“Not far. We have a place in the mountains.”
“Your safe house is at altitude?” Ajax felt nauseous already. “I’ll need ibuprofen, vitamin B12, and a ton of alkaline water for the altitude sickness. And it will probably take me a day to get my equilibrium because I don’t do well above six thousand feet.”
“I’ll bear that in mind next time someone asks where we should build a safe house.”
“And no fair! You never said I could bring my snowboard.” Ajax let his head fall back against the seat. He really didn’t need all this. His parents were going to be sorry they’d ever let him read “The Ransom of Red Chief.” “You could have told me where we were going.”
“That’s the thing about private security. It’s private and secure because we don’t tell everyone everything.”
They rounded the block for a third time, and what with stop-and-go traffic, they were just passing by when Dmytro came out of the restaurant, laden with food.
Bartosz stopped at the curb and waited, earning honks and some cursing from the people behind. He ignored them and unlocked the door.
To Ajax’s dismay, Dmytro opened the back door. “Scoot over.”
Ajax didn’t move. “Can’t you get back in front?”
At Dmytro’s long-suffering expression, Ajax unbuckled his belt and scooted. Dmytro crawled in and handed over a drink carrier with two slushes in it. He placed the food bag between them. This was degrading. He was going to have this awful man—this hulking, gorgeous, awful man—staring at him all day with eyes that said, You are nothing.
Nevertheless, he opened the bag. Chicken, tots, dressing. He handed Dmytro his corn dog and poppers. Gave Bartosz a drink and his food. “You know, everyone hates Russians right now,” he needled.
“Good thing I’m from Ukraine.” Dmytro reached out and flicked Ajax’s forehead.
“Ow.” He rubbed the spot. “That’s going to leave a mark!”
Dmytro’s eyebrow lifted. “Why don’t you put a bindi over it? No one in India hates you enough yet.”
“Fuck. You.”
“Not in my contract.”
Ajax held his food between his hands without opening it. “This is weird. You’re weird.”
Dmytro stopped in the process of unwrapping a straw. “Why?”
“It’s like you’re supposed to be this badass bodyguard, and now you’re eating junk food in the back of the car like a kid, and—”
“And what?” Dmytro bit the tip off his corn dog with a snap. “I eat junk food. Everyone eats junk food sometimes.”
“Guess I figured you must eat clean or paleo or gluten-free or something.”
“Paleo.” Dmytro’s lips quirked. “I look like a paleo guy to you?”
“Sort of.” Ajax nodded. He looked like a clean-shaven caveman, a warrior Hun, or a barbarian to Ajax. “You look like you should be eating a haunch of roast venison. Holding it by the hoof….”
Dmytro glanced down at his food and grimaced. “I eat what’s available to me. Ugh. The batter inside is still raw.”
Dmytro exchanged a few foreign words with Bartosz. His sentence ended with the English phrase “mustard the color of bile.”
Dmytro tossed it back in the bag and addressed his poppers. “These? I like.” He tossed one into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “What is ranch dressing? Sometimes it’s tangy, but sometimes it’s creamy and sweet.”
“You’ve given this a lot of thought.” Ajax swirled a piece of his popcorn chicken in dressing before eating it.
Again Dmytro barely hid that irritating smirk. “Don’t you think about what you eat?”
The question annoyed Ajax. It was like all the other meaningless questions people threw out to engage him. It wasn’t that they really wanted to know his answer. They mostly asked so they could find a way to exploit him. “You don’t care what I think.”
That got a brief unhappy flash of Dmytro’s cold eyes. “Not yet.”
Ajax leaned toward him. “What would it take?”
Thick, well-shaped eyebrows rose. “What do you mean?”
“What would it take for you to care what I think? Cash? Or sex?” Oh, it was reckless and stupid, and Ajax’s heart was pounding. This was a big preemptive strike, and he thought he knew exactly where it would land.
But he was wrong.
“If those are all you have to offer?” Dmytro said coolly. “I don’t believe I’ll ever care what you think.”
Ajax’s hands stilled mid dunk. “That’s better.”
Dmytro was obviously unhappy that he’d lost control. “What is?”
