Roman hoisted him to his feet. “How’d you find us? Who told you about this place?”
Oleg managed a smile. “Wouldn’t you love to know.”
“I’ve been waiting a long time to take you in,” Roman said as he dragged Oleg to the back of the car.
Well, this wasn’t a good situation. At. All.
With Oleg in custody, Nikolai Mateev would never find the money that Oleg had laundered and then hidden away. Even in his beaten and beleaguered state, Oleg knew that two million US dollars was not a sum to overlook. So, if Oleg went to prison, he would be punished twice. Once by the justice system, with a lengthy sentence and relinquishment of his assets. Then again, by Nikolai as he exacted two million dollars’ worth of revenge.
Because even in prison, Nikolai Mateev would be able to find him. And his punishment would be painful.
Fueled by desperation, strength surged through him. He pulled away and he tumbled to the ground.
Clawing forward, he scrambled to his feet.
“Stop! Or I’ll shoot.” Oleg turned to the voice. Madelyn Thompkins held his gun.
“You plan to shoot?” he asked. His lips were inflamed, and each word tasted of agony. “Go ahead.” He spat blood on the ground. “Shoot.”
Who would have thought he could feel such hatred for this woman?
Legs braced against the ground, Madelyn kept the barrel trained on him. She didn’t fire. He didn’t think she would. But it brought up another interesting dynamic. Whoever held the gun had all the power. And power was exactly what Oleg needed.
“Madelyn,” Roman said, “give me the gun.”
Oleg shuffled forward, remaining between Madelyn and Roman, his gaze locked with hers. He lurched toward her, reaching for the gun. Light flashed from the muzzle.
Oleg fell forward. Liquid hands of ice pulled him into the darkness. His lungs filled with water. I’ve been shot, he thought, stunned, and then...blackness.
* * *
Madelyn stumbled back, her arm springing upward with the gun’s recoil. Oleg had disappeared, but it hadn’t been magic—she’d shot him. Her arm trembled. She felt like throwing up. The gun slipped from her fingers onto the ground as she dived toward the creek.
She had to save him. She was sworn to protect life, not take it. Madelyn slipped off her shoes and untied the jacket from her waist.
“You aren’t going anywhere.” Roman held her back, his large hand on her shoulder. He moved Oleg’s gun to the waistband of his pants.
His touch was strong and warm. She wanted to turn all her burdens over to him. “I can’t just let him die.”
“You almost drowned while we were crossing that stream, Madelyn.” Roman pulled her into an embrace. “I’m not letting you kill yourself trying to save Oleg Zavalov.”
She pushed against him and he held her tighter.
“I’ll walk alongside the creek and try to find him.” Roman steered her toward the car. “You wait here.”
“I can walk with you.”
“It’s just that...”
Madelyn had never seen Roman at a loss for words. His silence crept across her skin, lifting gooseflesh in its wake. She shivered. “It’s just that, what?”
“You shot him.”
“I did.” The words were heavy on her tongue. “That’s why I need to find him.”
He looked upstream, then back at her. “I’d really rather you stay here.”
Why was Roman being so elusive? “Are you worried that I might have killed Oleg and you don’t want me to see his body?”
He exhaled and nodded. “Something like that. It’s hard to take a life. Even a justified killing is difficult.”
Justified killing. She clenched her teeth against the phrase, as if it were medicine that someone was forcing her to swallow. Madelyn imagined the firearm in her hand. The heft, the recoil, the bite. She saw Oleg’s swollen eyes, suddenly wide, as he was whirled around, and then his back as he toppled from view.
Oleg Zavalov was unquestionably a vile man, but he was still a man. Didn’t the propensity for both good and evil reside in every human heart? Oleg must have loved someone. Someone must have loved him in return. And now all that was left were empty memories of those affections.
She sank to her knees. Gravel bit into her flesh, each imprint a painful reminder of what she had done when terror had taken over and she’d pulled the trigger. Roman placed his hand on her shoulder. She gripped his fingers with her own.
