Hitman's Baby (Mob City Book 2)

by Holly Hart

  The breeze gusted, and carried on it a sound, a squeal – a baby's cry. My blood ran cold, and I stopped dead in my tracks, legs swallowed up by quicksand, the air in front of me replaced by invisible concrete. No! This can't be. He's not supposed to be here.

  I closed my eyes, blinked, licked my lips with a tongue that was as dry as sandpaper. Ellie's soft, sweet, innocent face flashed upon my mind, and it was all I could see. If our child was here, then it meant that this distraction – half of it, anyway, was for nothing. Maya would stumble across an empty nest, and as for Ellie…

  It didn't bear thinking about.

  My calm, deadly confidence evaporated. Anger surged through me, and then cold determination. If Victor had my baby, then he was as good as dead. The rules of the game had shifted, and my promise to Conor and Maya meant nothing. Perhaps I couldn't save Ellie, but my son was another matter entirely. I was going to get him back, and take his captor out.

  Victor's voice drifted on a change of wind, and what he said filled my heart with dread. "Find… Get it done."

  Find her? Get what done?

  I didn't know, and it terrified me. But I guessed he meant Ellie. There wasn't a shadow nor a speck of doubt in my mind that she was in danger. The bloody knife fell from my hand and landed point down in the dark earth, soil that the river had deposited over centuries, rich, life-giving mud. Droplets of blood trickled down the blade and soaked into the earth. Next year, a flower might feed on the death, or grass grow, but it meant nothing to me. My hand moved on autopilot, unclipped the holster at my waist and pulled out a gun. One-handed I flicked off the safety catch, then racked the slide with my left. I was the gun now, and it was me. We were one, and Victor was in our sights.

  I broke into a run, straight for the sound of Victor's voice. I dodged pillars as I sprinted, huge, stark edifices the color of blood, and they seemed like monuments to the lives of those that I'd killed. I didn't see them. Adrenaline soaked my muscles, flowing in not as a trickle but in a flood, and my vision narrowed until there was nothing ahead of me, nothing except my target, and blackness all around.

  I ran forward, past the last line of rusted stakes, and broke into the open.

  Victor's last bodyguard span.

  A shot echoed.

  His body dropped to the ground.

  I screamed, a raw, painful roar that ripped my throat to shreds. It was an outpouring of rage, of grief, and the statement of intent. "Victor!"

  He stood stock still, his arms by his side, but held oddly up at the elbow, as if he was hugging himself. Or cradling something… I leveled my gun and pointed at his skull, but it was an impotent gesture. I knew that if I shot, and he fell, he might crush my son, my fragile son, and I caressed the trigger and spat on the ground with impotent disgust.

  A baby's cry echoed out upon the breeze, and the blood thundered in my ears, and it felt wrong, sounded wrong.

  "Ah, the avenging father appears at last," he called, in a mocking, lilting tone of voice. "Where have you been, Roman? I've been waiting. I have to say, I'm impressed. It seems I miscalculated – I thought ten men would be more than enough. Mistakes, eh. I've made a few."

  He turned round, and in his arms I saw what I feared most – a bundle of cloth, held tight to his body with one hand, but worse, so much worse, a stainless steel, 9 mm Desert Eagle pistol held, limp-wristed with the other.

  My voice broke. "What kind of man –," I said, throat cracking. "Threatens a child?"

  "This?" Victor shrugged, an evil smile dancing across his lips. "This isn't a child, it's a pawn." His smile vanished, face changing in an instant from sinister, to downright terrifying – the kind of face that stalks every child's worst nightmare, and their parent’s waking dreams. Not stretched, not pulled into an affected grimace – just soulless, dead.

  Conor appeared to Victor's side, rifle held ready at his shoulder. He stared down the sights, aimed, and then looked at me, a question in his eyes.

  I shook my head.

  "That's right," Victor sneered. "Listen to your master, puppy. If I die, who's to say this finger doesn't pull against the trigger as I fall? We wouldn't want your sweet baby to suffer for your mistakes, would we? So here's what's going to happen." He said, a victorious grimace that I imagined was intended to pass for a smile curling at the corner of his mouth. "I'm going to get into that SUV, there, and you're not going to follow, or – well you know what happens."