“Don’t pretend you like me. You were hired to do a job. We’re not going to be friends.”
“If you say so.” They finished the rest of their food in silence, and afterward Ajax drifted, dimly aware of passing a million city lights outside the car’s tinted windows. Climbing the Grapevine, where darkness swallowed them, only an occasional car heading in the opposite direction broke the illusion they were the last people on earth. Beside him, soft whuffling sleep sounds reminded him he wasn’t totally alone. He yawned, turned his face to the window, and fell quite deeply asleep.
Chapter 3
Ajax Freedom. You will be judged by your God and your fellow man. You are an abomination. The world will be a better place after you’ve breathed your last.
DMYTRO WAS on the phone with his boss, Evgeni, when Ajax’s eyes flew open. “Bartosz, window. Stop! Unlock the door, for the love of God….” Ajax banged on the glass. Based on his color, his control wasn’t going to last very long. “Stop the car.”
“Boss? Hold a minute, I think the client is—”
“Shit.” Bartosz swerved off at a vista point and parked on the shoulder between a minivan and a pickup truck. Several people stood at the edge of the lookout, braving the wind and cold to enjoy a beautiful moonlit view of the valley in the distance. Bartosz unlocked the doors, and Ajax shouldered his way out of the car in time to be sick on the ground.
The noise he made was incredible. Foul retching and choking sounds.
Dmytro felt his own gorge rise. He’d killed men—sometimes, God help him, in cold blood—but he couldn’t bear the sound of someone getting sick. He dove out the door just in time to lose his lunch in the dirt too.
Somewhere behind him, Ajax hurled again. Fresh splatters hit the ground. The sound made Dmytro gag. He closed his eyes, blinked back tears, and breathed deeply of the fresh, thin fir-scented air….
“I’m on the phone,” Dmytro called weakly. “They can hear us getting sick at the office.”
“Then stop.” Ajax didn’t stop. Dmytro felt himself going again. This was the crack in his armor. His true Achilles’ heel. He suffered several abnormal sympathetic reactions, and now—
“Christ.” He heaved again, following Ajax in a pas de deux of wretchedness.
He cursed soundly and dug his earbuds out of his pockets. Shoving them in, he hit Play on his phone’s music player. Dwayne Johnson sang, “You’re welcome?” and a memory of the film, of sitting with his daughters in a theater full of giggling elementary school kids, reminded him how out of place he was in a world that believed monsters were imaginary and gods had sway and good triumphed over evil.
Maybe this was his penance.
He’d seen enough children suffer for a lifetime.
Dmytro kept his eyes closed, listened to the song, and found a piece of Big Red chewing gum to fold into his mouth. The rear window on his side rolled down, and Bartosz shouted, “Everything come out okay?”
“Shove it.” Dmytro leaned his back against the SUV and automatically checked his weapon. He pulled an earbud out. “Are you done, Mr. Fairchild? I have nothing left.”
Ajax called, “Mr. Fairchild is my dad. And… sorry.”
“Me too.”
Bartosz rolled up the window until Dmytro couldn’t hear his laughter anymore.
On the other side of the car, Ajax rinsed with his drink and spit on the ground. “I hate throwing
up.”
Dmytro gave his gum a ferocious snap. “Whereas throwing up has always been the best part of my day.”
“Oh, sarcasm.” Ajax lobbed the word. “I’ve heard of that. Didn’t they used to use that in the olden days?”
“Yes. Before your generation started mistakenly calling it irony.” After readjusting his clothes, Dmytro returned to his call. “Boss. How is your day treating you?”
“Better than yours is, from the sound of it.” The mirthful tone in his booming voice made Dmytro straighten. It didn’t do to appear weak with his Russian boss. “But Mitya, we have a problem.”
“What?” A wary shiver made his neck tingle. Men like Evgeni Ivanov didn’t have problems. They caused them.
“The safe house alarms have gone off fourteen times in the last two hours.”
“You think it’s compromised?” Dmytro asked.
“Can’t tell. It could be an animal got in, or it could be a thief. The CCTV shows nothing. I’ve got a man heading up there, but—”
“It could be someone setting off the alarms periodically so we won’t pay attention to them later, when they make entry,” Dmytro surmised.
