Partners
Page 18
She stealthily followed the route she had traveled before with Tony to the Don’s office. The way was clear until she got to the hall that led to the office. Before peeking her head around the corner, Kelly wiped her sweaty brow. She was surprised that she could still sweat because she was sure she had completely exhausted her sweat glands with her recently completed marathon. There were raised voices coming from the hallway. She heard Russian words that she did not understand, but she also heard a familiar voice yelling in English. It was Tony.
“Any of you Russian fucks sticks his head in here and I am gonna blast the goddamned thing off!”
“Yep, that’s Tony,” she muttered under her breath. Peering around the corner, she saw two men and one of them she recognized as Ivan. Suddenly, there was a pressure at the base of her skull.
“Get up,” Sergei Abramanov said with authority from behind her.
“This is why you should always have a partner, Kelly,” she muttered to herself as she got to her feet and rolled her eyes at the man with the gun behind her. He snatched the pistol from her hand and shoved her roughly into the hallway. “Watch it, asshole!”
Ivan and the other man had their attention pulled to Kelly and Sergei. “We have the assassin.” Ivan listened to his friend’s words and looked at Kelly quizzically.
“You’re the bitch from my club!” Kelly saw the arm come back and braced herself for the slap. Ivan connected on her jaw right below her ear and it stung like a son of a bitch. She had been hit harder, although she could not remember exactly when at that moment. Ordinarily, she would have ducked it or hit him back but she thought the better of it with a man pointing a gun at her back. She would take it for now, but she would remember it. “You and that other bitch tried to kill me!”
“No, Sonny tried to kill you, asshole,” Kelly spat back and wondered if there was going to be a bruise on her cheek. “I probably saved your life by taking her out of there.” She lightly touched her face with her cheek, feeling the throbbing sensation on her fingertips. “A decision that I’m really starting to regret.”
Ivan ground his teeth together and it appeared to Kelly that he was struggling to decide if he should shoot her or not. She willed her face to remain stoic, as if the thought of dying in the hallway did not bother her one bit. However, her insides were doing somersaults at the thought that this was how she was going to leave the land of the living. Unceremoniously executed in a mafia Don’s hallway during a gang war was not what she had hoped her obituary would say.
“You fucks have unleashed a shitstorm!” Tony’s shout exploded out of the office. “I’m gonna kill every last one of you fuckers!”
“We have your assassin!” Ivan shouted and then aggressively pointed his gun at Kelly. “Tell him.”
“I told you I’m not—” Ivan cut off her denial by shoving the barrel of his pistol into her sternum. Kelly exhaled hard through her nose; she was really starting to form a poor opinion of Ivan’s people skills. “Tony?” Kelly raised her voice as she kept her glare locked on Ivan’s eyes.
“Kels?” Tony’s tone changed from fury to surprise. “Is that you?”
“Yeah.”
“We’re coming in! You shoot, we kill her!” Ivan wasted no time in shoving Kelly into the office. His hand was on her shoulder as he used her as a human shield while his pistol dug into the base of her skull. Tony’s eyes went wide at the sight of her.
“Kelly? What the hell are you doing here?” Tony had blood on his light blue polo shirt and Kelly worried at first that he had been hit. Then she took in the whole scene of the office and saw Don Salvador lying still in a pool of blood near Tony’s feet.
Kelly shrugged. “I was in the neighborhood?”
“You shouldn’t be here, Kels.”
“Story of my life.”
Ivan’s men moved into the office behind him and their guns were all trained on Tony. “Is he dead?” Ivan nodded to the Don’s body. Tony looked at him with disgust, and Kelly knew that he would rip Ivan’s throat out with his bare hands if he could.
“Yeah.”
“Is this the assassin?”
“No, that’s Kelly. She’s a civilian. Let her go.”
Ivan laughed and Kelly noticed that all the gunshots outside had stopped. It was all over then. “She is no civilian. She was at my club with the other girl and they tried to kill me.”
Tony chuckled humorlessly and Kelly saw him gripping his pistol in his hand like he would crush it in his weathered and meaty hands. “She was sent to find Sonny Moretti, you asshole! You are as dumb as they say! We hired her to bring Moretti in! You understand, dumbass? All this shit is because you cocked everything up! We would have given you the assassin but you went batshit!”
Ivan was silent for a moment and Kelly assumed that his pea brain was processing the new information. “You know where she is now?”
Tony looked at Kelly and she saw a sadness in his eyes flash at her for a second before he hardened them back to Ivan. “No. The only person in the world who knows that is Kelly.” He nodded his head in her direction. Kelly’s anxiety skyrocketed as she began to understand what Tony was doing for her.
“Tony, no.” Her voice was a shaky whisper and he grinned sadly at her.
“It’s okay, Kels.” He took a deep breath. “You be good.”
Chapter Nineteen
“Then there’s no reason for me not to kill you.” Everything happened at once. Tony raised his gun to one of the men who stood on her right a few feet away. His pistol went off and the bullet struck the man in his chest. Ivan and the other man opened fire and hit Tony numerous times before the veteran gangster fell back and landed hard on the hardwood floor.
