Murder Aforethought
Page 6
Maksim took Emma precisely by her scrawny upper arms and kissed the top of her head. “I’ll be back as soon as possible,” he promised. “But in the meantime, I need my key back.”
“What!” she screamed.
The hairs on the back of Val’s neck rose. His chest grew tight.
He listened to Maksim’s soothing rumbles and the girl’s high-pitched whining, but it faded to background noise, like a radio playing in another room.
He’d thought the itch in his chest was anxiety, but his attention had been caught and drawn outward by something. What?
He turned his head, eyes unfocused, ears open.
There: a soft click from somewhere beyond the kitchen. There was nothing else to indicate something was amiss. Maybe it was a timer resetting. Maybe it was a lightbulb blowing.
Val’s gut heaved and his heart rate kicked into high gear.
He knew that click. Someone had entered the apartment.
He swiftly took up position to the side of the living room’s wide, arched entry. Maksim and Emma were still arguing.
“Hssst!” He hissed through his teeth. When Maksim glanced at him, he made a cutting motion across his throat and pointed toward the entry. Then he jerked his head at the couch.
Maksim went rigid. He didn’t waste a single breath trying to shut the girl up, he simply snatched her up and shoved her unceremoniously behind the couch.
“Ow! What the—”
There was a puff of breath and then a shadow that barely touched the corner of Val’s vision. But it was all the warning he needed.
He swung away from the wall and grabbed the gun hand the intruder was leading with, using his momentum to slam the man’s arm against the wall.
The intruder was tall and scrawny, but he had a solid grip on a Glock 19 with a long silencer on the barrel. He threw all his weight behind his shoulder and rammed it into Val’s chest.
Pain blossomed like black flowers behind Val’s eyes, and the breath whooshed out of his lungs.
He stumbled back a step, but he didn’t let go, using brute strength to force the gun away when it began to swing around.
The hitman’s finger squeezed the trigger, and a hushed, percussive thwock hit the sofa Emma had been curled up in earlier.
Emma screamed.
Val spun them so the muzzle was facing away from the duo sheltered behind the couch.
The gunman rammed him back against the wall and punched him hard in the left kidney.
Val grunted. Agony sheared up his torso like another bullet wound, and fuzzy white spots clouded his vision. His fingers began to slip on the man’s sweaty wrist.
Desperately, he turned his body into his attacker and brought his elbow up to break his nose. Blood gushed. The man yelled. Val brought his knee up and cracked the gunman’s wrist down against it.
He pried the gun from fingers gone slack, stepped back, and kicked the man hard across the jaw with the heel of his boot.
The gunman dropped like a bag of sand.
Val’s chest heaved as he brought the Glock up for a quick headshot.
“Val, no!” Maksim yelled. He lurched around the couch. “We can use him to—”
Pop! A bullet flew past Val’s ear.
He didn’t think. He dove into Maksim, knocking him ass over teakettle behind the couch, and crashed on top of him as three more shots impacted the windows.
7
Maksim
Emma was shrieking.
Maksim folded an arm over her huddled form and drew her as far beneath him as he could manage, but he was fighting against the lead weight on top of him as Val smashed his face into the carpet.
He heard the percussion of shots, but they were much quieter than they’d been at the police station. How many were there?
The weight on top of him eased as Val raised himself up, aimed, and fired with one smooth motion. There was a low grunt and then a thud.
Someone had just been killed in his home.
“Jesus,” he breathed.
He’d thought he was taking the threat seriously, but he realized now how wrong he’d been. He hadn’t believed people would specifically come after him, no matter Val’s insistence. It had seemed far more likely that he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and whoever was after Val took a shot at him just to be safe. Danger had felt possible but not imminent. It did now.
Val yanked both him and Emma onto their feet. His face was bathed in perspiration, and he was breathing hard. The left side of his sweatshirt was soaked dark purple.
“We’re boxed in,” he panted. “We’ve got to get out of here before anyone else comes through the door. Stay behind me.”
Maksim grabbed Emma’s hand so hard he felt her knuckles grind together, but she’d gone silent. She was trembling as she glued herself to his side.
Val strode past the two bodies on Maksim’s living room carpet, not even breaking stride when he lifted his weapon and put a single slug into the head of the gunman he’d previously stunned.
Maksim twitched at the sound but said nothing.
Val gestured for them to wait and walked briskly down the hall with his gun in a ready position. It looked strange to Maksim. In movies, they always crept. But creeping slowly down a narrow shooting gallery with no cover didn’t make much sense.
When he got to the archway that led to the kitchen and entry, Val stopped and peered around the corner. He flicked a couple fingers in a gesture for them to follow. Then he repeated the process at the front door.
They were halfway to the elevator when both their gazes locked on the moving numbers above the elevator doors.
“Are there emergency stairs?” Val growled.
“Yes.”
“Then run!”
The doors pinged and began to open. Maksim didn’t understand how Val was so sure it was a criminal, and not a neighbor, departing the elevator. But he must have been certain, because he aimed and fired as soon as the doors opened.
