Ballistic (A Vigilantes Novel)

by Keri Lake

  In a few hours, I’d be off to meet my fate, to face off with my greatest enemy. Perhaps the one to commission Nicoleta’s murder—something that still remained a complete mystery. With all the revelations I’d had over the last couple days, unraveling the trail of secrets she’d left behind, I still hadn’t figured out the connection between her and Tesarik.

  Of course, he wasn’t the only reason I planned to be there. I’d become so desperate to see her again, I was willing to throw myself into what could end up being a bloodbath.

  Mind spinning, I exited the bathroom to the bedroom, coming to a stop in the middle of the floor, and rolled my shoulders. Dropping to a plank position, I braced myself on outstretched arms and stared down at the cracks in the wood floor. I lowered myself, inhaling on the way down, and took in a sharp exhales on the way up, marking the pace of each pushup that followed. The exercise helped clear my head, kept me focused on what the fuck I planned to do. I’d been so hell-bent on finding Nicoleta, I hadn’t bothered to consider how the confrontation with Tesarik would go down.

  Maybe he’d gotten his hands on Nicoleta, in which case there’d be fucking war.

  Gritting my teeth, I upped the pace, each breath exploding out of me with anger and frustration, imagining his hands on her again. I visualized each pushup ticking off the number of seconds I’d throttle his neck for, and when I finally reached one hundred, sweat trickled down my temple. Still, I kept going. My muscles burned, face red, head dizzy with the cold rush of adrenaline pumping through me.

  I’d kill him.

  Fucking end him in the worst possible way, if he hurt her again.

  At a flash of Nicoleta’s bloodstained face, my arms buckled beneath me. I collapsed onto the floor, breathing hard through my nose, and palmed my face. Someone was going to die by night’s end, and if I didn’t get her out of my head, I might very well end up the stupid bastard to whom it happened.

  37

  Nicoleta

  The clock on the wall told me it was midday outside, but the darkness of the room made it feel like midnight. Heavy drapes hung from the window of the motel, where I’d hidden for nearly a week. I lifted the phone to my ear with an odd calm settling over me.

  Tesarik answered on the third ring. “Who is this?”

  “Meet me at the Belle Isle Boat House tonight. Eight o’clock.”

  “What have you done?” Rage carried on his voice, sending a rush of satisfaction through me, as I listened to his harsh breaths that carried through the phone. “You will be sorry if you fail to show.”

  “As will you.” I hung up the line and set the phone down on the table beside me. It vibrated with the number I’d just called. I ignored it.

  Two minutes later, it vibrated again. Same number.

  For the next half hour, I continued to ignore Tesarik’s desperate attempts to talk to me, each time merely watching the phone rattle against the worn wooden tabletop. Couldn’t blame him, really. Earlier in the day, I’d carried out my mission, the final piece of it: deleting the three private keys I’d memorized while trapped in his home. One hundred million in Bitcoins gone by simply removing a file. All done on one of the borrowed computers at the public library. That, of course, was after I’d transferred ten million to a wallet that would systematically move small increments to a clean wallet over the next couple of months—a trick I’d learned from Dmitry.

  Sad thing about digital money: once deleted, it was as if it’d never existed in the first place.

  Every night I’d gone to bed whispering the private keys inside my head, so as not to forget them, until they were as simple as rattling off a social security number. I’d waited patiently until two days before, when he’d finalized the deal with another buyer from overseas—one that’d netted him an added ten million. One he’d bragged about while fucking me in front of his guard. More money to the pot I’d set aflame and laughed as it burned.

  Tesarik’s empire was about to crumble, and I’d be there to smile as it fell.

  The phone eventually quieted, and once again, I sat alone with my thoughts. That was what I’d grown to hate most—the moments of silence, when memories of Dax would start out small inside my head, then blossom into monstrous bouts of obsession, where every thought drudged up more memories and musings. Wondering what he was doing. Where he was. Who he was with.

