Evil Without a Face (32 page)

“Oh my God. Not now.”

She considered making a run for the corner, but the footsteps were coming in their direction, closing the gap between them. She’d never make it with six girls. She let go of Shelby’s hand, shoved the gun into the waistband of her pants and reached for the keys she’d taken off the guard as she raced to the nearest cell. They’d hide until they could move again.

Nikki fumbled the keys in her hands, but remembered the door was already open. The lock could only be secured from the hallway. Once they got inside, the door would be open to whoever walked in. But she didn’t have time to think about that, not with the footsteps getting louder. She rushed the girls inside, keeping them as quiet as possible. At the last instant, she did remember to flip the light switch on the outside wall of the cell. When the room went black, the girls gasped. She didn’t blame them for being afraid. Hell, she was too.

“Get to this wall and press against it,” she whispered.

She picked the best spot in the room for the girls to hide. She didn’t want a guard to look in the portal and see them. If someone hit the light switch, she wanted them to see only an empty room.

“Remember, not a sound,” she whispered.

She waited until they were all behind her, hugging the wall, before she gripped her weapon and pointed it at the door. In her mind, she pictured herself pulling the trigger
like in the movies. Because if someone walked through that door, that’s what she’d have to do—without hesitation.

She wracked her brain trying to recall what little she knew about guns. If the weapon she held in her hand had a safety lock, she’d have no way of knowing what it would look like or how it worked. That scared her bad enough, but what if she fired and missed and the guard fired back? She grimaced with the thought and pushed it out of her head, except to make up her mind that when the time came, she’d step into the center of the room, away from the girls. She didn’t want them caught in her cross fire.

In the dark, Nikki felt Shelby reaching for her. The girl’s touch reminded her why she had taken a stand. Yet as much as the gesture meant to her, she had to stay focused. It took both hands for her to hold the weapon as badly as she was shaking. For the sake of Shelby and the others, she prayed for the strength to pull the trigger, a strange prayer. She felt the weight of the gun and the sweat on her palms. And her eyes blurred with stinging tears. That’s when she saw it.

At the base of the door she caught movement, a subtle brush of a shadow backlit by the faint pulse of the red flashing alarm. The shadow of a man stretched farther into the room, like unwanted fingers. Someone stood outside. She held her breath and aimed the weapon higher.

The next person through that door—she would shoot to kill.

Outside the perimeter of the compound, some two kilometers from the old radar site, the men waited for Petrovin to show up in the two choppers that would take them to safety and a new location. Both pilots had started their aircraft, but in the one nearest the escape tunnel, tension had grown to a fevered pitch.

“Where is he?” one man asked. His eyes darted to the other faces in the dark.

Another man looked at his watch.

“Twenty minutes is long gone.” A security guard clenched his jaw and heaved a sigh in frustration. “He would leave any of us. He said so himself.”

As soon as the man said it, the others stared at him. They’d been thinking the same thing, but it was as if Petrovin himself would overhear and heads would soon roll.

“What?” The man shrugged. “We have no idea what is going on in there. And he is the only one who controls the detonation. All I’m saying is that it’s risky for us to sit here, not knowing, that’s all.”

“If we take off and he’s left behind, he would find each of
us. You know how he is.” The co-pilot turned his head and spoke loud enough for them to hear, punctuating his commentary with curses under his breath.

A few minutes went by, without a sound coming from anyone, but the tension could be cut with a knife. From time to time the men gaped over their shoulders and stared at the tunnel in hopes Petrovin would emerge and the waiting and uncertainty would be over. If he did show, they could forget what had been said and keep each other’s secrets. But the Russian never came.

Without a word, the pilot took matters into his own hands and gave the thumbs-up to his counterpart across the makeshift tarmac. As the man made final preparations to leave, not another word was said. The helicopter lifted off the ground, hovered for an instant as the pilot gave the tunnel one last look, then flew into the night sky.

Petrovin would be on his own.

“May God have mercy on us all,” the pilot muttered under his breath.

For anyone who heard him, they might have thought he had included Petrovin in his prayer, but that hadn’t been the case. A man like Petrovin had no use for God. And if the Russian made it out alive, every man here would require divine intervention to stay one step ahead of the man’s inevitable retribution.

Swallowing her next breath, Nikki aimed the weapon toward the closed door, preparing to shoot whoever opened it. She felt the weight of the handgun shaking in her hands. How hard would she have to pull the trigger? Could the gun go off accidentally?

But more important, could she kill?

All these thoughts raced through her mind, clouding her judgment as the shadow under the door moved in the red pulsing light. Down the corridor, she heard doors slamming.
The guards were looking for them. She pictured the Russian’s face, and heard his voice as if he stood next to her in the dark. Fresh tears rolled down her cheeks.

Damn it! How had all this happened?

