“Because I owe you a little something for fucking up my plans.”
There was something in his eyes, when he spoke to me. A dark lust, the opposite of the primal hunger that I loved so much in Boone. This was twisted and cruel: he was going to use me as a toy. Use me until he broke me.
There was only one way to avoid that. I had to convince him to kill me. “You should put me on the plane,” I said. “If you keep me alive, you’ll nev—”
Weiss threw back his head and laughed: an ugly, shrill sound. “Go on, say it!” he taunted. “You’ll never get away with it!”
I went silent.
“I got away with stealing over two billion, you insignificant little bitch. Yeah, it would have been nice to keep it simple and have you and Boone be found in the plane. But this? This is even better.”
“When they realize I survived, they’ll look for me,” I said. I wanted my body burned up and destroyed, however much it hurt, because then he couldn’t hurt me.
But I’d underestimated him. He knew how to hurt me in ways I hadn’t even imagined.
He shoved his face close to mine. “You haven’t worked it out yet, have you? You haven’t realized the gift you gave me, when you let yourself get captured with Boone still out there, free.” He gave me that awful, thin-lipped grin. “See, they’ll find the plane wreck, all burned up. They’ll find what they think is my body. They’ll find the pilot and what they think are the marshals’ bodies. But you and Boone will be missing. A respected, heroic FBI agent and a wanted murderer.”
Oh shit. Suddenly, I saw it. Oh, God, no….
“They’ll search the area,” said Weiss. “And if they don’t find his cabin, I’ll tip them off myself. I bet your DNA is all over that place, isn’t it? In the bed? They’ll think he raped you, killed you and buried the body.”
No. NO!
That had been the one thing I’d been clinging onto: that at least Boone was still free. He’d just taken even that away from me, hurting both of us in the worst way possible. They’ll think he killed me!
There was a sudden wumf from outside and I saw orange flames roar high into the sky. The light from the fire lit up Weiss’s grinning face like the devil’s.
“You’re dead,” he told me. “In every way that matters. No one’s going to miss you. And that makes you mine.”
58
Boone
I made good time back to Weiss’s camp. Once there, I started up the crashed 4x4 and got the heater on, then bundled the dozing Megan into the back seat. Only then did I look at the damage.
It was bad. The car had smashed into the tree hard enough that the right front fender was actually wrapped around it a little. One headlight was gone: I’d smashed it with a rock. The right wheel was pointing in a completely different direction to the left, as if the two were trying to meet in the middle. The fender was wedged against the tire and had shredded it. It was a wreck. Most garages would have told me to buy a new car.
But if I couldn’t fix it, I wasn’t going to be able to save Kate. Okay, then….
I didn’t have the time or patience to try to reshape the bent fender. So I grabbed it in both hands and heaved until it came free, then turned and hurled the thing into the bushes. I could drive to Nome with one goddamn fender. I didn’t care how the car looked.
Next, the wheel. I jacked it up and, with a hammer and a pry bar, started knocking it back into place. It was a precision job but I was anything but precise: I just wanted the damn thing to turn. I hunched over it for nearly an hour, heaving and hammering, straining with my back and arms to bend the metal. And, eventually, I had the wheel pointing in the right direction and steering okay. It sure as hell wasn’t road legal but it would do. I changed the tire and I was done. We had a working car.
I climbed in and gunned the engine. We were hours behind them but I knew the area and they didn’t. Plus, I figured they’d call at the site of the plane crash on the way, to burn it. My stomach churned at that thought. Would Weiss put Kate on the plane before he lit it? That’s what he’d originally planned to do to both of us.
No. I’d seen the way he’d looked at her. The bastard would keep hold of her. And then, when he got her alone….
My knuckles went white on the steering wheel. No. Not if I had anything to do with it.
I put the car into gear and roared off.
59
Kate
Nome had seemed small in the daytime. Now, at night, it seemed even smaller, just a few illuminated signs and some softly glowing windows, their drapes thick to keep out the cold. A tiny outpost of humanity next to...that.
