Extreme Danger (15 page)

He let himself noiselessly down into it, and grabbed Becca’s waist, expecting her to shift her weight for him. She went rigid, clinging to a tree, shaking. Seconds ticked away, lost forever.

He lifted his hands, rage pricking at his calm. “You’ve got two seconds to decide,” he said. “Come with me, right now, or go back to him. Try apologizing. Smile pretty. See where it gets you.”

She laid her shaking hands on his shoulders. He lifted her down.

She sucked in a sharp breath at the water’s icy bite and slogged clumsily after him, stumbling over boulders in the dark water.

She tripped, would have gone under if he hadn’t grabbed her. As it was, she was soaked up to her armpits now, teeth chattering.

Great. If she hadn’t been going into shock already, this would do the trick. He ducked under the low cave formed by a couple of dead trees that had fallen into the water, unmoored the camouflaged Zodiac Futura inflatable that he’d borrowed from Seth Mackey. He dragged it out.

An excellent toy. He had to get one of these for himself, if he survived. Powerful outboard motor. Speed tubes with hydrodynamic lift to zoom over the surface of the water. He heaved Becca into it. She rolled in like a sack of potatoes. He clambered in after her, braced for the slice of lights through the trees, gunshots.

Nothing yet. Too good to be true.

The motor hummed smoothly to life. He moved out to deeper water, trying to hug the shore until they rounded the curve, and then he let out the throttle.

Becca had never been so cold. She’d never imagined such cold. Every muscle of her body convulsed individually as they tried to heat her up. She dragged herself slowly up from her huddled position.

The wind slapped her, whipped at her wet hair, dragging tears from her eyes. She noticed in an emotionless way that her blouse had been torn from her shoulder on that rampage through the forest. It dangled in a sodden swag, completely exposing one goose-pimpled boob.

She barely noticed.

He was saying something. She leaned forward, struggled to hear over the roar of the wind in her ears. “Huh?”

“Thermal blanket,” he said, pitching his voice just loud enough to reach her ears and pointing. “There. Get it before you freeze.”

Her numb fingers were about as responsive as a bunch of stiff dead fish, but she finally found the thing, and clawed open the waterproof plastic packing. She wrapped it gratefully around herself.

She peered at Mr. Big as he gazed ahead. Hair flying back off his face, eyes narrowed against the wind, the image of stony concentration.

His sleeve was stained with blood up to the elbow.

Visions of what she’d just seen assailed her. Pools of blood, gaping slashes in thick throats. The stupid surprise on the face of the guy with the hole between his eyes.

She’d been pushed over so many unthinkable barriers today, she was in an altered state. The menacing bulk of the islands rose out of the vast expanse of silvery water, towering over them like huge beasts about to pounce. The sky was cobbled with lumpy clouds and night was coming on fast. The lurid stripe of pink on the horizon faded before her eyes.

She was in limbo. Her grim, silent escort was terrifying as the hooded ferryman on the river Styx. Skilled at killing. As if it were something he did on a regular basis. She gulped. It made her throat hurt.

She stared at her toes, so cold they no longer even felt like they were hers, and tried to speak. She couldn’t suck enough air into her lungs to make a sound. Islands flew by, plumes of spray arced behind them. Finally, she made herself heard over the roar of the motor, asking a question she didn’t think he’d answer. “Who are you?”

His gaze didn’t even flick down. “Not now,” he yelled.

Not now? She’d been scared out of her wits, abused, insulted, threatened. “I want some goddamn answers!” she shrieked.

He slowed the boat, killed the motor. They slid forward in the sudden silence on leftover momentum, rocking side to side on the inky black heaves.

“OK, then. Listen hard. Hear anybody coming after us?”

She listened. She heard wind, water, her own chattering teeth.

“No,” she said.

“The correct answer to that question is ‘not yet.’ Followed by, ‘but pretty fucking soon.’ Do you have any idea how lucky you are to be alive?”