“You were very brave,” he said.
“I shot an unarmed man. That makes me a coward,” she said, her words came out with a sob. “I was afraid to shoot him. But more afraid of what would happen if I didn’t.”
“Remember what I said about bravery?” Roman asked.
“Not really,” she said, “but, I’m not in the mood to be lectured.”
“Bravery,” he began, ignoring her words completely, “isn’t the lack of fear, but the ability to act even though you are afraid.”
“It’s a nice sentiment,” she said. The pain in her head lessened.
“It’s true,” said Roman. He held out his hand to her and Madelyn let him help her to her feet. “I’ll see if Oleg washed up downstream,” he said.
“I’m going with you.” Madelyn stepped back into her shoes and retied the blazer around her waist. “Whatever the outcome, I need to know.”
Roman just nodded and led the way as they picked along the creek’s edge. Trees and bushes grew right up to the bank, making their search difficult. After a half a mile of walking, Roman stopped. “See that,” he said. An eddy swirled, filled with twigs and leaves. Amid the debris was a man’s shoe—a black loafer, and leather from the looks of it.
Roman broke a dead branch from a tree and fished the shoe from the water. “High-end Italian,” he said as he read the inside label. “It’s Oleg’s. I’ve seen him wear this shoe hundreds of times.”
“Then where is he?”
“There’s no telling. He might be close or miles away. What I do know is that right now we are wasting our time by looking.”
“You can’t say that.”
Roman pulled her close. She allowed herself to be enveloped in his embrace. “Let’s get back to the car. At least we have a way back to town. Once we can make a call, we’ll have search and rescue out here looking for him. They’re the professionals. We aren’t.”
Again, he made sense. Madelyn nodded, happy that he’d decided, and for once she wasn’t left to make important decisions on her own. She was happier still that this nightmare might finally be ending.
They fought their way back through the scrub to the road. In their haste to leave, they hadn’t bothered to turn off Oleg’s car or shut the door. The ding, ding, ding of a warning bell overrode the rushing water and the call of the birds. A cloud of exhaust billowed around the car, a dirty fog hovering above it all.
Roman opened the passenger door and she slipped into the leather seat. She was beyond fatigued and felt as if she could sleep for a year. Despite all the dangers of the past day and a half, in many ways the time had been special for Madelyn, magical almost. But as they drove away from the creek, she understood that the spell between her and Roman was ending.
If they were lucky, then soon their lives would return to normal. And those normal lives did not include each other. Not long ago, she’d made a grand pronouncement that any feelings of affection were simply an alluring cocktail of brain chemicals and echoes from a prehistoric need to reproduce. If that was all that she was experiencing, then why was Madelyn’s chest hollow, aching with a need for Roman to somehow complete her?
The feeling gave her pause. As the car bounced and jostled over the dirt track, Madelyn wondered, how could she think of needing someone to complete her? All along, she had seen a serious relationship as a pitfall to be avoided.
She lean
ed into the seat and closed her eyes. Her very busy, but clear-cut life had spiraled out of control. So much in fact, that she no longer controlled her own emotions. Roman pulled hard on the steering wheel. The car turned right and slammed onto the paved road. From beneath her seat two cell phones slid forward and clattered against her ankles.
“Look what we have here.” Madelyn held up the two identical phones.
Roman pulled to the shoulder and took the phones from her hand.
He tried to open both before saying, “Passcode protected. I could break through, but I have a better idea. If Oleg has programmed either number into his car, then I should be able to call one of them. Once we answer, we’re in.”
“If this car has its own phone system, why not call out directly with that?” Madelyn asked.
“It’ll only work if one of these belongs to Oleg. Otherwise we can only use his contact list.” Roman hit the button for the car’s phone system.
“Call Oleg,” he said. Both phones remained silent. He ended the connection and tried again. “Call Serge.”
