Moskva (6 page)

Russia - present day

Nazarov entered the van to find Alina arguing with Kane as the man attempted to search her purse.

"This is mine," she said, tugging at the strap as he finished unzipping the bag. "I told you there are no trackers in it."

Nazarov's meaty hand swooped down and claimed the purse from both of them. He shoved one fist in and seized a small stack of folded papers. Fanning a few open, he saw drawing done in a child's style. A dinosaur, a volcano, a dolphin jumping waves.

"No, no, no," she said as he let the pictures fall to the floor. Gathering the pages up, she clutched them to her chest. "Stop touching my things."

He grunted, scooped out her phone and watched her face as he passed the device off to Simon. Still holding onto the papers with one hand, she reached after the phone with the other, her face beseeching Simon to give it back.

"Please, they are all I have..."

"I'll be very gentle with the contents," Simon assured her, his voice dropping low in an attempt to calm the distraught woman.

Pulling out a box of crayons from the bottom of her bag, Nazarov dumped them on the floor and watched them scatter, then he checked the box for anything taped in side.

Feeling that the purse was empty, he looked inside, saw nothing. Turning it upside down and shaking, he heard a small metallic click as something fell out. Leaning forward, he saw the item. At first glance, it looked like junk. Mangled metal oxidized except for a small inward dipping curve on one side where it must have been rubbed frequently to keep the copper showing through.

He could just make out where the bull's horns had attached to the head. He looked at Alina to find her hugging her papers, her eyes on her lap and her face screwed tight from the tears she was holding in.

She had been crying earlier, begging and sobbing at the camera to spare him. And she still carried the little figure she had shaped for him so many years ago. But she wouldn't leave Dima, even if staying meant she would soon be dead.

Pocketing the figuring, he pulled out a knife and ripped through the fabric of the bag. His fingers manipulated the lining.

"He took all of your money, your identification?"

She said nothing, just continued staring at the top of her knees.

Nazarov passed the bag to Simon, who rolled down his window and tossed it onto the street.

"No point risking it," the Englishman explained as he returned to sifting through Alina's phone.

His fingers slowed as he looked through her photos. He expanded one, Nazarov's viewing angle too narrow to see what the picture contained or why it should hold Simon's interest for so long.

"This boy," he said, pointing the phone's display at Alina. "His name is Bogdan, yes?"

She nodded, her hand reaching for the phone, the fingers engaged in an urgent dance to coax Simon into surrendering the device.

Nazarov snatched it up, expanded the photo and stared at the boy. His head was tilted downward, black hair covering his eyes. The shade was that of all the Rodchenkos he had ever known. Alina, her father, Dima.

White and blue frosting smudged the boy's sharp chin.

"Dmitrey Rodchenko's son," Simon offered, his laptop out and opened once more. "No photos publicly in existence, his location more secret than his father's although presumed to live in the States. Mother unknown, rumored to be from one of the slave houses."

Simon dipped his head so he could look into Alina's flat gaze. "Is Bogdan why you're fighting us?"

Her shoulders scrunched together. Pursed lips trembled and her hands shook as she tried not to crush the drawings in her hand. She looked at Simon, the muscles of her throat visibly tightening.

"Please, it's like the hospital, isn't it? If I don't want help, you cannot force it on me."

Simon retrieved the phone from Nazarov. He swiped through more of the photos. Stopping at the last one, he looked from the photo to Alina before studying Nazarov for a few long seconds. His brow lifted, skeptical, and then he shoved the phone in his jacket pocket.

"What if we kidnap the boy?" Simon asked.

"Hold up," Kane interjected. "We have no reason to believe the boy is in danger. There are scummy parents all over the world. Law doesn't let us kidnap them."

"What fuck should I give over Dima's bastard?" Nazarov grunted, his gaze hard on Alina.

If only she had left with him that day at the library. They'd have children of their own. She wouldn't be risking her life over Dima's brat, a boy that would one day grow up to be as cruel as his father.