“Oh, I’m supposed to be grateful?” Her voice shook, splintered. “Gee, thanks! I want to know why I was in danger of getting killed in the first place! Who were those psychos? And who the hell are you?”

“Your timing blows. Shut up and—”

“Stop it!” She grabbed his arm. “You’ve been saying that all day! Shut up and do as you’re told, or die! Guess what. I no longer give a shit!”

“Fuck.” He shook her off and she thudded heavily down to the bottom of the boat on her butt. “Do you want us both to drown? Stay still.”

She rose up onto her knees. The boat rocked violently. “What, am I bothering you?” she hissed.

“Hey.” He grabbed a handful of the thermal blanket and jerked her closer to him. “You may find this hard to believe, but slitting throats is not one of my top five favorite activities. Truth is, it puts me in a foul mood—”

“You’re insane!”

“Right. I started out that way and went straight down from there. Now listen. Arguing is a waste of time that could cost us both our lives. Do you understand that?”

The force behind his words knocked her backward. Everything she had just witnessed him do came back to her again in a sickening rush. He operated, if that was the right word, with the lethal precision of a specialist.

The bubble of manic courage was popped. She was cowed again. She gave him a small nod, and huddled into the blanket.

He turned away. The motor roared back to life. The boat picked up speed until it was skimming over the choppy, wind-whipped waves.

Maybe it was enough to get through the day with her life intact. She could worry about her pride later.

Becca kept her mouth shut for the time it took to get to Crane Cove. Nick was grateful for that small favor. The ice cave in his mind was great for certain complex mental activities, like calculating bullet trajectories and wind vectors, but it was not the mental place to be when dealing with a stressed-out, hysterical woman.

They rounded a bend, and the lights of Crane Cove spread out before him. So there was to be no high-speed boat chase, no bullets flying. Almost home free. It was uncanny how lucky they’d been.

First, he had to get Becca squared away, returned to wherever she belonged, and then he would have to face up to his own personal failure.

He pulled into the marina. It seemed quiet enough. He’d considered renting a slip at Shepherd’s Bay, which was closer, but the marina was small, and people were more likely to comment on his boat or notice his truck. Crane Cove was no bustling metropolis, but it was several times larger than Shepherd’s Bay.

And they were conspicuous. He was soaked, spattered with blood, and he had a near-naked woman in tow. Anybody who saw him would have lots to tell the private investigator that Zhoglo would send. He’d used a false ID to rent the slip. Looked like that ID was a goner, if the place had a security camera. He hated compromising alternate ID’s. They were expensive.

He moored in his slip. Dim lights, no sound. A nothing evening in Nowheresville. Good. He climbed out of the boat, hauled on a line to draw it closer to the dock, and beckoned to her. Spent a teeth-grinding eternity waiting for her to collect herself to her feet and get out.

True to form, her blanket slipped seductively down to show off the outfit. Classic Penthouse Pet material: naked tits, clingy transparent fabric clinging to tight nipples, dark muff. Her hand was like ice when she grasped his. Her legs shook under her like a newborn foal’s.

“What now?” she asked. Her voice was husky and raw from the wind.

He yanked the blanket away from her and wrapped her up like a burrito, then scooped her into his arms. She protested and wiggled, but she was effectively neutralized, swaddled in the blanket.

“We’ll talk in my truck,” he muttered.

“Your truck?” She stiffened in his arms. “Wait! Aren’t we going to the police? We have to tell them what happened, don’t we?”

He nuzzled her fragrant hair, noticing at random that she still smelled faintly like violets, though she tasted like salt. “In my truck,” he reiterated. “Where we won’t be seen or heard.”

“But I—but we—”

“And after we talk, if you still want to, I swear I’ll leave you at the local cop shop,” he lied. “Cross my heart.”

That calmed her down, and he made good time through the walkways of the deserted marina. The darkened shopping district was quiet too. The empty street outside the gate was dotted with pools of orange light at regular intervals. Nobody in them. He hurried to the long, graveled strip along the water that functioned as marina parking.

