Drake Sisters 06 - Turbulent Sea

by Christine Feehan

  Ilya hastily tore his shirt and wrapped the wound on his arm to prevent throwing more droplets of blood around the crime scene. Four down. He had two to go and he had to kill them. He couldn't leave anyone alive, since he had only spotted the first two after him. He didn't know if anyone had seen Jonas Harrington and Aleksandr Volstov, but if they had, his cover was blown and Joley was a dead woman for certain.

  He retrieved the fallen's man's gun, the one that had struck his cheek, ripping his skin. He couldn't leave that on scene either. That would have to be dismantled and gotten rid of far away from here. Tucking it into his belt, he began to move again.

  The others were more cautious in the sudden silence. One swore, the other told him to shut up. Ilya slipped into the trees close to the playground. He could see childhood toys, a swing, a slide, a merry-go-round. Not that he'd ever played on such things. He'd climbed cargo nets over two stories high and scaled the walls of buildings, but he'd never even sat in a swing. His life had always been like this—hunted or hunter.

  He waited, calm, not feeling the pain in his arm or face. The only thing that mattered was sound and movement. The wind was soft, rustling through trees, lifting the leaves to show glimpses of silver when the moon managed to break through the clouds. In the distance he heard traffic. In his ear, with the earpiece, he heard heavy breathing. A twig snapped a few yards to his right. He slowly lowered his body, keeping close to the brush to conceal his outline, turning toward the sound, waiting. Just waiting.

  It occurred to him then that he'd spent most of his lifetime waiting in the shadows for someone to make a wrong move. He was done after this assignment, done with undercover work and living a solitary, cold existence. He was through killing people. He wished the killing mattered, that it bothered him, but he had been closed off to emotion for too long to resurrect guilt now. Undercover work, or taking out someone who lived beyond the arm of the law, was simply a job, and he had a code he tried never to deviate from, one that he could live with in a world of violence. He had a couple of triggers and his bosses knew it. The mistreatment of women and of children. He had seen too much as a child and wouldn't tolerate it, so he was often sent on the jobs demanding cleanup rather than arrest. Like the one he was on now.

  The branches of a bush swayed against the wind. Another twig snapped. Loud. Too loud. He turned fast, felt the knife slice across his ribs as he slapped it down and away from him. A second attacker had come up behind him. The only reason the strike hadn't hit home was because Ilya was blurring his image a bit and his assailant hadn't seen him until he was right up on him. He'd swung a knife instead of firing his gun.

  Ilya kicked the man's gun arm, smashing through bone, moving inside to whirl the attacker in front of him, facing the swaying bush. Bullets spat out and thunked into his human shield. Ilya dragged the deadweight with him until he had relative cover. He dropped the body, dove for the ground and crawled rapidly into thicker brush. The moment he was clear, he tore a strip from his shirt with his teeth and bound his wound.

  He waited in silence again. Minutes ticked by. The shots were bound to have attracted someone's attention. He didn't have the luxury of patience. He began to work his way toward the remaining man. He could still hear heavy breathing, this time rasping, as the air burst from lungs overtaxed with anxiety.

  The last attacker decided to make a run for it. He began to withdraw, backing through the brush, cracking small branches and crunching dry leaves. Ilya pinpointed his position and rolled toward him fast, coming up firing several shots in rapid succession. The attacker hunched over on the ground. Ilya crawled close, still covering him. A finger on the man's neck found no pulse. Ilya spent a few minutes looking for the knife that had scraped his ribs, retrieving it so he could leave a relatively clean scene behind.

  He glanced at his watch and swore. Joley's performance was nearly over. The feeling of doom inside him hadn't lessened.

  The danger he'd sensed hadn't just been this hit squad. He had to get back to Joley fast.

  ILYA isn't in the arena. Joley could barely focus. She was worried, worried enough that she'd reached out telepathically and tried to connect with him. He hadn't answered. Uneasily she glanced around at the band. Ordinarily, Staples Center in Los Angeles was another of her favorite performance venues, but this time, she felt overwhelmed instead of energized by the thought of performing that night.

