Extreme Danger

by Shannon McKenna

  On the other hand, the Spider would be unamused.

  Buy me time, Mr. Big had said. But what would she have to pay for it?

  She focused on the Spider’s pudgy face. “What about dessert?” The voice that came out of her was pure restaurant robot, breathlessly feminine. “I’m flattered at the attention, gentlemen, but you don’t want to miss my Grand Marnier Angel’s Fall cake. It’s a flourless but tender chocolate torte that melts in your mouth, flavored with orange liqueur, layered with mousse, and enveloped by a thick layer of dark Belgian chocolate.”

  At the mention of dessert, the Spider released her clit. Her knees almost buckled in relief. He gave her buttocks an approving squeeze. “Perhaps we’ll wait then, my dear. Just long enough to sample your masterpiece.”

  The other man blinked. “Certainly,” he muttered. “Whatever you wish. A very small piece for me, please.”

  Smile, smile, smile. “I’ll go prepare the dessert tray.”

  She made it out the door, but that was it. No more buying time for anybody, for any reason. Her sanity was shattering.

  She would use what time she had left to search the utility closet for something toxic to drink, or else run out screaming into the night and let them shoot her in the back. She would do any crazy, desperate thing before going into that room again.

  That resolve firm in her mind, she hurtled towards the kitchen—and tripped over something big and dark sprawled across the corridor. Splat, she landed facedown and hard, in a puddle of—

  Blood. Lots of blood. Her head lifted, slowly. She squinted into the kitchen, tried to focus her nearsighted eyes.

  She abruptly wished that she hadn’t.

  Chapter

  10

  Becca’s timing sucked. Why was he not surprised?

  Nick lowered Yevgeni’s twitching body to the ground and wedged as much of it as he could into the vid cam’s blind spot. Damn. Five more seconds, and he’d have been able to intercept her in the corridor.

  Still, he was cool—back in the ice cave. The more blood he spilled, the deeper he went. It was always that way.

  Don’t scream, he told her with his eyes. He’d left Anatoli in one of the vid cam’s other calibrated blind spots, but anyone watching the monitor would have noticed her tripping over an unseen obstacle. Luckily, the arterial gout had aimed itself down. Walls spray-painted with blood tended to catch the eye. He wiped his knife hastily on the guy’s shirt.

  Becca looked, appalled, at the blood she’d slalomed in on, at her crimson hands, at the wet red knife in his fist. Her pupils dilated. Her mouth sagged. Time to beat hell out of there, Nick thought, before she sucked enough air into her lungs to start the screaming meltdown he could sense coming.

  He yanked her to her feet, staying low, and dragged her over the pile of dead meat formerly known as Anatoli. She was slippery, but blood got tacky soon enough. Like glue.

  Back through the corridor, onto the side deck where she’d lost her lunch. She made a high-pitched noise when he dragged her over the third corpse, shoved into the shadow of a conveniently overgrown tree.

  Three down out of seven. Pavel was bodyguarding Zhoglo in the dining room, Mikhail was guarding the boat, Kristoff manned the vid monitors. One more was unaccounted for, probably on his way back from the dock. In a very few seconds, Kristoff would notice that he had lost visual contact. He would try to raise the other guys on the comm gear. He would fail. And Nick and Becca would be toast.

  To her credit, Becca was quick and light on her feet. She made a lot of noise gasping for breath, but she wasn’t screaming.

  He came to a stop at the blind curve on the wooden walkway, steadied Becca and strained with every sensory organ for information about what was around that bend in the dusk-shrouded forest. The vibration that had alerted him resolved into actual noise. The frantic speed of the guy’s thudding bootsteps told him they’d been made. No point in not using his piece then.

  The tall blond guy came barreling round the corner, talking softly into his comm. There was just time for his eyes to widen before thhhtp, the bullet from Nick’s silenced SIG 229 drilled him in the forehead. The guy’s head snapped back and he ran on out from under himself, thudded heavily down and slid, half-on, half-off the boardwalk.