A spark flew off the sliding doors at the level of an adult’s head. Another shot sounded, but this one sounded different, like return fire. Val fired again, just to keep whoever it was inside the elevator, before taking off after Maksim.
Maksim pushed Emma ahead of him, shielding her with his body, well aware there was a young man behind them doing the same for him.
He catalogued the exchange of several shots. With each one, he expected to feel a burst of pain or hear Val go down behind him, but they just kept running.
They hit the emergency exit hard, punching through the door and into the stairwell.
Val glanced around wildly. “You head… down,” he rasped. “I’m going up a level.”
“Why?”
Val was already taking the stairs two at a time, so Maksim pulled Emma in the opposite direction.
“They’ll have a better chance hitting us aiming down than I will aiming up!”
Maksim was reminded of a story his mother used to tell him when he was a child and they had first left Ukraine. It was an old story from the bible, the story of Lot’s wife, who turned to a pillar of salt when she looked behind her.
Don’t look back, sweet child, his mother would say. There is nothing behind us. Everything is in front of us now.
He felt like Lot’s wife just then, as if glancing behind would draw a bullet straight toward them like a magnet. He propelled Emma along, praying she didn’t break an ankle, but praying even harder that her head didn’t suddenly explode.
Shots rang out. He flinched.
Nothing.
The thud of something landing hard echoed through the stairwell, and suddenly Val was at their side again. He must have flown down those stairs to get to them so quickly.
He scooped Emma up and tossed her over his shoulder, taking the stairs at a dangerous pace that Maksim struggled to maintain without breaking his neck.
“I can walk!” Emma’s yell was muffled in the back of Val’s sweatshirt. “Carry Maks if you want to be a hero!”
“Do you have a plan when we get to the street?” he huffed.
“What… about any of this… gives you the idea that I have a plan?” Val snarled.
They had reached the bottom of the stairwell. Val dropped Emma unceremoniously to her feet.
The Glock was still in his right hand and aimed at the staircase above them, but Maksim doubted he’d be able to use it again. His arm was shaking. His breath rattled and snagged in his chest and his sweatshirt was sopping. He had his legs braced as if he thought his knees might buckle.
“In that case—” Maksim caught him by the arm. He could feel tremors even through the thick cotton. “—you should take Emma to the restaurant across the street while I find us a car.”
“Oh, that will work!” Emma yelled sarcastically. “Nothing suspicious about a bleeding gunman dragging a teenage girl around in the middle of a school day. Or do we want the cops?” She narrowed her eyes. “Do we want the cops? You wouldn’t be leaving town if you could just call them.”
“No cops,” Val gasped. “But… they’ll probably be here any minute. Your doorman… is probably dead. The next person through the lobby will call.”
“Okay. Out! Out!” Maksim grabbed both kids by the backs of their necks and shoved them out the emergency door. Rain pelted their faces. “Cut across the street. There’s a comic store behind that juice bar.”
“Uh, no offense, but what the hell good is that going to do, Batman?” Emma snarked.
“Shut up and move.”
As a group, they hustled across the street. An SUV slammed on its brakes and gave a long honk.
Val had his gun tucked out of sight in the folds of his sweatshirt. He kept casting backward glances at the apartment, checking for tails, most likely.
“Is it possible you got them all?”
“One left,” Val grated. “But if he doesn’t… want to die… he might have given up following… by himself.”
Maksim found it exceptional that a mafia hitman and former Recon Marine wasn’t more curious about where he was being led. It could speak to trust. But it was far more likely that Val was diverting every ounce of his willpower to not passing out.
His jeans were wet with blood now. Had he been hit again? Or was his previous injury worse than they’d thought?
They made it to a small parking lot tucked off a side alley behind the restaurant. To their left was a crumbling brick comic shop.
The nearest parking space had what Maksim was looking for: a rusted old '95 Honda Civic. It wasn’t locked. Junk cars usually weren’t. Not only was there rarely anything to steal inside them, whatever was inside usually cost less than replacing a busted window.
He yanked open the door and dropped to his knees.
“What are you…?”
Maksim removed a penknife from his pocket. He ripped off the ignition panel and craned his body under the wheel shaft.
His friend and colleague, Elliot Smith, had a partner who was a former car thief. He’d explained the process in detail once to a rapt audience of defense attorneys, while trying to explain why junkers got stolen more often than expensive new models.
The easiest are Hondas from the nineties, he’d explained with a beer in his hand. You just pop the panel, cross the wires, and bam.
Maksim had never expected to use the knowledge anywhere other than court. He held his breath, but after a moment of tinkering, the engine sputtered to life.
“Holy shit, Jason Bourne, where did you learn to hotwire cars?”
“Get in.” Maksim slid behind the wheel.
Val yanked open the rear door and shoved Emma inside before collapsing heavily onto the seat beside her. Emma had to stretch across his heaving chest to shut the door.
It took a supreme act of will for Maksim to ease the car slowly into the flow of traffic. His hands shook from adrenalin as he flipped his turn signal, and he wasn’t able to take his first full breath until they were creeping along, lost in a stream of vehicles.
He strained to keep his voice mild when he asked, “Where are we going?”
