14. Mobster School
14 MOBSTER SCHOOL
Lanie
The joy of seeing my best friend’s new baby was ripped away and replaced with dread. There were an infinite number of ways for our operation to go tits up; so many it wasn’t even funny. We’d made contingency plans for our contingency plans, yet it didn’t seem to lessen the knot which formed in my stomach as soon as we left the hospital. These weren’t your run-of-the-mill bad guys. The Bratva was ruthless and ten times more dangerous than anyone we’d ever gone up against. There was a real chance someone could get hurt and that knowledge made me nauseous.
“It’s going to be okay.” Noah squeezed my hand. He’d taken hold of it as soon as we climbed into the back of Duncan’s SUV and hadn’t let go.
“Don’t do that,” I snapped.
“Do what?”
“Placate me. Just because I was gushing over Ryder ten minutes ago doesn’t mean I’ve lost my edge. I’m still a badass. ”
“Of course you are.”
“For fuck’s sake, don’t coddle me either.” I shifted restlessly in my seat.
“Should we detour to the office so you two can go a couple rounds in the ring?” Duncan piped up from the driver’s seat.
“No,” Noah said at the same time I muttered, “Maybe.”
“It’s normal for your emotions to ping-pong all over the place, especially given we have no idea the kind of shitstorm you could be walking into.” Duncan flipped on the blinker to exit the highway. “But get it all out now. Once you walk into that restaurant, you’ve got a role to play and being a bitch isn’t it.”
Ouch. Direct hit.
“Watch it,” Noah growled.
“No, he’s right. I was being a bitch.”
Settling back against the leather seats, I closed my eyes, trying to eliminate all of the unnecessary chatter happening between my heart and my head. I needed to focus on the here and now, instead of worrying about the what-ifs should plans A through D unravel. If shit went left, I’d handle it––we’d handle it. That’s what family did.
Before we left the office at o’dark thirty this morning, we’d gotten word from Zakhar’s second-in-command, Kasimir. Vlaschenko agreed to meet, but only at a place and time of his choosing. Cocky Russian . It wasn’t anything we hadn’t already anticipated and prepared for. Although dinner at a bustling, hard-to-get-reservations-for steakhouse, thirteen miles away in nearby Ashland, Kentucky wasn’t what any of us had in mind. Nor was the fact he insisted I be the only agent in attendance. Noah was not pleased and he made it known…repeatedly.
Pulling up to the front of Steak on Main, the knot twisted further. As a law enforcement officer, sometimes your gut instinct was the only thing you had to go by. Right then mine was churning fiercely.
When the valet attendant opened the back door, I slid to the edge of the seat, my knee-length LBD revealing a bit too much of my thigh to the pimply-faced teenager. When Noah tugged on the hand he still had in his grip, I twisted around.
“You’re gonna have to let go, Cowboy.”
“If anything feels off, get up and get the hell out.”
“This whole damn thing feels off.” I leaned in, kissing him softly. “You didn’t give me a chance earlier, so I’m gonna say this now. I’ve been in love with you since before I knew how to love, Noah Anderson.”
“You better come back to me in one piece, or I’ll tan your ass,” he whispered in my ear.
“Promises, promises.”
“You remember what to say if you want us to get you out?”
“This isn’t my first rodeo, Duncan.” The warning look he gave me reminded me of the same one Dad used whenever he was exasperated with me and Lee. No wonder Koen nicknamed him and Waverly, Mom and Dad. It was the damn truth. “Is it warm in here?”
“Good.” He nodded.
I watched from the sidewalk as Duncan drove past the surveillance van parked on the corner across the street. Its dark tinted windows and bakery business logo on the side blended in seamlessly with the dozen or so other delivery vehicles lining the curb. The time of day helped as well, considering the sun was starting to set.
My cheap, knock-off heels clicked noisily on the concrete as I strode toward the glass-wrapped facade of the building. As I approached, the acne-covered kid, along with an older gentleman, opened the French-style doors, letting the most divine smell escape into the night air. My stomach grumbled, suggesting the two and a half donuts I’d eaten earlier had long since been digested.
“Good evening, ma’am. May I help you?”
The ma?tre d’ was decked out in all black; black fitted jeans, a long-sleeve black button-down shirt––and you guessed it––a black Stetson. The only thing not black was the huge silver buckle he wore on his black leather belt. The whole place gave me more of a Texas vibe rather than Kentucky, which made sense since the owners were from a little town near Austin, called New Braunfels.