  Easy. He dragged her past the corpse. Four down in less than five minutes. Not bad, for toast. Becca was starting to stumble, legs shaking beneath her. Going into shock, probably. The joke would be on him.

  It was a miracle they’d gotten this far. He’d worked out the formula for this opportunity in his head. Several separate windows of opportunity had to line up perfectly long enough for him to jump through them and bring Becca with him.

  He couldn’t take out seven armed guards at once. It had to be when Zhoglo and his new associate were distracted by their dinner and Becca’s tits. Guarding them would occupy Pavel. It had to be at the change of the boat guard, so that one man would be patrolling the front approach, not two. It had to be in careful sequence—front deck, corridor, kitchen—and done in dead silence, no gasps, shrieks, grunts or gunshots. It had to happen in quick succession. And finally, Becca had to appear at the right moment, keep her mouth shut and her shit together. Which she had. So far.

  At this point, it broke down to running fast and hoping hard. Hoping the Vor’s manpower was reduced enough so that he would cut his losses and let them go for now. Hoping that he wouldn’t want his men to race after them with the boat, leaving him stranded and vulnerable on the island. Lots of hopes. Hope was a bitch. Nick mistrusted it bitterly. It set a guy up for disappointment every time.

  He jerked her to a stop. She stumbled onto her knees. He leaped off the walkway, and plunged into the foliage, dragging her behind him. She made noise as the thorns and rocks tore up her bare feet.

  Tough shit. Feet healed. Dead didn’t.

  He pushed on, shoving through branches, abandoning stealth. It was all about speed now. And he had speed hidden down there in the water, if they could get to it before they got drilled.

  He’d thought long and hard about providing himself with this bolthole, as if the implied lack of total commitment could jinx him. It had. He should have managed himself like the commanders of armies in ancient times had managed their soldiers. Lighting fires behind the troops. No retreat possible.

  His last chance to find out Sveti’s fate was gone. He’d have given up everything he had, every last drop of his own heart’s blood, for that.

  But he hadn’t been able to give up Becca’s.

  The horizon opened up before them at the water’s edge, with the last of the sunset staining the sky, the fishy, weedy smell and gurgling of water all around them. There was no beach, no dock, just white roots sticking out over the dark water like bones, the water heaving and sucking and lapping beneath them.

  He let himself noiselessly down into it, and grabbed Becca’s waist, expecting her to shift her weight for him. She went rigid, clinging to a tree, shaking. Seconds ticked away, lost forever.

  He lifted his hands, rage pricking at his calm. “You’ve got two seconds to decide,” he said. “Come with me, right now, or go back to him. Try apologizing. Smile pretty. See where it gets you.”

  She laid her shaking hands on his shoulders. He lifted her down.

  She sucked in a sharp breath at the water’s icy bite and slogged clumsily after him, stumbling over boulders in the dark water.

  She tripped, would have gone under if he hadn’t grabbed her. As it was, she was soaked up to her armpits now, teeth chattering.

  Great. If she hadn’t been going into shock already, this would do the trick. He ducked under the low cave formed by a couple of dead trees that had fallen into the water, unmoored the camouflaged Zodiac Futura inflatable that he’d borrowed from Seth Mackey. He dragged it out.

  An excellent toy. He had to get one of these for himself, if he survived. Powerful outboard motor. Speed tubes with hydrodynamic lift to zoom over the surface of the water. He heaved Becca into it. She
rolled in like a sack of potatoes. He clambered in after her, braced for the slice of lights through the trees, gunshots.

  Nothing yet. Too good to be true.

  The motor hummed smoothly to life. He moved out to deeper water, trying to hug the shore until they rounded the curve, and then he let out the throttle.

  Becca had never been so cold. She’d never imagined such cold. Every muscle of her body convulsed individually as they tried to heat her up. She dragged herself slowly up from her huddled position.

  The wind slapped her, whipped at her wet hair, dragging tears from her eyes. She noticed in an emotionless way that her blouse had been torn from her shoulder on that rampage through the forest. It dangled in a sodden swag, completely exposing one goose-pimpled boob.

  She barely noticed.

