Eagle's Heart (20 page)

If there is a security guard, he must really be sleeping on the job, Julian thought. But when the gas tank finally goes, this place will be crawling with cops.

He had to be quick.

He stalked away from the side of the building and prowled through the lot, sticking to shadowed areas as he approached the remnants of their vehicle. There was movement by the burning shell of the sedan.

The bald man was attempting to investigate his handiwork but jumped back when a bright burst of flames flared in his direction. He pulled out a cell phone as he took a few steps away from the destroyed hunk of metal.

“They’re roasted,” he said nonchalantly. The light from the blaze was reflected in the sheen of sweat on his lumpy head, giving him a hellish cast. “I used that sweet little grenade launcher you wanted me to test out before you meet the West Africans. Yeah, it works like a dream. I wish we could use these babies on the force, but then we’d have the ACLU even more up our ass.”

Another dirty cop. Julian wondered if it was the same one who had assured Salomeh he’d help her.

Julian crept closer but didn’t attack. Although he wanted nothing more than to run up to the man and beat him to within an inch of his life, he had the element of surprise on his side, and he decided to use it wisely.

“Tamali was definitely in the car and so was the teacher. Look, I need to get out of here before some other cops show up. I can only pin so much of this stuff on gangbangers.”

The man pulled out a handkerchief and dabbed at his jowls and neck, shaking his head as he walked a circuit around the car.

“No, I can’t see them in there because it’s a fricking fireball, but that means less evidence. I doubt they’ll even be able to use dental records to identify them. But I’m out of here. I should have ghosted by now.”

The man turned and began walking toward a gray coupe that idled several feet away from the wreckage, and Julian paced stealthily behind him.

“All right, I’ll be there tomorrow at two o’clock for the meeting,” the man said and then ended the call and shoved the phone into his pocket. When Julian pressed the muzzle of his gun to the man’s back, he froze in place.

“Where will you be tomorrow and for what meeting?” Julian asked amicably. “Please share with the rest of the class, Officer Friendly.”

“Shit,” the man said, moving his hands slowly toward the front of his suit jacket. “I knew that was too easy.”

“And I’m not going to make it any easier for you. Put your hands behind your head, or you won’t have a head left to put them behind.”

Julian pressed the gun into the man harder to emphasize his point.

“I’m not telling you anything, so you might as well just kill me now,” he said as he placed his hands where he had been told.

“I don’t want to kill you,” Julian said, although it wasn’t entirely true. The man had nearly ended Salomeh’s life. Julian wanted to hurt him, and badly, but he knew that vengeance was useless. Information, however, could put this game with Bardhyn to an end and ensure Salomeh’s safety forever. “I want you to give me the information I need. Let’s cut a deal.”

“Deal? What deal? Are you going to take me to Henderson and have him put me in witness protection?” the man asked snarkily. “Oh, wait! He’s the one who led you into this setup. How do you know that anyone you trust to cut me a deal is clean? I’d rather take my chances with Birdie, thanks.”

Julian kept his gun trained on the man as he circled him, doing a quick reconnaissance of the parking lot in the process. No one was around yet; it appeared that the man had been working alone, and that Henderson really had gone home to his wife, secure in the knowledge that Julian and Salomeh had been blown to bits.

Henderson’s betrayal and what could have happened had it been successful fueled Julian’s anger. His patience and restraint were both walking on the wrong side of a fine line. “Henderson won’t be around for long, for obvious reasons,” he said. “Now tell me where Birdie is and what this meeting is about.”

The man laughed and shook his head. “Do I look like an idiot? No way.”

Julian took a step back and shot the man in the foot.

“Motherfucker!” the cop yelled, falling to the ground and clutching at one worn Italian loafer, which now sported a ragged tear at the top. Blood seeped through the opening.

“Get your hands back on your head!” Julian commanded. He took aim at the other foot, and the man quickly complied.

“Officer Friendly,” he continued now that he fully had the man’s attention, “my obliging manner may have led you to believe I’m not someone to be taken seriously. But listen to me: I am very serious about finding Bardhyn. And I don’t have much time. So you need to start talking. Now.”

