Adrenaline pumped into his blood. His mind shifted gears. Nathan drew his gun and ducked to the ground. Squatting behind the bushes, he eyed the entrance to the property. The safe house had been specifically chosen for its remoteness and access route, one way in and out. The car creeping up the drive was not there by accident.
Nathan watched as the vehicle turned into the unpaved driveway. He tracked the progress of the dark sedan from the shadows as it purred its way around the side, toward the back. The driver pulled to a stop and cut the engine just short of the house. Nathan stealthily shifted his position so he had a full view of the car. The driver sat motionless, head turned toward the house.
After a few minutes, the driver stepped out, shutting the door quietly. He walked casually toward the house, empty handed. Nathan moved along the tree line and kept the driver in his crosshairs, covering his approach to the back of the house. Turn away, man. You don’t want to go there. Nathan watched closely as the man stepped up onto the porch and scrutinized the door.
Suddenly, the porch lit up and the door opened. Bauer stood on the threshold dressed only in jeans, the gauze and sling around his arm stark white in the glare of the harsh light. The two men studied each other and exchanged words, their voices too low to be overheard. Nathan stifled a curse when Bauer stepped aside and gestured for the man to enter. Shit! Nathan was pissed. Neither Cassandra nor Bauer had mentioned expecting visitors.
Nathan paced behind the trees, running a hand through his hair. He breathed in and looked up into the early morning sky, shaking his head. Those two lived dangerously. He watched the leaves on the trees flutter in the breeze and heard a rooster crow. Morning was fast approaching and exhaustion was pulling at him. With his temper under control, he turned back and stared at the house. There had to be a good reason for their unannounced guest to be there. Determined to find out what was going on, Nathan took a step toward the edge of the tree line.
The crunch of fallen twigs and the rustle of leaves jerked his attention to the opposite side of the property. Fading back into the bushes, Nathan crouched and watched the area. The sounds were spaced, soft snaps and scrapes at intervals. In the dim morning light, Nathan caught sight of a hunched-over figure darting across the yard to the parked sedan. The new visitor tested the handle and opened the passenger side. He gripped his SIG firmly as the figure slipped into the tree line, moving toward Nathan’s position as he edged around to the back of the house following the same path the earlier visitor had taken. Assuming it might be another unannounced guest, Nathan eased closer to the edge of the property and waited. If the intruder wasn’t a friendly, it would suit him just fine. He was itching for an outlet to relieve his pent-up frustration.
His jaw clenched and his shoulder muscles tightened when the figure moved only a few yards in front of him and the snap of the cocking of a gun pierced the air. That sound changed everything. While the first guest had been unarmed and looked like he was there for a casual visit, this one was geared for a first-person shooter game. Nathan had found his outlet.
Fate must have been on Nikol’s side. She had been scouring the streets, stalking known informant hidey-holes and questioning people about newly arrived faces in Vyborg. Summer was a busy season in the well-visited town. Tourists came and went and nobody really cared about one new face. She had been about to give up for the night when, by chance, she had caught sight of the familiar sedan driving past her on the street. She had pulled out behind it and followed it covertly out of town to the remote house.
Parking her car in the woods, she prowled in the cover of the trees and through the property to the sedan parked on the side of the house. A quick check confirmed that he was indeed in there.
Nikol sat on her haunches watching the back door. A slash of light lit up the window when someone peeked outside. She could almost hear the loud thumps of her heart in her chest. She could taste triumph. Excitement was a drug running free in her veins. Everything she needed to exact revenge once and for all was inside that house.
A chill curved its way along her spine and she snapped her head around, searching the dark woods behind her. She could have sworn she was being watched. Focus, Nikol. The bastard is dead. Not waiting around to jump you. She turned her attention back to the door. Now or never. She stood and cocked her HK. She sucked in and exhaled a deep breath as she left the shelter of the trees, running for the back of the house.
