Extreme Danger

by Shannon McKenna

  The heart-wrenching tale that they’d bonded over: dear old Dad, Mom eating the pills, Becca raising little bro and sis all alone. That vibe of stoic endurance, tinged with stubborn good humor. Such a likable, masterful touch. He’d eaten it up with a spoon.

  But why had she waited so long to turn him in? She could have delivered him at any point in the last few days. He’d been utterly off his guard. His head between her legs, his brain melted down.

  Maybe she was going for a bigger prize. After all, Daddy Novak would pay big money for Tamara. And he’d enjoy cutting the McClouds into bloody pieces, too, for what they’d done to his son.

  With his usual legendary bad judgment, Nick had exposed and endangered every last friend he had. “Get dressed, babe,” he said.

  She looked like she was going to be sick. “Where are we going?”

  “I don’t know,” he told her honestly. “Anywhere. I don’t give a fuck. I’d rather be a moving target. And I think better when I’m moving.”

  She plugged her cell phone charger into the wall, attached the phone, stumbled into the bathroom. The shower began to hiss.

  Nick sat down heavily on the bed, and stared at her purse. He wasn’t sure where the impulse came from, to unsnap the clasp and look through it. Self-torture, maybe. Punishment for his own stupidity.

  The envelope in the inside pocket made his jaw twitch. It was a European envelope, the dimensions different from American stationery. The paper was thinner, shinier, yellower. The flaps folded differently. It was unsealed, and barely big enough to contain the wad of cash it held.

  He flipped through it. Fifteen thousand, in crisp new hundreds. The bills stuck to the cold sweat on his clammy hands.

  He shoved them back into the envelope, stuck it into the purse, and looked again, more carefully. Found a slit in the lining of her purse. He groped in, pulled out a GPS locating device. A commercial brand. Not professional level, but it did the job. The shower shut off. He shoved the locater back into the lining, tossed the purse where it had been.

  So, then. That solved that mystery. She’d gone to Gavin Street to make her report, pick up cash for miscellaneous expenses, obtain a monitoring device. Maybe she’d been ordered to plant it on him.

  Which meant he couldn’t lose it without her copping to him.

  He groaned, dropped his face into his hands. His head throbbed. Complicated, hell. Complicated didn’t even begin to describe it.

  She burst out of the bathroom, damp and naked and beautiful in a billowing cloud of back-lit steam. “Did my phone ring?”

  He shook his head, watched her dress with frantic speed. Her hands shook. She kept dropping things. Shirt on inside out. Tripping when she put her legs into her pants. When she got to the laces of her shoes, he couldn’t bear to watch it anymore, act or no act.

  He kneeled and pulled the laces of her sneakers tight, tied them for her. Mr. Solicitous. She reached out to touch his face with her fingertips, a butterfly caress. Her eyes were glowing with tears.

  Whoo-hah. Brace yourself for the tender moment, chump. Jesus. He had his limits. He flinched away. “You ready to go?” he asked.

  She grabbed her purse, checked her cell phone, tossed the charger into it and the phone into the outside pocket. “Ready,” she said.

  His mind spun in circles as they got into the truck, considering all his options. All of them ugly. He could ask Tam for some girl assassin trick, something like a nerve gas capsule he could tape to the roof of his mouth. Crush it with his teeth and spit death into Zhoglo’s face while the prick was gloating over his broken body. That would be satisfying, for the brief seconds he would have to enjoy it before his own lung tissue melted. Tam always had a stash of wicked shit like that on hand for her wearable weaponry biz, but her studio was pretty far away.

  He’d improvise with what she had on hand. Assuming she was in town, and that she would speak to him. She just might be willing to provide him with the means of his own death, she was that pissed at him. That would be better than asking for help, organizing an ambush. He didn’t want to put his friends into more danger than they were in already. They were family men, all in some stage of procreation. Except for Sean, who was on a plane to Italy with his bride for his honeymoon.

  The other happy bonus that the Lone Ranger suicide plan had to offer was that he would no longer have to wonder what the fuck to do with his own inconvenient self for the rest of his useless life.

  His life for Zhoglo’s. A fair trade. Hell, it would be a blessed relief.

