8. Alexei #2
I nod. “Fucker has been in the same place for twenty minutes. And that road was already spotless.”
He frowns. “Who do you think he’s here for? You, Lars, or me?”
“That’s what I’m going to find out. You got a weapon?”
Mickey nods.
“Good. But I don’t want you down there with me.” I check the Luger I had delivered on arrival. “I need you up here, with your sister.”
“Got it. But I haven’t slept in days, and I’ve drunk too much to be a sure shot.” He meets my eyes squarely. “I’m in no state to put up a decent fight if it comes to it.”
I’m slightly taken aback and more than a little impressed by his honesty.
“Let me make a call for backup,” he says, taking out his phone.
Making a call means Roman.
Questions.
Explanations I wasn’t planning on making.
On the other hand, not calling might endanger Ofelia.
No-brainer.
“Make the call.” I swap my dress shirt for a black T-shirt and lace boots beneath my suit pants.
“Then get rid of any stragglers and put Benny and Lourdes into Lars’s bedroom.
It’s got a huge Jacuzzi, so I’m sure Benny won’t complain.
I want your sister to stay where she is, in a separate room, and I want you outside her door with as many men as you have.
Then get Lars out here with his laptop. Do you understand? ”
Mickey nods. He doesn’t fuck around asking questions, just makes for the door, already murmuring into his phone as he goes.
I wait until he’s gone before I slip my new passport and several rolls of euros into my pockets.
I have no intention of letting whatever is down on that street follow me back up into the hotel—or anywhere near Ofelia.
My fingers touch the square box still in my suit pants pocket.
You should leave it for Ofelia.
It is her gift, after all.
Oh, sure. Hard reality reasserts itself almost immediately. On her fucking pillow, asshole, or were you planning to ask her brother to pass it on?
My hand tightens on the box, but despite knowing it’s the sensible thing to do, I can’t bear to simply leave it among the rest of my things. Instead, as I hear the party in the salon dying down, I thrust the box down to the bottom of my pocket and tell myself I’ll deal with it later.
As I come into the salon Mickey emerges from his room, weapon in one hand and laptop in the other.
Going by the fresh water dripping down his face, he’s done his best to sober up.
“I’m hacking the hotel security cameras,” he says, his fingers flying over the keys.
“And Roman is sending reinforcements. This time of the morning they’ll be here in ten minutes. ”
“Good.” I’m starting to remember why I liked Mickey back when I first met him.
“Roman said to wait,” he goes on, “and let them work this out instead of going down yourself.”
I really don’t give a fuck what Roman said.
“We’re not waiting,” I say curtly as two of the security guys emerge from the elevator.
“Two of our men are waiting for you on the second floor,” one of them says.
“Tell them not to bother. I want all of you here.” I put out my hand. “Give me a comms set, and I’ll tell them myself.”
Lars emerges with his laptop as I’m attaching the comms. “Ooh,” he says, cracking his knuckles and giving me a very loose grin as he pulls out a headset. “Looks like my kind of party. Mickey, where are we on hotel security?”
“Almost in.” Mickey doesn’t look up.
“Just like I nearly was with the divine Benny.” Lars shakes his head ruefully as he raises the mike to his mouth. “Radio check?”
“Loud and clear.” I glance at him. “There’s a street sweeper outside who shouldn’t be there. Can you run his face, see what turns up?”
“If he’s hot,” Lars says, taking his phone to the window and zooming in, “can I put him in the Jacuzzi with Benny? Oh well,” he says, opening the picture on his laptop. “Not hot, sadly.”
“If you find out who he’s working for,” I say, fitting a silencer to my Luger, “I’ll buy you one even prettier.”
“I love it when you talk dirty to me.” Lars’s fingers don’t stop moving throughout our discussion.
Unlike the security guys, who are watching us with slightly impatient expressions, I know that Lars does his best work while keeping up a constant stream of shit talk.
I like it that way. During my years in captivity, his black humor, transmitted through an old gaming console, was often the only thing standing between me and utter insanity.
That, and his lethal ability to hack any system in record time.
I turn to the security guys. “If there is anyone inside the hotel who shouldn’t be,” I say, “two of you go and take care of them. The others stay here.”
“You can’t go down there alone.” One of the guys frowns at me. “Not until we know what you’re walking into.”
“If you’re with me, they’ll make us right away.
