Cat's Paw (Veritas Book 1) (6 page)

*~*~*

After the tests had revealed that nothing bad was going on, they’d moved Miri to a more private room. Her roommate was sound asleep, so Alex stood by the side of her bed, rubbing his fingers across the back of her hand. He used to do that when they were kids, even when she was a newborn.

His mom hadn’t said much during the pregnancy, other than to complain about another mouth to feed. Her continued indifference had triggered something deep within Alex, and he took to watching over his sister from the moment she came home from the hospital. Because after all those years of being alone, he’d been given someone to love.

To his joy, that love had been mutual. He still remembered hurrying home from school, not bothering to take part in any after-school activities, always concerned about what had happened to Miri during the day. Once she’d learned to walk, she would meet him at the door, her tiny arms going around his neck. He blinked away tears even now.

Miri had never stinted on her love, at least until the day they marched him out of the courtroom in chains, the “guilty” verdict ringing in his ears. Barely sixteen, she hadn’t cried, just stared at him as if he’d destroyed her whole world.

In some ways, he had. She’d been forced to move in with their maternal aunt and uncle in Belle Chasse, a solemnly religious pair who didn’t have kids of their own. Suddenly having a teenager to raise, one who was hellfire on her best days, proved too much for them. They reacted with impossibly strict rules that no teenager could have handled. Miri rebelled. Repeatedly.

Alex had heard she’d run away twice during his first year in prison. He remembered the rank fear he’d felt, knowing she was on the streets, alone. He knew what predators did with young girls, had seen the aftermath. Thank God nothing bad had happened to her. Or, if it had, she hadn’t told anyone, not even him.

After the second time she’d run away and returned, he’d pleaded for her to stay with Aunt Karen and Uncle Mike. She had, though there were a few months when she didn’t write or talk to him on the phone. Their aunt and uncle said she didn’t want anything to do with him.

It came as no surprise that once she reached eighteen, she bailed out of their home to live on her own. Now she was under his care again, and he’d already failed to protect her the first night he’d been home.

Alex leaned against the bed railing, watching each breath. They’d removed the cervical collar and washed most of the blood off her face and neck, but there were still specks here and there. The ER nurse had Steri-Stripped the cut that reached into her hairline, but he knew Miri would be displeased when she realized they’d shaved the hair on either side of the wound.

“I’m so sorry, Monkey,” he whispered, rubbing her hand again.

The door opened quietly behind him. He turned, expecting a nurse, but instead it was Morgan who slowly entered the room. She was in scrubs, an ice pack lying over one shoulder, moving like every muscle was on fire. When she drew closer to the bed, he saw the start of a bruise on her jaw. The same on her throat.

Shit
.

This woman had taken a beating to save his sister. Every spiteful word he’d intended to throw at her went back down like bitter medicine.

Morgan leaned on the bedrail next to him, looking down at the patient, her expression thoughtful. “How is she?”

“As good as can be expected. No fractures or bleeding in her head. We just have to wait for her to wake up.”

Please God, let her wake up
.

“She will. Your sister’s strong. She nailed that bastard, hard.”

He listened with increasing pride as Morgan explained how Miri, all of about one hundred twenty pounds, had splattered the guy’s nose across his face.

“You’re right, she is tough,” he said. “Always has been stronger than me.”

Morgan looked over at him, dark circles under her eyes. “I’m so very sorry, Parkin. I should have stuck to her, and I didn’t. I let her out of my sight and—”

She’s blaming herself for this?
“No, it wasn’t your responsibility. This is my fault,” he insisted. “I should have known someone would go after her to get to me. The cat should have been a wake-up call.”

For a moment, the only sound was the beep of Miri’s heart monitor echoing in the room.

Morgan turned to leave, and he caught her arm. His long, tanned fingers lightly curled around her, a dark contrast to her paler skin. The touch radiated heat, though the room was cool.

“Thank you. I won’t ever forget what you did for her.”

Morgan nodded, the guilt still in her eyes, and left him alone to his fears. Not once had she spun a sales pitch about Veritas, how he should work with the good guys for a change. The Russians wouldn’t have been so thoughtful. They would have used this situation to put the thumbscrews to him.