  He was saying something. She leaned forward, struggled to hear over the roar of the wind in her ears. “Huh?”

  “Thermal blanket,” he said, pitching his voice just loud enough to reach her ears and pointing. “There. Get it before you freeze.”

  Her numb fingers were about as responsive as a bunch of stiff dead fish, but she finally found the thing, and clawed open the waterproof plastic packing. She wrapped it gratefully around herself.

  She peered at Mr. Big as he gazed ahead. Hair flying back off his face, eyes narrowed against the wind, the image of stony concentration.

  His sleeve was stained with blood up to the elbow.

  Visions of what she’d just seen assailed her. Pools of blood, gaping slashes in thick throats. The stupid surprise on the face of the guy with the hole between his eyes.

  She’d been pushed over so many unthinkable barriers today, she was in an altered state. The menacing bulk of the islands rose out of the vast expanse of silvery water, towering over them like huge beasts about to pounce. The sky was cobbled with lumpy clouds and night was coming on fast. The lurid stripe of pink on the horizon faded before her eyes.

  She was in limbo. Her grim, silent escort was terrifying as the hooded ferryman on the river Styx. Skilled at killing. As if it were something he did on a regular basis. She gulped. It made her throat hurt.

  She stared at her toes, so cold they no longer even felt like they were hers, and tried to speak. She couldn’t suck enough air into her lungs to make a sound. Islands flew by, plumes of spray arced behind them. Finally, she made herself heard over the roar of the motor, asking a question she didn’t think he’d answer. “Who are you?”

  His gaze didn’t even flick down. “Not now,” he yelled.

  Not now? She’d been scared out of her wits, abused, insulted, threatened. “I want some goddamn answers!” she shrieked.

  He slowed the boat, killed the motor. They slid forward in the sudden silence on leftover momentum, rocking side to side on the inky black heaves.

  “OK, then. Listen hard. Hear anybody coming after us?”

  She listened. She heard wind, water, her own chattering teeth.

  “No,” she said.

  “The correct answer to that question is ‘not yet.’ Followed by, ‘but pretty fucking soon.’ Do you have any idea how lucky you are to be alive?”

  “Oh, I’m supposed to be grateful?” Her voice shook, splintered. “Gee, thanks! I want to know why I was in danger of getting killed in the first place! Who were those psychos? And who the hell are you?”

  “Your timing blows. Shut up and—”

  “Stop it!” She grabbed his arm. “You’ve been saying that all day! Shut up and do as you’re told, or die! Guess what. I no longer give a shit!”

  “Fuck.” He shook her off and she thudded heavily down to the bottom of the boat on her butt. “Do you want us both to drown? Stay still.”

  She rose up onto her knees. The boat rocked violently. “What, am I bothering you?” she hissed.

  “Hey.” He grabbed a handful of the thermal blanket and jerked her closer to him. “You may find this hard to believe, but slitting throats is not one of my top five favorite activities. Truth is, it puts me in a foul mood—”

  “You’re insane!”

  “Right. I started out that way and went straight down from there. Now listen. Arguing is a waste of time that could cost us both our lives. Do you understand that?”

  The force behind his words knocked her backward. Everything she had just witnessed him do came back to her again in a sickening rush. He operated, if that was the right word, with the lethal precision of a specialist.

  The bubble of manic courage was popped. She was cowed again. She gave him a small nod, and huddled into the blanket.

  He turned away. The motor roared back to life. The boat picked up speed until it was skimming over the choppy, wind-whipped waves.

  Maybe it was enough to get through the day with her life intact. She could worry about her pride later.

  Becca kept her mouth shut for the time it took to get to Crane Cove. Nick was grateful for that small favor. The ice cave in his mind was great for certain complex mental activities, like calculating bullet trajectories and wind vectors, but it was not the mental place to be when dealing with a stressed-out, hysterical woman.

  They rounded a bend, and the lights of Crane Cove spread out before him. So there was to be no high-speed boat chase, no bullets flying. Almost home free. It was uncanny how lucky they’d been.

  First, he had to get Becca squared away, returned to wherever she belonged, and then he would have to face up to his own personal failure.

