Hitman's Baby (Mob City Book 2)

by Holly Hart

  I placed the trashcan as close to the nearest smoke detector as I could without raising suspicion. After all, I figured, if I left it in the middle of the room and set it on fire, someone was bound to get suspicious. I pulled most of the bundle of shredded paper out and shoved it into a supply closet. I was trying to cause a distraction, not burn the whole goddamn warehouse down…

  "Here goes nothing," I said, holding the lighter under the end of the cigarette and flicking the flint.

  It sparked, but didn't catch.

  "Dammit, Ellie," I swore. "You can't even get the catchphrase right."

  I sparked it again, and the cigarette burst into flame, the same dull oranges the setting sun. I laid it gently in the trashcan. I didn't trust myself to actually flick it in. This wasn't the movies. I watched, mesmerized, as the rest of the shredded paper curled into flame.

  I darted behind the door, flicked the magnetic catch keeping it open, and hid behind it. The last thing I wanted was anyone actually smelling smoke… That would scupper my plan before it even got going. The smoke floated upwards, a tornado in reverse, and tickled my nose.

  But the alarm didn't go off. Of course it didn't go off, because why would anything go right for me this week? I stared at the smoke detector, willing its stupid, tiny little electronic brain to do the one goddamn thing it was designed to do – detect.

  At long last, a wail echoed throughout the building. A piercing, cinematic screech that punctured my eardrums and had me clutching my hands to my ears. But now, the smoke smelled like success. I peeked through the tiniest of cracks in the doorway, staring down the corridor to where the evidence locker lay, waiting for someone to stumble out and head for the parking lot. Finally, he came, and my stomach did a backflip for joy. The balding Sergeant practically waddled down the corridor, and I could hear his grumbles over the screech of the fire alarm.

  It sounded like success. The second he disappeared out of sight, I stomped the fire in the trashcan out, shoved the rest of the shredded paper back in on an impulse, to hide what I'd done, and darted down the corridor, lock picker in hand.

  I swiped the small piece of black plastic. The lock beeped once, but flashed red.

  "Shit."

  I tried again, but got the same result. This time, the red LED flashed twice, as if in warning. I suspected that if I got it wrong a third time, either I would be locked out, or an alarm would sound. And if it did, my day would go from bad to very, very bad. I stared at the lock picker, boiling over with impotent rage. "What's your problem, you useless piece of –. Oh." My mouth went very small. I felt smaller, and couldn't resist a glance around to make sure no one had seen my mistake – even though if had someone seen it, I'd be in a hell of a lot more trouble that I was already.

  I thumbed a small switch on the side of the box, and felt a satisfying mechanical click reverberate through the device. It beeped twice, and a string of numbers danced across the screen, like a motel alarm clock restarting. And then, five letters. READY.

  Heart in mouth, I brought the card attachment back up to the locking unit. My hand trembled. This was it. If this didn't work, then for all I knew I might be signing Roman's death certificate – and mine. I swiped.

  The lock beeped once.

  It flashed – green.

  I was in. Really in.

  But my task was only just beginning.

  31

  Roman and Conor

  "Looks like I've brought a knife to a gunfight," Conor commented wryly.

  I looked up at him, then back down at my nicked , chipped, but impeccably maintained black AR-15, and then repeated the routine just for luck. I shrugged. "I like to be prepared," I said.

  "I can see that, mate. You really need all that? How many boys you think Victor's bringing down, an army?"

  I repeated myself. "I like to be prepared."

  The wind whipped along and down the river delta, until it reached the reclaimed floodplain that we now stood on, huddled behind an old, rust-colored steel pillar for shelter. There were dozens of the pillars, all different heights and sizes, some of which rose no higher than my shoulder, and others that towered over me. One hundred and fifty-seven, according to a green-stained copper plaque, one for every man from Alexandria who had given his life in the Vietnam War.

  "Listen, fella," Conor smiled, flipping the K-bar knife, the only weapon he brought with him, in his hand like a circus trickster. "I wouldn't feel right, you know, shooting up a war memorial. Leaves a bad taste in the mouth, and all that," he said, adapting his thick Irish broke to mimic an old English Lord. "It's just not the done thing, you do understand?"

