“Can you contact the guy in the video?” Nash had a sudden idea. “Tell him he’s right. Tell him he’s stumbled on a government conspiracy.”
Wrath gave a low whistle. “Nash, that’s playing with fire. You could be putting some poor civilian right in the way of a couple of desperate FBI agents with guns.”
Nash felt the two sides of his morality warring with that notion. He needed Ava safe. But at what cost? Finally, he felt something inside of him crack. It felt as if something died in that moment. He had judged Ava so harshly. He hadn’t been fair, and he was ashamed of it. “Don’t do it,” Nash said quietly. “Ava would never want me to put someone else in danger like that. Some bullshit about humanity and entitlement and not thinking we’re better than other people.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Ava prepared to walk out of the bathroom. As an afterthought, she grabbed a bunch of paper towels and used both hands to hold them against her nose. Her beautiful lavender gown was utterly ruined. There would be no coming back from this. She looked like a character in a horror flick. Although, at this point, she felt like a character in a horror flick too. At any moment, she would be running screaming through a cornfield somewhere.
Her ploy worked. Ryan completely forgot to put the handcuffs back on Ava before they left the restroom for the parking lot of the rest area. There were still plenty of people milling about. A few families were ushering their children inside to use the potty. Half a dozen motorcyclists were stretching their legs and talking together in a tight-knit group around their bikes. The FBI’s distinctive black SUV was parked rather haphazardly in the center of the mess.
As they approached the vehicle, Ava could not help but chuckle to herself. Ryan glanced over. “What’s so funny?” he demanded.
“You guys are straddling two handicapped spots.” Ava gestured to the SUV.
Ryan seemed stymied by her comment for a moment. Then he grunted. “You were the one wailing like a stuck pig.”
“You’re the one violating my civil rights,” she retorted. “I haven’t been read my rights. I haven’t been offered an attorney. I haven’t even been told where we’re going or what we’re doing.”
Ryan straightened up and gave her a small shove toward the vehicle. “That’s not part of your civil rights.”
“Oh, right.”
Ava had just spotted the man who had offered to help her before. He was still watching them from less than twenty yards away. His expression was a glower. Ava tried to gauge the distance. She needed to know that she could somehow run in these stupid heels without tripping and killing herself. A few good screams would help put off Ryan’s pursuit.
“Oh, good,” Ryan muttered. “Blevins has the truck started already. We need to get out of here. You better not scream this time. I took off the cuffs and let you clean yourself up.”
“Oh, you’re such a gentleman,” Ava said sarcastically. “Really.”
That’s when she went for it. No hesitating. There was no worrying about the consequences. She just ran like a frightened rabbit in the direction that help was most likely to come from. Behind her, she heard Ryan’s startled shout, but Ava didn’t let that slow her down.
The shriek of tires on asphalt caused Ava to stumble. She craned her neck around, but the sound wasn’t coming from Blevins and Ryan’s SUV. Turning her head wildly, she sought out the new danger. Unfortunately, she was headed right for it.
A big black SUV, much like the one she was running from, careened through the bikes sitting by the curb. The front of the vehicle crumpled as it shoved the motorcycles out of the way. Bikers shouted angrily as they dove for safety. Everyone at the rest area seemed frozen by the reckless motorist who jumped the curb still dragging one poor Harley Davidson beneath the SUV’s front bumper. Sparks flew as the metal bike scraped along the pavement.
Ava stopped reflexively and shifted right and then left. She didn’t know what was going on. What if this was her rescue? Then the passenger door flew open, and a man got out. Ava began to back away. Then she saw the gun.
“Ah, ah, ah, Ms. Harte.” Sergei Yurevich waved the weapon at her as though beckoning her back in his direction.
“Freeze!” Ryan’s voice came from behind Ava. “Federal agent!”