  "Who were you talking to?" I said in a choked voice, my heart in my mouth. "Just then, on your cell phone. Answer me! Who the fuck were you talking to?"

  "I'm sorry, Roman," came the reply, in a mocking tone of voice that didn't even register as a tidal wave of guilt crashed against my body. "If you're talking about your pretty little girlfriend, I'm afraid it's too late…"

  34

  Ellie

  The fire alarm's wail went on, and on, and on. It pierced my eyes, assaulted my eardrums and began to rattle around inside my skull like a banshee, a never-ending squeal that threatened to raise the dead.

  But I was grateful for it.

  Because the longer it went on, the longer I'd be alone. And judging by the sprawling enormity of the evidence locker, I'd need every second I could get. The steel racks went on forever, row after row of plastic-bagged, brown paper-tagged pieces of evidence piled high to the skies and forever in danger of toppling. Bloodstained shirts sat cheek by jowl with guns, knives – and even more arcane weapons abounded. I think I saw a samurai sword, though it was out of the corner of my eye, and I didn't go check it out.

  Still, weapons were the least of the story. Most of the racks weren't nearly so interesting: piled high with brown cardboard boxes, like the inside of the self storage unit, or the kind you get when you're told to clean out your desk.

  Well, shit…

  It turned out that getting in to the locker wasn't nearly going to be the hardest bit. Finding my bag in here was going to be like searching for a needle in a haystack. The size of the place boggled my mind, stretched its ability to comprehend what it was seeing to the very limit.

  I tried to picture it.

  Case after case, murders, rapes, beatings, assaults; day after day, month after month, year after year. My stomach clenched, and I began to contemplate just sitting back and letting the weight of the world wash over me. How could I do this? It was too big for just one person on her own. Hell, an army might scour this place for a month and not find what they were looking for. So what chance did I have?

  I closed my eyes. Not a second passed by before Roman's face flashed onto the back of my eyelids, risking his life for me even now; then the vague outline of my child, wrapped in blue swaddling clothes and crying out for his mother.

  I bit my lip, and kept biting until the coppery tang of blood filled my mouth, and then longer still. I bit down until the pain wiped out the fear, banished the demons stalking my mind, and crystallized everything I stood to lose.

  Who cares if an army can't find it? An army's driven by its stomach, not by love.

  And I had that in spades.

  My eyes snapped back open, and I found myself suffused by a grin, fatalistic determination. I was going to give it my best shot, or die trying, because if I didn't succeed that I didn't want to live.

  I tore through the shelves like a woman possessed, almost jogging at times, my arms and eyes and fingers all dancing in unison, searching boxes, eyeing labels, fingering bag after plastic evidence bag, box after box of legal notes until they all melded to one. And at all times, like Sauron's eye watching over me, two things reminded me where I was, and the enormity of what I was doing – the screeching wail of the fire alarm, and the security cameras that speckled the ceiling, dark and bulbous, like baleful black-painted turtle shells.

  Think, Ellie! Work smart, not hard.

  And then it struck me, like it had been preying on my mind all this time. The goddamn shelves were labeled. Pretty, organized white labels, like a library, and filed just the same. And librarie
s, after three years studying journalism at college and half a decade spent reporting, I could handle. The shelves were organized by year, then month, then week.

  January, February, March, no – skip a few, the clock's ticking, August, September, closer, October.

  November.

  The month I ended up in hospital.

  Search area narrowed, I sped through the shelf, the only shelf it could be. And there it was, my bag, stuffed full of my notes, and looking like the police had never even bothered opening it. I mean, why would they? It was an open and shut case, after all. Rick had absconded from custody, they knew that, and then I turned up beaten to all hell. Of course, he was long gone, but still. Open and shut…

  I opened it, tearing aside the plastic sheeting that covered it and brushed my fingers against the soft, aged leather as I unclasped the chrome-plated buckle.

