Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
TEN MINUTES EARLIER . . .
The fire alarms wailed in her ears, and she could practically feel the pulse of the noise moving through her veins. Men and women frantically gathered, pushing and shoving to get toward the exit.
“Come on.” One of her father’s guards urged her along.
Her dad peeked at her from over his shoulder, making sure she was okay before he began moving with the crowd.
Sam did the same, glancing back to spy Owen on his way out. Their eyes connected, he gave a hard nod, and then he disappeared through the side door that led to the kitchen area.
Please be safe. She started to walk, only to stop seconds later at the feel of something hard pressing into her back.
Before she could pivot to see who or what was behind her, a voice whispered, “Come with me, or you die.”
Her body stilled, and her mind went blank.
“Come, or I start shooting at the crowd.” The command in her ear had her lids nearly dropping.
She slowly slipped her hand to the chain at her neck, hoping to draw strength from Owen’s necklace. “Okay,” she said over her shoulder.
Walking backward as a hand tugged at her hip, she spotted her dad and bodyguard near the doors.
Her dad glanced back and threw his hand in the air, motioning for her to hurry.
But then he was pushed and shoved out of sight by the herd of desperate people, fleeing as if the room were actually on fire.
Suddenly, the smell of something burning caught her nostrils. She whirled around to see the overhead screen, with POTUS’s face, up in flames.
“Now,” the voice raged in her ear, and she spun to face the man. Viktor Frigging Gromov.
“You,” she whispered.
He yanked her arm in the direction of the flames eating at the screen. The gun poked into her side as they exited the room.
Once in the kitchen, a cloud of smoke slammed into her. She began to gasp for air. Her legs moved slower, and she coughed into her fist. The fire roared to new life, the flames licking the ceiling with purposeful intent.
“Hurry!” His fingers dug painfully into her arm as he dragged her out of the kitchen.
Away from the fire, she sucked in a breath of air through her burning lungs. “Where are we going?”
Gromov yanked open a door that led to a stairwell and then pointed to the steps with his gun. “Go down.”
When she didn’t move, he grabbed hold of her arm and drew her closer, pointing the gun at her forehead. All she could see was the black metal.
His fist connected with her abdomen a moment later, and a cry of pain tore from her mouth. Her lips twisted in rage; she didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of knowing he’d hurt her.
“Go. Now. Or I’ll throw you down the stairs.” His dark eyes leered at her, and he stepped closer, as if ready to hit her in the face with the butt of the gun.
She surrendered with upheld palms and rushed past him as fast as she could without tripping in her heels.
Another hacking cough broke from her lips when she found herself in a basement.
“You’ve ruined everything,” he snarled as he shoved at her back.
She stumbled forward and fell to her knees.
He grabbed hold of her hair, a sharp pain at her scalp as he pulled her upright to her feet. He nudged her in the back again with the gun. “Which way?” she asked, looking left and right. The two halls looked more like tunnels that led to a black nothingness.
“Right,” he rasped.
She slowly moved, trying to dodge the few low-hanging bulbs that dangled from thin cords. “So, you are working with the Kozaks. How’d they convince you to get on board?”
“You think a weak man like Laszlo could’ve planned this?” He sniggered. “I invited him here tonight, but he does not know what is going on.” His Russian tongue swept through his words, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood.
“You care to enlighten me?” she boldly asked, hoping to keep herself alive for as long as possible to give Owen a chance to get to her.
“Laszlo told me about some hacker approaching him—offering him evidence that his wife did not die in Iraq.” The words ripped from his mouth like a blast from a rifle, hot anger spilling hard into the air.
“But he didn’t want to do anything about it.
He wanted to let the past stay in the past. Not even tell his son. ”
She spun to face him, nearly bumping into his tall frame. “I-I don’t understand.”
“I went to this hacker and made the purchase when Laszlo refused.” He looked heavenward for a moment. “There is no place in Russia for weakness.”
“Not even for your friend?” Her arms trembled at her sides. “You were never in support of border peace, were you? The day we met, you were lying to me—but why?” She thought back to Brussels, trying to wrap her head around everything.
He lowered his gun to the side, and she considered making a move for the weapon, but she had zero hand-to-hand combat skills, and so she stood frozen in place.