“Get you… to the airport,” Val wheezed. He closed his eyes, head thunking back against the headrest. “Take the girl with you.”
“You don’t look so good,” Emma said nervously.
“I’m fine.”
Maksim glanced at the young man in his rearview mirror. His complexion was as gray as his sweatshirt. One hand was clamped feebly against his injury.
His pale eyes rose and met Maksim’s in the mirror’s reflection. Perhaps he could see the direction of Maksim’s thoughts, because he shook his head faintly.
Maksim diverted his attention back to the road and waited.
It took less time than he expected before Emma exclaimed in panic, “I think he passed out!”
Maksim grimly flipped his turn signal, gunned the engine, and abruptly entered the highway.
“He needs a hospital!”
“Yes,” he said, yanking his cell phone out of his pocket. “He does.”
8
Maksim
“The Lazy Daze Inn is a step down from your usual style, amigo.”
Miguel Acosta plunked himself down in the chair beside Val’s bed and began unpacking the duffel bag at his feet. “My, how the mighty have fallen.”
Val lay still as stone atop the sheets. After Maksim had gotten them to the first hole-in-the-wall motel he could find, he’d dragged Val’s dead weight into the room while Emma stripped the bed and shoved wads of clean towels against his wound.
Then she sat on the second bed, buried her face in her hands, and cried.
Maksim wanted to go to her, but his attention had been focused on holding in whatever blood was left in Val’s body.
Even now that Miguel had arrived, he found it difficult to move from Val’s side. He sat by his head with one hand buried in his thick black hair.
“Your commentary is not required, Miguel,” he said, but he was too tired to put the typical pomposity in it.
His colleague set a plastic basin on the end table and filled it with a pink liquid. Then he cracked open a sterile wrapper and draped a small white sheet over his beefy thighs.
Emma edged over to them and hovered at Miguel’s shoulder, waiting to be helpful. He’d already politely declined her offer of help, but she wasn’t giving up. Maksim suspected it had more to do with Miguel’s swarthy good looks and rock hard biceps than any desire to play Florence Nightingale.
Miguel was one of the full-time bleeding hearts at the CLC, and he was one of the few people who didn’t take offense at Maksim’s arrogance. Despite being a former medic for a PPB SWAT team, he was the most cheerful and easygoing man Maksim had ever known.
They rarely socialized outside of work functions, but he was probably the closest thing Maksim had to a friend. He was someone to call when Maksim had no other choice, and he’d only just realized it.
Miguel held up a finger as he finished checking Val’s blood pressure. Hadn’t he just checked it five minutes ago? Why did he need to check it again? Had it changed?
When he finished, Miguel tugged the stethoscope from his ears and said, “When Maksim Kovalenko, the Scrooge McDuck of the legal world, calls me for a favor? It’s worth commenting on. So, who is he?”
“Shouldn’t you be paying attention to what you’re doing?” Maksim watched with narrowed eyes as Miguel spiked a bag of saline and unwound the IV tubing.
Miguel snorted.
“Please. The last IV I did was on myself the morning after my sister’s quinceanera. Best hangover cure there is. I could do one in my sleep.”
He tied an expert tourniquet around Val’s arm, tapped a vein, cleaned the skin, and swiftly jabbed him with a large-bore needle.
&nbs
p; Val didn’t flinch. He was dead to the world.
“Start talking, Kovalenko. I take it this guy’s in trouble, or he’d be at a hospital right now. You don’t have friends, so… he one of your clients?”
“Yes.” There would be no avoiding the question. Miguel was laidback, but he was sharp as a knife blade. “I believe he’s innocent of the charges, however.”
Miguel took a syringe as big as his wrist from a sterile package and Maksim tensed. “What the hell is that for?”
“Relax.” Miguel looked startled. “I need it to irrigate the wound.”
Maksim forced himself to take a deep breath. He stroked the soft, dark hair away from Val’s forehead.
Miguel froze with the syringe half full of pink liquid and gave him a funny look.
“What?”
He shook his head and began squirting disinfectant into the gash at Val’s side. It was deeper than it had looked in the shoddy fluorescent light of the laundromat.
Maksim couldn’t help but wince at the ragged flesh and the blood that once more ran freely as Miguel cleansed the wound.
“So why are you cloistered in this shithole if you got the charges dropped?”
“He wasn’t formally charged. But that doesn’t matter to whoever the killer actually is. He shot at us the second we stepped out of Central this morning.”
“Your guy know something?”
“More than he’s saying. But I believe what he’s told me so far.”
“I guess if the human lie detector says so, it must be true.” Miguel tied a thread to a needle that looked like a large fishhook. “Strictly speaking, this is against my scope of practice, you understand.”
“I promise not to sue you.”
“Har har.”
Emma moaned and covered her eyes as the needle punctured Val’s flesh. It dug exceptionally deep.
“He’ll scar like a motherfucker,” Miguel announced. “Can’t be helped. I’m no surgeon.”
“Just keep him alive.”
Miguel worked quietly while Emma whimpered. Then he said, “Whoever shot him must have eyes inside the department, huh? Any theories who it is?”