In For the Kill

by Shannon McKenna

  And all she wanted was for that message to have been from Sam.

  She clicked on the e-ticket attachment. First class, when she had specifically told them she preferred economy. It was annoying. Wasteful.

  She hugged her bare, goose-bumped shoulders. She’d flounced out of the reception without her jacket. Showing great maturity and sense.

  This night was so fucked up. Why couldn’t she just be normal? Just be attracted to a great guy and go with it. Have him become her boyfriend. Have fun with him, then have it lead someplace wonderful and permanent. Ahhh. The normal girl’s dream. Classic. Romantic.

  But she was not normal. Reliving that kiss in Bruno’s office always ended with her huddled in bed, hot face shoved into her pillow, following one of her many erotic Sam fantasies that always led to orgasms like thunderclaps. Knowing perfectly well what came next. Feeling so stupid for inflicting it upon herself, again and again.

  Her punishment was always swift and brutal. If she saw Sam, or fantasized about him, it unleashed her worst nightmares, and often stress flashbacks during the day as well. It was like a cruel spell, to crave him so much when giving in to the craving was so self-destructive. Their hot tryst in Bruno’s office had touched off a period of waking flashbacks so violent and awful, she’d considered checking herself into a mental facility. Same thing, after Sam had gotten shot last year, and she’d spent all those nights in Intensive Care. She’d paid for that. During the day, she saw Yuri, her captor from the days of her imprisonment, leering at her everywhere. He was at the DMV, behind the counter at Starbucks, foaming her latte, pumping her gas at the 7-Eleven. At night, it was nightmares from the bad old days. She was naked, chained to a table. They were coming at her, raising the sacrificial knife, and she woke screaming as it was about to plunge into her chest. Or the other classic, where she was making love to Sam, and it was marvelous, and suddenly, he morphed into Yuri. That one was particularly hideous.

  It wasn’t fair. Sam deserved someone less fucked up than she was, even if she weren’t leaving the country. Even if he didn’t have checkmarks next to every characteristic she could not possibly accept in a lover. He was a homicide detective, like her father. He was addicted to danger, he liked bourbon, he had multiple bullet scars.

  That, she did not need, on top of her other complicated shit. Thanks, but no. It would be like painting a target on her chest that said, Yes, hurt me, please. Go ahead. I was genetically engineered for it.

  Hell with that. She wasn’t going to play out that sad, sick drama. No matter how deeply she’d been programmed to do so.

  Maybe she’d just skip sleep from now on. Maybe she could just stay awake forever. She ran her fingers through her hair. Found two pins that clung to the remnants of her updo and twisted the thick rope up again. A temporary measure. It would tumble down soon enough.

  Sam never gave up, never lost interest. His laser focus was unnerving. A normal man would have written her off by now. His focused intensity cut through her defenses, to secret places she’d forgotten were there. But she was not that terrified twelve-year-old, locked in stinking darkness. She did not appreciate being forced to feel like that again. Remembering it was painful. The way the little ones had clung to her. Needing her to be strong, needing her to love them. She’d hated herself for lying to them, even as she soothed or reassured them.

  But she had, by God, learned how to put on a good show.

  Sam brought those feelings back. No defenses. Back to the wall.

  Not that Sam was cruel or frightening. On the contrary. It was the rawness she could not endure. It hurt, to be so bare. Buzzing with lethal voltage. She couldn’t breathe, think, function in this condition. She would melt down, go nuts, totally lose it. Not even during her long, historic crush on Josh had she felt like that, but she’d been too clueless and innocent at the time to know the difference.

  She’d drawn some conclusions about sex, pre-Sam, after her hopes for Josh had come to nothing and her college dating adventures had gone nowhere. What she’d taken away from it all in the end was that there were far more important things in life to fuss about.

  It made her squirm, to hear Sam echo that private conviction back to her. Who gave him the right to know something so intimate about her when she’d barely articulated it for herself? She couldn’t let someone so deep inside her head. She’d watched that dynamic play out between her parents. It had not been pleasant watching, even before Zhoglo’s revenge, her abduction, her father’s murder.