  She had a bad feeling. Her stomach churned with a terrible dread she couldn't shake.

  "Come on, Joley, get dressed. We've got to go on in a few minutes," Logan said, glancing at Tish for help.

  Tish sent Logan a quick quelling look and flashed Joley a bright smile. "Logan can watch the baby while I help you."

  "Ten minutes, Tish," Jerry reminded her.

  Joley realized they were all treating her carefully. She knew they thought her arm, which was swollen and bruised but healing fast, was much worse than it was. Only Tish and Brian knew the truth. She was pining away for the wrong man. He talked to her at night when she couldn't sleep. She wanted to beg and plead with him to come to her, but she'd remained silent. If she expected Brian to stay away from Nikitin and Denny to stay away from drugs and women, and Logan to toe the line with Tish, then she expected the same high standard of herself.

  "It's amazing how you've just fallen right back into taking care of all of us," Joley said as she pulled open the door to the large room she'd been given to get ready. She preferred her own bus, it helped calm her down, but she'd come directly from the hotel, so she used the suite the center set aside for their performers.

  "I forgot how much I loved to travel with the band," Tish said, shoving a long narrow box to the back of the table so she could set Joley's makeup case there. "Who sent the flowers?"

  "Are there flowers?" Joley's heart leapt. Maybe Ilya had sent them. If he had, she'd do the right thing and throw them away. Or maybe that wouldn't be right. She wouldn't want them to go to waste. "Let me see. Is there a card with them?"

  Tish dragged the box back to the center of the table and handed the card to Joley while she lifted the lid. Joley bent over her shoulder, ripping open the small card. She glanced at the card, hoping it was from Ilya.

  DIE BITCH

  The two words were typed in black bold letters across the white linen card. Tish shoved Joley back and dropped the lid. The box spilled out a dozen long-stemmed blackened roses and a grotesque decapitated doll cut into pieces.

  "Okay, that's totally sick," Tish said.

  Joley looked around the room. "Maybe it wasn't meant for me. I'm pretty sure I'm not a bitch. Well, at least most of the time."

  Tish moistened her suddenly dry lips. "This is crazy, Joley. Who would do this?"

  "I don't know, but they have really poor taste in flowers." Joley sank down into a chair and looked up at her friend. "I think I'm done with this life. Really, Tish. I can't deal with the crazies or the paparazzi anymore. Did you see the headlines this morning? There's pictures of me on the ground splashed all over the papers and the Internet. One picture looks as if I'm crawling. The headlines say I'm drunk—too drunk to stand or perform. There's a shot of Brian looking worried and a headline saying he wants intervention to try to save me. They shoved me, Tish, onto the ground and then took the photographs. I wasn't drinking, Brian was worried because he thought I might be hurt. One of them reached down like he was going to help me up, but instead he asked me a question."

  "I know it's hard right now," Tish said. "But you're also upset over other things and that's making it worse."

  "You mean Ilya." Joley pushed her head into the heel of her hand. "He isn't here. I know something's wrong. I feel it. He isn't here." The last came out forlorn. "I didn't realize how much I depended on his presence."

  Tish used a napkin to push the box of dead flowers to the back of the table and replace the lid. "I'll get the security people to turn that over to whoever takes care of it. In the meantime, Joley, you need makeup. You can't go perform like that."

>   "I don't want to go on tonight." Joley turned around and put her head back so Tish could apply the makeup. "Maybe we should say I'm sick."

  Tish studied her face. "Are you?"

  Joley sighed. "I don't think so. I just feel off. Tired. Exhausted."

  "You aren't sleeping again."

  "No. I could sleep when he was there. Why is that? If I don't trust him, why would I be able to fall asleep with him when I can't with anyone else?"

  "Hold still." Tish frowned as she applied eyeliner. "You're on the pill, right?"

  Joley nearly fell off the chair. "Where did that come from? Of course I'm on the pill. Lissa must be putting babies in your brain. I'm just tired, and sick of the whack jobs following me everywhere threatening to kill me because they love me so much."