The man stared at him, his face drawn in pain. “How are you going explain this to your higher-ups?”

“The same way you will—I’ll figure something out. Now let’s try this again. Where is Birdie, and what meeting is he having tomorrow?”

“Okay,” the cop gasped. “Okay, he’s at this Albanian club up in the Bronx. Ryli’s, it’s called. Downstairs is a titty bar. Upstairs is where he keeps the girls. That’s it, that’s all I know.”

Ryli’s
. An image of his little sister laughing and trying to get his attention flashed before Julian’s eyes, and a fresh wave of anger surged through him. Bardhyn had actually had the audacity to name the club after his sister. The sick bastard had to turn everything into a game designed to inspire pain.

“You mentioned the West Africans, so you do know something. Tell me what the meeting is about,” Julian prodded, rage thickening his voice. The name of a club seemed so inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, but it galled him that even Ryli’s memory had been desecrated. He hadn’t even been able to protect that.

“I don’t know, weapons or something. I’ll find out tomorrow, and I’ll tell you,” the man pleaded. “I won’t say anything to Birdie. He thinks you’re dead.”

“Tell me,” Julian yelled, reaching the end of his patience.

Just then Salomeh came running from the alcove where he had left her. She didn’t seem completely steady on her feet, but she was powering her way toward him.

“Didn’t you promise to stay put?” he asked, gentling his voice.

“Someone came out of the building and saw the fire, and I think they called the police. We have to get out of here,” she said, looking frantically behind her. Julian saw headlights far across the lot.

The man took advantage of the distraction and decided to make a run for it. Unable to go very fast with his injured foot, he was hopping past the burning car when the gas tank finally went. The explosion wasn’t as big as they made them out to be in the movies, but the man’s body was not designed to absorb such an impact. The results were gruesome.

Julian and Salomeh were far enough away that the explosion knocked them back some but didn’t send them to the ground. Julian pulled Salomeh, who was transfixed by the sight of the man’s shredded corpse. She didn’t budge, so he grabbed her and shoved her into the man’s abandoned car that was now up for grabs.

The keys were in the ignition, and when Julian shifted the car into Drive, the engine purred smoothly to life.

“I think things are starting to go our way,” he said. He tossed his cell phone into the wreckage as they drove by the flaming remains of their sedan. The goon had reported them dead, and dead men didn’t use cell phones.

“Where are we going now?” she asked.

Blue and red lights flashed far in the distance as he pulled out of the parking lot.

“Damned if I know,” he said. “Know of any place where there aren’t crazy Albanians trying to kill us, dirty cops trying to kill us, or terrible bosses trying to kill us?”

“I can think of a place,” she said, hugging the overnight bag tightly to her chest. “Drive on.”

Chapter Eighteen

Linda knew something bad had happened as soon as she heard the door to the accounting room unlock, even before Bardhyn stepped into the small space with his ice-blue eyes flashing with a manic energy.

No one was supposed to disturb her as she counted the day’s takings and calculated various aspects of the operation, like which girls were bringing in the most money and which dealers at their illegal poker games were giving too much of it away.

His fine silk shirt was unbuttoned, revealing his broad chest and flat stomach beneath. He still worked out every day, determined to be the strongest man in the room both mentally and physically.

“I’m finished doing the books,” she said, standing so he could see she wore his favorite outfit: her little red A-line dress with her black-and-red-checked scarf draped around her neck. “We’ve turned quite a profit this month despite the small losses over the last couple of days. We’ve had to pay off more cops than usual, and informants too, but everything is in order for tomorrow.”

He didn’t even look at her as he walked to the minibar in the corner of the room. “Julian and the teacher are dead,” he said, the words as smooth as a knife slid between two ribs.

Linda felt a brittleness in her chest as if someone had stepped on a small dry twig there. The startled “What?” escaped her lips before she realized she had spoken. It was the first time she had dropped her cool demeanor in front of Bardhyn in years, and it was exactly the wrong time to do it.

“I said that the backstabbing dog and the pain-in-my-ass teacher are dead,” he said, his gaze narrowing, seeming to sense her struggle to remain calm. “Is there a problem?”

