Locke and Key (Titan Book 12)

by Cristin Harber

  “She is…”

  Then why was she calling? This was too risky! They’d tried to make things work in person, and it had almost killed them all, and he was so close to bringing them together. She didn’t even know about that, but they had a plan, and that plan was to trust him to do right.

  “Alexander…” The way she said his name made him worry. “Could you—I don’t know how to word this… If I asked you to research something.” Taisia’s voice trailed again. “It might not sound safe, and you will want me to explain why, but I can’t.”

  His stomach bottomed out. Of course there was a reason for the middle-of-the-night phone call. His first worry was always their daughter, but that wasn’t it. “Please tell me if you’re putting yourself in danger.”

  Taisia’s hesitation was the answer. “A complication has arisen. I’m not sure how to put it into words, but I’m taking steps to fix it—”

  “On your own?” Panic fueled his skittering heart. If there was any chance that she could do anything as dangerous as he was doing, he had put a stop to it. “No. No.”

  “See, Alexander? This is why I can’t talk about specifics. I’m not even sure what I’m asking. I’m laying the foundation”—she gave a sad laugh—“almost quite literally. And when I figure out what it is that I need, you will be the first person that I turn to. I know that you will help me. I know that this will help us. Alexander, please. I’m letting you know I have no choice.”

  “Taisia, chyort.”

  “Please don’t curse—I miss you. I miss you, I miss you, and if my hand wasn’t forced…”

  Tears slid down his face. “I miss you both.”

  “I love you,” Taisia said. “We love you.”

  “I love you and Alyona too.”

  But as good as it felt to hear her, as much as he wanted this, he wanted her safe and taking care of their daughter more than any selfish need.

  “Alexander…”

  “No. We can’t argue again.” Not after the other night when she cried over the phone and he had to cancel a meeting with her father. It had ruined plans for that night and forced other plans to happen. “We have to stick to our plan. Let me do what I need to.”

  She hissed her disproval in the phone. “I know what you’re doing.”

  “You do not.” And now his plan had to work faster than she could do whatever she was up to and get herself killed. “But it will work. I promise.”

  “There has to be a different way. For both of us.”

  “We’ve been saying that for years.” Even though no one around would hear him and he wasn’t waking up his mother, he needed to control his emotions for no other reason than not to worry Taisia. She’d panicked and was taking actions into her own hands. That couldn’t happen! “You have to trust me on this.”

  “Don’t do it, Alexander,” she pleaded. “There are other ways, and the risk is too much. Let me do what I need to, and—”

  “We have come up with nothing over the years. We couldn’t see each other before. And Alyona? I just want to see my daughter! I can’t go on like this. I’ll do whatever it takes to get to you and her, and if that means doing this, I’ve seen much worse happen.”

  “We are not those people! You have never been. When we were young and surrounded by all of them, all of the time…”

  “Times change, Taisia.”

  “You were different, and that is why I love you.”

  “No, you love me because I promised you a family. To love you like our fathers didn’t know how.”

  Taisia sniffled. “I know, I know… family chooses family. But you don’t know how it is here. I’m not choosing my father, his hatred or disgusting choices…” Her shaking breath tore his soul. “I will fix what’s wrong here, and I choose you.”

  “Taisia, what are you talking about?”

  “We choose you. That’s all that matters.”

  His head dropped when he could tell that the call had ended. Whatever she was up to, he would get to her first. The Mikhailovs were too dangerous for her to fight alone.

  “Ya veryu v tebya, Taisia.” He put the phone next to him in bed in case she called back, repeating, “I believe in you, Taisia.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  The screen showed that forty-seven of Alexander’s AP students had used the download link and given him a portal to their home networks within the last two weeks. He scrolled through their files, focusing on the students whose families the FSB were interested in.

  The priority list contained five students. If he could get into their parents’ cell phones, Alex could wrap this job, trade the intel for Taisia and Alyona, and call it a day.

  The plan was easy: parent-teacher conferences. They were coming up, and everyone hated them, especially parents whose schedulers made arrangements for such inconveniences. But he’d already notified parents that the in-person meetings were off. They might as well have dubbed him a saint. The suggestion to use the online and teleconference resources was met with huge approval. Even the principal told other teachers to look at Alexander’s program.

  He tried not to feel like a braggadocio. His plan was for his family, not career advancement. As his fingers flew over the keyboard, he knew there was enough information in his hands or on the way for Ivan and the FSB to be very happy.

  An email came on-screen. The subject line used Ivan’s code word that requested Alexander to meet a Mikhailov flunkie. Perfect timing. He could now confirm everyone on his list, including parents who worked at the IMF, the United Nations, senate leadership, and the two front-runners for the White House.

  Alex stood up, grabbed his wallet and his keys, threw his cell phone into his back pocket, and shouted up the stairs, “Hey, Mama. Do you need anything?”

  “No, are you going out?” Her weak question tilted downward.

  Mom’s frailty killed him, and he cringed. Tanya would have to step up when he left for Taisia and Alyona. He jogged up the stairs halfway to continue the conversation. “I’ll be back in a few hours. Go to bed.”