  He pulled into the marina. It seemed quiet enough. He’d considered renting a slip at Shepherd’s Bay, which was closer, but the marina was small, and people were more likely to comment on his boat or notice his truck. Crane Cove was no bustling metropolis, but it was several times larger than Shepherd’s Bay.

  And they were conspicuous. He was soaked, spattered with blood, and he had a near-naked woman in tow. Anybody who saw him would have lots to tell the private investigator that Zhoglo would send. He’d used a false ID to rent the slip. Looked like that ID was a goner, if the place had a security camera. He hated compromising alternate ID’s. They were expensive.

  He moored in his slip. Dim lights, no sound. A nothing evening in Nowheresville. Good. He climbed out of the boat, hauled on a line to draw it closer to the dock, and beckoned to her. Spent a teeth-grinding eternity waiting for her to collect herself to her feet and get out.

  True to form, her blanket slipped seductively down to show off the outfit. Classic Penthouse Pet material: naked tits, clingy transparent fabric clinging to tight nipples, dark muff. Her hand was like ice when she grasped his. Her legs shook under her like a newborn foal’s.

  “What now?” she asked. Her voice was husky and raw from the wind.

  He yanked the blanket away from her and wrapped her up like a burrito, then scooped her into his arms. She protested and wiggled, but she was effectively neutralized, swaddled in the blanket.

  “We’ll talk in my truck,” he muttered.

  “Your truck?” She stiffened in his arms. “Wait! Aren’t we going to the police? We have to tell them what happened, don’t we?”

  He nuzzled her fragrant hair, noticing at random that she still smelled faintly like violets, though she tasted like salt. “In my truck,” he reiterated. “Where we won’t be seen or heard.”

  “But I—but we—”

  “And after we talk, if you still want to, I swear I’ll leave you at the local cop shop,” he lied. “Cross my heart.”

  That calmed her down, and he made good time through the walkways of the deserted marina. The darkened shopping district was quiet too. The empty street outside the gate was dotted with pools of orange light at regular intervals. Nobody in them. He hurried to the long, graveled strip along the water that functioned as marina parking.

  There was a bar up the street. Nick saw the flicker of a large-screen TV, heard a guttural roar of male voices crying out in unison. Some big sports event—that explained the deserted streets. He had no clue what the sport might be. He’d been out in orbit
for too long.

  There was his truck, waiting where he’d left it some days before. Not stolen or vandalized. One advantage of living in Nowheresville. Except that he’d grown up in a place like this, and he’d been the kind of no-good punk who’d have made sure that any abandoned truck was properly fucked up before its owner came back to claim it. At the very least he would have slashed the tires. They must sedate the teenagers in this town. But he’d take any luck he could get, however undeserved.

  He bundled Becca into the passenger seat without ceremony and got that sucker fired up with a roar of the motor, spattering gravel. Becca braced herself on the dash and gave him her owl-eyed look. She fumbled for the seat belt.

  He dragged his cell out of his pocket, and punched in a number.

  An irritated female voice answered in Ukrainian. “Who is this?”

  “Milla. It’s Arkady,” he said rapidly in the same language. “It’s all gone to shit. My cover’s blown. So watch your back.”

  “What? What? He will kill me now! You asshole! You fool! How can you do this to me?”

  “Just thought I’d warn you,” he said evenly. “Good luck.” He hung up over the woman’s shrill protests. There was nothing else he could say.

  Becca gazed at him. “And the police?” she asked.

  He chose his words carefully as he stepped on the gas. “This is the deal with the police,” he said. “If you tell them what you saw, they’re obliged to investigate. A lot of things might happen, all of them bad. Most likely some locals will be killed before they get wise to exactly what they’re dealing with. As in cold-blooded murder. Film at eleven. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.”

  “But isn’t that just what we’re going to tell them?” Becca forced the words out from between her chattering teeth. “Exactly what they’re dealing with, I mean.”

  “We can tell them anything we want,” he said. “Men and women with families will still get killed. It’s a statistical certainty.”