” I head for the elevators. “I need you here. Whatever happens on the street, Ofelia Borovsky is your only priority, do you understand?” I glare around to make sure they all get it.
“If she or any of her friends suffer so much as a scratch, you’ll answer to me. ”
The guy glances warily at Lars, who is technically his primary asset. “Mr. Andersson—”
“—will tell you exactly the same thing,” I cut him off. “As will Mickey.”
“What he said.” Lars speaks without looking up from his screen.
“You don’t leave the penthouse,” I continue addressing the security team, “for any reason. I want two of you outside Ofelia’s door, and until you’re told otherwise by Mickey, Lars, or me, you don’t move. Roman has men on the way. If I need backup, I’ll use them.”
“Copy that.” Clearly realizing the futility of arguing, they just get to it.
Mickey holds up his phone. “Line will be free, brother. Call and I’m there.”
“Just look after your sister.”
His grave nod is the last thing I see as I sidestep the elevator and head for the fire escape stairwell.
Mickey may be two days without sleep. He may have consumed his own weight in alcohol. And he may not like me.
But I know with absolute certainty that he’d put his body in front of Ofelia’s without a moment’s hesitation, no matter how many bullets were flying. And right now, that’s all I care about.
I’m two stairs down when I see two shadows on the wall below. They don’t appear to be moving.
I flick the safety off my Luger and hold it before me. I move silently down one flight of stairs before the acrid scent of cigarette smoke hits me. I peer cautiously around the balustrade.
Two young men, both wearing hotel uniforms, are leaning against the stairs, sharing a smoke.
Christ.
I slip the Luger into the back of my pants. “Bad place for a smoke,” I call down grimly. They look up in surprise. “Best fuck off back to work.” I nod upstairs behind me. “Your supervisor is on his way down.”
Looking scared, the two stub out their smoke and beat it.
The last thing I need is hotel bellboys on my conscience.
I leave the stairs on the second floor and go to the window, scanning the streets below. My eyes pause on a white van, parked discreetly on a side street opposite the hotel. It has no windows—and someone is sitting in the driver’s seat.
“White van parked in the side street just down from the hotel,” I say into my comms. “Any idea what it’s doing? There’s someone in the driver’s seat.”
A moment later Lars’s voice crackles back. “Got it. No plates, and there’s some high-grade tech inside it, going by the signals.”
Fuck.
“What kind of tech? Are we talking surveillance or a fucking bomb?”
“I’ve got cellular, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and radio. Surveillance for sure. Can’t tell you what else is in there.”
“Can you hack their cameras and get a head count?”
“Working on it.”
“I’m into hotel security.” Mickey’s voice comes through my comms. “Checking cameras and exits.” He pauses, then comes back a moment later. “So far, nothing out of the ordinary, just staff.”
“Check the names,” I say grimly. “And that doesn’t mean they didn’t hide someone earlier. Get Lars’s guys to run through the earlier feeds.”
“Copy that.”
Lars’s security are all trained by me, and chosen for more than their physical capabilities.
Unlike the kind of work I do in Miami, our tech enterprises require security operatives that are as dangerous on a keyboard as they are in the field.
I’ve spent a lot of time training a team we can rely on for both.
Lars has accused me more than once of being overly cautious, but if I learned anything from my years of captivity, it’s that the more skills a man has, the better his chances of staying alive.
And that means training geeks with guns, as Roman calls them.
I scan the street. “I need eyes and ears inside that van, Lars. I need to know how many we’re dealing with.”
“Whoever is in there has high-grade shit sewn up tighter than a twink’s buttcrack. It’s going to take time to break in.” Lars sounds positively gleeful at the prospect.
And if they’re planning something, we might not have time.
“Have fun, asshole. And keep me updated. We could be on a clock here.”
“Ooh,” he says as I head for the fire escape. “Now you’re just turning me on.”
I take the stairs down to the basement parking garage, then find a pedestrian’s exit.
I emerge onto the street at the rear of the hotel and take my time edging around to the front, hugging doorways and recesses as I move through the growing dawn.
I pause just before the corner, sheltered behind a parked car, looking carefully around at the empty streets.
The van is parked diagonally to the left of me, in a side street across the road.
I can just see its rear doors from my vantage point.
The street sweeper is still pretending to work on the pavement opposite the entry to the hotel.
And he’s not the only one pretending to be something he isn’t.