The ocean took my breath away. The wind had gotten up and I could hear massive breakers crashing against the rocks. It was even scarier for not being able to see it, like a huge dark monster curled around the town. And I was going out there. I’d once thought of Alaska as a dark void but this was the real thing: fifty miles of black, freezing ocean. And then, when we reached Russia….
Weiss hadn’t touched me, so far. Instead, he’d taken great pleasure in telling me his plans for me, lapping up my fear.
He was going to break me. Taking me by force: that was no challenge. Instead, he was going to gradually destroy my spirit, through pain and hunger and cold, until I begged to be used by him. He was prepared for it to take a long, long time. Even wanted it to. “I’m buying a big house in Moscow,” he told me. “There’s a basement we can use. I’ll have it soundproofed.”
I knew he was serious. He was rich, now, absurdly so. He’d had his fun separating people like my parents from their money. Now it was time for a new game. And I had no illusions that anyone would care what happened to me. I was going to be legally dead, a non-person even in America, and since they were smuggling us in, there wouldn’t be any record of me arriving in Russia. If anyone did hear a scream coming from behind a door in a billionaire’s cellar...well, money has a way of making people look the other way.
“Here.” Weiss bent down by his feet and picked up an insulated flask. “We might as well get started.” He unscrewed the top and then poured some of the dark liquid into a cup. Steam rose and the smell filled the car. I even saw the mercenary’s nose twitch.
Coffee.
“I’ll give you some,” said Weiss. “All you have to do is say….”—he thought about it—“Please, sir.”
Coffee was all I’d been dreaming about for days but I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. I reached out as if to take the cup and then suddenly upended it over him.
He sucked in air through his teeth as scalding coffee splashed across his legs, staining his suit. I was ready for the slap when it came but it still hurt: an explosion of pain across my cheek and the taste of blood in my mouth.
I could fight him. I would fight him. But I wouldn’t be able to do it forever. I was going to experience what Boone had: torture designed to break my mind, just in a different way. And when he won, I’d be his until the day I died. I couldn’t think of anything worse.
The 4x4s left the road, drove down a ramp and came to a stop on a deserted beach. Our driver left the headlights on, pointing out into the roiling black waters like searchlights. Looking across at the other 4x4, I could see the marshals in the back seat. Phillips was grinning, no doubt looking forward to his reward and the start of his new life in Russia. But Hennessey looked as grim as I felt. He’d been a prisoner all along...but now that Weiss had lost his leverage over him, the others had been keeping an even closer eye on him. And now that we’d made it through Nome and away from any cops, he was expendable.
He knew he was never going to see Megan again.
The mercenary who was driving muttered into his radio, then turned around. “Five minutes.”
Five minutes. And then I’d be Weiss’s forever.
60
Boone
It was a long time since I’d driven a car. My cabin was only accessible by foot: I’d had to haul everything I needed there on my back, or on a sled in the winter. And be
tween the rough terrain and the rogue wheel, it wasn’t a gentle re-introduction.
But he had Kate. So I used forest paths like they were highways and forged foot-deep streams like they were puddles. Twice, cutting across steep slopes, I felt the car tip sickeningly to one side and had to throw my weight the other way to prevent us rolling over.
But it worked. Dawn was still a way off when I saw the lights of Nome ahead of me.
Immediately, the thing inside me stirred. There were police there. They’d cuff me. Stuff me in the back of a car behind steel mesh. Then a tiny cell with a high, barred window. The fear fed on itself: I was scared of being imprisoned but I was more scared of what would happen next: losing myself in that darkness and locking down completely, becoming a prisoner in my own mind. My foot eased off the gas and we rolled to a halt….
He has Kate.
My foot slammed on the gas and we roared off again, entering the town.