With a muttered curse, Nathan bolted from his cover, his gait stealthy and his gun clenched tightly in his hand as he ran all-out after the shadowy figure. He hit the porch at a leap and body-slammed the target into the house, pressing his forearm across the intruder’s neck. A loud breathless grunt burst from the intruder and the heavy gun slipped from his hand, falling with a loud thunk to the porch.
The man of slight build and some five inches shorter than him kicked back, slamming the heel of his boot into Nathan’s knee. Simultaneously, he twisted his body, throwing his elbow with a sharp jab, snapping Nathan’s head back and dropping him to his knees. Nathan hissed as pain radiated from his knee and merged with the throbbing pain at his temple.
Before he could catch his breath, a sharp blow hit the center of his chest and a yell spilled out as he sailed through the air off the porch, landing on his back with a loud thud, the impact popping his gun from his hand.
Stars spun in front of his eyes and nausea overtook him as he rolled to his side and rested on his elbow, sucking long drags of air into his constricted lungs. Fuck! Before he could take a second breath, the intruder, with catlike grace, jumped from the porch and kicked him a second time. Pain amplified in the middle of his chest as he fell to the ground. The imprint of his boot throbbed like a newly inked tattoo on his chest. Nathan growled in fury as he rolled to his knees and glanced up.
He had expected to see the face of a hardened criminal, but found instead the bruised face of an angel filled with the fury of the hounds of hell. His heart lurched and the shock of the vision in front of him left him dumbstruck. Before he could come to his senses, she backhanded him, knocking him sideways to the ground. Nathan groaned and wiped the blood from his mouth with the back of his hand, the coppery tang burning his tongue. While attempting to stand again, he ducked and missed the right hook aimed at his head, but he was too slow to avoid the toe of her boot. It snapped in a swift kick, catching him under the jaw and sending him flying backwards. His last thought as his eyes rolled into the back of his head and his body dropped like a log to the ground was, Fucking Valkyrie.
Chapter Fifty-One
Revelations
NIKOL STOOD OVER THE SPRAWLED body of her attacker, heaving with the exertion of the fight. In the soft light of dawn, she studied the man’s angular face, his aquiline nose, the well-defined lips, the cleft chin, and short haircut. She hadn’t been able to register the color of his eyes but, by his coloring, she assumed they were light. It was an attractive but unfamiliar face. Nobody she had seen in the mansion or among the many mug shots she had memorized. She committed his face to memory. The bastard was now another on her watch list.
The door flung open. “What the hell!” A woman’s curse filled the air and Nikol spun to find the dark muzzle of a pistol aimed at her forehead. The woman was barefoot and dressed in a button-down shirt, her dark hair a rumpled halo spilling around her shoulders. As the woman stepped closer to the edge of the porch, Nikol’s eyes darted to her Heckler & Koch lying by the door.
“Nuh uh…I wouldn’t if I were you,” the woman warned in English, a language Nikol understood well, as she stepped back and eased to a squat to retrieve the gun. Standing, she aimed both at Nikol.
“Cassandra!” Ivanov stormed up behind the woman and Kostas spilled out behind them. Ivanov pulled up short when he saw her. “You! How did you get here? Dmitriy! You better not have touched him.” The Russian words rolled smoothly off his tongue.
“Ivano—” She barely registered the growl which sounded behind her before a heavy crushing weight crashed int
o her back, dropping her face first to the wet grass. Her lungs labored in her chest and burned from the effort to breathe under the pressure of the tank sitting on top of her, pinning her. A low, deep voice snarled against her ear, “You’re going to pay for that.”
“Fuck, Nathan! What the hell are you doing?!” the woman Ivanov called Cassandra yelled at the monkey on her back. Her voice brimmed with concern and smoldering anger. Nikol felt a large strong hand tighten on her shoulder. “Back off, Nate! I have her covered!” Cassandra’s voice was low and hard.
Nikol gritted her teeth and bit back a groan when a hand fisted her ponytail and the back of her jacket, jerking her to her feet. A cry spilled from her lips when the man pushed her from behind and her knees collapsed against the hard edges of the porch steps.