Because they all knew he had only one true weakness: the young woman lying on the bed in front of him.

Chapter Eight

September 18th

Tulane Medical Center

Alex opened his eyes as his neck complained about the hours spent in a chair. Not that he’d slept much. A glance at his phone told him it was approaching seven in the morning. Miri’s heart monitor sped up, and he shot out of his chair. He looked down at her only to find two very confused eyes blinking back at him.

“Hey,” he said, trying not to let her know he was only a step away from tears. “You’re awake.”

She kept blinking, but didn’t reply. What if she didn’t remember him?

“Miri? Talk to me. Let me know you’re there. You’re freaking me out.”

She croaked, “Alex?”

Thank you, God
. “Need some water?” She nodded and he slowly raised the head of the bed and let her sip water through a straw. When she was done, Miri stared back at him.

“What . . . ” Then she frowned as her hand migrated toward her head wound. He caught it before it reached its destination.

“Best not to touch that.”

Now her eyes began to reflect panic.

“You have a concussion, but that’s the worst of it. How much do you remember?” he asked gently.

Thank God he didn’t have to tell her she’d been raped. That thought made his stomach pitch.

“Not much. I . . . went to work . . . ” Her eyes widened. “The alley . . . ”

He swallowed hard. “You remember the guy?”

Miri gave a tentative nod, then winced in pain. “Yeah. He was big. He . . . ” She reached up again, and this time he allowed her to gingerly touch the wound. She winced again. “How bad is it?”

“You look like a shaved poodle, but that’s about it. It’ll heal quickly. You’re lucky.”

She frowned, not appreciating his attempt at humor. “There was a woman. She went after that guy . . . kicked his ass.”

“So did you. You broke his nose.”

A half smile formed. “I wanted to do more than that.”

You and me both, sis.

“Your friend Shanita came by and stayed for a while. She’s really worried about you.”

“Oh, damn, it was her birthday. I totally messed that up.”

“Don’t worry, she said you guys can celebrate another night.” He hesitated, then added, “She’ll let your boss know you won’t be in today. So how long have you been working at a bar?”

Miri grimaced, and he suspected it had nothing to do with the head wound. “I didn’t mention that, did I?”

“Because you knew I wouldn’t like it.”

“Well, you weren’t here, and I’m old enough to do what I want.”

He had no way to argue that point. “So it appears. When did you change jobs?”

“Six months ago. I needed more money.”

Something else he didn’t know about his sister. “Is it possible someone followed you from work? Some creep?”

“Yeah, I’ve seen him before at the bar. He never talked to me, but he’d watch me all the time. Same thing tonight—I felt someone watching me. Might have been him.”

Or it might have been Morgan and her people, and for once he was grateful for their interference. “You know this bastard’s name?”

“No. He always paid cash for his drinks.” She sighed deeply. “I can’t stay here. I don’t have any insurance.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Her frown grew. “I’ll take care of it
legally
, okay? That’s what big brothers do.”

How the hell he’d pull that off, he had no idea, but right now the truth wasn’t important. Alex took her hand, and her expression softened.

“The cops will want to talk to you. Tell them what you remember and maybe we can bag this SOB.” She shivered. “It’s okay to be scared, Miri. That’s normal.”

“But I can’t get him out of my mind. I feel him touching me and breathing on me and . . . ”

“That’s as far as it went. Get some sleep. It’ll help. It gets better in time.”

She gazed up into his eyes as if he’d given something away.

“Things happened to you in prison, didn’t they? Uncle Mike wouldn’t tell me anything, just said it was the Lord’s justice, but I knew it was bad.”

Alex nodded. “It
was
bad, but I made it through. You’ll do the same.”

“I love you,” she whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that last night, when you first got home.”

Her eyes drifted closed again, and he tucked her arm under the sheets. Leaning over, he kissed her forehead, like he had every night when she was a kid.

“I love you, too,” he whispered back.

Alex’s stomach rumbled, reminding him that he hadn’t eaten since the pizza the night before. Now that he knew his sister was going to be okay, he needed breakfast. He found Neil leaning up against the wall just outside the door, arms crossed over his chest.