  "I don't think whoever sent the flowers feels that way about you. 'Die bitch' doesn't seem very loving to me."

  Joley shoved both hands through her hair. She was still back on Tish's unexpected comment implying she might be feeling sick and miserable because she could be pregnant. She was on the pill and she'd just had sex a few days earlier. Tish was nuts. Sheesh. She struggled to bring her mind away from Ilya, sex and babies and keep the focus on whoever had sent her the dead flowers. "I got a weird phone call on my cell the night we left Red Rocks. Jerry gave me a new cell and number. But Ilya kept that number and phone in case they called back. He said sometimes if they hear your voice it's enough to keep them from escalating." Joley leaned forward to apply lipstick. "How much time do I have?"

  "You've got to hurry, hon." Tish patted Joley's hair and nodded her head in satisfaction. "Your hair looks great. Very healthy and lots of shine."

  "That's nice to know. I don't feel shiny. Where're my clothes?" Joley looked around. "I thought I hung them outside the closet. I don't know where my brain is tonight." Thinking of Ilya. Worried about him. Worried about the pressing dread that wouldn't go away. She hopped up and stalked across the room to the little clothes closet built into the wall.

  Joley yanked open the closet door impatiently. Tish gasped. There was nothing left of the outfit Joley had planned to wear onstage. It hung in shreds, long thin tails of glittering material. Her special jeans, covered in a dazzling rainbow of rhinestones, were in worse shape.

  She moistened her lips and blinked up at Tish. "They don't much like the clothes I wear either." Tears burned behind her eyelids. "I'm not going to let them make me cry." But she wanted to cry—not for the flowers or the cut-up doll, or even her stage clothes—although it was her favorite outfit—she wanted to cry because Ilya wasn't there and she was terrified for him.

  The dread that had been building for the last hour, making her heart race and her palms sweat, was only growing stronger, and it had nothing to do with what was happening to her.

  "You're on in five minutes, Joley. What are you going to do?"

  "I'll be going casual tonight." Her chin went up and her eyes glittered with anger. "Because—screw them, Tish. No one's going to scare me off performing. If and when I quit, it will because I want to, not because I let them beat me. Whoever this sick person is, they can just go buy a ticket and watch me, because I'll be giving the performance of my life out there tonight."

  "Good for you, honey," Tish said. "Let's do it. Jerry and I will see to this mess, you take care of giving those people who came to see you the show of their lives."

  Joley had to run to catch the band. She nearly missed the huddle. Brian raised an eyebrow at her casual garb, but it didn't seem to matter at all to their audience when they took the stage. She joked about her elegant attire and showed off her running shoes as she skipped across the stage, flashing her famous smile. Her voice was in good form, and she delivered every note as if she was having the time of her life. Her joy in her music carried the crowd to a new high, and they went through the roof, yelling, clapping and stomping for more. And she gave them more, finishing up with several of the audience's shouted requests before ending with her latest, very popular single.

  Joley waited until after the performance, when they were back in the suite, before she told the band members about the flowers and her clothes. "Sorry about not dressing up."

  "It didn't seem to matter," Denny said. "We rocked the house tonight."

  "Yeah, we did," she agreed. "We're leaving for Anaheim in the morning, right? We have one more show before we hit northern California and we're almost home, boys."

  She would be so happy to get home to Sea Haven and her sisters. In the meantime, she wanted to see Ilya, just to make certain he was all right. She'd looked for him when she'd come offstage, but he wasn't there and event security had escorted them from the stage. With a sigh, Joley walked through the parking lot toward her bus, looking around for her bodyguard. She'd be grateful to get inside where she could collapse and close her eyes and concentrate on trying to reach him through their telepathic connection.

  Steve came toward her from the front of the bus. She waved stopping him. "Hey, Steve. I needed to ask you about something. I got this box, narrow, like for long-stemmed roses, but it had dead flowers in it and a chopped up doll. They were in the dressing room along with my clothes, which someone had shredded. Did you happen to see anyone, or have anyone ask you to, deliver the box to my dressing room this afternoon?"