  I cocked my head to one side, considering what he was suggesting. "If I've got a shot," I grunted. "I'm going to take it."

  "Well, it's hard to argue with tha'!" Conor grinned. "And don't get me wrong, my friend, I like your style. But we've got to get serious. Victor's going to bring half a dozen men, maybe ten. You can't take them all out, not even with that," he said, pointing my chest.

  I patted the rifle clipped to the front of my body armor. "I'm a good shot."

  Conor sighed. "My man, I've been where you are, all torn up inside because someone's tried to keep me from my child."

  I looked up and stared at the Irishman with a beady eyed, suddenly intrigued. A little voice at the back of my head told me that he was pushing my buttons, telling me what I wanted to hear. But another voice, a much stronger one, said he was telling the truth. Either that or he was an astonishing liar, damn near sociopathic, and my gut told me that that wasn't the case. I'd swum in waters teeming with sociopaths and psychopaths and serial killers and murderers for years, and Conor didn't have that vibe – where a man's smile didn't meet his eyes, where his laughter rang false, where it was more like he was a poltergeist inhabiting a meat suit than a person.

  Conor was none of those things.

  "Oh yes," he chuckled, a humorless laugh that seemed designed to cover over a deeper hurt. "The Antonovs are a pretty sick kettle of fish, when you get to know them. Except Maya, of course," he amended. "But she's a Regan now, anyway."

  "What happened," I said, stating instead of asking, my manners disappearing in the face of an overwhelming urge to know the truth, to find someone who could share my pain. "Tell me."

  "No," Conor said simply. "I'm not going to. It was a shitty time in my life, and it’s not one I'm like to revisit anytime soon. Not if I want to sleep tonight. I'll tell you something, though. Four years. Four years her da' hid her away from me, four years I didn't know my son existed. Look into my eyes, I dare you, and tell me I don't know what you're going through…" He said, facing up to me, feet, hips and jaw all set firm.

  It was the only answer I needed. "We've got movement," I grunted, sidestepping the awkwardness in the time-honored fashion of men all over the world – ignoring it. "Two – no, make that three black SUVs, rolling in fast."

  They really were, speeding off-road across the floodplain, kicking up dry dust behind them as they crashed through small sandbanks of deposited mud and silt. I almost nodded with approval. Avoiding the road – and a potential ambush – was good tactics, whatever I thought of the man himself.

  "He's done this before," Conor murmured, his earlier bravado disappearing as the enemy sped into view. He was a brave man, I thought, without doubt. But he was a fighter, not a killer. Killers can fight, and fighters can kill – but there's a difference the size of the Grand Canyon between the two.

  I clapped him on the shoulder. "You're right," I said, placing my rifle on the ground and pulling an Israeli combat knife from my ankle holster. "We need to get in close, pick off the men on his perimeter one by one. Can you shoot?"

  "Depends," Conor laughed weakly. "If I'm supposed to hit anything or not…"

  I picked the black rifle off the floor, flicked off the safety and handed it to him. "You know how to use it?"

  He nodded. "I've had… some experience."

  "Good." I flipped the knife between my two palms, te
sting its easy balance. The iron tang of spilt blood was already tickling my nostrils. Victor was going to pay today. "If it's going to shit, use it. I do my best work with my hands anyway. You know the plan?"

  Conor shrugged, his face wrought with tension. "Kill as many as we can, for as long as we can, and buy the girls some time?"

  I bared my teeth, in a grimace that was somewhere between a smile and a snarl. "You got it. Good hunting."

  32

  Maya

  "Massey, slow down," I said, turning to look out of the window of the small European two door car. Its paintwork was chipped and scratched, not to mention faded from a dozen winters sat on the curb without protection from the driving snow of an Alexandrian winter, or the beating sun of an Alexandrian summer. We'd dispensed with the stretch limo for this. I didn't like using it at the best of times, but Conor swore that the bulletproof windows would come in handy someday. I didn't doubt it, especially not in a city where half the criminal gangs were out for my head. But I didn't have to like it.

