of two young women. A striking strawberry blonde, her arm draped around a smaller woman, whose dark, curly hair was dragged straight back from her forehead. The dark woman wore harsh, unflattering glasses and a drab brown button-down shirt.

  That plainer one was clearly Nina Christie. No jewelry, no makeup, no contraceptives. Ergo, no lovers. A custom-made closet to hide in. Hmmm. A deep fault line, just waiting for him to exploit.

  His eyes fixed on the other woman. A friend with pride of place on a woman’s bedroom dresse
r, right next to dear old Mom, was another fault line. Love was the best one. It had worked on Helga, after all.

  But time pressed. He laid the picture down and swiftly toured the rest of the house. Not much to glean. She hung few pictures, had simple, utilitarian furniture. A china cabinet in the dining room was flung down, its porcelain contents smashed to dust. A mirror over the table had been smashed, cracks radiating out from the splintered hole.

  The kitchen was his last stop. He made his way to the refrig-erator, and gazed at what was clipped with magnets to the door.

  Yet another photo of the smiling strawberry blonde, but this time she was seated with a tall, grinning dark-haired man who had his arm around her shoulder. Each held a squirming toddler on their laps.

  A card was stuck up with a magnet. It was made of handmade paper, liberally scattered with pressed wildflowers. On closer inspection, the flowers proved to be yellow mountain lilies, small and delicate, their dried petals wispy yellow threads, like saffron.

  Inside was printed:

  You are cordially invited to the wedding of

  Lily Evelyn Parr and Bruno Ranieri,

  to be held in the Portland Rose Garden

  on September 8, at 2:00 PM.

  Reception to follow, at the Braxton Inn.

  Please RSVP.

  His cell phone vibrated in his pocket. The display indicated that it was Anabel. He hit “talk.” “Yes?” He kept his voice cold.

  He was displeased with Anabel. She’d been coming up blank in every task he set to her.

  “I heard from Dmitri,” she said. “About Joseph Kirk. In Portland. His men paid Kirk a visit this morning. Questioned him.”

  “And?”

  “Kirk didn’t know anything. He really thought Helga was dead, in the fire. No clue. Dmitri’s boys questioned him very thoroughly.”

  “We need to have you read him, too,” Rudd said briskly.

  “Make arrangements to go to Portland immediately. We have to move fast—”