A brutal wind was lashing the buildings: one of those real paint-stripping gales that you only get on the coast. When I pulled up in front of the church and opened my door, the wind almost pulled it out of my hand. I picked up Megan in her bundle of blankets, hugged her to my chest to shield her from the gusts and carried her to the door, then hammered on it.
It was a few minutes before the preacher answered, his white hair disheveled and a bathrobe wrapped around him. His eyes widened when he saw my military fatigues and my camo paint-streaked face.
I gently pushed Megan into his arms. “Take her to the police,” I told him. “Her name is Megan. They’re looking for her.”
He blinked and then nodded. I knew I was probably putting the cops right on my tail, but what else could I do: leave her in a damn doorway? I had to make sure she was safe.
“Mr. Mason?” I was halfway back to the 4x4 but Megan’s voice made me turn. She looked at me through tangled blonde curls. “Please save Agent Kate.”
I nodded and ran for the 4x4.
The wind had shaped the ocean into a heaving, angry mass. Clouds were across the moon and you could barely see where the night ended and the water began: it was just a thundering black void that would smash anything crazy enough to enter it. The one advantage was that, between the early hour and the weather, the streets were empty. That would make finding them easier—
My stomach knotted. Unless they’d already left. I had no idea how fast they’d made it here. They could have got on their boat an hour ago for all I knew. If that was the case, I’d never see Kate again.
I stamped on the gas, making a fast circuit of the town. I checked the harbor first but couldn’t see the 4x4s. But there were plenty of small bays where you could land a boat. I passed one after another, all of them empty—
There!
One of the 4x4s had its lights on, acting as beacons for the small launch that was being tossed about by the sea. The mercenaries, their black fatigues making them almost invisible, were just running out to help pull it ashore. I’m in time!
I stopped the car before they heard my engine, grabbed my bag and started to creep towards the beach. They were armed and I wasn’t, but they weren’t expecting trouble. If I was lucky, I could jump one of them and get his gun….
“Hold it!”
I was so surprised, I whirled around. Very nearly the last thing I did, because the gun pointing at my head twitched and nearly went off. “Freeze!”
Oh shit. Oh God, not now….
A cop car had pulled in right behind my 4x4, no siren and lights off. I hadn’t heard their engine over the wind. They’d probably picked me up as I sped around town in a smashed-up car. Two cops were leaning over their open doors, guns pointed, one muttering into his radio.
I swallowed and tried to speak calmly. But I was a big guy in black military gear, jacked up on adrenaline and my voice came out as a growl. “You don’t understand. I gotta go.”
Their guns twitched nervously. “You’re not going anywhere.”
I checked behind me. The launch was on the beach and—my heart lifted for a second as I saw Kate get out of the 4x4, Weiss pushing her from behind. She’s alive! But in another few minutes, she’d be gone. “The boat. There’s an FBI agent—”
The first cop had been listening to his radio. He suddenly cut me off. “Jesus, it is him! The one who escaped! GET DOWN ON THE GROUND!”
Oh no…the station must have been reading him a description of me. I checked over my shoulder. Kate was getting into the boat.
I sank to my knees because, if I didn’t, they were liable to shoot me. Immediately, I was back in that basement, kneeling beside the radiator as they chained me to put me in the hole. I could feel the thing inside me uncoiling, rising up to claim me. I couldn’t breathe. “Please,” I groaned. “Take me in, but just stop that boat!”
The cops ignored me. “FACE DOWN ON THE GROUND!”
I lay down, hands behind my back, craning over my shoulder. The last thing I saw was the boat being pushed out into the surf and the mercs jumping aboard.
Then a knee was in my back and the cuffs were going on. Steel closed around my wrists and I felt the thing inside me rise to claim me.
61
Kate
“Jesus!” yelled Weiss over the wind.
For a second, we were airborne. Then we slammed down into the trough of the next wave and the shock went up through the hard bench seat, compressed every disc of my spine and slammed my teeth together so hard I heard it.
