Chapter 26
I keepmy eyes on the mirror, endlessly watching Roddick following close behind us, carrying Nikoletta. Deviating from the plan has an itch settling between my shoulder blades, my nerves pinging with every variation of sound and each flash of light as we make our way back toward the city.
Nikolaj left within ten minutes of emerging from St. Clair’s office, off to do the man’s bidding and climb one more rung on the secret society ladder, no doubt.
Understandable, but it left us down to two vehicles, with no choice but to have Nikoletta either leading in the first or following in the second instead of ensconced safely between the two the way I prefer.
I settled on keeping her in front of me. This way any danger would come from behind and encounter me before it could reach her. But thanks to some dipshit panicking as we approached the construction zone right after passing a vehicle with his four-way flashers on, we now lead. At least until we get through this next section and it opens back up into three lanes again.
Grigori’s phone buzzes on the mount between us. Never taking his eyes from the road, he answers with one swipe. “Talk to me.”
“I’m pretty sure we’re being followed.” Roddick’s voice holds a hard edge that has my back snapping straight.
“How many?” Grigori bites out as I reach for my gun. Out of the corner of my eye, I catch sight of Sasha in the back seat doing the same.
“One, maybe two. Not sure just yet.”
I should have ridden in the same vehicle with her, but I knew, I just knew I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands off her. I took enough risks tonight, marching her up to the balcony, doing my best to deliver on the fantasy she scrawled in her journal.
In the single most dangerous place imaginable. And even then, I didn’t give her the passionate fuck she lamented on in that damn diary. I toyed with her, then gave her possessive brutality, leaving my bite carved in her delicate skin. I spent the next hour watching with smug satisfaction, knowing my cum dripping from her spent cunt caused every wobble in her step thereafter.
She spent the hour glaring at me, keeping her back to the walls to hide my teeth marks.
The road opens up and Roddick punches the gas as he darts into the third lane. “Fuck. Definitely being followed. Two of them.”
The traffic fans out as cars bunched up just moments before get up to cruising speed, making it easier to spot the vehicles in question.
The problem with this particular road is, cars flow a good fifteen miles per hour over the speed limit. We’re going twenty over right now. Guardrails run along the right and cement barriers run along the left. Narrow concrete underpasses come out of nowhere in the dead of night and crop up the entire route on our way back into the city.
It’s too damn fast, with too many immovable obstacles. A battle on the road risks rolling one of us, maybe both of us, which will surely take out other cars as well.
Then it’s a matter of who makes it out of the wreckage quickest and shoots first. I don’t like the odds. Not with her life in the balance.
“Get ahead of us, Roddick.” I slide the magazine from the grip of my gun and check the bullets, although I know it’s fully loaded and ready to go.
“On it.” The thread of tension in his voice kicks my heart into a hard and heavy beat, my mind scrambling through all the scenarios.
If they sideswipe Nikoletta—nope. He’s got to get ahead of us. I won’t even consider the possibility.
If they sideswipe us—we wreck, die, and take innocent people in our vicinity with us, at worst. A gunfight at best. Either way, Nikoletta is miles ahead of us and away from the destruction.
The seconds draw out, my muscles tight, my whole body coiling into a singular focus, ready to strike. Even the most forgettable details around me. The bent corner of the speed limit sign. A missing reflector in a series of evenly spaced reflectors along the top of the guardrail. The exact quantity of stick figure kids in the family bumper sticker on the back window of the Honda we’re passing.
Gleb and Sasha sit silently in the back, guns ready in hand. Their eyes narrow as they survey every angle around us.
They’re good at their jobs. But for them, it is a job. For me, it’s my calling. Every time I’ve intercepted threats to Nikoletta’s life, the tiniest of details leading up to the battle carved themselves in my memory.
As though my mind is just waiting in anticipation of my fuckup so I can torture myself with every insignificant detail, looking for where it all went wrong until I drive myself mad or my heart stops beating.
If I lose her—my heart squeezes in my chest—it’ll only beat long enough to end it and join her.
“If we can get onto the side streets, we can lose them,” Grigori says, his shrewd gaze going to the rearview as Roddick begins to pull up alongside us in the left lane.
“I don’t want to lose them.”
Grigori does a double take. “Almost half of our team is with Nikolaj. They could easily outnumber us.”
“And we’ll never know how they found us. No one knew we”d be at the party tonight besides our team and Nikolaj. Someone there outed us. I want to know who and why.”
The car ahead of Roddick is taking his dear sweet time passing another vehicle, leaving only a narrow gap. Trying to slip through is a risk. If he doesn’t do it just right—well—he better do it just right.
Grigori eases off the gas, opening the space wider. His fingers flex on the wheel. “Maybe this is a distraction and the real target is Nikolaj and they’re headed for him as we speak.”
The cars Roddick spotted advance on us and slide in tight on our bumpers in a matter of seconds. “Exactly. So let’s collect a few of these fuckers and find out. Take the next exit. Get us to Woodlawn.”
“The cemetery?” Grigory asks, confusion in his voice.
“Yes. Any attempt on Nikoletta is choosing death. Whoever I don’t collect for questioning, I’ll deliver straight to the grim reaper’s door.”
The streak of headlights slashes across the rearview mirror as one of the cars slams Roddick’s bumper. Their vehicle lurches forward but stays on the road.
This time.
“Fuck!” Roddick’s voice is full of fury.