A phone lit up and trilled. Roman swiped and answered, then ended the call again. He made another call that was answered by three beeps. After he entered a four-digit passcode and disconnected, it rang again.
“Roman.” She recognized the voice at once. It was Roman’s boss, the Brit. “Where are you? I got a message last night and then you fell of the map.”
* * *
Roman exhaled, the tension in his shoulders slipped away. “It’s good to hear your voice, Ian,” he said, relieved to have finally made contact. He eased back on to the road. For the next ten minutes, Roman drove and filled Ian in on the developments of the case—their wild night at The Prow, Madelyn and her search for Ava, Oleg and his cronies, and Nikolai Mateev.
He told Ian about his theory that Oleg had discovered Madelyn’s identity, and how he somehow found the safe house. Roman ended with Oleg being shot, although he didn’t mention that it was Madelyn who had pulled the trigger.
“Oleg’s body is missing,” he concluded, “but we did find his shoe.”
For a long moment, the call was silent. Roman wondered if they’d lost contact on the mountainous road.
“Are you still there?” Roman asked, as the pause stretched out.
Ian came onto the line. “Are you sure,” he said, his words slow and precise, “that Nikolai Mateev is coming to Boulder?”
“I’m positive that’s what Oleg said. He’s expected today, if what I heard was right.”
“Any idea how? Auto? Air?”
“I didn’t get a travel itinerary, brother. Sorry.”
“The first thing we need to do is to get you and Miss Thompkins back to Denver.” A constant clicking served as a background to Ian’s words. Roman envisioned his boss and friend sitting behind his desk—a big wooden thing with scrollwork on the front panel and a leather ink blotter on top. The speakerphone was at his elbow, while his fingers danced over the keyboard of his desktop computer. “There’s a truck stop forty miles south of where you are. It’s busy, which is good and bad. Bad because you’ll be seen, and there’s no telling by whom. Good because you’ll likely blend in, just two more travelers out of many. Park there and I’ll pick you up personally.”
“I’m not sure that leaving the car is our best play. I can easily drive directly to the office and not waste more time.”
“In one of your previous reports you said there were two Russian nationalists working for Oleg.”
“Anton and Serge,” Roman said. “And we don’t know what Oleg told Anton or where he is now.” He was itching to get back to Denver, but understood that in his haste he could lead Anton to the RMJ offices and compromise the case even more. “I guess it really is better to be safe than sorry.”
“Park the car where it won’t look abandoned,” said Ian. Roman didn’t need the added direction. After all, he’d been with Delta Force for years and knew all about covert operations. “I’ll meet you in forty-five minutes.”
Roman ended the call.
“What now?” Madelyn asked.
He glanced at her. Dark circles ringed her eyes, making her milky complexion paler. Her lips were still tinged with purple, like she’d been eating blackberries. Blackberries and cream, now that was a delicious combination. Like her.
He shook off the errant sexy thought and focused on the situation. “You should rest,” he said. He turned on the seat warmer and looked back at the road. “It’s out of our hands now. All we can do is cross our fingers and hope that the good guys win.”
Madelyn napped while Roman drove. He kept the radio off, the softly purring engine more musical than any song. The truck stop came into view and he eased into a space halfway down a row filled with a variety of cars. Madelyn roused as he turned off the engine.
Stretching, she glanced out the window. “That was the fastest forty minutes of my life,” she joked.
He’d come to appreciate her corny quips and would miss them once the case ended. Too bad he couldn’t convince her to give the two of them a chance—maybe something could work out. But he got it, at one time—Roman had serious life goals, too.
On the other hand, just because she wouldn’t go out with him didn’t mean that he cared any less. He hoped that she could retain her sense of humor. Soon Oleg’s body would wash up, and though she’d never be charged with a crime—the shooting had been unquestionably self-defense—she’d have to live with the fact that she’d taken a life. No matter the reason, killing a person was never a laughing matter.