Ava’s gut clenched in horror as Sergei casually turned the gun on Ryan and fired. She heard a grunt behind her as the man took a bullet. He wasn’t wearing his vest. Sergei had just murdered an FBI agent as though he were nothing but a piece of garbage in the street. This time, when Sergei waved his weapon at her, Ava obeyed.
Swallowing back the bile that threatened to make her lose what little dinner she had eaten at the party, Ava walked with as much dignity as she could muster to the vehicle.
“Do get in, Ms. Harte.” Sergei’s voice was so very calm and congenial that it seemed almost ludicrous. “I have another guest I’m sure you’ll just love to see again.”
Ava had a bad feeling about this. She pulled open the rear passenger door, and the dome light went on. The first thing she saw was Stedman. He was unconscious. His face was bloody, and there was a dirty rag shoved into his mouth. His hands were cuffed to the overhead handle of the vehicle, and he sort of hung there like a marionette.
Ava got in and very carefully closed the door. She wanted to cooperate for now. She did not want handcuffs. She just wanted to find a way out of this alive. That meant being a good girl and a cooperative prisoner for the moment. She closed the door, and the vehicle lurched forward. Stedman’s head sort of lolled to one side at the abrupt motion of the SUV. The sight made her stomach turn over in disgust.
It was true that she had wanted her ex-husband to pay for what he’d done. Stedman had manipulated, lied, threatened, cheated, stolen, and pretty much harassed her family for years now. Ava had thought she was ready to see him pay. She had wanted him to see what it was like to be used and abused by someone who just wanted what he had. But this was more than Ava had bargained for, and she felt sick inside as she wondered what was going to happen.
*
The rest stop was utter chaos by the time Nash and his men pulled into the parking lot. Ambulances were on scene, along with state police and firefighters. The EMTs were attempting to stabilize a biker who had been thrown nearly twenty feet by something big.
“Hey!” Someone waved at Quentin. “Are you the guys who contacted me on social media?”
Nash realized that there was a large man ambling quickly in their direction. He put his hand reflexively on his sidearm until he realized that Quentin didn’t seem at all alarmed.
“This is our anti-establishment friend who posted the video,” Quentin told Nash and the others. “I recognize him from his rant.”
“How does he recognize you?” Nash demanded.
Quentin snorted. “I have a profile pic that pops up when I respond, grandpa. It’s a pretty standard social media thing. I made a comment to his video asking him to stand down and that we were on the way.”
“Hey!” The man was waving again. “The shit just hit the fan here!”
“I can see that,” Quentin said mildly. “What happened?”
“That first SUV had FBI guys in it, right?” The guy was panting. “I’m Joe, by the way.”
“All right, Joe.” Nash pointed to the motorcycles strewn like a child’s toys all over the pavement. “And this?”
“Another SUV pulled up, just smashed through everything, and then grabbed the chick in the bloody dress and left.”
“Bloody dress?” Nash’s hand tightened on his holstered weapon. He was going to kill someone. He just needed to know who.
Quentin grimaced. “I might have left that detail out. Ava’s dress looked as if she’d had a bloody nose or something. There was a pretty good amount covering her front. But she was walking and moving around just fine.”
Nash narrowed his gaze angrily on Quentin. “Do not leave anything out in the future. Got it?”
“Yes, Boss.”
Joe was practically j
umping up and down. “That’s what the other dude said!”
“What?” Nash was having difficulty following along.
“Some guy in an expensive suit blows through the motorcycles, almost kills someone, then gets out and tells a woman to get into his truck. She had been running away from the FBI guys. The dude in the suit shot one of those agents too. Killed him.”
“Damn,” Wrath muttered. “Sergei really doesn’t give a fuck anymore, does he?”
“Not particularly,” Nash decided. “So, he took Ava. Why?” That was actually a stupid question. Nash didn’t actually have any doubts as to why Sergei had made such a point of finding and acquiring Ava. “It’s that book.”
“The book?” Wrath was already heading back toward the truck. “Then, why are we standing around? The book is at Ava’s, right? Shouldn’t we be getting it?”