  He just had to figure out what to do with Becca first. He had to plan for this, to prepare, and he couldn’t let her witness it. Nor could he take his eyes off her at this point. And he couldn’t bring her with him on a suicide mission. The chances of her getting killed were too great, even if she was on Zhoglo’s team. It was her job to keep him under control. If she failed to do that, she was dead meat.

  He didn’t want that to happen. Whether she deserved it or not.

  Besides. There was always the possibility that he was wrong. He’d been wrong before. He would never again trust his own reading of events the way he had before the Novak disaster. But he didn’t dare examine that possibility too closely. His judgment was whacked already. There was a crushing load of evidence massed against her. Fifteen K in a European envelope, for fuck’s sake. What more did he need?

  Weird, that she’d given him Mathes and Evans, though. That wasn’t in Zhoglo’s best interests. Maybe she figured they were harmless bits of meat to throw to the panting, whining dog under the table. After all, Diana Evans was already dead.

  What the fuck. He didn’t care. Lying, two-faced whore or not, Becca was in deep. He would protect her if he could, from Zhoglo, from herself. Let the lawyers and judges thrash it out afterwards. He wasn’t going to have to watch.

  He would be long gone.

  They were both silent, each lost in a private hell of dark thoughts as he drove aimlessly around the city, formulating the key elements of a plan for dealing with her. It began to come together in his mind, painful and flawed and ugly as hell, but so was everything else.

  He pulled into a strip mall that boasted both a supermarket and a Staples store. Becca gave him a questioning look as he parked.

  “Got to pick up some supplies,” he said. “Come in with me?”

  “I’ll wait for you here, if you don’t mind. If he calls, I don’t want to take the call in public. I might cry, throw up. Faint. Who knows.”

  He grunted. Fair enough. But he didn’t like leaving her unsupervised. She could plant that locator somewhere on his vehicle. Or make phone calls to her boss. Still, he’d rather get provisions unobserved. And once he got her settled, he could always make sure the locator was still in her purse and behave accordingly. So whatever.

  He was brisk and focused in the supermarket, now that he’d decided what to do. Some bottles of water, some meal replacement protein bars, some snak-pak cheese and cracker combos. A heavy-duty dog chain, like one you’d buy for a Doberman or pit bull. Done.

  He loped across the parking lot, ducked into the Staples. Grabbed the first clerk he found, a pimply blond youth, and yanked the digital voice recorder out of his pocket. “Got the right battery for this?”

  The kid examined it, frowning. “Aisle five, on your right, at the end.”

  Found them. Bought five. The fucking things were tiny.

  There was a FedEx machine in the store. One more detail. He scrounged a piece of paper off a clerk, and scribbled a terse message to his ex-boss at the Cave. He filled out forms, swiped his credit card, watched to make sure that sucker wasn’t maxed out. It took. He dumped it into the deposit slot.

  It wasn’t going to go out until Monday morning, but that was OK. He’d chosen the quickest, most expensive option. It should be on her desk by Monday afternoon, max. And his name on the sender’s line should serve as a red flag that would get it to the top of the In box.

  He climbed into the truck just in time to hear Becc
a’s phone ring.

  One. The playful twittering, chirping sound that distinguished a call from Carrie was bizarre in this context. Becca was paralyzed. She could not move her hand. Two twittery chirps. Three. Her body vibrated.

  Nick plucked the cell phone out of the pocket on her purse, glanced at the display, held it out. Four twitter chirps. “Pull yourself together, babe,” he said. “Showtime.”

  Five twittery chirps. She hit talk. “Yes?” she croaked.

  “Rebecca. How rude. I was beginning to think you didn’t care. Or that you were angry at me.” Zhoglo’s voice was full of mock hurt.

  She could think of nothing to say to his taunting. She waited.

  He grunted, and got on with it. “Telling you the location of the meeting so far ahead of time is risky for me, but I am aware that you will need lead time. You must fabricate a convincing story to lead your lover in, no? I am not an unreasonable man, you see.”

  “Um,” she said. “Ah, no.”