  The bag fell open, and the musty smell of hard work, of paper that hadn't seen the light of day for months, filled my nostrils. I sucked it in greedily, a pig at a trough.

  I pulled the string rucksack off my shoulder without looking, grasped an iPad and keyboard from inside, and turned it on. This was it, the culmination of my plan. I'd known – and hadn't told Roman – that there was no way I'd be able to smuggle evidence out of the police station.

  This was the plan.

  I started taking photos. Every last one of the hundreds, maybe even a thousand research documents. Sworn testimonies of witnesses, men and women I'd interviewed, faded black and white photocopies of bank statements, all headed with the logos of offshore banks – from the Cayman Islands, Guernsey, Haiti, Panama and a dozen others besides. I tapped the screen until my finger hurt, until I could hear it echoing around the room.

  Something was wrong.

  At least, different. I struggled to place it, to figure out what it was – what my subconscious had revealed. And then, at long last, I understood.

  I could hear again. The fire alarm was off. It was only a matter of time before someone found me.

  I knew what I had to do. I had to get the story out. The words began to fill my mind, like numbers cascading through the matrix, flowing like water after a storm. I'd known what I was going to write for months, even before Rick damn near beat the ability to speak out of me. My brain must have dwelled on it whilst I was in that coma, marinated it, made it ready, and now – with the power of desperation and the fear of failure spurring me on, the most powerful article I'd ever written began to soar from the crevices of my mind.

  I wedged myself behind an overflowing rack, hidden from sight, and began to type. The clacking sound of keys filled my tiny corner of the room.

  And my story began to flow.

  35

  Roman and Conor

  For the first time in my life, I was lost, like Jesus in the desert. I felt the pressure of ten thousand tons of bricks pressing down on my shoulders, weighing on the arm holding my gun, pushing it down. It wavered, trembled, and I couldn't keep my aim. Even if my life depended on it – and my son's did – I wouldn't have backed myself to make that shot. Not without missing, or worse.

  Victor's taunting sneer mocked me, teased me, showed me everything I had to lose, and everything I could do so little about.

  "Please," I said, voice cracking. "Lock me to the ground, tie me here and leave me. Hell, kill me for all I care, and give my baby to Conor. Just let him live."

  I'm sorry, Ellie. I failed you.

  "Now," Victor grinned, hugging my son's swathed body to his chest ever tighter. "Why the hell would I go and do something silly like that? I hold all the cards here, Roman, not you, and not your dumb potato-peeling friend and his gun."

  "Maybe," Conor said mildly. "This dumb potato-peeling friend should put a bullet in your thigh. How would you like that?"

  I stared at him with abject horror. Why the fuck was he talking like that, provoking Victor, as if a baby's life wasn't on the line.

  "Go on," Victor sneered. "I dare you."

  A mocking smile licked Conor's lips. "That, my friend, was a fucking stupid thing to say."

  A spurt of flame shot out of the rifle's long, black barrel. A gunshot echoed around the floodplain, bouncing off a hundred and fifty-seven rusted iron spikes, and every one sank like a dagger into my heart.

  "No!" I roared, surging forward. I dropped my gun. It didn't matter, all that mattered was getting to my son.

  A second gunshot exploded into existence, battling the air for its roaring supremacy. This one came from a different direction. From Victor's direction. Where my baby lay, wrapped in blue swaddling cloth that would soon be soaked red, clutched to the chest of a monster.

  My throat stung, ripped raw. I collapsed next to Victor's writhing body, searching for the bundle that contained my son's shattered body, and held my failure as a father and as a man. I pulled it out of his hands, not listening to the gangster's outraged roar of pain, his cries as he pressed the fingers of one hand against a hole in his thigh that was weeping blood, and as with the other he searched for his dropped weapon.

  Eyes blind with rage, I pulled a tiny knife from my boot and stabbed it through his wandering, murderous hand.

  I clutched my son's broken body to my chest.