“Exactly. Can’t take the chance. Especially not with Ajax.”
That seemed oddly specific. “Why him especially? Beside the fact his parents are rich.” The kid was an all-hands-on-deck, follow-protocol-to-the-letter, death-before-dishonor kind of job. What Dmytro didn’t know was why.
“For one thing, Ajax’s mother is the CEO of a Fortune 100 corporation, and his father just invented a promising new cancer protocol for children.”
“So? His parents are cash cattle. We deal with those all the time.”
“Yes, but Ajax is special to me personally.”
“You’re joking.” Dmytro couldn’t believe what he was hearing.
“The hell I am.” Evgeni—Zhenya to his friends, which Dmytro liked to think they were—sounded very serious. Good God.
“What kind of special?” Dmytro glanced into the car. The young man in question lay half in shadow, watching a couple standing at the edge of the vista point taking in the view. “Does he require medical or psychological care? If so, you’ll need to fill me in.”
The man and woman they watched were very young, and she was heavily pregnant. Dmytro wondered what was in Ajax’s head. Were they memorable extras in his fabulous life? Did he find such things like tender human moments—starting a family, holding a loved one in your arms—to be for the have-nots of the world? The less fabulous people?
“He’s my godson.” Zhenya said that like he thought it was a good thing.
Oh no. Dmytro groaned. “You never mentioned you had a godson.”
“Why would I?”
Since everyone at Iphicles was either foreign military, black ops, or muscle like him, with his specialized language and, er… other skills, they didn’t always fit into a normal life with normal people. Half of them didn’t even exist on the grid.
Dmytro was the only family man he knew in the organization, and there were those who resented it—who thought that for him, going home might be more important than the team. But to him it didn’t matter if anyone went home unless everyone did. He put every single ounce of effort into being a team player.
This new information provoked the question—how did Zhenya meet CEOs or research scientists for long enough to become godparent to their children?
“Er—how do you know the Fairchilds?”
“When your brother and I were starting Iphicles, we took a lot of different jobs to get things started. We still used questionable skills in those days.” Blackmail, intimidation, and even coldhearted violence had all been part of their skill set.
“That was before Katerina had her way, I assume.”
“Yeah.” He and Zhenya both paused, probably in an unconscious moment of mourning of his brother Anton’s gentle wife. “I took on a routine protection detail that turned out not so routine after all. We were able to prevent a kidnapping—Ajax’s mother, Violet, was the target, and she was pregnant at the time. She and Jackson Fairchild were so grateful they capitalized our startup. Without them, there’d be no Iphicles. He goes by the name Ajax Freedom on the internet these days, I guess. The kid’s a riot. Literally.” Zhenya chuckled—he actually chuckled. It was such an unusual occurrence that the sound was rusty and forlorn. Like a gate in a forgotten cemetery.
The business had been around for over twenty years. That baby certainly could have been Ajax. “So you’ve known him all his life?”
“I know what you’re thinking, but he wasn’t always such an immense pain in the ass. Believe me, he’s his parents’ kid, so fair warning: he’s highly intelligent, an outside-the-box thinker in a way you won’t understand before it bites you in the ass, and about as mature as a gummy bear.”
Dmytro sighed. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“I told Bartosz to detour to the coast as soon as he can. You’re to head for the Santa Barbara house. Someone from our team will arrive before you to make sure it’s secure and provisioned.”
“Will do.”
Dmytro entered the front passenger door as Ajax got in the back. Sweat clung to Ajax’s skin. His clothes were damp. He didn’t look like he was going to stay awake for long after they took off.
Dmytro buckled his seat belt. “Are you all right?”
“Sure,” Ajax muttered.
“You two are disgusting Furbies,” Bartosz said as he keyed the engine. “Bump one and the other goes. Splat.”
For Ajax’s benefit, Dmytro said, “There’s been a change of plans. We’re heading for the Santa Barbara safe house now.”
“Santa Barbara?” Ajax frowned. “Why?”
“The other safe house might be compromised. Seat belt, Ajax.”