There was a bar up the street. Nick saw the flicker of a large-screen TV, heard a guttural roar of male voices crying out in unison. Some big sports event—that explained the deserted streets. He had no clue what the sport might be. He’d been out in orbit for too long.

There was his truck, waiting where he’d left it some days before. Not stolen or vandalized. One advantage of living in Nowheresville. Except that he’d grown up in a place like this, and he’d been the kind of no-good punk who’d have made sure that any abandoned truck was properly fucked up before its owner came back to claim it. At the very least he would have slashed the tires. They must sedate the teenagers in this town. But he’d take any luck he could get, however undeserved.

He bundled Becca into the passenger seat without ceremony and got that sucker fired up with a roar of the motor, spattering gravel. Becca braced herself on the dash and gave him her owl-eyed look. She fumbled for the seat belt.

He dragged his cell out of his pocket, and punched in a number.

An irritated female voice answered in Ukrainian. “Who is this?”

“Milla. It’s Arkady,” he said rapidly in the same language. “It’s all gone to shit. My cover’s blown. So watch your back.”

“What? What? He will kill me now! You asshole! You fool! How can you do this to me?”

“Just thought I’d warn you,” he said evenly. “Good luck.” He hung up over the woman’s shrill protests. There was nothing else he could say.

Becca gazed at him. “And the police?” she asked.

He chose his words carefully as he stepped on the gas. “This is the deal with the police,” he said. “If you tell them what you saw, they’re obliged to investigate. A lot of things might happen, all of them bad. Most likely some locals will be killed before they get wise to exactly what they’re dealing with. As in cold-blooded murder. Film at eleven. And no, I’m not being sarcastic.”

“But isn’t that just what we’re going to tell them?” Becca forced the words out from between her chattering teeth. “Exactly what they’re dealing with, I mean.”

“We can tell them anything we want,” he said. “Men and women with families will still get killed. It’s a statistical certainty.”

“Ah.” Her throat worked. She put her hand up to it, massaged it.

“And there’s another thing, too,” he went doggedly on. “Right now, he doesn’t know anything about you. Not your name, your address, your work, nothing. You have no idea how fucking fortunate that is.”

“Oh, but I do,” she snapped. “Since you never miss an opportunity to remind me of my great good fortune.”

He was relieved to hear that snippity tone. A woman in shock would not be giving him hell. She was so much tougher than her sex bunny looks would suggest.

He found his train of thought. “What I’m saying is that if you blow the whistle on Zhoglo here, that gives him a place to start when he comes looking for you. And he will come looking for you. Count on it.”

“Is that his name?”

Nick slammed a hand into the steering wheel. “Yeah.”

“But the police would never give him my—”

“You have no idea how powerful this guy is,” he said. “He’s got a reach you cannot imagine. Info can be accessed on shared databases, Becca. It can be hacked, stolen, bought. Everything is for sale. He’s already corrupted the feds. He’d get around the local law.”

The bitterness in his voice silenced her, but only for a minute. “Why would he bother looking for me? I was just the cook, right?”

He made a derisive sound. “Where do I start? He didn’t get a chance to fuck you, for one thing. That’s reason enough right there.”

“Never mind,” she whispered. “Sorry I asked.”

“And you saw him,” he went on relentlessly. “You saw his new business partner, too. You were scheduled to get snuffed the minute you got a good look at Zhoglo’s face, Becca. Let alone all the rest of it.”

She kneaded the silvery blanket with desperate, nervous strength. “Who is he?” she whispered.

“You don’t want to know. The other reason he’ll want you is because he’ll want me. He’s capable of chopping my dick off and feeding it to me piece by piece. Not exaggerating.”

She winced.

“Given what happened tonight, he’ll assume that you’re the path to me. And he’ll be coming for me. Like a freight train.”