"Rodchenko plans on killing a family member to cement his position," Simon argued with his gaze on Kane. "If it isn't his bastard sister -- no offense -- then all that remains to sacrifice is his bastard son."

Nazarov nodded. Dima had a sickness in him. The pain of others was his entertainment.

"Please," Alina whispered. "You see now why you have to let me go. Bogdan cannot take my place in Dima's plan."

"He will fucking kill you!" Nazarov screamed, his hand shooting out. He tore the papers from her grip and began tearing them up with each new word that came out of his mouth. "First he'll have them beat you. Rape you. Stab you. They will cut off toes and fingers, make your tongue a stump."

When the child's drawings were reduced to confetti, he looked at Simon for confirmation. "You listened to the tape, the one recorded in King's hotel? You heard Dima's instructions?"

His face drained of all blood, Simon nodded. "Your brother was quite explicit in his instructions. He wanted it recorded on video so he could watch it later."

"Doesn't matter," Alina mumbled right before she tumbled unconscious to the van's floor. "I died a long time ago."

Russia - present day

Alina woke in a shabby room, the smell of borscht drifting under the door confirming she was still in Russia. Hearing the light play of fingertips over a keyboard, she rolled onto one side and saw the back of the Englishman they called Simon.

He wore a headset and he spoke into its microphone. "She's awake."

Covering the mouthpiece, he glanced over his shoulder and tossed a nod at the ice chest next to the bed. "Get yourself something to eat and drink."

She didn't care about food or water. Her thoughts were consumed with Bogdan -- her son.

And Mishka, though she wished she could forget him.

Sitting up, she reached for one of the water bottles, discreetly testing its weight in case she needed to smack the Englishman upside his skull. At little more than sixteen wobbly ounces, she didn't think it would phase him, so she cracked the seal on the cap and took a long drink.

Her voice cracked when she spoke. "How long was I asleep?"

Maybe there was still time to undo the terrible mistake these men had made in trying to help her.

Simon lifted a single finger. She thought for a second he was signaling an hour, but that was too short. A day was too long.

Realizing he was ordering her to silence, she shifted along the mattress until she could see his computer monitor. Green and red images moved on one half of the screen, with images from night vision cameras filling the other half. An iPad was propped up next to him, its display showing thermal views.

"To your right, ten feet and closing," he said.

"What -- what is this?" she demanded, jumping to her feet.

"Sit," he ordered, his voice like a dagger buried in the softest down. "You don't want me to make any mistakes on this. I assure you."

Her ass hit the mattress at the same time her mouth slammed shut. Her gaze scanned each image on the computer and tablet. One of the dots was neither red nor green -- it was blue and represented a body far smaller than the rest that showed on the thermal, where another blue dot appeared over his head.

Bogdan -- her son was that little blue dot and all the other people in the building, red or green were armed and ready to kill.

"No, please," she croaked, but the Englishman had blocked her voice out. His ears were attuned only to the communication stream from the headset and any movement Alina might make to stop him.

One of the red figures dropped and stopped moving. A green one stood almost directly over him. The red man offered one last jerk as a bullet entered his head and then the green man moved on.

Adrenaline flooded her blood. She lunged for the small wastebasket with the condoms and vodka bottles the last tenant had left behind and unloaded the contents of her stomach.

"Please, who is green?"

He didn't answer. Looking at the display again, she drew her own conclusions. The Rodchenko thugs were red because a red dot hovered over the man holding Bogdan. By his height and thin frame, she knew who hid behind her son's body -- her half-brother.

Dima faced the door, one arm holding a gun, the other wrapped around Bogdan's neck. He had claimed the boy as his son, but that was a lie. He had never cared for him, only cared how he could use Alina's son to control and hurt her. The boy thought she was his aunt, Dima slowly warping Bogdan's opinion of the woman who had lived in so much pain to bring him to life and for the rare hours each month she was allowed to be in his presence.

Now he was using his nephew as a human shield.