“There can never be peace. Ukraine belongs to Russia.”
“So, you were always planning an attack, but you were going to blame Ukraine, right? Have both the U.S. and Russia turn on them. That way, they’d never get into NATO.
” She gathered a breath. “And then you realized you didn’t have to find someone to blame when you learned about Teteruk and the U.S. cover-up.”
“At first I thought this couldn’t possibly be a coincidence. Our lives being connected as such. But when I had the photo of your fiancé delivered to you . . . I realized you didn’t know the truth. Your father—he did, but you were a victim.” He let out a heavy sigh.
“What?” She lightly shook her head.
“I had liked you, you know. When we met in July, you had balls. Bigger balls than your father, and I can appreciate that. But your plans for peace and to help Ukraine are absurd. Do you really think the people here tonight from Russia expect to bow down to your country or Ukraine?” He tsked.
“I had hoped you’d do the right thing when I gave you the evidence, and then maybe I’d spare your life tonight.
But you didn’t. You sided with the Ukrainians, just like your father, even knowing they killed your fiancé. ”
“That’s not why—” She cut herself off, realizing the asshole didn’t deserve an explanation from her. “So, you’ve been using me since the moment we met.” She swallowed the lump in her throat as she edged down the hall.
“Better you work with me than find some weak man to try and get your agenda passed.”
“It sounds like you were confident I’d succeed,” she snapped.
“I guess fate kisses the hands of the worthy. And clearly, my friendship with Laszlo was meant to be, so I could discover the harsh truth of what that Ukrainian militant did—and how your country hid it from the world. The U.S. chose to pay off a murderer—and for what?”
She slowly turned, a bone-chilling fear creeping up the back of her neck.
“Are you sure you care about your country so much? Or do you love the money your defense company would make if there were war?” She took slow steps, not anxious to go wherever the hell he wanted to take her, knowing it’d be the end of the road.
His hand curved around her bicep, stopping her, and he yanked her back around.
She sneered at him. “There are other ways to go about finding justice, you know. Killing a crowd of a hundred and fifty people and turning nations against each other? That only makes you a terrorist and a psycho.”
“It makes me smart.” He leaned forward. “My company relies on war and violence. There will never be peace as long as greed exists.”
“So, we’re back to money?”
He pointed toward the ground, an angry scowl marring his lips. “Tatyana Kozak deserves justice.”
“Right. Love of country is a distant second to money. And justice is a far third. You just wanted to use what happened to Tatyana to get you closer to your goals.”
He forced her back around. Before moving forward, she kicked off her heels.
“How do the Kozaks fit into all of this?” she asked a minute later when she found herself facing a closed door at the end of the tunnel.
“Are you setting them up? Are they your fall guys? Is that how much your friendship is worth?” She faced him, her stomach wrenching, disbelief an echo in her mind as he remained quiet.
“You hired someone from Alexander’s company, making it look like he smuggled in the weapon earlier as an A/C guy.
” She thought back to everything Owen’s team had discovered, everything that had led them to pin the crime on the Kozaks.
“You think you’re so smart, but you’re down here with me, are you not?”
She ignored him, trying to buy herself more time. She just needed a little more time.
“That’s why you demanded a change in the date for the event, huh?
You wanted it around the time of the ten-year anniversary to really shove the idea that this was about revenge down everyone’s throats.
” The blood in her veins boiled as she thought about how he’d pulled her strings and manipulated everything—and she had the distinct feeling this wasn’t the first time.
A man like him had probably pulled off similar events to create tension and produce a greater need for the weapons and technology his company produced.
It was sickening.
“If you really cared about Russia, you wouldn’t sacrifice Russian lives tonight. How do you think your government would feel about that?”
“My government will never know. The truth will die with you.” He maneuvered around her and shoved the door open, and her heart leaped into her throat at the sight on the other side.
A dead body lay sprawled on the floor, and a man was gagged and tied to a chair at the center of the room.
She gathered up the images Owen and his team had shown her before heading to Russia in her mind.
Young. Tall. Blond. The corpse was Alexander Kozak.
But the man in the chair . . . Pavlo Teteruk.
Gromov closed the door behind them and waved her toward Teteruk with his gun.