  "What are you accusing me of, Joley?" he snapped. "You think I brought you dead flowers and cut up your clothes?"

  His aura bothered her, the colors swirling in muddy grays and darker greens and browns. She talked to Steve all the time, but usually they were separated by tinted glass or the partition in the bus. His aura indicated he was agitated, nervous—upset even.

  Joley frowned. "I wasn't accusing you of bringing the box into the room, Steve, I was asking if you'd seen anyone, or if they'd asked you to drop it off. You've been with me for years. Why would I think you'd want to bring me some dead flowers? Sheesh, if you had a beef with me, I'd assume you'd tell me."

  Steve shrugged, visibly calming. "I don't know, Joley. I guess everything is making us all a little on edge. Where's your bodyguard tonight? I thought he'd be with you. I wasn't happy when Jerry gave me the word he was hiring him, but I haven't exactly been doing that job for a long time. You never ask me to do anything but drive, and I've gotten in the habit of just taking you or the band anywhere you want to go."

  "I'm comfortable with you, Steve," Joley said, "and I sure don't want you to have to fling your body between mine and a bullet. Or a dead flower." She flashed him a small grin. "Besides, if you were always hanging with me, how would you ever drive the boys to the parties?"

  "You knew about that?"

  "Sure. I thought it was a great idea. Jerry told me a few years back that if I was tucked safe in my room or on the bus, you were willing to make certain the boys wouldn't try to drive drunk—that you'd get them safely back. I thought it was wonderful. If Jerry hurt your feelings by hiring Prakenskii, you should have told me. Besides, it's a temporary thing."

  "And he doesn't appear to be here to do his job." There was satisfaction in Steve's voice.

  Joley sighed. She was getting used to people—especially men—not liking Ilya. He was too dominant, and made men uneasy. "He was supposed to be here. Maybe Nikitin held him up. He's here in LA." Joley started again for the bus.

  "Yeah, I know. I drove Brian to see him this afternoon." Steve remained where he was.

  Joley stopped and looked back at him. "Brian? Before the show?"

  "Yes, he asked me to take him to the hotel and I did. Shouldn't I have?"

  "Oh no, it was okay. I just seem to be out of the loop lately. You know I'm not all that fond of Nikitin's parties. The last one everyone went to was a big mess." She took a step back toward Steve. "In all the times you drove the band to his parties, did you notice underage girls there?"

  He sighed. "I tried not to see anything, Joley. I like my job. I just do the driving."

  She nodded and turned back to the bus with a little wave. "What time are we pullin
g out tonight?"

  "Jerry said he wanted us on the road by five this morning. You can probably catch some sleep before we get moving. That's what I'm going to try to do."

  "Sounds good." Joley waved again and hurried across the lot to her bus.

  She stopped abruptly as she neared her home away from home. A photograph was stuck to the door. It was a picture of her standing in the parking lot talking to Tish. Tish and she each had a bullet painted into the center of her throat. She pulled the picture off and stared down at the words pasted from a magazine onto the glossy print.

  BACK OFF THE GIRL OR YOU'RE BOTH DEAD.

  The girl? The missing girl? She glanced around, her fingers on the door handle. Where was Ilya? Her stomach was dropping out of her body and her heart pounded like it might leap out of her chest. She was getting an awful lot of notes lately. She yanked the door open.

  "Joley! Wait. I need to talk to you about those flowers. Hang on a second."

  She turned at the sound of Jerry's voice. His familiar face was a relief. She let out her breath and started toward him, wanting someone else to see the threat, not only to her, but to Tish. The flowers were nothing in comparison. She'd taken several steps when thunder crashed in her ears, and it felt as if a freight train slammed into her.

  Chapter 14

  THE explosion rocked the ground and sent the bus walls bursting outward in all directions, including up into the sky. The concussion blasted Joley off her feet, picking her up as if she were a paper doll and hurling her forward through the air. She landed hard, her ears ringing, lungs fighting for air, pain streaking through her body while burning debris rained down around her.