“I’m meeting Zakhar Vlaschenko.”
“Ah, yes. If you’d follow me, your date is waiting.”
I chuckled to myself, immensely grateful Waverly only insisted on me wearing a wire and not an earpiece as well. I’m sure the comment about my “date” was going over really well with Noah. If I listened real hard, I could hear his voice in my head. “It’s not a fucking date.”
Scanning the restaurant, I followed the cowboy toward the rear of the restaurant, vowing to have Noah bring me back here when I could enjoy the atmosphere, instead of scrutinizing the patrons to figure out which ones came here with my dinner companion. We weaved our way through the dimly lit space, bypassing hordes of hungry diners eating by candlelight, until we reached our destination; a lone table in the corner. It was what the industry called the chef’s table, which was reserved for special guests; like the man sitting behind it, looking even more handsome in person.
Game time.
Zakhar stood and I had to keep my chin from hitting the floor. What the hell did they feed these guys? Miracle Grow? He was taller than Duncan by at least a couple inches, and the pictures hadn’t done his muscles any justice. There was no way the navy-blue suit he wore was anything but tailor-made. Off the rack was definitely not in this guy's vocabulary.
“Special Agent Biggs,” he held out his hand, “it’s a pleasure.”
“Same, Mr. Vlaschenko.”
After pulling out my chair, the ma?tre d’ handed us each a menu, recounted the specials for the evening, and told us our waiter would be over shortly.
“Zak, please.”
“Hmm?”
“Call me Zak. May I call you Alaina?”
“Only if you have a death wish.” I slapped the menu down, having decided on the most expensive cut of meat I could find.
“Feisty.” He steepled his hands under his chin. “I like that.”
“This isn’t a date, Zak.”
He lost a bit of the playfulness in his tone. “No, it’s not.”
Silence ensued, only broken by the arrival of our server a few minutes later.
“Can I start you both with a glass of wine?” she asked, batting her long eyelashes at Zak. I rolled my eyes, thinking about the verbal smackdown she would’ve gotten if this were an actual date.
“I’m afraid we won’t be staying.” A text alert sounded on the phone in my purse at the same time Zak’s words registered. What the fuck? He dismissed the server and leveled his icy gaze on me. “You’re going to want to check that, Alaina. Don’t worry, your friends in the van outside are getting a similar message as we speak. Seems I have a death wish after all.”
Slowly reaching into the sparkly red purse, I pulled my cell out and swiped my thumb across the screen. My hands began to shake as I studied the picture. Henley, Jade, and Keaton; all fast asleep inside the hospital room. Each of them with the red dot of a sniper rifle in the middle of their foreheads. It took every bit of my self-control not to launch myself over the table and shoot this motherfucker right between his eyes. He was lucky there hadn’t been enough room to strap a gun to my thigh under the dress.
“I’m truly sorry for deceiving you, milaya.” My head snapped up when he spoke. I didn’t know much Russian, but I knew the word for dear. “For what it’s worth, I have no intentions of harming you or allowing harm to come to you. Machail, nor his men, will get anywhere near you. You’re safe with me.”
Safe with him? I’d be safer in the middle of a minefield. I laughed. Not a snort, not a chuckle. A full-on belly laugh because this could not possibly be my life.
“You’re out of your fucking mind, Zakhar.” I couldn’t stop laughing. “In about three seconds, four very pissed-off FBI agents are gonna storm in here and kick the shit outta you.”
“They won’t.” He shook his head.
His confidence sobered me. “What makes you so sure?”
“Their text message, which included a picture of you marked with the same red dot, instructed them not to.”
My eyes narrowed, though truth be told, I was impressed. Not many people could have bested us the way he did. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to put his balls in a vise grip if I survived whatever hell he had in store for me. It was happening so long as Noah didn’t gut him first .
“So what’s your big plan here, Zakhar? You're just gonna walk right out the front door with me?”
“In a manner of speaking…yes.” He snapped his fingers at someone behind me. Two seconds later, my chair was being dragged out from under the table. “As much as I’m enjoying the view of you in that remarkable dress, it’s gotta go. There’s a change of clothes in the ladies’ room. Leave your phone, purse, and any jewelry in there. Oh, before you go, take the wire off and place it on the table, please.”