  "Sorry boss," Massey replied sheepishly, after tapping the brake so hard my head almost bounced off the dashboard. "Are we here?"

  I nodded. "I think so."

  The grubby, pollution-stained brick tenement blocks were built in the 1940s to house workers flooding to Alexandria from across the country. They fed the factories that then fed the war effort, and their homes soared into the sky. They pricked the haze that hung low over the city, like the choking black smoke stacks of a hundred coal fires. I shivered. They should have been knocked down decades ago, but corruption and special interests – much of it my father's doing – had kept them firmly in place.

  "Imagine living here," Massey muttered as he brought the car to a halt, more gently this time. "I think I'd rather top meself."

  I looked at him reproachfully, but it seemed to bounce off him like water off a ducks back. I doubted he'd even noticed my attempt at scolding him. Massey lived in his own world, a world of leprechauns, rainbows and pots of gold, as far as I could tell. A world without responsibility. I was jealous of him. "Plenty do. The suicide rate here's three times higher than the rest of the city, and Alexandria's already got a rate higher than the rest of the country."

  Massey looked around with dismay. "More power to them," he said. "Better dead than this."

  I rolled my eyes. There was no point chiding him, he wouldn't change. And frankly, I didn't want him to. "Come on," I hurried. "We haven't got much time. Are you ready –"

  "To do what needs to be done?" Massey finished, cradling what looked very much like a second world war bayonet in his hands, light from the fading skyline glinting off his eyes in a menacing caricature of. "Born ready."

  That I really didn't doubt. For all his jokes, his easy smiles and infectious laughter, Massey was still a very scary man. A scrapper – and a killer. Conor hadn't told me the whole story, and out of respect I hadn't asked, but a few dark, throw away comments here and there had helped me paint a picture. He'd been raised to fight by the Irish Republican Army, a group of terrorists, or freedom fighters, depending on who you asked.

  I didn't. By the sounds of it, his childhood had been short and brutal.

  I shook my head, trying to rid myself of the thought, and to make sure that I gave my own boy, and the one kicking in my belly, a better life than that. That was what I was fighting for – the reason I wanted to scour Alexandria of its sins. Not to take control, or to be called the Boss, for creature comforts or earthly pleasures. But to make sure that my babies didn't have to grow up like Massey. "Come on then," I said, disguising the upset in my voice with false enthusiasm. "Let's go."

  I fought the urge to rest my hands on my knees and double over from the exertion. Just my luck, the kormilitsa – wetnurse – my network of spies had pointed to lived on the top floor of the towering apartment block. And the elevator was out.

  "You okay?" Massey asked with concern. "You sure Conor would be okay with you doing this, you know, in your condition?"

  I shot him an acid look. "Conor's my husband, not my keeper. And I'm your boss," I said, placing my emphasis on the very last word. "So unless you want your next task to be cleaning toilets with a toothbrush, I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself."

  Massey grumbled, but to his credit, he kept the muttered protestations to himself – mostly. I turned a blind eye. He rapped twice on apartment 53's door – two commanding hits that left whoever lived inside in no doubt that they were to open the door – or else. The decaying open-brick corridor echoed with the noise, and then fell deathly silent. Even the sound of children's laughter from inside the apartment, which I realized that my heaving struggle for oxygen had drowned out, seemed to fade away, before roaring back with twice the vigor.

  I grinned to myself, hiding behind Massey's back in case the door opened. Kids are kids.. I thought. You can't keep them down.

  "No, no, no," came a thrice repeated, long-suffering refrain from just inside the door. "Pyotr, go with Elsa –"

  A click, and the door opened an inch, revealing a slice of a harried, middle-aged woman's face in between the doorway and the paint-chipped door itself. "What is it?" She barked brusquely. A child squeaked, then was yanked from view.