“Tony!” She felt sick and dizzy all at once as she watched him die.
“Check him.” Ivan’s man followed his order and examined Tony’s body. He nodded to Ivan. “Tie her up.” He shoved her into the other man’s arms. “We’re taking her to my father.”
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Sonny stopped pacing. Kelly was not coming back. Sonny had ordered her out and she had gone, so why on Earth would she come back? It was for the better. Now I can do what I had set out to do in the beginning and get back to normal. Normal was her life before Kelly King had stampeded her way into it with all the grace of a rabid bull. Chaos and Miss King seemed to go hand in hand, Sonny had observed from the brief period she had known the woman. But chaos was a quick way to the afterlife in Sonny’s line of work. Chaos was definitely something she did not need.
She began to ready herself to complete her objective, but while she assembled her gear, she could not help but notice how quiet the little safe house had become.
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Agent Timmerman watched with her arms folded across her chest as some of her agents checked the scene. They would keep the locals away as long as they could. If Moretti or King were here, she would get their remains out and make sure any evidence of their presence was removed. She thanked God that there were no civilian casualties involved in the mess she had found at the Salvatore estate. It was a shit show that was getting out of hand quickly. She did not imagine she would be granted much more latitude before all this blew up in her face and people came to the conclusion that getting Sonny Moretti was not worth the hassle.
“Well, I can tell you that your girl wasn’t here.” Trace had come up from behind her with her ever-present laptop in her arms. “I got the video from the surveillance cameras.” She turned her laptop so that Nancy could see the screen, multiple angles playing from around the compound. “There’s our boy Popov Jr. with King coming out of the house. She’s cuffed and they stuff her into this truck and then they all drive off.” After she finished her narration of the footage, she closed the laptop. “No Moretti. She wasn’t here.”
“Fuck
.”
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Kelly refused to let them see her cry. She was not about to give Ivan and his flunky the satisfaction. She did not want them to think she would waste one tear on her situation. They could not be allowed to believe that she was concerned about what was about to happen to her. Kelly was aware that she was probably on her way to her own death; she just hoped it was a quick one and not a torturous nightmare that the girl had endured, the girl whose face she could never forget. No, she was oddly calm about her fate. If she was going to die, so be it. If any tears fell from her eyes now, they would be for Tony.
He had told her to ‘be good’ right before he died and those words meant everything to her now. Tony had always appreciated the moral gray area that Kelly worked in when it came to what she did for the Don. Tony understood that deep down Kelly was no criminal; she did not have it in her to hurt someone for no good reason. Tony knew that Kelly was a person that still believed in justice and right and wrong. She might constantly beat herself down for the mistakes of her past, but Tony saw that she still had certain principles that she was not willing to betray. Kelly King had either run off or run from almost all of her friends, but she had considered Tony one, a good one. Now he had saved her life with his final action on Earth: he had lied to Ivan. Tony had known that the only way to keep Kelly alive, at least temporarily, was to insinuate that she knew where Sonny was.
Tony’s last action had bought her maybe an hour, she figured. Kelly knew where the safe house was, but she would be damned to Hell if she ever told them where it was. She was not going to betray her friend—friend?—that way. No matter what these assholes did to her.
Ivan was on his phone but he continued to give Kelly a death stare as if he felt the need to remind her that he was going to kill her. “What do you mean ‘all of them’? All of them have gone over to my father?!” It sounded like Ivan was getting some bad news over the phone.
Good.
“Well, if she won’t answer her phone, then go over there!” There was a vein starting to bulge on his neck and Kelly noticed his face was starting to flush. “Your job is what I tell you it is! Now do it!” He ended the call and was breathing hard as he continued his glare at her.
Kelly gave him an exaggerated pout, sticking out her bottom lip. “Things not going your way? Poor baby.” For a moment, she thought he would strike her again and this time she braced for it; he wouldn’t be catching her off guard again. Instead, he turned his attention to the driver.
“Change of plan, Sergei. Take me to my father’s.”
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Without any new information on Ivan’s whereabouts, Sonny decided that her best bet would be to go to the elder Popov and get the information from him. She knew that eventually she would have to eliminate Petrov after killing his son. She did not like leaving loose ends and she assumed Petrov did not either.
With her gear stowed in a pack on her back, dressed in her work outfit with her bulletproof vest, she donned her motorcycle helmet and climbed onto her bike. A grin spread underneath the helmet as a memory of Kelly speeding them away from Ivan’s club pushed its way into her mind’s eye. Kelly was a resourceful woman and had managed their escape even though she had been shot. In her cute little ass. Sonny recalled Kelly’s complaints with a chuckle.
Had she overreacted by ordering the ex-FBI agent out? Kelly King just did not understand why Sonny was so apprehensive about involving herself with Homeland Security. Agent King was comfortable with her life being controlled by others but Sonny was independent. Her life was her own, and she came and went as she pleased. To give all that up and become a mindless drone for the government to use as a weapon was unthinkable to her.