  Even finding her daughter alive had not saved Sveti’s mother. She’d become unbalanced and paranoid. Had begun making bizarre claims about mass graves. People being murdered in illicit experiments.

  No proof of her claims was ever found, and eventually, they had locked her in a mental hospital. Sveti had been fortunate to have a safe place to be with her friends in America for that awful interval.

  But even after she was released a few years later, Sveti had not gotten her mother back. Sonia had promptly run off to Italy and taken a new lover. Some rich, pampered, hateful Italian guy. Ick.

  And then, without warning or a good-bye, she’d killed herself.

  Sveti had been finishing high school in Cray’s Cove at the time, living at Tam and Val’s. Mama’s last letter had been to tell Sveti to cancel her plans to come to Italy to spend Christmas together.

  Visit another time, she’d said. Right before she threw herself off a bridge.

  Stupid, to think about this stuff at all. Old pain, dredged up to no good purpose. Her mother had seemed so strong, but it was all show. Like her own show, with the kids in the traffickers’ dungeon. Bombast and theater, and behind it, the ugly truth. Weakness, despair. Loss of hope.

  And a long fall through the dark.

  Love did that to a person. Grief drowned you. Or it ripped out your guts, as Zhoglo had done to her father. Or ripped out your heart, as Zhoglo had almost done to her. Call them life lessons or call them dysfunctional hang-ups, it hardly mattered. They were part of her now, like her bones or her blood. And speaking of dysfunctional hang-ups.

  She pulled her phone out and logged in to the account she used to communicate with her best friend, Sasha, who had shared her ordeal. Sasha was the son of one of Zhoglo’s henchmen, Pavel Cherchenko. The man had fallen out of the vor’s favor, and Zhoglo had punished him by selling the man’s young son to the organ traffickers.

  She and Sasha had been together from the very beginning. They had bonded in their captivity, although Sasha had stopped speaking, even to her, after a few months. The other children had been too small to talk. Several had been developmentally disabled as well. It had been so lonely. Sveti had almost forgotten how to talk herself, by the end.

  Sasha had his own struggles these days. Depression, heroin addiction, and his extremely dangerous father. Pavel Cherchenko had taken over Zhoglo’s empire after he’d killed the old vor, and he was, if anything, more ruthless and cruel than Zhoglo had been. Tricky, with her calling in life, to have the son of a mafiya vor for a best friend. But who got to choose?

  There were no messages from Sasha in the drafts folder. Just the ones she had sent to him, still unanswered. She opened a message document, and typed.

  You still in Rome? Did you see my talk? Coming to Italy next week. Can’t wait to see you. Sveti.

  She saved the message in the file without sending it, hoping that he was all right. Poor, hunted Sasha. She did not blame him for his addiction, knowing what he struggled with, but it drove her mad with anxiety. She’d lost so many people. She couldn’t bear to lose Sasha to that awful black hole, too.

  She hadn’t had the courage to tell her friends about the Illuxit job yet. She cringed from the thought of telling Rachel, but there would be visits, and Skype. Her friends had saved her and sheltered her, and she loved them for it, but they continued to see her as a vulnerable child. They’d never understand that she was an adult until she broke away.

  The Illuxit job was a bolt from the sky. It knocked
her a few spaces ahead on the playing board, the game being to stop the filthy scum who kidnapped vulnerable people, used them, and tossed them. She would pound those bastards into powder. Rinse them down the drain with a high-pressure hose. She wasn’t afraid of death threats.

  Truth to tell, she was more afraid of Sam’s kisses.

  You don’t have to be afraid of me. Right. She squeezed her legs together around the buzzy throb of arousal. She’d been off balance since the day she met the guy, years ago. He’d been trolling for info with a stack of grisly photos, intent upon his task of finding killers and bringing them to justice. At which, from all accounts, he was very talented. Intuitive, relentless. A good detective, like her father had been.

  She’d tried so hard to hate him for it. It just wasn’t working.

  Her phone rang. Her heart thumped as she jerked it out.