  And then she saw Massey. I watched from behind him as her throat muscles contracted and she gulped, her head rocking backward with dismay. "No, no," she whined. "I pay Mister Victor already. I am just old lady, no husband, I cannot pay more. I already do favor for Mister Victor, like he say. No, no…"

  My heart broke.

  "Wait out here, Massey," I ordered. He turned and stared at me with surprise, but I shook my head surreptitiously, my eyes flaring with command. The last thing I wanted to do was have him kick down a door that led to an apartment filled with playing kids. That was exactly the kind of thing I was trying to change in this city. If I allowed myself to break my own rules, it would be a slippery slope… I stepped forward, and sneakily elbowed him aside.

  "Mrs. Linsky?" I asked, softening my voice and plastering a broad smile on my face. "Perhaps I could come in," I continued, catching a sweet smell pouring from her apartment. "We could share a couple of sbiten?"

  Her eyes flared at the sound of my voice. Massey shot me a surprised, amused look as he heard me lay on a Russian accent so thick I doubted that even my great grandparents had spoken so, when they farmed in the Siberian tundra.

  I studied the woman carefully now the Irishman was out of my way. She wasn't as old as she had first appeared, not much past forty, if I was any judge. But she had the worried, lined face of a woman at least ten years older. Hope, like a candle in the breeze, had been snuffed out. She was reduced to surviving, and existing, not living.

  She stared at me with worried eyes, but in the traditional Russian way, deferred to my authority. I didn't like it, but there it was. Like most Russians of her generation, I guessed she had memories of living under complete domination in the Soviet Union, or had parents who did. She let me in for the same reason she did Victor a favor – fear. I resolved not to take advantage of her. A click echoed through the corridor as the woman loosened the chain holding the door closed, and she ushered me in.

  I stepped through, and hissed to Massey to, "stay here."

  "You have a lovely apartment, Mrs. Linsky," I said, looking around at a small, pokey place that was anything but. The walls had taken on the jaundiced yellow that indicated a smoker had lived here, once. For a long time. More poignantly, the kids I'd heard from the other side of the door were nowhere to be seen. Hiding, no doubt, the elder children caring for younger, keeping them quiet. Mrs. Linsky caught my gaze.

  "I told my husband not to smoke," she said, "every day. But did he listen? Of course not." She handed me a steaming mug of hot sbiten and pointed at a faded paisley couch. "Please, sit."

  I did as I was told. The couch groaned and gave off the unmistakable sound of a spring breaking as I sat. I started speaking, more to distract myself from the cloying poverty of my surroundings than
anything else. "Thank you," I said, glancing at the hot drink in my hands. "I'm sorry for coming here without any warning, Mrs. Linsky –"

  "Alina."

  "Alina," I repeated. "But we've much to discuss."

  33

  Roman and Conor

  The knife sprouted from his neck like a weed from the ground. I swiveled past him, and his eyes filled with astonishment, shock, and fear. Blood dwelled around the blade's hilt and trickled onto hands already sticky with the dark red liquid. I pulled it out, a fountain spurted, and he dropped. His body hit the ground with a thump, but I'd already stopped listening.

  Eight men had piled out of those three black SUVs, piled out and then filed in amongst the war memorial's huge, rusted iron pillars to secure the area for their boss. Three already lay dead at my hands, scattered around in various stages of lifelessness, snapped necks or slit throats chronicling their descent into death.

  Now four.

  The earpiece around the body's neck crackled, relaying a high-pitched warning its owner would never get to hear. I stared at it with disgust, considered putting it on, hearing the pained, terrified cries of my enemies as their confidence evaporated, as their minds filled with fear and doubt. I decided against it, kicked it off his neck and crushed it underneath my boot. An electronic screech briefly pierced my ears, and then nothing.

  This was a hunt. They were animals, and animals don't talk.

  I kept walking, straight through the rusted pillars. They were built offset, like a thicket of trees that grew not by design, in careful rows, but wherever their seeds fell, so that whatever lay behind was visible only rarely. Brief snatches of the floodplain, the back of Victor's head in the distance, then rusted metal stakes, warnings against the folly of human violence – and now testament to yet more of it.