  “Okay, Alexander. Don’t stay out too late. I’ll wait up for you and your sister.”

  “Tanya…” She was never there. “She’ll be home late too.”

  His eyes sank shut. He couldn’t handle the responsibility of his mother’s dementia that night. More and more, she was lost in the past and unable to complete basic tasks—the woman who’d taught him how to grift!

  Tanya didn’t believe Alexander when he said Mama couldn’t remember their past, how they grew up, the crimes, the hunger, the cigarettes, the booze. His sister wouldn’t come, not with her kids. She didn’t want them exposed to the life they’d abandoned.

  Maybe Mama would fall asleep waiting for her husband. Alexander cringed, holding on to that hope and disgust he felt for his parents’ never-ending affection for one another. Maybe that was devotion. He thought about Taisia—so different yet similar.

  He could never understand the relationship between his parents, but they had some sort of love. They were partners, and maybe once upon a time they’d been in love. Finances and hardship and life had made them drunk and criminal. Now Mama was just an old lady with dementia, no husband, and false memories of a nice family life.

  “Take care, Mom. Everything will be okay.”

  Come hell or high water, come traitors or treason, come whatever obstacle he ran into, Alexander would make everything all right. Eventually.

  ***

  Alexander pulled into the parking lot as the cell phone rang, and the Russian number caught him off guard again. His pulse jumped. “Hello?”

  “Alexander, it’s me again.” Taisia’s voice set his heart soaring.

  He threw his car into park. “Is everything okay now?” One phone call on top of another was extremely risky, and he was apprehensive about what she wasn’t telling him, and she was concerned enough to use burner phones or a new phone number every time.

  “It’s fine.”

  He paused. “Tell me the truth. Wha
t else is happening?”

  Taisia let out a small sigh that stabbed him in the gut. More was happening. Even if she used a throwaway phone, that sound meant she probably wouldn’t tell him what it was.

  “Is our daughter okay?” Alexander bit his fingernail, worry eating at his mind.

  She didn’t respond.

  “Taisia, the truth!”

  “Yes, yes. I take care of Alyona; she has more security than you can ever imagine. But the family business has expanded, Alexander.”

  “Meaning?”

  Again, another breath, this one worn and weighted. “There are women. Girls. All ages.”

  “I’m sorry?” Alexander tried to understand. Girls?

  “They’ve even talked about young ones. Girls not too much older than Alyona, and I have to stop it. I can. I am…”

  Girls. Like Ivan had at the club. A new business venture. The information that Ivan wanted from the US… If he was pulling women and girls from various countries, he would likely need to cover his tracks, and blackmail was the most efficient way to get around bureaucracy.

  Nausea ran through him. But maybe he was making this a bigger thing than it was. Maybe the two things weren’t connected—Ivan needing access to intelligence, and this new business. At home, the Russians had always had their fingers in petty crime, alcohol, drugs, gambling, you name it. But never prostitution and pedophilia. Prostitution existed, but he hadn’t seen it. His mind reeled. “Is our daughter safe?”

  “Yes, but others aren’t. I can’t allow that.”

  He couldn’t either. “Damn.”

  “It’s… sick,” she mumbled.

  Taisia’s words repeated in his mind. I can. I am. Maybe this was wrong. He’d heard incorrectly. “How are you involved?”

  “It’s complicated. Father has me… working—”

  “What?” Alexander exploded.

  “No! Not in that manner! But what you might call management. And I think this is a way that I can stop this.”

  “Wait, one thing at a time.” Alexander’s molars gnashed together with a force that could break his jaw. “That son of a bitch.”

  “I didn’t think he had something like this in him. The greed, though. Always the greed. You know, living like we do, I have no choice.”

  Alexander cringed. He couldn’t have failed as a man and father more than right at that moment.

  “But I can’t let it go on. I can stop it,” she whispered so faintly he was sure he misheard.

  “What? How?” Alexander shook his head. He couldn’t not help those girls. But yes, he could. If it kept his girls safe, he’d man the hell up and say no. His stomach turned. He wasn’t sure there was a right decision. Maybe he’d misunderstood. “What are you talking about?”

  “I can help them,” she said. “I told you I needed research. If we can get them off the property—”

  “Then what?” he spat out. “You’re going to hide a couple of girls in your closet? You’ll feed and clothe and house grown women in your part of the Mikhailov complex? Think it through. Your father will kill you!” This escalated everything. He needed to go there immediately and bring them home.

  “Someone came and got them!” she cried. “There must be people missing these girls.”

  He dropped his head back. “Taisia… the world isn’t perfect. God, I love you. But there’s not always someone to save them.”

  “What if there is?”

  “What if there isn’t.” He broke down. “You’re going to risk your life—and our daughter’s—to help people you don’t know?”

  “Alexander Gaev! You fell in love with a woman you weren’t supposed to! I was a death sentence! I was someone you didn’t know, and still, you stayed by my side all these years.”

  He crumbled on the inside. God, he knew that and loved her anyway. “You do whatever it takes to stay safe. I am coming for you.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The plastic beach toys lay on the expensive handmade comforter. Taisia’s heart rate had finally reached a baseline in which she could glance at any of her makeshift tools and not have a panic attack.