Fury was a tight ball sitting in her chest. She hissed as she turned her head and spat at him, “You are going to pay for that.” The man’s light grassy-green eyes turned to stone and his hand balled into a fist at his side. Nikol raised her chin defiantly.
“Let her stand, Nelson,” Ivanov’s voice ordered. She glanced up to see both him and Cassandra with their guns trained on her.
With a backward glance, she pushed to her feet and eyed them warily. She watched as Ivanov tucked his gun at his waistband and rested his hand possessively at the woman’s lower back. Cassandra gestured at her with the flick of Nikol’s own HK muzzle. “Let’s take the party inside.”
As Nathan followed the group to the living room, his eyes touched on the ponytail swinging back and forth ahead of him and anger simmered hot—anger directed at the woman who had just handed him his ass on a platter. Nathan cracked his jaw. It still ached and his head still spun from the beating she so effortlessly delivered.
His eyes followed the lines of her long, lean athletic figure; he found himself admiring how she had handled herself. Her legs encased in dark jeans went for miles, ending with a tight curvy ass. Nathan shook his head and tried to gather his scattered wits. He wanted answers now. Who is the man? Who the hell is the Valkyrie? And why is it that everybody seems to know each other? “What the fuck is going on here?” Nathan’s voice, clipped and flippant, reflected his frustration. “Who the hell are these people?”
The older man stood to the side, his stance relaxed, eyes studying everything, mostly glued to the harpy.
“That’s Boris,” Cassandra answered with a narrowed look at the man.
“Boris who?”
“Well, now that is the question of the day. Who exactly are you Mr. Boris Kostas? Care to explain to us why I shouldn’t just shoot you where you stand for putting our lives in danger?”
“Cassandra…I do need to apologize for not telling you what you were getting into, but it was for the greater good,” Boris said sheepishly.
“Can someone explain in plain English what the fuck is going on?” Nathan growled.
Bauer joined him. “Ditto.”
The woman’s lips pressed into a thin line and her eyes narrowed on the man they were all scrutinizing. Nathan had seen the hatred in her eyes when she had directed it at him, but the look she was throwing at Boris defined the phrase “if looks could kill.”
He was pulled from his musings by Cassandra’s icy-cold voice. “I’d love to know what the fuck is going on, too. As for who Boris is, let me introduce you. Meet Special Agent Boris Kostas of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation.”
All heads snapped back to Boris and they all wore similar curious, confused expressions.
Nathan burst out, “Jeezus, Cass. How did you two get involved with an FSB agent, and why is he here?”
Trevor frowned and fought to grasp the implications of what was unfolding in front of him, specifically the look of shock that had briefly fluttered across Petrovna’s face on finding out that little detail. “Hold on a second! Cassie, when and how the hell did you find that out?”
Cassandra shot him a quick glance. “George dropped that little bomb right before all hell broke loose. When Jessie and I both came up empty, I asked for his help. I don’t have all the pieces yet. I know he’s FSB, but that’s about it.” She paused and studied Boris’s frowning face. “It took George a few days of digging. And you know George. If the info was easily available, he would have found it in no time flat. This was buried deeper than Jimmy Hoffa.”
Trevor snorted at her reference. “And why would that be?” Trevor continued to scrutinize Boris. His face displayed surprise. Interesting. Almost as if he hadn’t expected anyone would be able to uncover any information on him at all. But then, he probably had never encountered anyone like George before either. The man was one of a kind, his tenacity even made Trevor break out in a sweat.
Trevor’s attention slid to Petrovna and Nelson. Animosity pulsed in a thick wave between them. Petrovna sat in the corner of the couch with an arm resting casually on the armrest, the clenching and unclenching of her fist signaling her agitation as she glared sourly at Nelson. His expression was a mirror image of hers as he kept his gun trained on her. The two looked worse for wear, as if they had been put through a meat grinder. Petrovna’s gaze darted to Boris and hatred flared brighter. Boris himself stood near the hall entry, out of harm’s way, observing the two with a puzzled look in his face.