A figure took up most of the thermal display on the iPad, its brightness and size blocking the reading for Dima and Bogdan.

"Straight from your shoulder, hold..." Simon said, all of his attention on the iPad. "Hold...hold...shoot!"

Alina screamed, the howl drawn out and turning her throat raw. The green figure dashed to the left of the screen. She could see another green figure kick in the door, but Dima was on the ground, unmoving, the blue figure covering him and also motionless.

The shooter entered the room and scooped Bogdan up. The boy started fighting, kicking and punching at the giant who held him. Fresh air filled Alina's lungs at the sight.

"Target acquired, pull back," Simon ordered. "All threats appear neutralized."

She scanned the screens again to see that Simon was right. The Rodchenko men were flat, dead or dying. One of the green men was slung over a team member's back, his vitals showing in a readout at the bottom of the screen.

Hurt but not dying.

Russia - present day

As soon as the operation to rescue Bogdan from Dima's safe house successfully concluded, Simon packed up his equipment and hustled Alina out to an old sedan. The Englishman had given her no idea of where they were going, deferring her questions over and over with the promise someone would fill her in when they met up with Kane and Mishka.

"We have no papers," she said as they drove out of Moscow. "Dima took control of our passports and visas after we cleared customs."

His mouth quirked and he strummed his fingers along the steering wheel. "Not every flight has to go through customs and immigration."

She lapsed into silence and wondered how Mishka had come to have friends like Simon and Kane -- and why he had let her languish all those years in misery when he had the means to rescue her.

The fault was hers. It always was. She had treated him cruelly at their last meeting. Even though he had broken her heart after they had made love, she had wanted nothing more than to protect him.

She hadn't known their single encounter had put a baby in her womb when she had scared him into fleeing the library by threatening to alert the guards. That painful lesson would come two months later.

Her first month of an absent period, she marked up to stress. It had happened before. The second missed period came with an inability to eat breakfast without throwing it up, something one of her father's staff noticed and reported to the old man.

That was the day her misery reached its flash point.

Seeing Simon tense at the wheel, she looked around for suspicious vehicles. When nothing caught her attention, she looked at the road side signs to read which city they were coming up on.

"Was the safe house in Novgorod?"

The Englishman nodded. "Rodchenko stashed your son there after Nazarov's first attempt to kidnap you."

Slowly, she processed the information, focusing first on the memory of one of Dima's brigadiers swooping in like a vulture and grabbing the boy and a few bags as she begged in the hallway to go with the boy. The man had punched her in the stomach to shut her up, in front of Bogdan, who watched emotionlessly, his life around his so-called father inuring him to violence, even against a woman who cherished every moment she was allowed to spend with him.

Her mind drifted next to Mishka and all the visible marks of what had happened to him after she had forced him yet again to flee from an attempt to rescue her.

Only then did she realize what else Simon had said.

"What makes you think he's my son?"

His mouth curled up at the side she could see. "Beyond how long it took you to challenge my statement? I looked through the rest of the photos on your phone."

"I see." She didn't, not really. She also didn't know just how much Simon had pieced together. Let him think the boy was hers and Dima's. That was, after all, what Dima had told their father to keep the old man from beating her to death.

Yeah -- for one moment only, her half-brother had seemed to play the hero. But he quickly proved no better than a cat choosing to keep its favorite mouse alive.

"You should rest," Simon suggested, one hand fiddling with the sedan's navigation system. "And eat."

Taking his sunglasses off, he handed them to her. "I don't expect any trouble going around Novgorod, but it's best you put these on and lower your seat. I'll wake you when we get to St. Petersburg."

Accepting his offer, she hooked his gaze for a moment. His face lit with a genuine smile, its tilt apologetic over the stress he had caused her in masterminding her kidnapping and Bogdan's rescue.

"I don't care about me," she said, voice breaking. "Just promise me my son is safe."

"I promise I'll do everything I can to keep him from harm."

Briefly, she touched his arm. It wasn't the pledge she had asked for, but it was the best she could hope for.