  Alyona dressed quietly in her nearby bedroom with the radio playing in the background as Taisia questioned everything about her skills as a mother. They were lying to everyone they knew. But everyone who lived and worked on the Mikhailov complex functioned at some level of complicity. They were all on payroll and following orders. Some were even dedicated to keeping her safe and protected.

  Taisia and Alyona had had the same bodyguards for years, and lying to them was an act of betrayal. The thought stabbed at her, but she shook it off, trying to ignore the disloyalty that clouded her judgment and made it all confusing. Given a simple nod from her father, the men who’d protected her for decades would turn on Taisia and her daughter. One order, and she and Alyona would be dead.

  Add that to the long list of reasons for leaving. Humans couldn’t be for purchase. The new prostitution and pedophilia ring was the final straw. There were too many things she’d ignored with a blind eye, and she could wage war internally about that for the rest of her life. The criminal and government worlds had never before affected her, a protected Russian princess living a lavish lifestyle in a beautiful prison.

  Alyona walked in, her hazel eyes—just like her daddy’s—dropping to the beach toys on the bedspread, and in English, which they always practiced, asked, “Are we going to work on the door?”

  Taisia’s pride grew. “We are.”

  Alyona wouldn’t be able to comprehend how women and girls could be for sale. There were children arriving soon, according to her father, who were only a few years older than her daughter, and Taisia would save them first. She’d kill any man who got near them, be it an accident or full-fledged murder. She would save all of them, starting with the youngest ones. They would go out the door that she and Alyona were tearing open.

  The antiquated Mikhailov compound was steeped in their history, passed from generation to generation. The rich architecture of each mansion on their property towered, facing one another across a courtyard. There was much history between the great houses on the property. But to build dynasties like this meant there were people in pain, being abused, and in servitude, particularly to her family.

  And when there was tyranny and a destructive wielding of power, there would always be resistance—even if the Mikhailovs couldn’t see it. Except that she was Taisia Mikhailov, and she was there to bring it down from the inside.

  Taisia had heard the rumors of the secret passageways between the houses. There were the paths that everyone used and knew about—Russian winters required it—but her mother, whom her father had killed early in her life, had told her there were other pathways as well.

  She and Alyona had found one. That was all they needed, though there were probably far more than she could imagine. The passage had been cordoned off, probably many decades earlier, but the barrier was made of what could only be described as a papier-mâché-drywall material. It wasn’t guarded anymore. That was how Taisia would get the girls out of the main house, though she still had no idea where they would go next. Still, the first step would be to remove the barrier.

  She and Alyona had started digging, tearing, kicking, clawing to break down the barrier the moment she found it. Their smuggled tools were silly—kitchen knives and now beach toys. The bodyguards had to wonder what game they were playing. And the maids? Taisia had come up with interesting explanations for why their clothes came back dusty and dirty after she and Alyona had been playing in the house. No one followed them, and it was easy enough to fade away in ten thousand square feet. No one had reason to assume she was doing anything scandalous. They just let her be.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Jared had called the late Sunday meeting and now sat at the head of the table, taking in his team plus the reporter. Most eyes were on him with the occasional sideways glance at the newest addition, who stood at Locke’s side.

  “We’re waiting
for a couple of others,” Jared said, checking the time.

  A few of the team who hadn’t been in Russia had figured out that Cassidy was the cause of Locke’s issue last time they had all met in the war room, while others recognized her from the rescue mission a few weeks back.

  Brock, Delta Team’s leader, walked in, followed by Parker.

  “All right.” Jared clapped. “Now that we’re all here, if you don’t know Cassidy Noble, she’s the reporter we found in Russia.”

  Parker hovered by his seat and motioned toward the door. Damn it to hell. When Parker had that look, Jared got indigestion. Then Parker gave the same gut-churning glance to Rocco.

  Jared pointed at him. “You too.”

  Rocco hit his feet.

  “Everyone else, hang tight. We’ll be back in a motherfucking jiffy,” he grumbled and met Parker and Rocco in the hall.

  Parker gave them each a piece of paper, and Jared perused the list. “What am I looking at? This is what the Mikhailovs are shopping for?”

  “Affirmative,” Parker answered.

  “Why does it require me to leave… the…” Fuck.

  “Room,” Rocco finished. “How about that shit?”

  Jared stared at the high-dollar request for an American with dark-red hair, explicitly detailed as a “blue-red” redhead—natural only.

  “I know someone who looks like this,” Parker muttered.

  “We’re talking about Cassidy?” Rocco asked. All three were jumping to the same conclusion, though none of them would sell themselves as hair-color experts.

  “Yeah, I asked around to be sure.”

  “Who’d you ask?” Jared chewed the inside of his cheek.

  “I gave generic screenshots of redheads, including a couple of Cassidy, with their faces blurred, to Nicola, Beth, Mia, Marlena, Caterina—”

  “Basically”—Rocco leaned against the wall—“everyone who might know?”

  “Yeah. They picked the blue-red hair as Cassidy.”