Kills Well with Others (Killers of a Certain Age #2)

Chapter Twenty-Nine

It should have been me, going after Tamara, but before I could even fix my fingers to gouge her eyes, Mary Alice launched herself, scrambling to her feet and vaulting clean over the tangle of the rest of us. She grabbed Tamara by the throat and shoved her up against the window.

“That was my friend , you bitch,” she snarled. I’d never seen Mary Alice like that. Sure, she could be cranky as a grizzly on meth if she got up on the wrong side of the bed, and Nat was usually the one who caught the brunt of it. (Because she was usually the one to provoke it, which Nat herself would be the first to tell you.) Everybody knew Mary Alice was really all bark and no bite.

But something about seeing Tamara go after Natalie meant Mary Alice found her fangs. She had a good thirty pounds on Tamara and she used every one of them, lifting the smaller woman clean off the floor and slamming her so hard into the window, the glass cracked into a pattern like a spiderweb. One of Tamara’s hands clutched at Mary Alice’s, trying to loosen her grip. The other went into her pocket and came out with a knife. A quick slash and she was free, Mary Alice’s wrist dripping blood.

“Oh, now I’m mad,” Mary Alice told her. She reached out and slapped Tamara so hard Tamara’s head cracked the glass a second time. The spiderweb spread to the corners of the window where pockets of rust seemed to be the only thing holding it together. Tamara slashed again with the knife, but Mary Alice threw up her left arm, blocking the blow as she hit fast with the edge of her right hand, aiming for Tamara’s throat. Tamara jammed her knee up into Mary Alice’s pubic bone and went for her again with the knife, slashing back and forth wildly.

With the rest of us distracted by the fight between Mary Alice and Tamara, Marilyn took the opportunity to bolt, grabbing the enormous backpack in both arms and scurrying out the door. Helen, looking a little dazed, shoved herself up from the floor and went after her. Galina tried to do the same, getting as far as the corridor before I grabbed her by the hair, yanking hard.

She twisted, slippery as an eel, and shoved a stiff index finger towards my eye. I turned at the last second, letting her hand go past me so I could grab her wrist. I pulled her forward to wrap my free hand around her broken fingers. I squeezed hard and she dropped to her knees, howling in pain. I circled her and looped my arm under her chin, locking it as I pulled her against me.

“It didn’t have to be like this,” I told her as I held her steady. “You could have just walked away. You killed Lilian Flanders. We killed Pasha. The score is even.”

Galina had three basic options the way I had her pinned. She could have gone for my diaphragm, my foot, or my nose, any of which could cause an attacker to loosen their grip, and all of which I was prepared for. But Galina surprised me and went for the trifecta. She jammed a well-placed elbow in my solar plexus as she stomped hard on my foot. It was basic self-defense class stuff, but they teach it for a reason. When you combine it with a backwards slam of the head to the attacker’s nose, that’s three explosions of pain at once, and that’s two too many.

I let her go, blood streaming from my nose as I gasped for breath. She’d gotten lucky, and I figured at least one rib was properly cracked, but my boots had protected my feet. I’d have a bruise there but nothing worse. She staggered to her feet, and when she looked at me, there was nothing but pure hatred in her eyes.

“Even? I don’t think so. Did you forget that you killed my father too?” she asked.

I spat out a mouthful of blood before I answered. “Your father had it coming. You know what he did for a living, right? He was former Bulgarian secret service and his favorite thing was interrogations. He tortured people, Galina. And when that got boring, he graduated to freelance assassination. He worked for some of the worst dictators on earth, did you know that? And he killed really good people. Academics, activists, anybody working for freedom, your father had a pop at them.”

“So that gave you the right to kill him?”

“The world is a better place without him.” I didn’t really want to debate the ethics of my profession with her, but the conversation was giving me a chance to catch my breath and I didn’t hate that.

“You even killed my dog,” she went on.

“The poodle that was on the plane?” I remembered the dog. It had been a pampered little asshole, and a complication we hadn’t expected or needed at the time. And I remembered Natalie’s almost hysterical insistence that she couldn’t kill the dog. In the end, Helen had parachuted out of the plane we crashed with the dog strapped to her chest. To my surprise, it survived the jump with nothing more than a few bruises. Helen had kept it for the next twelve years.

