Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
The floor groaned as Yuri paced back and forth in front of the window, staring at the abandoned dirt airstrip not fifty feet from the front door of this shithole.
The field was set in the middle of the New Jersey Pine Barrens, far away from anything and anyone.
Low clouds still hovered above the field from the rainstorm that had pounded the area overnight.
He shoved a hand through his hair, disturbing the gel that held it perfectly upright. The short strands crunched beneath his fingers.
“Blyat. Yobany v rot.” Fuck. Shit. Fucking shit. Things could not suck worse. The pilot was late. Getting to Chicago before anyone figured out his destination was essential to his plan.
He glanced at his shitty old Rolex. Nine a.m. They should have taken off by now. Five thousand dollars was all he had left. He’d paid that pilot half in advance to fly him and Vika to Chicago. If he didn’t show, he’d hunt the motherfucker down and shove a propeller up his ass.
Still pacing, he growled and plowed both hands through his hair this time.
Maybe he should have gone with his original plan to use Vika as bait to lure Gates in, so he could kill him before her very eyes.
That would have been poetic justice, too, and Russians were nothing, if not poetic.
Pushkin, Pasternak, Brodsky. See, he was not the uncultured heathen Semyon and Nikki always thought he was.
Part of him wanted the opportunity to kill Alex Tarankov himself. Sadly, the risks were too great. Gates would never come alone. Feds were like tundra wolves. The beasts traveled in packs. Hitting up Nikki for men wasn’t an option, unless he was prepared to hand over half his cash.
Yuri snarled. He would never give Nikki a dime of what he’d hidden in that bank.
The sound of an airplane filtered through the old farmhouse’s walls. He rushed to a window, rubbing away the century-old grime with his fist. A small plane flew overhead but kept going. “Fuuuck!” he roared and pounded the wall next to the window.
He whipped his head around, staring at the door, behind which his treacherous wife lay. Flexing his fingers, he breathed in and out through his nose to calm his rage. Failing at that, he yanked the clear plastic baggie of Anadrol from his pocket and dry-swallowed the last two pills.
Minutes ago, he’d barely resisted the urge—no, make that the need—to strangle Vika, but he needed her. For now.
The urge to take her held no interest. With Gates’s bastard inside her, she was soiled. Maybe she always would be.
He pulled a pack of Java’s from his pocket and lit one up, inhaling the potent, unfiltered smoke into his lungs as he peered through the dingy window again and looked up at the empty sky. This was supposed to be the easy part.
Relying on someone else was screwing with his plans.
Getting Vika out of her building unseen had been easy in comparison.
Stupid feds. The fire distraction had worked like a charm on the one in the front.
Then he’d carried Vika down the back stairs and dumped her in the stairwell while he’d dealt with the fed guarding the back of the building.
He grinned, remembering the shocked look on the agent’s face when he’d tased him.
Less than a minute later, he’d tossed Vika on the back seat of the sedan he’d parked on the street not three vehicles in front of the fed’s car.
Russian Spetsnaz special forces these guys were definitely not.
The phone tucked into his back pocket next to the Makarov pistol dinged.
He yanked it out and narrowed his eyes on the screen.
One of the motion detectors he’d set around the house last night had been triggered.
It was a cheaper version of the kind he’d installed outside his house in Chicago.
The problem was, any animal lumbering past would set it off, but he had to be sure.
He grabbed the Makarov from his belt and yanked open the rickety door.
Sunlight cast shadows in front of the abandoned hangar at the end of the airstrip.
Wind rustled through the pine trees. Yuri jammed the cigarette out on the railing, then stepped off the porch and picked his way through the trees to where he’d set the device that had triggered.
Crunching came to his ears, the sound of something stepping on dried branches.
He hid behind a thick pine tree, aiming the Makarov in the direction the sound had come from. The crunching grew louder. Deliberate and heavy—not a squirrel or a deer.
A man.
Aside from the pilot he’d hired, no one knew he was here. The pilot had no reason to betray him. He’d still want the other half of the five grand that was due to him. This was probably an early season hunter. Either way, he was a dead man.
The guy stalked closer, no more than thirty feet away. The idiot had no idea he was the one being stalked.
Slacks and a brown leather jacket. Sunglasses, in the woods, no less. A quick flash of light glinted off the thick gold chain around the guy’s neck and—
Yobany v rot. He was fucked.
Yuri knew this man from Chicago, and he’d been in the courtroom during Boris Kolbayev’s trial. Ivan Asimov. Nikki’s man. Nikki did have him followed. Soon, Nikki would know where he was, what he was planning.
Yuri curled his fingers tightly around the gun butt. This could not happen. He could not allow Asimov to report back to Nikki.
Relaxing his grip, he blew out a slow breath, sighted in on the man’s chest, and pulled the trigger. The blast reverberated in the silence of the woods. Birds took off. A squirrel scurried up a dead trunk.
Rising from his crouched position, Yuri walked to where Asimov lay on his back.
He kept the muzzle aimed at the man’s chest, but it was unnecessary.
The force of the gunshot had knocked off the sunglasses, revealing open, unseeing eyes.
A blotch of red now soaked around the hole in his expensive white silk shirt. Too bad. A waste of a good shirt.
Yuri kicked Asimov in the ribs, just to be sure, and because he wanted to. A phone rang, and he automatically reached for his back pocket. But it wasn’t his phone. The sound came from Asimov’s breast pocket. He slipped out the phone. The letters NL lit the screen.
Nikki.
He set the phone on the ground, aimed at the screen and was about to pull the trigger.
Instead, he silenced the ringing, then leaned down and pressed Asimov’s thumb on the home button.
Working quickly, he pulled up all the recent calls.
There’d been one to Nikki. Five minutes ago.
At the very least, Asimov must have given Nikki his approximate location.
Fuck, fuck, fuck!
Where the hell was that pilot? Time was running out.
After dropping the phone on the ground, he aimed at the screen and pulled the trigger. The phone blew apart, sending shards of plastic and phone guts everywhere.
He searched Asimov’s body for a gun. Odd. There wasn’t one. So, Asimov hadn’t been sent to kill him. Only to follow.
Leaving the body where it was, he spun and jogged back to the house.
With the rounds left in the Makarov and the boxes of ammo stashed inside the trunk of the car he’d stolen, he had nearly five hundred rounds.
But his greatest weapon was the woman chained up in the bedroom.
Nikki knew who’d been safeguarding his money all these years.
He wouldn’t want Vika dead, either. Not yet, anyway.
He slammed the front door shut behind him and cued up the number for the pilot. “Where are you?” he shouted when the guy answered.
The sound of an engine hummed in the background. “I’m ninety minutes out.”
“Are you kidding me?” Nikki and his people could already be on the way. He didn’t have ninety minutes.
“I couldn’t take off. Cloud coverage was too low. I’ll call you when I’m on final approach.” He hung up.
“Final approach my ass.” He hurled the phone at the sofa. If that pilot didn’t show as promised, he’d have to find another way to get Vika to Chicago. Yes, he’d put the fear of losing her baby into her, but there was no guarantee she’d play by the rules. His rules.
He stared at the bedroom door, his lip twitching uncontrollably.
Only yesterday, she’d fought him with a toilet brush. Today, it hadn’t taken much to bring her back in line. She had always been weak, easily twisted around his own personal needs. The way it should be. But was it all an act? He would be stupid not to consider the possibility.
Nine months from now, he would decide if she served any wifely purpose. If not…he’d kill her.