The culmination of her terror came down to this moment. When she put a face to whoever was outside the cell, only one pair of eyes came to mind, and she nearly threw up thinking about it. Could she do it? Did she have what it took to kill him? If the Russian walked through that door, she wasn’t sure she could pull the trigger. That was the kind of control he had over her.

But whether she was ready or not, she’d run out of time. The knob turned and the door creaked open.

Oh my God, please
no! Inside her head, she screamed. Her heart thrashed in her chest and pounded the inside of her ears. She gripped the weapon and stepped away from the wall. As Nikki moved to the center of the room, she felt Shelby’s small fingers fall away. She had never felt so alone.

Now, the dark silhouette of a large man stood in the open doorway. Her eyes blurred with tears, but she couldn’t stop crying. She started to pull the trigger. And she would have done it, except movement behind the man distracted her. A face she recognized. In the red glow, she saw Jessica Beckett, the woman she never thought she’d see again.

Nikki’s sobs came in a torrent. She lowered the gun, her muscles too drained to keep the weapon hoisted. She wanted to say something, yet the words wouldn’t come. She was happy to see Jessica, but when the woman flipped the lights on, Nikki couldn’t believe her eyes. The man from the shadows who’d stood in the doorway was Uncle Payton.

And she’d almost killed him…again.

Before she could say anything, he swept her off the floor and clutched her to his chest, cradling the back of her head with a hand. In his arms, she felt safe. In his arms, she never felt so loved. And in his arms, she wasn’t alone anymore.

“I thought you were dead,” she whispered into his ear
and burrowed her face into his neck. “And I almost…pulled the trigger. I could’ve—”

“Shhhhh. I’ve got you now, baby. You’re safe, Nikki,” Payton’s low voice reassured her. “Oh my God, I love you so much. I thought we’d lost you for sure.” Eventually, he lowered her to the floor and pulled back. “Let me see you. Are you okay?”

When he had assured himself she was all right physically, he grinned that same crooked smile she’d grown to love. She could see he’d been crying, and it broke her heart to imagine how close she’d come to losing him a second time.

“How’s Mama? I can’t believe I did this to her…and to you.” She pictured her mother’s face, and a devastating wave of regret hit her hard.

With a gun in her hand, Jessica kept watch at the closed door, searching out the glass portal, then shifted her gaze back to them, listening.

“You didn’t do anything wrong, honey…” Payton kissed her cheek and pulled her to him again. “…except maybe trusted the wrong folks. But they’re the ones who’re to blame here, not you.”

“That Russian man killed Britney. He took her heart and her eyes…they had an operating room.” Nikki knew she wasn’t making sense, but the words kept coming and she couldn’t stop holding her uncle. “He was harvesting body parts, selling them to the highest bidder…and he killed her. He almost did that to me, but I got away. That’s how I stole this gun.”

She handed the weapon over to Payton, glad to be rid of it.

“The Russian? The same one from Chicago?” Jess stepped closer and stroked Nikki’s hair. When the girl nodded, she said, “We saw the operating room, honey. These men will pay for what they’ve done.”

Before she and Payton found the row of holding cells and
began their search of each one, they had located the operating room. An unconscious man lay on the floor, and another one dressed like a doctor had been shot to death; the gunfire they’d heard earlier. They’d also seen a crematorium where bodies had been destroyed in an industrial-size furnace, remains reduced to dust and bone fragments. Emissions from the crematorium probably got chalked up to the contamination in the area, perhaps sustaining the belief this part of the island was still at risk.

She and Payton had discovered Globe Harvest’s setup while looking for Nikki, but Jess had no intention of telling the girl what they’d found. It would be hard enough for the kid to recover from her ordeal without adding to her night terrors.

To distract Nikki, Jess turned to face the others.

“We’re getting you girls out of here—now.” She held out her hand to the smallest girl, a blond kid with freckles who was crying. “It’s okay, honey. We’re gonna take you home.”

Many of the girls had ventured timid smiles, hesitant to move until Jess said the word “home.” Then one by one they rushed to her. And when she felt the press of their warm bodies, Jess was overwhelmed with a flood of emotion, one that had been building in her for a very long time.

The sensation propelled her back to the day when
she
was rescued. She’d been a severely abused child who only existed in the moment, without a future or a past—and she had no one to call family. She thought she’d forgotten what it felt like, but in a rush everything came back.

“I hate to break up the party, but we’re not out of this yet,” Payton said. “We’ve got to get these girls out of here, Jessie.”

She looked up at him and nodded.

“Yeah, he’s right, girls. We gotta go.” Jess wiped her face and retrieved her Glock from the waistband of her pants. She headed for the door and did a quick look through the glass, then fixed her eyes on Payton.

“I’ll take point. We’ll keep the girls between us.” And to the kids, she said, “Everyone keep real quiet, okay?
Shhhh.
”

Jess opened the door, trying to minimize the creak, and crept into the hallway. With one hand, she clutched the little blond girl’s fingers, and she gripped her gun in the other. And when she got to the end of the corridor, ready to turn for the elevator, she stopped short—not believing her eyes.