  “There is a house, outside of Cedar Mills. Number 6 Wrigley Lane. Any GPS navigational system will have no trouble finding it. A humble place, on high ground, with a clear visual for three hundred and sixty degrees. You will bring Solokov to this house at ten o’clock this evening. I personally will not be there, so please, no clever tricks, no heroics, no police. Or Carrie and Josh…need I go on?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “My men will be waiting for you there. You will be covered by hidden gunmen. All must be exactly as I dictate. Or both your siblings will die tonight. Along with you and Solokov. Very, very slowly.”

  “I understand,” she said.

  “Till later, then.” The line went dead. Becca’s hand dropped, limp.

  “And?” Nick prompted. “Ten o’clock, in Cedar Mills,” she said dully. “Number 6 Wrigley Lane. A house, I suppose, in a rural area. He says he won’t be there. No police, no heroics, or he’ll kill everybody.”

  “Hmm. OK.”

  Nick’s voice sounded so detached. She glared at him, incredulous. “Huh? Hmm, OK?” Her voice vibrated with strain. “What are we going to do, Nick? What the hell can we do?”

  “Calm down, and let me think it through,” Nick said in that weirdly cool, distant voice. “We’ve got time.”

  “Time?” Her voice rose to a shriek. “What do you mean, time? My brother and sister have a knife to their throat! Three hours until—Jesus, Nick! There’s no thinking through this! There is no way through this!”

  “Panicking won’t help. Shut up and breathe,” was Nick’s pitiless rejoinder.

  Becca covered her face in her hands and tried to do exactly that. Breathe. Oxygenate her body. She had to stay functional. It was hard. She’d never tried breathing with a thousand-pound weight of pure terror weighing her lungs down. Her rib cage would not budge.

  The miles flew beneath their wheels. The sun was down. It was getting dark. She saw signs for SeaTac, and for Southcenter. Nick was driving with more purpose than before. They had entered an industrial area. Warehouses, towers of giant, multicolored shipping containers. Chain link fences, semi trucks. Nick pulled up outside a big steel gate and got out, leaving the truck idling. He picked at a combination lock that closed it. Pushed the gate wide, with a rusty, protesting screech of metal.

  Becca stared at him as he got back into the truck. “What is this place? Where are we?”

  He accelerated into a big, dim complex of deserted buildings. “You’ll see,” he said.

  “Hey, Nick. Now’s not the time for you to get cryptic on me. What the hell is—”

  “Shut up and let me think. You think you’re the only person who’s stressed out? Do not fucking scold me, Becca.”

  She flinched at the brutal edge in his voice, and shut her mouth.

  Nick braked in front of a blank-looking building with huge, sliding metal doors. The place had an air of decay and abandonment. Some of the windows were broken. There was a chain held by another heavy-duty combination padlock. Remnants of faded yellow crime scene tape tangled on the ground and stuck to the door. What on earth?

  Nick picked that lock too and wrenched the thing loose. He reached into the back seat of the truck, grabbed a couple plastic bags that were stowed there, yanked the passenger side door open, and grabbed Becca’s arm. “Out you get.”

  She slid out of the truck. “But where are we—”

  “Later. Move.” His tone was like the flick of a whip. The jolt to her tortured nerves got her going.

  He shoved her before him in a stumbling trot, into the big, empty building. Dim light filtered in from the high, filthy windows. There was a little more light from the open door. The ceiling was vast, many stories high. There was a huge metal scaffolding system, designed to hold industrial quantities of who knew what. The scaffolds were empty now.

  Startled bats fluttered and swooped. An owl hooted, whooshed down over their heads and soared, flapping, out the open door. Becca smelled the reek of animal shit, mold, dust, rot. The place was cold, damp. Incredibly desolate.

  “What is this?” she whispered.

  “A few years ago, there was a big drug raid here,” Nick said. “This was a storage point for heroin coming out of the southern ex-Soviet republics. The owners are rotting in jail.”

  “But why are we here?” she asked.

  He crouched, did something with his hands inside the plastic bag that she could not see. She heard the clink and rattle of metal, like the links of a chain. He grabbed her hands, yanked them unexpectedly downward.

  Snick. Snick. “Because this is the only place I know of where no one will find you, and no one will hear you scream,” he replied.