  They struck worse at night, just before I’d fall asleep and wake to those phantom sensations of his hands on my skin, his warm whiskey breath in my ear. My body mourned him in ways I hadn’t anticipated. Ways I’d never mourned another in my life. I’d told him I loved him the night before I’d left, but how weak was love if I could just up and walk out on him like that? Maybe I hadn’t been in love with him, at all. Perhaps I’d mistaken it for something else. After all, I didn’t know a damned thing about it, had never grown up knowing the feelings that were supposed to be attached to such a simple word. Love was something only found in the suburban homes, not the ratted-out, forgotten trailer parks where I’d come from.

  As promised, I’d provided him the location where I’d planned to meet Tesarik, but had given him a different time to avoid running into him. I had a sense he could talk me out of just about anything, with those stern and resolute brown eyes, and seeing him there might destroy everything—including me. I couldn’t afford that.

  If all happened to go according to plan, he’d get some closure. If not, perhaps he’d still find some closure.

  I sat on the edge of the stage in the ballroom of the Belle Isle Boathouse, twirling a blade between my fingers, and listened.

  A sitting duck.

  Rowboats hung from the rafters of the room, which’d remained in decent condition, considering the outside had a weathered, unkempt appearance where it’s white paint had chipped away to patches of red brick beneath. Dusty wooden floors still carried a dull shine in the moonlight streaming through the windows that stretched ceiling-high.

  I tried to imagine what the place might’ve been like before the Detroit Boat Club had relocated. The fancy events they’d have held, and the couples who didn’t have a care in the world, dining and dancing all evening. A world as foreign to me as the idea that I could ever live so freely.

  A slam from somewhere in the building piqued my attention, but I didn’t hide. I didn’t move, at all. I wanted Tesarik to find me.

  Blood hummed through my veins, but not from fear. It was excitement that had me reminding myself to breathe slow and easy. Soon, everything would be set right again, regardless of who got to walk away.

  Shadows slinked past the entrance to the ballroom, widening to the silhouette of the fat bastard and three of his men. I wanted to laugh at the sight of his big burly men flanked at either side of him.

  What a pussy.

  “I’m flattered,” I said. “Didn’t know I was the kind of threat that warranted your entourage. Hell, I didn’t even bring a gun.”

  Tesarik kept a steady stride toward me, unfettered and unamused. “Laugh, child, but it’s you who are foolish, for coming alone and unarmed. I’m not here to chat. I’m here to retrieve you.”

  I raised my knife, twisting it around in front of him. “I’m not completely unarmed.”

  “You have one opportunity to save your life. Only one.” He came to a stop just short of where I sat, his men glancing around the room, always watching his back. Strange how loyal they remained, considering he’d always treated them like shit. “Transfer every bit of what you stole. You have a chance to walk away from this, Nicoleta.”

  Hilarious. I’d once watched him force a guard to swallow gasoline, after he’d accused him of stealing his best cognac. Turned out, Tesarik had cracked it open himself on a drunken night and accidentally smashed it against the brick wall of his cigar room, where the bits of broken glass had lain mocking the man’s death.

  At best, he’d probably let me scream one more time, before slicing out my tongue and tossing me into a bonfire.

  I nabbed my phone from my back pock
et, and at the racking of guns, I held my hands up in surrender. “Just wanted to show you something on my phone.”

  Without looking at them, Tesarik raised his hand, and the men lowered their guns. “You’re testing my patience, child.”

  “It’ll only take a second, and then I promise you, we’ll talk about your money.” I pressed play on the video, and with the heightening of screams, my screams, I watched as Tesarik’s mouth curved into a smile. “Who commissioned this?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t answer that. They all go by screennames. Completely anonymous.”

  Breathing a sigh, I stuffed the phone back into my jeans. “Then, I guess we’re done here. Do what you will, you’ll never find your money.”

  Jaw shifting, he cracked his neck, eyes teeming with the kind of rage I’d only seen a few times in the months I’d been his prisoner. “Voyeur-two-ICU.”

  Mind teasing out what the hell he just said, I frowned back at him. “What?”

  “The name of the one who commissioned that production.”

  “Not you?”

  “I don’t commission my own productions. I prefer the live action version. Perhaps you remember that.”

