Chapter 21 Alison
ALISON
The guy was all in black, wearing a ski mask. I tried to get my gun back up, but we were too close, and he was too quick. He grabbed the gun in one meaty hand and slammed it against the wall. My knuckles banged into the hard plaster, and the gun went flying out of my hand.
Fuck. I took two running steps backwards, trying to open up some space and give myself some thinking time.
Everything was happening too fast, and it didn’t help that my mind was awash with a hot wave of humiliation.
You let him get close because you were weak-kneed at the thought that Gennadiy was here to fuck you. You fucking idiot, Alison.
And then it got worse: the guy reached behind him and pulled a gun out of his belt. Now he was armed, and I wasn’t. My stomach dropped, and I pushed the shame aside. I could beat myself up later. I had to focus, or I was going to die here.
I jumped forward before he could aim and kicked him hard in the shin, then followed up with a vicious punch to his kidney. He grunted, but he didn’t stop. The barrel of the gun moved towards my face, and I grabbed it and pushed it up–
The gun went off, and plaster fell from the ceiling. Then again, and this time the barrel was so close to me that I smelled my hair singe. He wrenched left and right, trying to break my grip on the gun so he could aim right at me…
I suddenly stepped back, pulling him off balance. As he stumbled forward, I snapped out a front kick that hit him right in the face.
He fell to the floor, and I dodged past him, then sprinted to my front door and grabbed the handle. The gun boomed again, and the bullet missed me by inches, digging into the wall. I threw open the door and sprinted down the hallway and out of the building, barefoot–
And then the universe must have decided to give me a break because a Chicago PD cruiser was driving down the street, no more than fifty feet away. “Hey!” I yelled, waving my arms. “Hey!”
A half hour later, I was standing outside my building, now dressed and nursing a takeout coffee.
Caroline had arrived first, screeching to a stop in her blue minivan with toys littering the backseat.
She’d hugged me for about a minute straight, refusing to let go.
Then Halifax, Hadderwell, and Fitch had shown up.
My apartment was now a crime scene, being crawled over by lab techs.
There was no sign of the intruder. The cops I’d flagged down had raced inside with guns drawn, but the guy had already fled.
Halifax was pacing around, furious that someone would dare to attack one of his agents in her own home. “I’m getting a warrant for the son-of-a-bitch’s arrest,” he told me. And he pulled out his phone and started talking.
I frowned. “Who?” We hadn’t identified the intruder.
Halifax frowned at me. “Gennadiy Aristov, who do you think?”
I felt my eyes go wide. “It wasn’t Gennadiy!”
“How do you know?” asked Fitch.
“Yeah, you said he had a ski mask on,” said Hadderwell. Both of them sounded gentle and…nice, for once. In law enforcement, when one of you gets hurt or attacked, all the bickering and infighting stops because it’s one of us.
“I saw your description; it fits Gennadiy perfectly,” said Halifax. “White guy, same height, same build…you didn’t hear him speak…”
I felt like the ground had tilted and everything was sliding helplessly sideways. “But…it wasn’t him,” I mumbled. “He wouldn’t do this.”
The others looked at each other, confused. Halifax put his phone call on hold for a second. “Alison, he hates you. Your entire job is trying to bring him down. He’s Bratva, he’s a killer…what am I missing, here?”
“But…I know it wasn’t him!”
Caroline frowned. “How?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Because I know Gennadiy’s walk as well as I know my own, and this guy walked differently. Because he wasn’t wearing Gennadiy’s cologne. Because…
Because we…
There was no way I could explain. Not without telling them about him hugging me in the graveyard and the secret meeting where he’d given me the tip about the cesium and me warning him about the attempt on his life. Not without explaining that, somehow, my mortal enemy had become…something else.
“I just know,” I said lamely.
Halifax put his hand on my shoulder. “You’re shaken up,” he said softly. “It’s okay.” He squeezed my shoulder, then turned away and went back to his phone call.
I looked around at all the concerned faces, then turned and looked at my apartment building, awash in red and blue lights.
Reality set in and it felt like someone had just dropped an ice cube through my soul.
Are they…right? Everyone was so sure. Was I just blind to it because I didn’t want it to be true?
Gennadiy was a killer, I knew that. And while a lot of high-up Bratva guys don’t do their killing personally, Gennadiy did get his hands dirty: he’d said as much to me, more than once. This could have been him.
