24. Stefi
24
STEFI
T he smoke bombs have done their trick. The scene is chaotic. People are screaming, rushing toward the exits in a blind panic. The sprinklers finally come on, and the spray of the water sets more people shrieking.
If it weren’t for the masked gunman determinedly threading his way through the crowd toward me, everything would have gone exactly as planned.
“Come on,” Joao urges, tugging me toward him. “We need to get the fuck out of here.”
I hike the skirt of my dress up, duck low in a futile attempt to get lost in the crowds, and race down the stairs. I make it two levels before disaster strikes. My left foot slides awkwardly inside my borrowed stiletto, and sharp pain flares through my ankle like a hot poker. I suck in a breath, my eyes watering from the shock, and Joao stops immediately.
“I’m fine,” I tell him before he asks, then try an experimental step and nearly collapse. Crap. The gunman is only a level above us. He’s not shooting—there are too many people in the stairwell for him to open fire—but he’s catching up.
Any moment now, we’re going to be trapped.
“Go,” I say to Joao through clenched teeth. “Get the hell out of here.”
He doesn’t dignify that with a response. Instead, he sweeps me into his arms so quickly that I don’t even have time to yelp. Then he’s rushing down the stairs again, shouldering people out of the way with ruthless focus.
I don’t think I’ve broken my ankle. It’s probably just a bad twist. But it hurts so much. Fleeing partygoers collide with my leg, and each time, it sends a fresh jolt of pain through me. Every step Joao takes leaves me dizzy and light-headed, almost nauseous. In many ways, I’m a good assassin, but I’ve never had any pain tolerance.
I grit my teeth, refusing to cry out, and do my best to keep my eyes on the guy chasing us. The crowd is thinning, and Joao picks up speed, his steps quick and sure.
For a moment, I think we’re going to make it. . .
Then a sharp crack splits the air. . .
And Joao turns a corner, staggers against the railing, and almost drops me.
“What—?” I start to ask, and then I see blood blooming against his jacket. Gunshot. My heart slams against my ribs, and my mouth goes dry with fear. “Joao, are you?—”
His jaw clenches as he forces himself upright. “I’m fine. Just a graze.”
Focus, Stef. I can’t panic. Joao’s making himself move again, but we’re sitting ducks in this stairwell. The gunman’s already lining up for another shot, and our lives depend on what happens in the next minute. “Where’s your gun?”
“Holster behind my back.”
I knew he’d be armed. I grab his weapon in one fluid movement, sight the gunman, and pull the trigger. The bullet whizzes over his shoulder and buries itself into the concrete wall next to him. I correct my aim and shoot again.
This time, my bullet takes him in the head.
Joao turns the corner as the man chasing us goes down. Someone screams, a shrill, ugly sound of total fear. Another woman joins her. Joao ignores them as he continues down the stairs. “Nice shot,” he says, as maddeningly calm as always. He gives me an appreciative look. “You’ve been practicing, little fox.”
“He shot you,” I say flatly. “Nobody gets to shoot my husband and live.” His praise usually makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. Not now; I’m too worried about the rapidly spreading blood on his shoulder. “How bad is it?”
“I already told you, it’s just a scratch. Shoot out this lock, will you? This is our floor.”
I do, and he pushes the door open. We’re in a long hotel corridor. “Where are we going?”
“We need to get to the service elevator,” he says. He’s alarmingly pale. “It’ll take us down to the garage. I have a car waiting.”
“The fire alarm’s gone off. The elevators won’t work.”
“And I have an override code,” he says with a wink. “You’re not the only one who prepped for this mission.”
He got shot, he looks like he’s going to pass out at any moment, and he’s winking at me. Resisting the urge to punch him in his wounded shoulder, I keep my eye on the door we burst through, just in case anyone is following us. But it looks like we’re in the clear, at least for now. Everyone’s busy panicking in the stairwell, but so far, nobody has had the presence of mind to follow us.
Joao staggers to the service elevator, sweat beading on his forehead. I smash the button, and the doors open immediately. He carries me inside. “There’s a key in my back pocket,” he says. “Could you get it out?” He grins down at me. “Try to resist the urge to pinch my ass.”