  No. Not Sam. Hazlett, her benefactor, boss, and brand-new friend. The one who had pushed through the nomination for the Solkin Prize. He was an attractive man, who was showing all the telltale signs of being interested in her. Like she needed any more of that right now.

  She was half-dizzy with disappointment, but she put on her game face and hit ‘talk.’ “Good evening, Mr. Hazlett.”

  “I’ve begged you to call me Michael,” Hazlett replied, his deep voice jovial. “Is this your subtle way of keeping me at a distance?”

  Um, yes, actually. “No, it isn’t. I got Nadine’s e-mail, with the ticket. I told you that economy class would be fine, remember?”

  “Allow me to treat you, Svetlana. You deserve it.”

  “That’s not the issue,” she said. “Donate the difference in price to an anti-trafficking nonprofit, if you want to make me happy.”

  “I do want to make you happy. And I will donate that money to the nonprofits, many hundreds of times over, I promise. And guess what—I’ll still put you in first class, given the opportunity. Sorry.”

  She gritted her teeth. “But I don’t need—”

  “That’s the freshness of youth talking,” Hazlett said with a chuckle. “In twenty years, you’ll treasure that leg room, believe me.”

  She exhaled. “Michael,” she said slowly. “Don’t condescend.”

  “Oh, never. Just joking. And I’m so glad you’re calling me Michael. So, how was the wedding?”

  Incendiary. Mind blowing. Outrageous. Orgasmic. “Ah . . . lovely.”

  “I wish you had been with me here in New Delhi,” Hazlett said wistfully. “These pompous blowhards at the seminar could have used a dose of distilled reality about human trafficking like only you can give. It’s so satisfying, seeing people’s faces change when you do your magic.”

  “I wish I could have gone, too, but I—”

  “Certainly you couldn’t. I understand completely. A friend’s wedding takes precedence. I stand rebuked.”

  “I’m not rebuking you!” she protested, flustered.

  “Of course not. I’m glad to know that you have your ticket. Forgive me for insisting on first class, but I can’t help myself. I can’t wait to see you in San Anselmo. Bon voyage, Svetlana.”

  She got through the rest of the pleasantries somehow and closed the call, red-faced and smarting. Feeling clumsy and stupid.

  Sam shoved her off balance, too. He rattled her cage, melted her into hot, mindless froth. But he never made her feel stiff or humorless.

  The cab was almost home. Soon, she’d peel off that dress and all the fantasies that went with it. She’d bought it for the gala in Italy, and decided at the last minute to wear it to the wedding, too. The rum breezers brought over by her upstairs neighbor Paul last night were also partly to blame. It was so easy to rationalize, with alcohol in her system. A single girl had no business not looking her best, Paul had sternly lectured her. She should look smoking hot at all times, particularly at a wedding.

  And Sam would be there, looking at her. She’d been so busy not allowing herself to think that thought, it had filled her consciousness.

  The minute he’d actually seen her, she’d wanted to run and find a blanket to wrap herself in. The piercing intensity of his eyes, the vast heat blazing out of him. It crept insidiously into her secret places from across the room, making her shiver and melt. And yield.

  Sam looked different, with his hair yanked angrily back, his face so tense and thin. His jaw shadowed with beard scruff a shade darker than his hair. He looked grim, focused. Hard. But no less gorgeous.

  For God’s sake, why? This was a guaranteed disaster. Of course, her improbable friends had pulled it off. Even the more problematic ones, like Tam and Nick and Aaro, and the McClouds, too. All of them were beating the odds somehow. Happy, in their own weird, particular ways.

  But she was Svetlana Ardova, with a rattling crowd of skeletons in her closet. There was no more room in there. She was at capacity.

  Josef rifled through the silky undergarments that lay on top of Svetlana Ardova’s open suitcase. The place had been stripped to nothing, furniture sold, books and pictures boxed up.

  He’d rifled through her boxes with latex-gloved hands and had found nothing of interest. No computers, tablets, or external drives. No photographs. Her electronics must be at Cray’s Cove, where she’d been holed up for days, to his jaw-cracking frustration. No matter. Tonight, he would extract everything she knew. He was a very good interrogator.