Sonny had also been hurt by Kelly calling her an ‘Ice Queen,’ but had the annoying redhead really been that far off with her characterization? Maybe it had hurt Sonny so much because it was so close to the truth. She had been isolated for so long that she did not really know how to behave around another person. What Kelly had seen as coldness was actually Sonny feeling shy and nervous around the woman.
She started the bike and the imported engine hummed to life. At the touch of a button, the garage door opened slowly and her bike rocketed out of the garage and down the street. In her mind, she tried to go over her plans and strategies, possible scenarios she might encounter at Popov’s. Weaving in and out of traffic, she tried her best to ignore the constant distraction that derailed her concentration. If she did not focus on her objective, then Kelly King would definitely be the death of her.
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“You called in a bomb threat?” Agent Timmerman was trying her best to control her anger at Trace as their caravan of government SUVs sped down the road. From the seat across from her, Trace shrugged her indifference.
“We needed the cops focused on the other side of town so we don’t have any snoops near Popov’s place when it gets all shooty.” Trace was not bothered in the least at the furious glare that Nancy was giving her. “You gave me a task and I completed it. Problem solved. Moving on.”
Agent Timmerman rubbed her temples and hoped that she would still have a job in the morning. “What about the 911 calls? Have you taken care of them?”
“Yup. Any calls from that area are routed to little ole me now. If the neighbors hear explosions and whatnot, I will be telling them that help is on the way. Hopefully, nobody has a real emergency while all this goes down though.”
It was just one more complication that Nancy had to worry about now. Too many variables. Nancy hated not having complete control of an operation, but now there were so many things that could go wrong before they acquired Moretti. Too many variables, she thought to herself again as she rolled her eyes away from Trace and out the window. The computer genius was already on to something new and clacking away at her keyboard.
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Appearing as if she was concentrating on the view outside the car as they drove along, Kelly had been working on tearing the zip-tie cuffs that had been placed on her wrists. Ivan kept his gun aimed in her direction but seemed to be more concerned with the conversation he was having with his driver. She did not understand Russian but she could tell by their inflection that they were both very agitated.
Kelly was surprised at how well she was taking her imminent death. She knew that she had always been pretty cool under pressure, but she had never before had the deck stacked against her like this. Right then, for reasons she could not understand, she felt like she was going to make it out of this alive.
Two car lengths behind the vehicle that carried Kelly, Sonny took notice of the battered SUV ahead. Although it was a late model, it looked as if it had been through a war. She noticed bullet holes on the vehicle and her heart rate increased.
It couldn’t be. Could it?
She had to see for herself so she accelerated past the two cars in front of her and began to get a better view of the vehicle. Through the back window, she could make out the back of a woman’s head and even though she had not known her all that long, Sonny was confident that she could recognize her red hair anywhere. She gunned the engine and pulled alongside the driver’s window.
Kelly heard the bike engine before she saw it slip agilely up to the window. She saw the familiar helmet and felt herself exhale. Sonny Moretti saves the day! She twisted and twisted her wrists, cutting into her flesh and feeling the slick wetness on her hands. When the zip-tie was hastily put on her, she had made sure to push her wrists apart so that they would be loose.
Sergei noticed the bike before Ivan did and glanced at the rider curiously for a second before h
e comprehended the danger. He cursed in Russian and pulled his pistol.
“Who is that? What is going on?” Ivan was agitated and Kelly decided to take advantage of his lapse of concentration. Lifting both her legs together, she kicked hard at his gun hand. The pistol went off and the sound was deafening inside the car.
Sonny slowed her bike and maneuvered behind the vehicle until she was just a foot away from the back bumper. In her mirror, she could see the two cars behind her stopping; the drivers had probably decided not to have anything to do with what was playing out in front of them.
Ivan turned to Kelly and she thought for a second he would pull the trigger, but the car
jerked to the left suddenly and they both swayed hard in their seats. Kelly saw the driver slumped over the steering wheel, most of his brains painting the inside of the windshield.
“Shit!” both Kelly and Ivan screamed out in unison. Ivan went for the wheel and tried to straighten it as the vehicle began to accelerate out of control. Kelly brought her wrists under her legs and quickly undid a shoelace on her running shoe. Quickly, she slipped a lace between the zip tie and used friction to grind away at the plastic. Ivan was struggling to pull the corpse of the driver out of the seat and was not paying attention to Kelly. She pulled her wrists free and noticed that Sonny had now pulled up to the passenger-side doors. Sonny was pointing aggressively at the door handle and Kelly nodded her head in comprehension.
Ivan had nearly moved Sergei out of the way when the passenger door flew open. Like it was the most natural thing in the world, Sonny hopped from her bike into the car through the open door. The bike jackknifed and skidded away from the decelerating vehicle. With one hand on the wheel, struggling to keep the SUV going straight, Ivan began to point his gun hand at Sonny. Kelly lunged forward from the backseat and grabbed his wrist, pulling the gun and his arm backward at a painful angle that caused him to scream out in pain.