“She’s awake,” Alex reported, enjoying the euphoria those two words brought to his soul.

“That’s good news,” the man replied.

“Headed to get some food,” Alex said. “I’ll let the nurses know she’s doing okay.”

“I’ll keep an eye on her for you.”

Alex gave him a respectful nod. “Thanks.”

Maybe having that intense of a guy watching over Miri wasn’t a bad thing, just as long as he remained on the side of the angels.

*~*~*

The sound of ringing brought Morgan back to consciousness. As she shifted in bed, the pain in her neck brought her up short. She dragged a hand across the nightstand, finally locating the phone.

“Yeah?” she asked, blinking at the clock. It was just half past seven in the morning.

“Parkin’s gone missing,” Neil said.

She sat up, despite the discomfort. “What do you mean, missing?”

“He headed down to the cafeteria thirty minutes ago and never came back. I had Lars check on him, and according to the staff, he never made it down there.”

“You get a tracker on his phone?”

“Affirmative. He was in the hospital for a short time, and then the tracker stopped working.”

“You think he did a runner?”

“No way,” Neil said. “His sister is awake now. He didn’t strike me as the type to bail on her.”

“The Russians?”

“That’s my guess. They must have heard what went down last night and decided to nab him for a little chat. Probably something along the lines of, ‘Nice sister you have there, pity if anything
else
happened to her.’”

“Which means Parkin could be anywhere.”
Or dead.
Morgan groaned. “Okay, put the word out. Maybe someone will spot him.”

“We need to move the girl to a safe house.”

She blinked at his suggestion. “Since her brother’s not on the team, we have no obligation to do that. At least not yet.”

“Doesn’t matter. This girl is in danger, and we need her out of the way so Parkin can make the right decision.”

Morgan cranked an eyebrow. This wasn’t Neil’s usual behavior. Did Miri Parkin remind him of his own sister, the one he hadn’t been able to save?

“I’ll talk to Crispin. Either way, if Parkin doesn’t show back up, I have to let her know what’s going on.”

“Affirmative. I’ll be here.”

When the call ended, Morgan pulled herself out of bed and made slow progress toward the shower. After last night’s battle, she felt eighty. Then she smirked at the thought of just how sore Miri’s attacker was this morning, no doubt swimming in a world of hurt with that broken nose.

“Rot in hell, you bastard.”

As the hot water hit the sore spots, her mind turned back to Parkin. He was a hothead, and if the Russians had picked him up, he might go ballistic, get in Buryshkin’s face. If that happened, it was a good bet that Miri would never see her brother alive again.

*~*~*

The farther the car got from the hospital, the more pissed off Alex became. He’d been in the elevator, headed toward the cafeteria for an orgy of bacon, eggs, and biscuits to celebrate his sister waking up. He’d paid scant attention when a man had joined him one floor down. Then another guy had stepped into the elevator the floor below that and Alex’s radar went off. One wore a black suit, the other brown, but the subtle bulges under their jackets spoke of armed thugs, not morticians.

Black Suit had informed Alex they were going for a drive and that if he thought to raise the alarm, someone—not him—would get shot. It wouldn’t matter if it was a nurse, a doctor, or a visitor, that person would pay for his lack of cooperation. Given the heavy Russian accent, Alex knew these guys meant business. They’d waited for the perfect time to corral him, and they clearly knew which buttons to push. Though furious, he had to appreciate expertise when he saw it.

The instant they’d gotten into the car, Black Suit had demanded Alex’s phone. His tone said that refusing would not be a good idea. Alex sighed and handed it to the man in the front seat. The Russian popped the back off, fiddled with it, then shook his head. He pulled something out and reassembled the phone.

“There is bug on phone.” The tracker in question went flying out a side window.

Veritas.

There’d been a moment during the night when Alex had gone to talk to his sister’s nurse and had left his el cheapo phone in Miri’s room. Apparently old buddy Neil had tapped it while he was gone. He made a mental note to check it over once this meeting ended, because it was a good bet the Russian had stealthily inserted one of his own, if they meant to keep him alive. A moment later the cell phone came back his way, the battery removed, no doubt to keep his location from being monitored by the cell towers. He shoved both into his back pocket.