Trevor almost laughed at the entire comical scene. Five people stuck in a house in the middle of nowhere, ready to do one or more of each other harm. He eased himself next to Cassandra on the couch and got the party started. “Let’s start at the beginning, why don’t we? Boris, why didn’t you tell us about your associations? You would have gotten our full cooperation from day one if you had been up front.”
Trevor’s question dusted off memories of the days and emotions Boris had dealt with over the years. The many good things that he had forfeited for the sake of a job. A job that he believed was helping to improve his fellow countryman’s lives. “To be honest, I never expected I would need to tell you anything. I have been living undercover for a very long time.” Out of the corner of his eye he saw the woman’s head snap up, a deep crease furrowed her brow and disbelief clouded her narrowed eyes.
“Maybe far too long.” To give himself time to gather his thoughts, Boris took the chair across from them and addressed Cassandra. “It was shortly after I met your father. A KGB officer offered me a position after my performance during the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow and the US-Soviet peace talks in the mid-80’s. At the time, I saw no wrong in doing so. I was young, had no family, not many friends, and was dedicated to the service. My introduction to the organized crime unit was under total secrecy. No one was to know I worked for the KGB; otherwise, I would be of no use to the agency.”
Boris paused just long enough to catch his breath. “With the change of times, the collapse of the Soviet Estate, and dissolution of the KGB, my role was carried over to its successor organization, the FSK, and subsequently to the FSB. That is why even though Robert was a very dear friend of mine, I was unable to tell him about my new position or activities. I left the army under the guise of joining the police force to assume the façade of a corrupt officer. An easy assignment really, since corruption within the police is commonplace.”
Nikol sat as if turned to stone. Her eyes never left Boris’s face. She listened intently to his words and tried to make sense of the facts as he laid them out. Questions droned in her head. Everything that she had grown up believing, everything she had focused on her entire life, had been unraveled in just a single minute. She struggled to hold on to the cold mask covering her emotions—the surprise and shock stemming from Boris’s revelations.
Boris sighed deeply, drawing Nikol back from her internal struggle. “It is a sad reality when the population trusts more the mob than they do the police. During the time I was in the police force, I ran guns, passed on information, and cultivated a reputation—all legwork in preparation for the new role ahead of me: taking down the largest gang in St. Petersburg.”
“Zarev’s?” Trevor interrupted, and
Boris nodded. “How did you become involved with Mikhailov’s instead?”
“By chance.” Boris found himself reliving that memory. Tumbling once again in the turbulence that had bled from Mikhailov’s eyes that fateful day. “Mikhailov’s wife was murdered by a minor gang in retaliation for some wrongdoing committed by his men. He sought me out. He had heard about my access to the investigation reports and wanted information.” He closed his eyes and squeezed them tight to push that memory away.
“You flipped her killers. You gave him their names,” the woman said.
The intonations of that voice sent him spinning into another memory, the memory of someone who haunted his dreams each night. His eyes snapped open and his brow wrinkled with his contemptuous thoughts. He studied the woman and tried to understand the niggling that had pierced him each time he had seen her. Hearing her voice for the first time played with the edges of his perception, evading his efforts to pinpoint what it was about her that was so familiar to him.
“Yes. It haunts me to this day, but it was something that, at the time, I just viewed as poetic justice. They had killed an innocent woman. It was only fair that they were punished for that. With the information in hand, Vladimir delivered his justice swiftly. The men were never found, but we all knew they were no longer among the living. The gang in question disappeared from the mafia scene shortly after.”
Cassandra leaned forward. “Why us? Why did you use us to get the files? If what you say is true, you were in, friends at that point. Why not try to secure them yourself?”
“Vladimir is a very cautious man, even more so after his wife was killed. He doesn’t engage in lasting personal involvements, so we couldn’t bribe a lover to get the files for us. Although I have had a close association with him for years, he never allowed me into his inner circle until recently, and I never had access to his data storage. Your arrival was heaven-sent. I couldn’t ignore the fact that you were my ticket to those files.”
To Russia With Love (Countermeasure Series) Page 44