He was furious, and he had just found a target for his frustration. Linda scrambled to shore up her defenses. She thought she had long ago divested herself of emotions as trite as simple sadness. But the news of Julian’s survival, the one man who had ever really been a match for Bardhyn, had stirred some vestige of hope that had lain dormant like a treacherous weed that now threatened to choke her.

“Of course there isn’t,” she finally said, trying to sound testy instead of shocked. “I simply thought you were going to bring them back alive.”

“That was what I wanted, of course. To see the look on his face as I cut off his fingers one by one,” Bardhyn said wistfully as he filled two highball glasses with vodka.

“But unfortunately the man I sent to do the job decided he’d rather test out one of the weapons we’re selling to the Africans tomorrow. The bad news is I didn’t get to have my reunion with Julian, but the good news is I’ll still get to indulge myself today. When the idiot who killed Julian against my wishes arrives, he’s going to discover that small-scale missiles fit into other things besides a grenade launcher. Like an asshole.”

Linda repressed a shudder. She gave Bardhyn a brittle smile when he walked over and handed her a glass. He knew she never drank, but to refuse him now would be to incur his wrath.

“To Julian, who always thought he was the better man. I can only hope that as he was blown to bits he realized how wrong he was,” he said before toasting. “
Gezuar
!”

Linda took a large gulp and choked, tears coming to her eyes as she coughed and spluttered. The coughing subsided, but the tears did not. She drew two fingers across her cheeks, dumbfounded by the fact she could still cry after all these years.

And then the back of Bardhyn’s hand connected with her face, nearly spinning her waifish frame around. She stumbled and then straightened, patting her hair back into place while she composed herself.

“You dare shed a tear for that swine?” Bardhyn demanded. “He had the honor of a worm, and you cry for him?”

“I’m not crying for him,” she said in what she hoped was her usual haughty tone. The blow Bardhyn dealt her had the same effect as a slap given to a person midhysterics. It brought her back to herself, and she was thankful for it. He would not get the pleasure of any further displays of emotion from her. “I shed a tear for this teacher stupid enough to trust him. I’ve heard enough about this woman from Yelena’s incessant chatter that I felt a bit of sympathy for her. Am I not allowed a moment of feminine weakness after all these years?”

“That better be it,” he sneered. “If you dared cry for him after what he did…”

“What would you do?” she asked. Her voice was quiet, just enough to temper the challenge in her tone. “If you thought anyone else could help you run this business as well as I do, you would have let me die long ago. So save your threats for the meeting tomorrow. That’s what you should be focusing on, after all, not a friend who hurt your feelings ages ago.”

Bardhyn regarded her for a long moment. She tossed back the remainder of the vodka in her glass and stared at him, running her tongue over alcohol-numb lips.

His eyes were still manic, but he smiled.

It did not make her feel better.

“Go check on the girls. I’m going to make sure everything is okay at the club,” he said, beginning to move past her. He stopped to speak directly into her ear. “And when I come to bed tonight, you’d better be awake and ready for me.”

Linda flinched when he swept out of the room and slammed the door. She walked over to the minibar, poured herself another vodka neat with trembling hands, and drank it down. She hated the taste, but the pleasant burn as it went down allowed her to feel something.

She knew she should check on Maria, the attempted suicide. When the girl had come to after her unsuccessful attempt, she had glared at Linda and shouted,
“You’ll pay for this! You’ll burn in hell!”

Linda had called two guards to hold the girl down as she injected her with more heroin. Then she had taken two of the antianxiety pills she now kept in her pocket and continued with her day.

She passed Maria’s room, ignoring the sounds that came from within, and let herself into the small space where Yelena was being held. It could barely be called a room, having been converted from a utility closet. It was big enough for the cot where the girl lay passed out, looking even younger than her fifteen years. One arm was raised, held in place by the shackle embedded in the wall. The skin of her inner arm was marred by track marks, a necessary part of the integration process.

She didn’t know why Bardhyn had the girl here or what his endgame was. Yelena was simply caught in the tangled web spun by Alexi’s stupidity and Bardhyn’s monstrosity. And that web was held in place by Linda’s compliance, by her masochistic dedication to Bardhyn all these years.