“One second.” Nash could see a second FBI agent sitting on a bench near a very large bloodstain on the concrete.
Nash approached the man. He was fairly young and somewhat familiar. Nash knew he had seen this guy with Miranda Brookes. Nash nudged the agent with his toe, basically kicking the other man’s boot.
The guy looked up. “What do you want? It’s your fault this all went south.”
“Oh, really?” Nash snorted. “You do realize that your boss, Miranda Brookes, is singing like a canary to her superiors right now. She was taken in by Boston PD, arrested, and then jailed. There was a unit chief on his way down to talk with her before I had even left the country club to come after you guys.”
The young man sucked in a quick breath. “Shit.”
“Exactly. So, why don’t you tell me what the plan was supposed to be,” Nash said flatly.
The agent didn’t even hesitate. “We were told to take the woman south to the Farm. Miranda—I mean SSA Brookes—was going to meet us there. The man was supposed to go down there too. She wanted to question them in private.”
“Because she wasn’t the one who was going to question them,” Nash guessed. “Sergei Yurevich was going to meet her there.”
The man shrugged. “Maybe. I don’t know. Brookes makes the plans. I just execute the order.”
“Except, this time, it all went sideways and your partner wound up getting shot,” Nash told him. “Next time, I would suggest not letting your supervisor talk you into something illegal.”
“It was her fault!” the young man burst out. “That Ava chick! It was all her fault. Her nose started bleeding, and then she was screaming and moaning and making Ryan freak out. It was like trying to transport a demented toddler.”
Nash chuckled. “That’s my girl,” he murmured. She had fought them with everything she had, and it would have worked if Sergei hadn’t shown up at the last minute. “What were you going to do with the prisoners once they talked?”
The agent shrugged. “Send them to jail? I don’t know.”
“You realize the woman didn’t do anything wrong. Ava was innocent. Miranda just needed some information from her.”
The guy’s expression turned even more ashen beneath the lights. “I’m screwed.”
“I hope so,” Nash said darkly.
He got up and hurried back toward his vehicle. The others were already inside, and Joe was busy taking new footage of the carnage at the rest stop. It would likely be all over the web in less than an hour.
Finding Ava was the priority. Sergei needed her alive. That was true. But once he had that book, there was no clue what he would do. Ava was quick and resourceful, but Sergei was desperate.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ava held tight to the door of the SUV as the vehicle careened wildly around a corner. Sergei was shouting in Russian at the driver, but it was apparent that neither of them was very familiar with the narrow one-way streets of Boston’s South End. The neighborhood was not large, yet the way it was tucked into the city left it extremely difficult to get in and out of.
“This stupid city!” Sergei finally smacked the dashboard with the gun in his hand. “Nothing makes sense!”
“That’s just Boston,” the driver told him.
The man’s smart remark earned him a threatening look from Sergei, but the driver didn’t seem particularly bothered. He looked in the rearview mirror at Ava. “My name is Aloysha. Your book resided in my bar until your daughter stole it from me.”
Ava didn’t respond. At least she knew who the man was. Nash had thought that Aloysha was a neutral party. Apparently, he was just as motivated by the promise of money as everyone else was.
Another street blocked by construction had Sergei cursing at the ceiling. Ava didn’t care. The longer it took them to get to her house, the longer she had to be alive. She wasn’t naive. There was no way that these two were going to let her live just because she produced the book. Her only hope was for Nash to make it back to her house before or soon after Sergei did. She had no doubt that he was on their trail. It wasn’t in his nature to give up.
I haven’t given him enough credit.
The thought made her sad. Why was it that she saw things so clearly when it was almost too late to make amends or fix the situation? Was that just her lot in life? Or was there some kind of chance in hell for her to get out of this without dying? She really wanted to tell Nash that she loved him. He was pigheaded, and sometimes he was an unbelievable idiot, but she loved him more than she had ever thought it was possible to love anyone.