My skin burns with awareness. The windows are too dark to get a glimpse of her, but somehow, I know she’s turned toward me, searching.
She hasn’t made a sound in the background, but then she wouldn”t. At least not one of panic or fear. I’d bet anything her blood boils back there, just itching to get her hands on whoever made the deadly decision to fuck with us tonight. I should have sent Sasha and Gleb with them. One on each side of her, because what are the chances of the feral little killer I found at the compound staying put when the bullets start to fly?
Fuck.
I check my second gun as I did my first, keeping it in my grip, propping it on my thigh as Roddick gets just ahead of Grigori and leads us off the exit. Four vehicles careening into the otherwise quiet night, in a dense residential section full with cars parked alongside the road, one-way streets, and streetlights on almost every block.
Everything gets quiet other than the sound of revving engines, squealing tires, our angry breaths, and terse communication over the line. Their drivers are cocky little fuckers. Speeding up, swerving to get a reaction, feeding their egos with useless threats they can’t really follow through with without drawing attention to all of us.
But what they’re really doing is wasting energy they’re going to need the minute we enter those gates because we won’t be cautious there. After all, everyone there is already dead.
As the gates come into view, Roddick punches the gas again until he’s just shy of the turn. Slamming on his brakes at the last possible second, he yanks his wheel, sending them into a sharp, last-minute turn that has the two left tires coming off the ground, throwing off our uninvited guests.
My lungs swell with a sharp intake of air, and then freeze, the breath lodged in my lungs, only breaking free when those tires meet the ground once again and he takes off, putting distance between Nikoletta and our enemies.
The minute we make it through the gates behind him, we’re flanked by both cars as they squeeze us and force us toward a copse of trees on the edge of the cemetery.
Tires tear up grass along each side of the narrow lane snaking through the massive burial site. Grigori barely holds the road. The minute we make it over the rise, a granite fountain appears and the car on our left slams on his brakes to avoid taking it head-on, leaving him behind us.
For the moment.
The car on our right swerves away and slams back into us, with a grinding of metal, tearing off the side mirror, sending us off the road where we take out a line of modest stones adorned with American flags.
“There!” I point to the towering oak tree alongside the first of several mausoleums.
“On it.” Foot slamming the gas pedal, he heads in that direction. Rolling down my window, I prop my elbow and take aim in my sights at the front driver’s side tire.
Pop! Pop! Pop!
The explosion of bullets firing pierce the silence. The tire lets out a satisfying pop and shreds just as Grigori swerves out and then back, slamming into them with every bit of force he can. Virtually unable to steer, they head straight into the narrow space between the tree and mausoleum.
Metal screams and crunches as they wedge between the two, the force bringing them to an abrupt, jarring stop. The radiator snaps and hisses, spraying coolant over the hot, mangled engine.
Grigori slams on his brakes so Sasha and Gleb can jump out of the back. Guns drawn, they keep their eyes trained on the wreckage.
“No one gets away. Call Logan for extraction and cleanup. Anyone alive goes to the den. We’re getting Nikoletta.”
Grigori peels away. The call with Roddick is now disconnected. The tracker on the other vehicle is a reassuring green flash on the screen of his phone.
My heart thunders in my chest and a buzzing fills my ears as we snake through the winding roads, careening around tight corners, getting closer to them with every passing second. “C’mon, c’mon, c’mon.”
There’s no way Grigori can hear the chanting under my breath between the sound of the engine and squealing of tires, but it doesn’t matter. He knows.
“We’ll get her. We should see their taillights just over this ridge.”
Before I can blink, we’re cresting over the incline and my heart lurches into my throat at the sight unfolding before me.
Roddick goes left around a massive tree. The car chasing them goes right. When they converge, the bastards chasing them smash into the passenger rear, sending Roddick into a skid that rips through the grass and dirt so hard it’s spraying a good ten feet into the air.
Just as I think they’re good and their ass end starts to come around, their tire catches on a rock and the SUV rolls onto its side, skidding until the roof slams against a massive tombstone.
It was too fast. They were going too fucking fast.
Blood pounds in my ears and everything goes eerily still. Grigori swears next to me, but I can’t make out the words past the pounding panic in my skull.
She’s buckled. If she’s buckled, she’s fine. She is buckled. Roddick would have made sure of it.
If he could control her.
And that fucking temper.
My lungs heave as I search for any signs of movement. Something. Anything.
Our enemies slam on their brakes before the tree line beyond and execute a tight turn back in our direction.
Just as they advance, Roddick kicks out the passenger side window, climbs up onto the door, and pushes himself up to standing. Nikoletta appears next, her face mottled red with rage, her hair slipping from its updo, a blade already in her hand.
My lungs ache in my chest as I search over her skin.
She’s fine. Pissed, but fine.
But exposed.
Grigori skids to a stop, and I’m out the door, my gun drawn, aiming right at the gun appearing from the passenger side window of the other car.
Time slows, the smallest action distinct.
“Nikoletta, down!” I yell.
“Stay down!” Roddick barks at her at the same time.
He spins to face the car heading for them.
She doesn’t listen to either of us and hoists herself up until she’s half-in, half-out of the car.
My heart is literally walking around outside of my chest once again. For the hundredth time. Maybe the thousandth. I lost count years ago.
Three bullets pop off within a split second of each other.
Roddick’s, mine… and theirs.