  Jason Kang, one of the Triad snakehead thugs he’d hired for this special job, was peering out the window. Cretin.

  “Taxi at the curb,” Kang said. “She’s getting out.”

  “Get your head out of the fucking window!” Josef snarled.

  Kang jerked his head down out of sight, his thick face sullen and clouded. He was not especially bright, nor was his colleague Chan Yun, waiting downstairs in the van. Both men were fresh out of prison and very much out of favor with their previous employer. But Josef couldn’t complain about their incompetence, since he’d specifically gone shopping for Triad-connected thugs who were expendable. Men whose former employers would be genuinely glad to see the last of them.

  Neither man would live out the night, once he had spread prints and genetic materials all over Svetlana’s apartment, and inside her lovely body. He had paid a hefty fee for this arrangement, but the men would die happy, he thought, philosophically. Out on a high note.

  And Svetlana had made it so easy, getting in everyone’s face, being a naughty, inconvenient girl who never knew when to shut her mouth. There would be so many fingers to point when she disappeared.

  And not a one of them would point at Josef or his boss. Seamless.

  He picked up a framed picture of her from the topmost box. Bikini-clad, on a beach, holding a laughing baby girl, her arm around a mop-haired child of ten or so. Beautiful smile. So like Sonia, but dewy and fresh. He indulged in a brief, vivid fantasy of sparing her life and running away with her. Of her, showing her gratitude for his mercy on her knees, with his cock in her mouth. Anxiously sucking. Mmmm.

  He shut the fantasy regretfully down. There could be no turning back. Too much money at stake, and women more beautiful than Ardova could be bought by the truckload at a fraction of the cost.

  The cab slowed at the renovated Victorian house where Sveti had rented an apartment for the past couple of years. A strange, clawing desperation rose up inside her as she fumbled for the fare. Something precious was coming to an end. Her Sam fantasies, entering a new phase. Shifting from glowing possibility to bittersweet memory.

  She wasn’t ready for the shift. It pressed her chest, hurt her heart. The driver accepted his fare and tip. The cab pulled away.

  “Stop!”

  The car lurched to a startled halt.

  Sveti reeled, swaying on the sidewalk. Shocked at the enormous sound that had just emerged from her body. Not a yell. Not a screech.

  No, that had been a wake-the-dead bellow, like a maddened bull.

  He shifted into reverse and backed to where she stood. She jolted into movement, wrenched open the
car’s back door.

  “Did you forget something, miss?” he asked.

  “Yes.” She slid inside before she could chicken out. “I forgot where I was going. Will you take me to 233 Hauser Street?”

  The driver looked perplexed. “It’ll have to be a new fare. I already zeroed out the meter.”

  “That’s fine.” The vehicle surged forward. Her heart was bruising her ribs from the inside. Oh, God, oh God. She was about to smash herself full-on into a brick wall. Just to see how it felt. For the pure, bloody, messy, masochistic fun of it.

  What the hell. She was no stranger to pain.

  Amazingly, Kang dared to peer out the window again, tempting Josef to kill him now before he fucked things up any further. “I told you, get down!”

  “She won’t see me,” Kang said, his voice defensive. “She’s in the cab again, turning the corner. So’s the van. Chan Yun’s following.”

  Josef bolted for the window. Fuck. He seized the walkie-talkie. “Chan Yun!” he barked. “You’re following her cab?”

  “Yes,” Yun replied. “They’re a block ahead and heading north.”

  “Keep on them,” he snarled. He’d been so primed to touch her.

  His cell vibrated. His boss. Micromanaging, as always. “Yes?”

  “Have you questioned her yet?” the vor demanded.

  “Not yet. She arrived, but got back in her taxi and left again without coming upstairs.”

  Cherchenko was silent for a beat. “So. You lost her. Again.”

  “No, sir. I have never lost her. Chan Yun is following the—”

  “And you trust that snakehead filth?”

  Josef’s nostrils flared. “He’s competent enough to follow a cab.”

  “Can it really be so difficult to subdue a little doe-eyed hundred-and-ten-pound cunt, Josef? Have you lost your touch?”