I stand corrected. It didn’t matter if Noah killed him, his nuts were still getting squashed like boobs during breast cancer awareness month.
“Are we there yet?”
“You just asked two minutes ago, Agent Biggs.”
“A hundred and twenty seconds is a long time. Things change.”
“The time of our arrival hasn’t.”
“And that would be…?”
Annoying the shit out of a Russian mobster wasn’t on my to-do list this evening. However, since the asshole made me change my clothes––which I wasn’t upset about since it would be easier to run in sneakers than heels––then snuck me out the back door of a restaurant before he fed me, which explained my hangry attitude, then he’d earned every ounce of smart-assery I could muster. I was also pissed that his behemoth of a driver had cold-cocked Nelson. Poor guy hadn’t even seen it coming.
“You’re acting like a child, Alaina.”
“Well, you kidnapped me, so there’s that.”
“Technically you got in the car of your own volition. ”
“Semantics, Zak. Or didn’t they teach you about that in mobster school?”
Our driver barked out a laugh, or what sounded like a laugh. I couldn’t be certain. For all I knew, he was choking. Either way, he wasn’t my concern. My sole focus was on the piece of shit sitting to my right. Well, him and how the hell I was going to get out of the handcuffs he’d gingerly put on my wrists so I could kick his arrogant ass when the time came. Should I have been worried? Sure. Maybe even a little scared, given the fact I was cut off from my team, and I was. My snark seemed to work overtime in stressful situations. For some unknown reason though, I actually trusted this douche when he said he wouldn’t let anyone touch me. Just call me na?ve because it was my new middle name.
Giving my captor a moment of reprieve, I flopped back into the seat with a huff. Noah had to be losing his mind. I would be if the situations were reversed. There was no doubt in my mind, they’d have my location figured out in a matter of hours. The problem was, did I have hours to wait? So many questions…too many unknowns. I hated being in the dark.
Reprieve over.
“Why not cooperate with the FBI? You could’ve had a sweet deal.”
“Do you know what happens to a member of the Bratva who cooperates with law enforcement, Agent?” He twisted his torso to the side. “It’s not pretty and it’s not a quick death. I’m not going to put the image into your pretty little head, but let's just say, it makes drawing and quartering a person look humane.”
“Then why the ruse?”
Zakhar studied me a moment longer than necessary, then blew out a breath. “Machail wants you, I want Machail. Seemed like a no-brainer to me.”
“So what happens when we get wherever we’re going? You said he wasn’t going to touch me, right?”
“He’ll never have the chance.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Dead men can’t touch anything.”
Noah
Whether they went to prison or we buried them six feet under, the Bratva’s reign of terror was coming to a swift end. We’d failed Lanie once, but I’d be damned if it would happen again. Duncan left as soon as we received the first text. He’d be able to use the different angles from the photo to find the den of the snipers who had Keaton and the girls in their scopes. Shortly after, Lanie’s wire went silent and I knew something was wrong. We tried and failed to reach Nelson, who was monitoring the rear of the restaurant. Waverly ordered us to stay put while she entered the restaurant alone. She found the table empty and our tech guy laying on the ground outside with a nasty bump on the back of his head.
Not long after, we received the all clear from Duncan. The gunmen were long gone. He’d wait at the hospital with Keaton until we had more information. Then we hauled ass back to the office where Nelson, despite his raging headache, and Koen scoured traffic cams in search of any vehicle leaving from the rear of the restaurant while Waverly phoned for reinforcements; the local, state, and federal kind. She was already in a heap of shit for disobeying direct orders, so a little more insubordination was nothing in comparison .
Me? I was instructed to keep my shit tight or face a five-by-nine cell. As tempting as it was to see which one of them would try to lock me up, I didn’t want to be sidelined for the duration of the rescue. Even though it felt like my heart had been torn from my chest, I was determined to be useful. The best way I could figure to do that was to find out where Vlaschenko was taking her. While I wasn’t a hacker supreme like Nelson, I knew my way around a computer well enough to search property listings by owner.
“Got ’em!” Nelson shouted. “A black Escalade tore out of the rear parking lot fifteen minutes after Lanie went inside. No other vehicles went up or down that street. It has to be them.”