“You got shot,” I burst out. “I’m trying not to freak out. One more joke, and I’m going to knee you in the groin.”
“Promises, promises.” He takes the key I hand him and inserts it into the control slot, and the elevator starts to move. Phew.
I try to wriggle out of his hold. “I can stand.”
“You were going to fall on the stairs.” His eyes fall to my feet. “Your shoes are a couple of sizes too large. Were you trying to break your leg?”
“An expert on women’s shoes now, are you?” He gives me an exasperated look, and I sigh in resignation. “Yeah, yeah, you’re right. They didn’t fit right, and I was going to take them off when I ran for it, but in my defense, I was a little distracted.” First by my orgasm and then by the gunmen blasting into the room.
“Is your ankle broken?”
“I don’t think so. It’s just a twist.” At least, I hope it is. Judging by the amount of pain, it’s bad. This conversation with Joao is the only thing that’s keeping me from screaming in agony. “You should have left me back there.” If he hadn’t been carrying me, he would have never gotten hurt. “Next time, if I go down, you get the hell out of there, understand?”
“Don’t be ridiculous, Stefi,” he says, looking down at me with a smile in his eyes. “We’re a team, you and me. I’m never going to leave you behind.”
Before I can react to that, the elevator lurches to a halt, and the doors slide open. We’ve reached the underground garage. Rows of cars are parked in neat rows, illuminated by bright overhead lights. I listen for voices, and tentatively point the gun out in front of us, my finger on the trigger, but all is silent, and there are no gunmen in sight.
“Why isn’t there anyone here?”
“I might have hacked into the hotel security system and remotely locked all the garage doors,” Joao replies with a smirk. “We still need to hurry. They won’t stay that way for very long.”
His words suggest urgency, but his voice is even, and his heartbeat is steady. Joao doesn’t panic; he never has. His calm would be infuriating if he wasn’t on my side. “How’s your shoulder?”
“Still fine. Stop worrying.” He walks down the corridor and opens the door to the underground parking garage. “I’m going to put you down for a second while I get my car, okay? Can you keep your weight off the injured leg?”
“Yes,” I reply. He sets me down gently. I kick off my shoes, wincing as a fresh wave of pain surges through my ankle, and lean against the wall. I watch Joao walk up to a black Audi, and it’s not until he’s about to open the door that my brain starts working again.
“Stop!”
He looks at me. “What’s the matter?”
“I’m not getting into your car. We can take mine.”
“What? Why?”
“Those guys knew I’d be there.” He thinks Q is responsible, but I’m not buying it. “There’s a leak in your organization.”
A look of outrage passes over his face. “My organization?” he demands. “Absolutely not. The leak’s on your end, not mine.”
I lift my chin in the air. “You might be sure of that, but I’m not. If you want me to come with you, then we’re taking my car.”
He stares at me with exasperation for a long moment. “God, you can be so fucking stubborn sometimes,” he murmurs. “Fine, not my car. But we’re not taking yours either.”
He walks up and down the rows of cars, looking for one he can steal. I want to go over and help him, but when I put an experimental foot on the ground, agony explodes up my ankle. “Don’t take anything with electronics,” I call out. “They can be tracked.”
“It’s not my first day on the job, Stef,” he responds. He disappears out of sight, and then I hear a car start up. Joao drives up to me in a rusted-out Peugeot that’s got to be at least twenty years old and gets out of the driver’s seat with a grin. “Your chariot awaits, my lady.”
He picks me up and puts me in the passenger seat. In the distance, I hear shouts and gunfire getting closer. Joao does too. “We need to go,” he says, getting into the driver’s seat and buckling up.
I hold out my hand. “Your phone. You need to destroy it.”
He rolls his eyes. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Yours too, then. Hand me the gun.”
I hand my phone to him and then the gun, feeling naked and vulnerable as I give up the weapon. This has all gone to shit. Varek Zaworski was incredibly well-connected, and Borys Kawka saw me stab him. Ivana from the escort company has my phone number, and her office had security cameras. Any moment now, the Polish police are going to start hunting me, and they’ll have my photo.