  Lips curled in disgust, I tightened my grip of the blade, wondering why the hell I hadn’t thrown it square at his skull, yet. “Then, why would you purchase me at auction? Why would you pay to make me your prisoner?”

  “To bring Dmitry out of hiding, of course.”

  Schooling my face to hide the smile tugging at my lips, I tipped my head. “There is no Dmitry. I made him up.”

  Tesarik’s chuckle echoed in the surrounding building, and he pulled a case from his pocket, opening it to show cigarettes inside. “Surely, you don’t expect I’d have forgotten my own brother.”

  I let the smile break at the one small detail I hadn’t been privy to, but had always suspected.

  “He was my half-brother. Bastard child of our whore mother. For years, I thought I’d killed him that night. And then you came along, and like ghost, he reappears.”

  The weight of the knife sat heavy in my palm, and I curled my fingers around the blade. I could be fast. No doubt, Tesarik’s men would shoot me, but not before the blade struck his skull. “If you expected Dmitry, then its you who are foolish for having come tonight.”

  As soon as the words had fallen past my lips, three shots were fired from a silencer, and within seconds, Tesarik’s men lay on the floor. One of them lifted his gun and shot blindly into the darkness. A black hole marked the bullet’s path through his skull, and he fell backward. Another lay gripping the wound on his leg, swinging his gun as if searching for the source of gunfire. In the next breath, he lay as still as the other two.

  Tesarik hadn’t bothered to take cover, or spare a single glance for his men. Instead, he casually lit his cigarette and blew the smoke off to the side, keeping his eyes on me. “A zrazu sa zjaví duch!”

  “Is that what I am to you, Brother? A ghost?” From the shadows, Dmitry and one of his guards I recognized stepped into the ballroom. In a black suit and black gloves, he blended with the darkness, as if he were a part of it, coming to life. “You’ve built quite an empire, Jozef, eliminating all of your enemies. Me, Eugen.”

  Tesarik shook his head, studying the lit end of his cigarette before taking another drag. “I did not kill our brother. He was always loyal to me.”

  “He was murdered because of you. But no matter, he was dead, anyway, for what he did to her. My wife.”

  “My wife.” Tesarik spoke through clenched teeth and turned to face Dmitry. “She was mine first.”

  “She never loved you, Jozef. Surely, even you could see that.”

  “She was bewitched! Just like your skurveny Rus father, turning our mother into a whore. Not even worthy enough for my father’s name.” Chin high and lip twisted in contempt, he gave a dismissive wave. “You had to take our mother’s.”

  I recognized the term Tesarik had used to describe one of his Russian acquaintances—one he hadn’t been particularly fond of, nor trusted, so I had to assume it was a derogatory slap against Dmitry’s father, who I already knew to be Russian.

  Tesarik sucked in another drag of his cigarette and pointed back at Dmitry. “You know, I could’ve been a different man. A woman, a wife like that could’ve changed me.”

  Neither of the two seemed ruffled by the other, like watching two sharks circle each other in the water. Dmitry had once told me he’d expected the end. He welcomed it. Perhaps Tesarik felt the same.

  Maybe that was how men like them lived, always prepared to die.

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything.” Hands behind his back, Dmitry stepped closer, and when he circled Tesarik, the shark visual came to mind again.

  “Am I to assume you’re the thief who stole my money?”

  “Your money? Paid by the lives of so many innocent? It hardly belonged to you.”

  Tesarik remained silent, but I caught sight of his thumb rubbing across his fingers, indicating he’d grown increasingly on edge. I remembered the gesture the night his men had captured Aleksey and me, as we’d tried to get away. Aleksey had come to rescue me on his own, and paid in what I could only imagine was the most horrific death.

  I couldn’t think about that. Not yet. I’d wait until later, when everything, including Dax, would come crashing down on me. An entire world of pain pressing its weight into my conscience. Killing me from the inside out.

  But not yet.

  “I had Nicoleta delete them.” The easy way Dmitry said it forced me to hold back a chuckle. Only someone as intimidating as Dmitry could get away with speaking so casually to a man like Tesarik—one psychopath to another. “It’s gone. Poof. No more.”