  Conor approached me, but in my grief I didn't recognize his presence until his shadow blotted out the sun. "How could you," I cried, my throat tight with the feeling of a wave of sobs that wouldn't come. And nor would words, now. I said it again, hissed it. "How could you…"

  He put his hand on my shoulder, and spoke with an exaggerated, cocky charm in his voice that fanned my anger into a white-hot rage. I faced him, ready to make him pay for what he had caused. "Whoa, buddy," he said, hanging back. "Where's the blood?"

  His words washed over me. I searched for a gun that wasn't at my waist, clutched the bundle of rags to my chest and bellowed my pain to the sky. "How could you?"

  "Roman, you idiot," he said kindly. "Look at the fracking thing in your arms."

  It didn't fit. None of it did. Why was he so calm, after what had just happened? A ray of hope flickered within me, like a candle at the top of the mountain, fighting valiantly against the wind. I looked down.

  There was no blood.

  But no cries, either.

  Just a bullet hole that had ripped right through the cloth. I unwrapped it, holding my son''s body gingerly, terrified to touch it.

  "It's –," Conor began.

  "– a fucking doll," I finished, open-mouthed, as I stared at the broken, crushed and bullet-holed body of a child's doll.

  "You've got to be fucking kidding me."

  36

  Ellie

  My finger hovered over the send button, trembling. I felt like the president, about to press the big red button to destroy the world.

  Except, just like the president, there was no actual big red button to press. For him, it was the nuclear football. I watched a documentary about it, a briefcase with a computer in that can end the world.

  My version was slightly less impressive – an open tab, with Gmail running in it. Still, I knew that it would end my world, as I knew it. This email would hit Alexandria like a bomb, sweeping through the corruption, the crime, and the killings like a brush. The only question was whether I would survive the aftermath. I was about to make some very powerful enemies.

  I stared at the blinking cursor, and the last two words: "Regards, Ellie." It seemed so small, so insufficient in comparison to the story that preceded it. I knew that the thousand word article above it was the best thing I had ever written. I shivered just proof-reading it. It railed against what Alexandria, the city I grew up in, had become. It exposed the corruption, the lies, as well as the filth. And it lay down a challenge. To the gangs, to the police, to the city government – and most importantly of all, the citizens. Because without them, it was all for nothing.

  Grow a pair, Ellie.

  I pressed send, and the article, along with a folder full of photos that damned Victor Antonov to a jail ce
ll, and a host of crooked cops and city counselors beside, winged its way to a list as long as my arm.

  My old employer, the Herald was first.

  Then the chief of police – though, since he was incriminated in the evidence I doubted he'd prosecute himself…

  All the way up to the FBI.

  The cat was out of the bag now, and like chickenpox ripping through a nursery, there would be no putting it back in. But just to be sure, I loaded every single last document into the cloud and shared it online. No coverups. Alexandria had had enough of those.

  I shut the iPad, kind of wishing it was a typewriter, because the black slate screen's silent winking off was hardly the round of applause I felt I deserved after that. My fingers were burning. I'd never typed so fast in my life.

  "Yeah, yeah," I muttered out loud. "'Nuff fluffin', El. You can celebrate when you get out of here."

  The problem was, that was easier said than done. A draft of air brushed against my forehead, the slightest, tiniest movement – but enough, a warning. I thanked whoever was looking out for me up there. The usual Ellie, the one I'd been before all this started, would never have noticed such a tiny change in air pressure. Hell, she had her head so far up in the clouds the only change in air pressure she'd have noticed was the goddamn jetstream! Maybe Roman rubbed off on me, a little bit.

  I know I rubbed off on him.

  I hoped that I was just imagining things, that I was just on edge – understandable, after the day I'd had. Hell, the year! But that faint, weak hope was torn apart in less than a second.

  "Come out, little girl," a wheezing voice called out. A familiar wheezing voice, like a parody of a horror movie kidnapper – both in the way he spoke, and what he said. "Come out, come out, wherever you are…"

  I stiffened, pressing myself against the nearest metal rack, every last faint ounce of elation drained away in an instant. I pressed too hard, and watched in horror as I rocked the rickety shelving unit, and watched as it swayed to and fro, and as a cardboard box, precariously balanced, found its weight pulling it inexorably downwards.