And my money is in my hotel room, as are my fake passports.
A hotel room I can’t get to without risking getting shot.
I’m entirely without resources. All this, and a badly twisted ankle. I’m screwed, and I’d be even more fucked if it wasn’t for Joao.
Some of what I’m feeling must be visible on my face because Joao reaches over and squeezes my hand. “Hey, hey, none of that,” he says. “We’re still alive. Let’s focus on keeping it that way.”
He opens his door and throws both phones on the concrete. Then he aims his gun at them and fires. “And now nobody can track us. Happy?”
He’s insane. I start to giggle, my ears ringing from the sound of the gunshots. “Delighted.”
He grins and puts the car into drive just as the door closest to us bursts open and three gunmen pour out of it. “Put your seatbelt on,” he says. “This is going to be a wild ride.”
Three hours later, we’ve switched cars twice and finally have time to catch our breath. I make Joao pull over at the side of the road. “We’re not going anywhere until I look at your shoulder.”
“It’s fine.”
“Take off your shirt.”
He chuckles. “Ah, I see how it is. You just want me naked.”
I roll my eyes as he shrugs out of his jacket and then his shirt, and I examine his wound. It’s definitely more than a graze, but luckily for Joao, the bullet missed the brachial artery, the humerus, and the cluster of nerves in his upper shoulder. It looks like a clean, in-and-out flesh wound.
I exhale in relief. “It’s not bad,” I admit.
“Thanks, I’ve been working out.”
“I’m not talking about your muscles.”
“So, you did look,” he teases.
Once again, I resist the urge to punch him in the arm. “Will you be serious for a second?” I demand. “We’re in big trouble. Kawka saw me stab Zaworski. The authorities are going to be looking for me. By now, they’ll have my photo. And, if that’s not bad enough, I don’t have a passport on me, and without one, I can’t leave Poland.”
He starts up the car again and merges back on the road. “I have a passport for you,” he replies. “And money. Unfortunately, if you’re right about the leak being in Venice, we can’t use it. Not unless we’re out of options.” He takes his eyes off the road and runs his gaze over me, slow and through. “You look like you’re about to pass out. We can make plans tomorrow. Right now, we need rest, and I need to look at that ankle.”
“It’s fine.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” He gets on the freeway, headed west toward Poznan and Berlin.
“Berlin?”
“I have a contact there, one who’s unaffiliated with the Venice Mafia. She can get us passports.”
“She?”
“Are you jealous?” He shoots me an amused smile. “You have no reason to be.”
“Not according to Google,” I reply tartly, regretting the words the moment they leave my mouth. “You’ve got dozens of beautiful women hanging onto you, staring adoringly in your direction.”
“And you found these pictures on the Internet? When we get our hands on a computer, you must show me these search results.” He smiles at me. “I missed this. Running away together, shooting people together. I missed hanging out with you.”
“Me too.”
I know he wants to know why I ran. It’s the question on the tip of his tongue, but he doesn’t ask. Maybe it’s because he knows I’m feeling increasingly nauseous. Every time the car goes over a pothole, a shock goes through my ankle. Or maybe he’s just tired of asking me that question and not getting an answer.
Either case, he holds his tongue and puts his hand over mine.
I look down at our entwined fingers. “Your palm is bleeding.” With everything that’s happened in the last couple of hours, I’d almost forgotten about his insane knife blade stunt. “The cut’s opened up again.”
He glances down. “Yeah, it started to clot, but it reopened when I punched Kawka. Totally worth it.” He strokes my cheek with bloody fingers, and I lean into his touch. “We’re going to be on the road for a couple of hours,” he says quietly. “I want to get well away from Warsaw before we stop for the night. Go to sleep, little fox. You need the rest.”
“I’m fine,” I say automatically. “I’m wide awake.”
But it’s a lie. Sitting in the car with Joao, I feel truly safe for the first time in eight years. Lulled by the dark and the movement of the car, with my husband holding my hand, I relax back in the passenger seat, and before I know it, I’ve fallen asleep.