  “You fool. You fucking fool!” Tesarik tugged a gun from beneath his suit coat, tightening my chest, as Dmitry stood with his back to the bastard. Before he could take the shot, he fell to his knees and cried out.

  A stray shot whizzed past me, the burn streaking across my cheek, and the sound of broken glass chimed its exit. I swung around to see the hole in the window, with its branching cracks, and slapped a hand to my face, damned near pissing myself as I palpated the wound that extended up my cheek, angled in the same trajectory as the bullet. Holy hell, that was close! An inch closer, and I’d have had a hole through my face.

  Tesarik’s gun clanged against the wooden floor, and he smacked a hand to his shoulder where Dmitry’s guard had nailed him. “Do piče!”

  “Heartbreaking isn’t it? How your entire world can collapse in a matter of seconds? One minute, you’re a king, sitting on top of the world, and in one blink, you’ve lost everything that mattered.” With his gloved hands clasped behind him, Dmitry paced alongside his suffering brother.

  Tesarik groaned and fell back onto the floor, beside the scatter of blood drops.

  “Your failure was your greed. Your love for money. There’s no passion in that, Jozef. No purpose.” Dmitry shrugged, head tipped as he stared down at his brother. “Now look at you.”

  “You won’t kill me. You’re weak. You’ve always been weak.” Tesarik spat at Dmitry’s feet, still holding his wound to staunch the oozing blood.

  “You mistook compassion for weakness. But you’ve stripped me of that, now. So unlike you, who left me to live with the memory of that night, I am going to kill you.” He reached back his hand, and another guard emerged from the shadows, carrying a medium-sized plastic bottle that he handed off to Dmitry. “But first, I’m going to watch you suffer.”

  The second guard, dressed in black like Dmitry, moved like a phantom, taking position behind Tesarik.

  Tesarik fell forward, his good arm stretched out toward his fallen gun, and the guard slammed his boot down on his elbow with a sickening crack.

  I flinched, as Tesarik’s scream reverberated off the walls of the hollow room.

  Dmitry poured what I surmised as acid, given the curls of smoke that rose up on impact with Tesarik’s skin, and those screams turned blood-curd
ling. A sound like nothing I’d ever heard before. The sizzle of his skin coiled my stomach, and I had to look away as the gore of his wounds dripped onto the floor in a pool of blood and burned flesh that left a dark brown stain on the wood.

  With his cheek pressed into his arm, Tesarik’s body seized on the floor while his hand liquefied before his eyes.

  “It’s unbearable, the pain. And I wish I could say it subsides at some point, but it doesn’t.” Dmitry set the bottle down and crouched in front of his brother, removing his black gloves. “Even now, just watching you, I can feel the burning across my skin.”

  “I … kill you.”

  “You did, the night you took my family.” Gray thunderstorm eyes met mine, and he pushed to his feet. “And then you hurt the only thing I’ve come to care about since then.”

  “The whore?” Tesarik chuckled, and I would’ve stabbed him with my blade, had I not just watched his hand burn away into a pile of liquid on the floor. “Did she tell you of our games? How she loved them?” The moon’s light glinting off his eyes gave them a soulless shine, like staring into black onyx.

  I ground my teeth at the memory of those depraved games in his bedroom, the pain in my cheek flaring with my repulsion.

  “You called my wife a whore, as well.” Jaw clenched, Dmitry kicked him in the face, while the guard still held Tesarik’s arm steady beneath his boot.

  A flicker of distant headlights snapped my attention toward the window, and the rumble of an old engine outside twisted my stomach.

  Dax. Early, as I’d expected. Probably wanted to case the place before meeting up.

  I pushed off the edge of the stage and strode across the room, taking a stand beside Dmitry. “He’s here. I can’t stay.”

  “You’ve done well, Nicoleta.” He dragged a scarred finger down my cheek and pressed his lips to my forehead. “I’m proud of you.”

  “Dmitry … promise me …. Promise me you won’t kill him.”