Jason Nash was honorable and good and fantastic in bed. He was fiercely loyal to his people, and yet he always seemed as though he didn’t quite know what to do with his own life. He could figure it out for everyone else but himself. It was kind of endearing.
“You.”
They rounded another corner—this time going in the correct direction—and Ava looked over to find Stedman had regained consciousness. His face was still a mess, and his eyes looked bleary and bloodshot. But there was no mistaking the hatred that gleamed in their depths right now.
“This is all because of you,” Stedman snarled. He actually tried to lunge at her, but with his hands bound over his head, it only made his body do a very odd sort of inchworm movement that looked quite painful.
Ava exhaled a sigh. “You never change. You know that?”
“Excuse me? What the fuck are you blabbing about?” Stedman proceeded to yank on his hands as though he thought he could pull the handle free of the SUV’s interior.
She suddenly realized that she had no fear of him. Not anymore. It was difficult to say when that had happened. Once upon a time, she had been fiercely afraid of the physical harm he could do. Then, it was the emotional and financial cost of his meddling. Sometime in the past few weeks, she had realized that Stedman Hyde-Pierson got too big for his britches a long time ago and now he was paying the price.
“You are simply incapable of taking responsibility for your actions,” Ava told him primly. She spoke as though she was instructing a small child. “It’s really quite ridiculous. I am not the one who got involved with the Russian mafia and then decided to defraud them, steal their money, lie about the death of their leader, and think that he wasn’t going to be found out just because he had committed some more fraud at the bank. Stedman, you have ordered the murder of more than one man.” Ava still had difficulty believing that he would go that far. “A bank executive died when his car blew up. You threatened him the day before! You cannot possibly expect anyone to believe that’s a coincidence.”
“It’s the cost of doing business,” Stedman muttered. He was still struggling, but his movements had gotten weak and even more ineffectual. “The man should have done what he was told.”
“Break the law, you mean,” Ava shot back. “You’re a horrible person. And that’s why we’re currently speeding toward my house, which should not at all be involved in your ridiculous scheme, because these men believe I have a book that will allow them to get the money back that you stole!” Ava was getting a little pissed now. “And you have the gall to sit there and say this is
my fault? Are you fucking kidding me?”
By this time, Sergei had turned around and was watching the marital drama unfold as though it were a daytime talk show. He kept waving the gun around as though he thought it were inert or something. It made Ava nervous, but there was nothing she could do about it. Sergei used the handgun once again, waving it in a big circle to indicate that Stedman should answer.
“Come on!” Sergei sang out. He pounded the side of the weapon on the center console. “Let’s hear what you have to say for yourself!”
Ava’s gut clenched in anticipation just a millisecond before the gun discharged. The sound was deafening inside the car. Ava flinched away and covered her ears with her hands. It was too late. The muffled deadness of the instant loss of hearing made everything slow down to a crawl. There was blood everywhere. Ava looked down at her already ruined dress, but there was no pain. She was not bleeding. Her arm burned from the gunpowder since she had been so close to the weapon’s barrel, but there was no injury.
Then she turned. She felt her mouth fall open, but there were no words. Her entire brain stopped as she took a moment to register the sight of Stedman hanging lifeless from the handcuffs. Half his head was blown away. That side of the SUV was covered in gore. Bits of skull and brain clung to the headliner, and the windows had been sprayed with blood.
Aloysha was shouting. Sergei was laughing. Ava could hear none of it. A high-pitched whine was the only thing in her head, and she was afraid that she would see Stedman’s gruesome end every single time she closed her eyes for the rest of her life.
The vehicle had stopped. Ava barely registered the details of where they were. Then Sergei yanked open her door, and she nearly fell to the ground. He was still holding the gun. Was he being more careful this time? Maybe he would kill her on accident before she could tell him the truth about the book. She almost laughed at the thought. It would have served the horrible man right!
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