“We didn’t kill the dog,” I told Galina, not really expecting her to believe me. It was the least of the crimes she could lay at our door, but it was important to me to tell her the truth. “I admit we killed your father, and I’m not sorry for that. Not even a little. It was one of the best day’s work I ever did. But we really do draw the line at pets.”

Her nostrils were wide as she pulled in heavy breaths. “And when my mother died, I had to go live with that old bitch. She hated me because I was like my father,” she told me.

“Is that why you killed her?” I asked. I wasn’t actually playing for time, but I was enjoying the breather.

“She tried to beat the Bulgarian out of me,” she said darkly. “She loved Pasha, he was her darling. But me? She had no use for me.”

“We all had shitty childhoods, Galina,” I said. “But we don’t all kill the people who raised us.”

I was feeling stronger—the bleeding from my nose had slowed to a trickle—but giving Galina that much time to recover was a mistake. She feinted and when I went to grab her, she slipped around me, arms coming up fast and locking me into the same position I’d used on her. We were pretty well matched in height and weight, and she was a few years younger, but I had the advantage of experience. Whatever underworld skills Galina had, street fighting wasn’t one of them. Somebody had trained her—Tamara, maybe? She had the basics down. She knew to keep her core tight and her face protected. But I’d been doing this a long time, and unfortunately for her, follow-through is my specialty.

I waited a beat as she choked me, letting her tire herself out a little more. Keeping a tight choke hold is exhausting if you aren’t used to it. The forearms really start to burn. When I finally felt my air running out, I slipped my hand into my pocket and pulled out my lighter. It was the only thing I had of my mother’s, a vintage piece of heavy silver, engraved with flowers set with turquoises. She’d left it behind the day she took off without me, and I’d kept it ever since. Unlike her, it never let me down.

I flicked it once, holding it to Galina’s arm. It took a second for the flame to catch, but when it did, it flared fast, catching the fabric of her shirt and licking upwards. She shrieked and let me go, grabbing at her smoldering sleeve to slap out the fire. That was all the chance I needed. I clamped a hand around her broken fingers again, twisting her arm at the wrist until I heard the bone pop out of the joint. She screamed and her knees buckled, but I kept her on her feet by grabbing the back of her collar as I propelled her towards the open door. She flailed and kicked, landing several good shots to my legs, and one to my knee that sent me straight to the floor again.

I scrambled to my knees, curling the lighter into my fist. As weapons go, it wasn’t as good as a roll of quarters, but it helped add a little heft to the right cross I delivered to her jaw. Her head snapped back and she howled like a dog in rage and pain. That’s the problem with amateurs, I reflected as I backed towards the door. They always take things personally.

I glanced behind me. There were maybe six inches of train left under my feet and then nothing. We were still on the viaduct, crossing the gorge on a narrow track, more than a thousand feet above the valley below. I could see the supports of the viaduct, and some of the brickwork. Below that was just an endless blackness, and I turned back to Galina.

She pushed herself to her feet. I had to give her credit, she had guts if nothing else. Her sleeve was burned away, her arm was hanging at a funny angle, and her jaw was a different color than the rest of her. But still she didn’t quit. Her father would have been proud.

She didn’t bother to answer me. She reached into her pocket with her left hand, fumbling a little. It was awkward but also inevitable. I suspected she’d been lying about not having a gun. She might not like them, but there was no way Boris Lazarov’s daughter wouldn’t be prepared.

I’d felt the gun during our tussle and figured it would make an appearance at some point. She pointed it at me and smiled—her father’s smile, incidentally. I remembered it well. Maybe it was stupid to let her have that moment. I could have disarmed her before she even got the gun raised. But maybe I felt sorry for her, sorry for the kid she’d been when we had killed her father. Or maybe I wanted her to have that one moment of hope when she thought she was going to win. Because that made what I did next all the more devastating.

There was a split second before she pulled the trigger, and in that space of time, I stepped aside, grabbing the gun and pulling hard. The shot went through the floor of the train, and she didn’t have time to get off a second. The momentum of my pull dragged her straight out the door. I dodged back as she went by me, an expression of surprise on her face. For an instant, she seemed to hang in midair. Our eyes met, then she closed hers, as if she didn’t want to see what was coming. That was probably for the best.

It was a long way down.