“Okay. Um… wait.” Ajax bolted out of the car again.
Cursing, Dmytro followed, angrily racing around to the other side of the SUV. Where the hell was Ajax going?
Ajax unwound his scarf, removed his hat, and left them hanging from the side mirror of a pickup truck with veterans’ bumper stickers on the glass in the back of the cab. He darted back to the car before its owners noticed and practically dove inside. That left Dmytro standing outside, pretty much holding his dick.
Oh, they were going to have a talk about protocol. Dmytro returned to the front passenger seat and was about to lecture him when Ajax rapped on the window as if Bartosz were his chauffeur.
“Drive, Bartosz.”
“Sure thing, boss.” Bartosz complied, turning the big vehicle. As they waited to pull out, the couple Dmytro had been watching returned to their battered truck and found Ajax’s abandoned scarf and hat. They glanced over suspiciously before the man picked the scarf up to check it out.
Evidently finding nothing wrong with it—and why would there be? It was a ludicrously luxurious cashmere thing—he wrapped it around the woman’s neck before offering her the hat too. She put it on, adjusted its angle in the driver side mirror, and turned to wave with a happy smile. The set looked good on her. Hiding his face, Ajax sank into his seat.
Melancholy flooded Dmytro after Bartosz took off. In his side mirror, the loving couple grew smaller and smaller in the bruised purple darkness. He’d looked at Yulia just so a thousand times, imagined their happy future, imagined they had their whole lives ahead of them. He’d held her close and felt his children kick against his fingers.
Yulia lost her life because of him, and now he had so much farther to go. He needed to be there for his girls, so he kept on—for Yulia, for Alexandria and Penelope. For everyone but him.
He wondered what the insouciant Mr. Fairchild/Freedom would make of that, since apparently he held his own life cheaply.
Ajax had already begun the slow and even breathing that signaled sleep. He wasn’t a boy—he just looked young. He had beard stubble. Someday he’d probably grow the full Romanov beard the hipster boys were wearing these days.
Just now, his dark hair bounced aroun
d his head in curly profusion, and he looked a little too much like one of Caravaggio’s angels—Amor Victorious or David, with the head of the slain Goliath still dripping from his hand. Beautiful and powerful, but innocent in a way men like he, Zhenya, and Bartosz had never been.
Caravaggio had a way with dark hair and pale creamy skin that would do justice to Ajax. Ajax. Even his name was just a little bit extra. Still, he’d seen the woman at the vista point was cold, and in his own way, he’d given her his warmth. Maybe Ajax Fairchild wasn’t so bad after all.
Bartosz drove with the windows down for a few minutes because the scent of sickness was plain on Dmytro’s skin. It chilled him, but when you could smell the stink of yourself, you shouldn’t ask for special favors. As soon as he noticed Ajax shivering, though, he asked Bartosz to roll up the windows. Bartosz did so without complaint.
“Thanks,” Dmytro offered.
Bartosz reached over and cuffed him on the shoulder. “Buy a scopolamine patch next time.”
“I would have been fine if not for the hurling dervish. We should have flown. We’d be there by now.” They’d been forced to make their plans around Ajax, who had refused to fly.
A few minutes later Ajax started snoring softly, mouth open. His teeth were perfect—white as candy-coated gum squares. He had soft, full lips, which Dmytro had no business looking at.
“So, what do you think of our client?” Bartosz switched to Russian again.
“He’s not entirely awful.” Dmytro checked his messages and found a new one from Liv. The girls are in bed, all tucked in and cozy for the night. TTYL
“That’s an improvement on what you thought this morning.”
“He’s still a fraud.” He glanced back. “It’s no wonder people reacted the way they did.”
Ajax had come gift wrapped with a thick file of psychologist’s notes and petty crimes, which admittedly Dmytro had barely skimmed. Ajax’s rise to social media superstardom followed a predictable pattern. Part enfant terrible, part agent provocateur, he’d made a glorious name for himself in a squadron of moneyed baby sociopaths, and then the misery he caused everyone boomeranged spectacularly when they found out he wasn’t who he said he was. Maybe he didn’t know who he was yet?
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