I bit my lip. Just because we were attracted to each other didn’t mean he couldn’t just snap and decide I was causing him too much trouble. Hell, maybe he decided to end me because he felt something for me.
I started running back through the attack in my mind. The guy had been Gennadiy’s height and build. The ski mask had covered everything except his mouth, and it had been dark. Was I that sure he’d walked differently, that sure he’d smelled differently? Every fact I grabbed at turned to smoke.
What if it was him?
I walked a little way from my apartment block, where it was quieter, and thought.
I thought about the feel of his arms around me in the graveyard.
The look in his eyes when I’d said, but you hate me.
All the way back to his cold, protective fury at the strip club.
The memories were like a river’s current, washing away all the uncertainty and leaving only immovable rock.
Gennadiy was a killer. And that seething, vicious temper of his was scary. But hurt me?
No. He wouldn’t hurt me.
I took a deep breath and looked around me. Dawn was just breaking, the sky turning from deep blue to pink and gold.
Halifax was after the wrong guy. I had to stop him.
But the police still had questions for me, and by the time I was finally allowed to leave and go to work, it was after ten. I met Halifax, Hadderwell, and Fitch on their way out of the FBI building.
“I got the warrant,” Halifax told me, brandishing it. “We’re leaving to pick up Gennadiy now.
I gave him a weak smile and watched him go, my toes nervously dancing inside my biker boots. The irony wasn’t lost on me. A few months ago, I’d been desperate to bring Gennadiy down. I still wanted to bring him down. Just not for something he didn’t do.
Relax, I told myself as I changed out of my biker leathers and into my suit. Halifax could arrest Gennadiy, but they’d have to let him go. There was no evidence it was him in my apartment because it wasn’t him.
I frowned at myself in the bathroom mirror. So why was a sick fear spreading through me? Why did it feel like I was missing something?
I stood there gripping the sink, staring down at its clean whiteness without seeing it. My cop brain started grinding. I felt myself rise up on my toes and slowly sink down. No evidence. No evidence…
I froze, still up on my toes, as everything suddenly reversed in my head.
That means there’s no evidence that could prove it wasn’t him, either.
The intruder had been super-careful not to leave any.
He’d approached my building from a side where there weren’t any security cameras, so there were no pictures of him.
He’d worn a ski mask so I didn’t see his face.
He’d worn gloves, so there were no prints.
He was covered head to toe, so no DNA was left behind.
In fact, the only evidence he’d left was…
The bullets that were dug out of my apartment’s walls and ceiling.
And it all snapped into place. “Oh, fuck,” I whispered.
I ran out of the bathroom and raced downstairs, to the evidence room.
I searched through the racks of boxes, looking for one we’d received from Chicago PD, back when I first started the case.
Bullets recovered from Radimir Aristov’s wedding, bullets that came from Gennadiy’s gun, when he’d fired in self-defense.
They’d been dug out of a wall, too. Seven of them.
Except—I held up the evidence bag—now, there were only four. Three were missing. The same number that the attacker had fired at my apartment.
I felt a cold sweat break out across my back. I’d been scared plenty of times in my life, but I’d never felt so utterly disturbed.
Someone was trying to frame Gennadiy. Someone at the FBI.
I dug out the burner phone Gennadiy had given me and dialed. The line rang two times. Three times. Fuck. It was twenty minutes since Halifax left. He could be arresting Gennadiy any minute. Pick up! Pick up!
“Alison?” It was the first time I’d heard him say my name, and despite everything, the sound of it in his Russian accent sent a silvery tremble straight down to my groin.
“Get rid of your gun!” I told him. “They’re coming to arrest you!”
I could hear the frown in his voice. “My gun is clean.”
“Not anymore, it’s not. Someone switched out the evidence.
They’ll run ballistics on your gun, and it’ll tie you to a crime scene.
Get rid of it!” I was wincing, listening to myself.
I didn’t want to think about how many laws I was breaking, telling a suspect about an active investigation.
If anyone found out, I wasn’t just out of the FBI, I was going to jail.
“Why are you doing this?” asked Gennadiy.
“Because someone tried to kill me last night,” I said breathlessly, “and the one thing I’m sure of is, it wasn’t you.”
Silence for a moment. Then he started to say something, but he was interrupted by the rising wail of police sirens.
“Gennadiy?” I asked, panicked.
“I have to go.”
A door banging open. Raised voices. “Gennadiy?!”
But he was gone.