“Can’t the yacht come any closer?!” yelled Weiss. “I’m getting fucking bruised!”
The lead mercenary turned around and glared at him. “Three nights ago, when we should have crossed? Smooth as glass. Boat has to stay far out or coast guard interfere.”
Weiss grumbled but went quiet. His arm was around my waist and that chilled me even more than the fierce wind and spray. But I didn’t dare try to push him away. It would only take one shove from Weiss and I’d be overboard...and in the freezing waters, I’d be dead long before I could swim to shore.
Already, the lights of Nome were almost out of sight behind us. It was just black in every direction. I couldn’t understand how the pilot could see: then he turned and I glimpsed the night vision goggles on his face.
At last, the boat slowed. I still couldn’t see anything ahead. Then, looming out of the darkness, the prow of a yacht, all its lights off. It would be invisible from the shore.
A rope was thrown and the launch tied up. Then, one by one, they helped us aboard. The two marshals were led off down a companionway but I was pushed forward by Weiss, onto the bridge. A man in a suit stood there, his heavy body stretching the fabric. He turned to us—
I recognized the face and the carefully-coiffed blond hair immediately. Dmitri Ralavich. He’d taken over the running of half of St. Petersburg’s underworld from his father. I knew him because he’d been trying to expand his network of brothels and dealers into the US. He’d been ugly even before some rival Mafioso had beat him half to death. Now, his fat face was a wreck.
“Mr. Weiss,” he grinned, and embraced him. “Three days late,” he said, mock-sternly.
Weiss scowled at the mercenaries. “Your men will be compensated.”
Ralavich waved it away as if it wasn’t even a thing. The fact that he’d come out here personally spoke volumes about how much Weiss must be paying him to help him disappear. Ten million? Twenty? That was nothing to Weiss, but it would fund a big, aggressive push into the US by Ralavich. I felt sick. I’d heard what went on in Ralavich’s brothels.
“And you come to us considerably richer,” said Ralavich. I realized he was pointing at me. He grinned: it was as if he was trying to be charming, but he’d learned it from a book. There was absolutely no warmth in his piggy eyes, just ugly, twisted lust. “Is she a girlfriend? Someone you couldn’t leave behind?”
“Kate is an FBI agent,” said Weiss.
Immediately, Ralavich’s expression changed. The lust didn’t diminish: it doubled. “I may need a little extra m
oney, when we dock. You understand: two people, instead of one.”
Two? Not four?
Weiss looked at me and grinned, reading my expression. “We don’t need the marshals anymore.”
My stomach twisted. I’d suspected as much but I’d been praying I was wrong. I had no love for Phillips but Hennessey was innocent: he’d been dragged into this against his will. Everyone was disposable, to Weiss. I would be, too, once he’d extracted all the pleasure he could from me.
Ralavich stepped closer to me and I took an automatic step back. He wasn’t as big as Boone and unlike Boone he ran to fat, but he was still intimidatingly tall and wide, especially next to me. “I could be persuaded to absorb the extra cost,” he said to Weiss. “If I could spend the crossing with her. I would love to make the acquaintance of an American federal agent.” He spat out the final three words as if they were sweet-tasting poison.
Oh Jesus, no. Ralavich was almost Weiss’s opposite: a big, thuggish criminal who’d risen to the top through luck and inheritance, not cunning. Both were evil but the idea of Ralavich’s fat hands gripping my throat, holding me down...that scared me just as much as Weiss’s planned torture.
I thought I was safe, though. Weiss was convinced I belonged to him. He wouldn’t let some other man touch me.
But as Weiss turned and grinned at me, my spine prickled. He wasn’t jealous, like a lover. He saw me as a possession. He’d loan me out just to prove his ownership.
I couldn’t help myself. I shook my head, begging him. Then I realized that my show of fear had sealed my fate. He’d do this because it terrified me.
“Why don’t you take her to a stateroom?” Weiss told Ralavich.
I turned and bolted from the room.
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