Standing between her and the elevator was Alexa Marlowe and an entourage of men dressed in black and sporting FBI gear. Alaska State Troopers Frank and Gary were with them. Every last one aimed a weapon at her. If she had more of an inferiority complex, she might have taken offense. But as it stood, she never felt safer in her life.

“Damn, am I glad to see you.” Jess grinned. “Whoever said there was safety in numbers really knew what they were talking about.”

Once Alexa relaxed and lowered her weapon, she pulled something out from her BDU pocket, an item Jess knew well. Shaking her head, the woman twirled her red lacy bra in one hand and raised an eyebrow.

“You really know how to send up a red flare, bounty hunter. Thanks, you saved us time.” As Alexa approached, she got a good look at the girls behind Jess and added, “Well, I’ll be damned. Good work, Jessie. But if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not end up a slab of bacon. I’m partial to my ass the way it is. I’m sure Globe Harvest has this place rigged to blow.”

“It’s worse. Nikki told us Petrovin is here,” Jess said. “If he’s in charge, we gotta get out of here fast.”

Alexa clenched her jaw in anger. “Let’s roll—
NOW!
”

Without hesitating, she and Payton grabbed Nikki and the smallest girl, and Alexa’s men reached for the other kids. The Alaska State Troopers took point with weapons drawn, and Alexa followed close behind, armed and dressed to kill. They all ran for the elevator.

Mercifully, Jess didn’t remember much about the explosion in Chicago, but this place felt different. There were no propane fumes and no shrill alarm to grate on her nerves. Still, she knew Alexa was right. If the Russian had been here, he’d have the place wired to blow. She only hoped they’d have time to get ahead of the blast.

And she prayed Nikki’s good luck had rubbed off on them.

Out of the shadows, Stas Petrovin emerged from the escape tunnel in time to see his men fly away in both helicopters, leaving him alone to face the enemy…and his fate. He glanced at his watch. They had waited nearly forty minutes, well beyond the time he had warned that he would have left them.

What more could he have asked of them?
What more indeed.

He shut his eyes and took a deep breath of the cool night air and looked up into the heavens. This place reminded him of Siberia, and he had mixed emotions about that. Casting a bluish haze over the foothills, a full moon shone above him. The sight of it should have made him feel small and insignificant, but nothing could be further from the truth.

He felt powerful and in absolute control.

In his hand, he had the means to bring down the underground facility and implode it under the feet of his enemy, perhaps taking the lives of many with the blast. If he did his duty, Bukolov would be protected once more. Yet for the first time, he sensed he had a choice.

Perhaps that was why he felt in control. He stood on a precipice of change and he knew it.

He contemplated his actions, then made his decision, reveling in the fact that the call was his alone to make. Without further thought, he initiated the detonation, knowing he had a time delay for his escape. But instead of thinking of his own safety, he pushed the envelope and chose to stay,
standing in the glow of the moon. After all, it was a night for indulgence, and he had the heart of a poet beating in his chest.

Of this, he was certain.

After leaving the elevator, they barely had enough time to clear the collapsed wall when Alexa felt a familiar rumble under her feet. Self-preservation sent a second surge of adrenaline through her brain.

“Oh shit, not again.”

They raced for the way out, but with the first impact, the ground swelled under her, then dropped out. The quake nearly knocked her down as she ran. She saw one of the troopers hit the dirt, but the man scrambled to his feet, hardly missing a step. And, good man, he never dropped his weapon. The older girls ran one step ahead, their age giving them an advantage. And her men kept the kids out of harm’s way like a team of bodyguards or a strong defensive line in the NFL.

“Pedal to the metal, people. This place is gonna blow,” she yelled, keeping her legs pumping. Her lungs heaved and her thighs were on fire from exertion.

Dust and debris fell from over their heads as they ran. The whole mountain could come down on their ears any minute. She took a quick glance back and saw that Jessica hadn’t let go of Nikki’s hand and Payton had the other. In his left arm the quarterback carried a little blond girl who had his neck in a fierce grip. He didn’t look like he minded the extra burden. She couldn’t blame Jess and Payton for not wanting to let go of Nikki and the smallest girl. The four weren’t making the best progress as they ran, but some things were worth the risk.

A hot vaporous cloud of gases and dirt swept by them as they finally made it outside. Alexa remembered how it felt to barely escape the carnage in Chicago.

“Keep moving. Don’t stop.” And under her breath, more
to herself, she added, “And whatever you do, don’t look back.”

A wall of fire belched from what remained of the cinder-block structure they had used to enter the old radar station. She felt the heat crawl up her back as if she’d caught fire. Eventually, cool night air touched the inflamed skin of her face, and she knew she’d beaten the blast once again. When she got free, she did a quick head count and was relieved everyone had made it through, until she saw Jessica ranting up ahead.