“Our job is to blend,” he said. “Let’s go inside. It’ll arouse less suspicion than if we just sit in the car.”
He pocketed the keys and both cell phones before opening his door and rounding to the other side of the car to help Madelyn out. He scanned the faces of everyone they passed, searching for one he recognized. He saw no one. Leading Madelyn through the front doors, he made his way to a diner that took up half the truck stop and chose a booth in the back corner.
The scent of cooking beef, along with the smell of thick and meaty gravy, hung in the air. His mouth watered and his stomach rumbled. Too bad they wouldn’t have time to grab a quick lunch. Half of a can of pasta was not enough food for a big guy like Roman. A waitress in a white uniform approached the table, order pad and pen in hand. “Can I get you something to drink while you look over the menu?” she asked.
“We won’t be eating,” Roman said. “But you can bring me a soda.”
The waitress turned to Madelyn. “And you?”
“Nothing, thank you.”
“You need something,” Roman said. “You’ve had quite a morning and need to keep your strength up.”
“No, thank you.” Madelyn’s teeth were clenched.
“Just bring her a soda, too,” Roman said to the waitress. “If she doesn’t drink it, I will.”
“I’m not hungry,” Madelyn said, once the waitress had left with their order. “Or thirsty. In fact, I feel queasy.”
It was a physical sign of shock or even post-traumatic stress but Roman said nothing. “Just humor me and take the drink. Like I said, we need to blend in. If Anton comes here and asks questions, we don’t want the waitress to remember the woman who sat in a restaurant and didn’t order anything.”
“Sorry,” she said. “I hadn’t thought of it that way...”
Her words were cut short by the waitress’s return. She set their drinks on the table along with two straws wrapped in paper. “I’ll stop back in a minute to see if you need refills,” she said.
Roman thanked her and cast his gaze around the restaurant, the attached convenience store and the parking lot beyond. Even from his strategic location, it was hard to see everything. There were four security cameras on the premises, though. One behind the cash register, one at the door and one each trained on the two banks of fuel pumps. So far
, Roman and Madelyn had avoided them all.
And since they had a few minutes to spare and a certain amount of privacy provided by the booth, he withdrew the cell phones from his pocket and laid them both on the table.
“They look identical,” Madelyn noted.
“They are.” He lifted one. “This is Serge’s, so we have to assume that Oleg found his body in the beer cooler. It doesn’t clear up the mystery of how he found us, though.”
Madelyn lifted both shoulders and let them drop with a sigh. “I have no idea.”
Neither did he, but it was a breach of RMJ’s security and would warrant further investigation. “And this phone.” He picked up the other one and gave it a little shake. “I have no idea whose phone this is.”
“Can you open either? Maybe there’s something useful in the emails or texts.”
Roman bypassed the password on Serge’s phone and then opened the web browser and found nothing of interest. The emails, texts and voice mail all had their own password protection. Aha. Too bad Roman never bet, because odds were that important communications went back and forth through those applications. “I can open everything eventually,” he said, closing Serge’s phone again. “But not now. I need equipment and more time. And speaking of time, Ian should be here any minute.”
Roman lifted the cup to his lips, using it as cover while he glanced at the parking lot. The sun glinted off the windshield of a forest green luxury SUV as it drove in front of the travel plaza. Roman fished a slightly damp ten-dollar bill from his wallet, plenty for the drinks and a generous tip, and threw it on the table.
“That’s our ride,” he said, scooping up both phones and placing them in his pocket.
He kept his head down and positioned himself between Madelyn and the camera at the exit. The car pulled into a space well away from the building and Roman led Madelyn across the parking lot at a brisk walk. He opened the back door for Madelyn. After sliding in beside her, Roman pulled the door closed.
Ian sat in the driver’s seat. As always, he was dressed in a suit, shirt and tie. His dark blond hair was short and swept off his face. His grey eyes were rimmed with red.
Her Rocky Mountain Defender (Rocky Mountain Justice Book 2) Page 12