After driving through a Starbucks to pick up coffee, a move that made no sense to Alex, they drove a short distance to park in Lafayette Cemetery No. 1, near one of the large mausoleums. A short time later, a car identical to theirs pulled up behind them.

The door locks clicked open and a man joined Alex in the back of the sedan. He was probably about fifty, with short graying hair and a blackwork tattoo of a skull peeking above the collar of his starched white shirt. Mikhail had told Alex that tattoos were a Russian gangster’s résumé, a skin-deep representation of his crimes. The skull meant the man had committed murder. There were more tattoos on his hands and fingers, along with letters in the Cyrillic alphabet, revealing that he’d been in and out of jail repeatedly. Buryshkin had not sent a low-level flunky to this meeting.

“Good morning, Sasha Parkin,” the man said, his accent heavy. “I am Vasily. I am here on behalf of certain interested parties.”

“What a surprise,” Alex said, then took another sip of his coffee. He calculated the odds of launching the hot drink in this newcomer’s face, then getting out of the car before someone put a bullet in his skull.

“I see you working out an escape strategy. Don’t. These two gentlemen are highly trained and will not allow you to harm me. Because if you did, they die.”

“Now there’s an incentive,” Alex replied. “Let’s get something straight right now. If you bastards had anything to do with my sister getting hurt last night, you are fucking dead. You got it?”

“We had nothing to do with that.”

I almost believe you.

“Okay, so what’s your spiel?” Alex already suspected what it would be; he just didn’t know how hard they were going to play ball.

“You have two options,” Vasily explained. “You agree to work for us, and in exchange, you and your sister will be offered our protection.”

“And option number two?”

“You turn us down, and we will take you to the bayou and feed you to the alligators. While you are still alive. Your poor
defenseless
sister will never know what happened to you.”

The coffee in Alex’s stomach turned to corrosive acid even as his anger built. Right now, kicking some Russian gangster ass would feel so good. But it wasn’t going to happen when it was three against one, not with them using Miri as leverage.

The old Alex would have taken them on, despite the bad odds. The new one was more patient, more willing to wait until the perfect moment to exact punishment.

Alex made sure to keep his voice free of the rage careening around inside of him. “With choices like that, you guys must be batting a thousand when it comes to recruitment.”

Vasily smiled, revealing tobacco-stained teeth. “We take care of our own. As a show of good will, we will determine who hurt your sister and bring him to you. Then we will discard the body once you are finished with him, no questions asked.”

Damn, that was tempting.
If nothing more, these guys knew how to make corpses disappear.

Alex finished his coffee and set the empty container in the cup holder. “Why am I so damned important?”

“That is not for me to say. So what will it be? A new life, or a very brutal death?”

Alex knew this wasn’t a bluff. He’d just disappear and there would be no one to take care of Miri. Veritas certainly wasn’t going to watch over her once he was out of the picture.

As long as he was alive, he was the prize that made everyone sit up and take notice. He might even have an option to try to turn things in his favor. And now, given what they’d just threatened, a chance to go after Buryshkin himself. It wasn’t what he’d planned as he’d walked out of prison, but these people had set the game in motion.

It was time to do some negotiating of his own. “I don’t kill law enforcement officers, and I don’t peddle dope.”

“You will if we ask it of you.”

Alex ground his teeth. “No, I won’t. And don’t tell me you’re going to chop me into gator bait over those stipulations, because you want me on your team too badly.”

No response.

“I want to know who set me up. Sent me to prison. Those are my terms.”

The man cocked his head. “I would have figured you’d be willing to do anything to keep your sister safe.”

“I am. Including killing
all
of you,” Alex said, holding the man’s gaze. “Slowly, painfully, and with great malice.”

Vasily broke out in laughter, slapping his thigh. “
Grigori byl prav. Etot chelovek imeyet nabor zheleza sharov
,” he said to the others, and they laughed as well.

The senior Russian had said something about Grigori being right, that Alex had a set of iron balls. He kept his expression neutral, as if he didn’t know the language that well.