  She stared at her hands, fastened with handcuffs. One was attached directly to the heavy metal scaffolding, the other was cuffed to a long, heavy chain which Nick then buckled to the next metal pillar.

  She gaped at him in terrified astonishment.

  Chapter

  29

  Something cool and wet kept stroking his face, but Josh didn’t want to drag himself up to consciousness. Something bad waited for him there. But that wet thing petting his face was making him curious. Groggily, he let his eyelids flutter open. Regretted it as light sliced into his brain like a hot knife.

  Oh, God. All pain. He was nothing but pain, his head a throbbing, sickening knot of it. Every heartbeat a hammer blow.

  Josh tried to reach up to feel his head and discovered another source of pain. His shoulders were wrenched behind his back. Wrists on fire from tourniquet-tight bonds, his fingers numb and cold. His face felt crusty. His back hurt, his balls hurt, his stomach rolled. He tasted blood. Felt loose teeth. He knotted his gut to rock-hardness, and tried peering out one slitted eye.

  Eyes. That was all he saw. Big, hazel eyes. Long-lashed, shadowy eyes, gazing at him thoughtfully. It seemed to hurt a fraction less, so he opened his one eye a little more to take in the whole face.

  A girl’s face. Heart-shaped, hollow-cheeked. Delicate and beautiful. He would have taken her for an angel coming to carry him away if she hadn’t looked so damn sad.

  There was an old bruise under one of her eyes. She was scary thin. Someone said something, in a questioning tone. A small child’s voice. He couldn’t make out the muffled, garbled words. The girl looked down, and replied gently in a language he could not place.

  He opened both eyes. Curiosity was getting the better of him, but he had to close them and wait through several violent explosions of pain before he could gather the courage to do it again, and take in the entire scene.

  Holy shit. It took a while for it all to sink in. So many kids. This raggedy girl, dressed in a shrunken T-shirt and baggy sweatpants, was in front. The shirt didn’t hide her shape. Pretty. No, beautiful, despite her thinness.

  He averted his eyes and was punished by a searing bolt of pain from his optic nerve. Served him right, though. This chick was way too young for him to be noticing anything below the collarbone.

  She was surrounded by other childr
en. Lots of children. Skinny, dirty looking. Most of them were sucking on their thumbs.

  They were in a white room, flooded with light. Big, nasty, buzzing fluorescent bar lamps hung over them, blazing cold, head-splitting light that washed out all the details like an overexposed photo. He was reminded of a pop psych quiz someone had given him once. So, like, you wake up in this completely white room. How do you feel?

  His answer was supposed to have revealed his true feelings about death. That kind of drivel annoyed the shit out of him. He didn’t need a quiz to know how he felt about death. Death sucked. He wasn’t looking forward to it, not for himself or anyone he cared about. End of story.

  But no one had ever asked him how he would feel if he woke up in a white room with a bunch of starved-looking kids in rags. He wondered what deep psychological truths that question would reveal about a person.

  The kids huddled around him in a semicircle, staring as if he were an alien fallen from space. Like they might start worshipping him as a god. The girl leaned forward with her bloody rag and dabbed his forehead again. She said something. Said it again, louder. It wasn’t until the third repetition that he realized she was trying to say something in English. “Hurts?” she said again. It had sounded more like “huts.”

  “Yeah,” he croaked. Speaking made him cough, which provoked instant, skull-crushing agony with every jolt of his chest. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. Bam, crash, pound, fuck.

  It was starting to come back, in broken, jagged pieces. He remembered feelings—horror, betrayal, fear, shame—but the memories and sequences that had provoked them were broken to shards.

  Image by image, he fit them together. Nadia, in the bedroom, naked. Hands clamped over her mouth, eyes streaming tears, watching silently as three big guys tied him up and kicked the shit out of him.

  And the fat guy. He remembered him, too. Looming over him at some bizarre sideways angle, smiling. The bags of his puffy, bloated face swelling as he gloated. Crazy, blank gray eyes. He’d nudged Josh’s face with the toe of his expensive loafers, and taunted him about something…something that scared him out of his mind, even before the memory slid back into place. Carrie. Becca.