Shayne Black, a detective and friend from the Huntington PD, leaned over his shoulder. “Can you get me the plate number? We’ll be able to track them faster with the license plate reader.”
The automated license plate recognition system was a tool law enforcement used which utilized cameras to capture license plate numbers, then stored them in a central server. Once Shayne keyed in the information, we were able to see every movement the SUV made. We couldn’t wait for any more backup to arrive. We were out of time. Lanie was out of time. The instant Nelson spouted off the location of the vehicle, the three of us, plus Shayne, hopped in Waverly’s FBI issued SUV on an intercept course.
“I haven’t had a hit in the last two minutes,” Nelson’s voice sounded over the vehicle’s sound system.” They must’ve turned off on a side road.”
“Which road, Nelson?” Waverly barked.
“Give me a minute.”
“You have thirty seconds. We’re almost to the last known location. ”
Something clicked in my brain about our current heading.
“Nelson, check my laptop. I’m pretty sure Zasha Popov is the listed owner of a property near here.”
“There’s no need to look,” Shayne interjected. “The Huntington PD assisted the DEA with a raid on that property about six months ago. I was there. It’s literally five acres of forest.”
Shit.
“Has anyone had eyes on it since?”
Koen had a good point. It wasn’t like the Russians were upstanding citizens. They wouldn’t give a damn about things like submitting a building permit to the city before they started excavating the land. They’d just do it.
“Do you remember how to get there, Shayne?” I asked.
“Take a left at the old paper mill,” she replied. “Deer Road.”
They built a warehouse in the middle of nowhere. Not just one…three. The Bratva was storing a big part of their operation in these buildings. There was no telling what we’d find. Guns, drugs, hell, there could be human beings inside. This was bigger than the kidnapping of a federal officer and way more than the four of us––well, five, since Duncan was two minutes out––anticipated.
As I strapped on my bulletproof vest and watched everyone else do the same, a comment Nelson made the other day kept playing on repeat in my head. He’d said Vlaschenko had a zero tolerance policy when it came to hurting women. So why not go along with what the FBI was offering rather than going rogue? Something wasn’t adding up. Whatever the case, it didn’t matter if we were outgunned, we were getting my girl out of there one way or another.
A moment of static, then Koen’s low voice came through the comms unit in my ear. He’d split off from the rest of us to find higher ground in order to use the night-vision scope on his rifle.
“There are two armed guards on the outside from what I can see. Lucky for us, they aren’t the sharpest tools in the shed. One circles the building, leaving the other completely exposed. We’ll be able to disarm and disable without being heard. Unfortunately, the windows are blacked out, so I can’t see what’s happening inside.”
“No need,” Nelson cut in. “I hacked into the closest satellite and brought up the images from the last two hours. A total of eighteen people have entered the building, plus your two on the outside. Twenty in all.”
“Great work. Both of you,” Waverly replied. “Double-time it back here, Koen.”
Shayne shook her head. “How many laws did he just break with that stunt?”
“Only about a dozen.” She shrugged.
I was about to comment when a branch snapped somewhere behind us. As one, we spun, drawing our weapons. Nothing moved, but then Duncan came through the comms. “We’re a hundred yards to your south. Coming in fast.”
We? Even a newborn baby couldn’t keep Keaton grounded, I guess. Or his fiancée insisted he come. Either way, I was relieved when he and Duncan stepped out of the trees. The more firepower, the merrier, in my opinion.
The longer it took to make our move, the more anxious I became. It wasn’t as if we were waiting for reinforcements; we’d nixed that idea back at the office. Too much red tape to worry about. So what the fuck were we waiting for? I was about to ask just that when Waverly started talking.
“We’ll split into pairs. Shayne,” she pointed to the detective, “you’re with Duncan. Take down guard number one then locate a way inside. Koen and Keaton, you take the second guard and cover the back. Noah, you and I will breach from the front. Everyone has four minutes to get in position. I’ll give the word over comms and we’ll move in together. Any questions?”
With my Glock in hand, I glanced around at the people with me. There wasn’t anyone I’d rather have at my side. We were more than a team, more than friends. We were a family in the truest sense of the word, and we were missing a vital member. And when gunshots rang out from inside the building before Waverly gave the signal, we didn’t hesitate. Fuck the plan. Fuck waiting. We were getting her back by whatever means necessary.