Chapter 18
Middle of the fucking night, late Monday or early Tuesday, unmarked van
G abby blinked herself awake. Hard plastic bit into her wrists when she reached to swipe her hair out of her face. Her cheek was pressed into the floor of a moving vehicle instead of a pillow, and the sound of tires on asphalt roared dangerously close to her ear. Traveling at freeway speeds to who-knows-where in a dark van throbbing with Russian techno—she had been kidnapped. Through the brain fog, she remembered a van arriving, three guys in masks, and defending herself with a leaky bag of trash. She must have gotten him good. This was the worst-smelling van Gabby had ever been in, which was saying something.
On the bright side, she was alive, and they hadn’t ever gone in the house. They’d thrown her in the van and sped away, meaning her kids were still asleep in their beds. If Kyle was awake, she was sneaking down to the kitchen in earbuds, and drinking a half a gallon of juice, as if the person who restocked the fridge didn’t notice that the raspberry lemonade disappeared overnight. Gabby didn’t know how she was going to do it, but she was going to do her damnedest to get back to her kids. They needed her.
One of the men yelled something. It wasn’t English. Russian? It sounded like Granny.
If Gabby died today, Phil would marry some big-boobed bimbo who could cook and clean, a replacement mommy, younger and prettier but just as dumb as she’d been. Then Kyle would end up in therapy with stepmom issues, in addition to whatever else she was struggling with. Gabby didn’t understand what Kyle was going through. When she’d gone from Kylie to Kyle, Gabby had asked if she wanted to change her pronouns. Kyle had sneered back and said she just didn’t want to be a Kardashian.
One of the guys reached back and squeezed her calf and uttered a guttural, “Hey.” Instead of recoiling, she played dead—the same move she had used when Phil wanted late-night sex.
She squeezed her eyes shut against the darkness and fear, but she couldn’t block out her self-recrimination. Her abysmal sex life, her failed marriage, her daylong career as a spy. She had nodded and smiled her way into a facsimile of Al and Peggy Bundy’s marriage. Agreed to a job she wasn’t qualified for because it sounded sexy and blown it on her first damn day. If, and that was a big if, Kyle was feeling weird about being a woman, Gabby could hardly blame her. She sure as hell hadn’t made it look good.
A blinker turned on, and the van slowed from highway speeds. She couldn’t see out the window, but she could see the lights of oncoming headlights cutting across the roof of the van. They pulled off the freeway, headed somewhere more remote, no doubt. These had to be the guys who had killed Darcy. They were probably going to shake her down for information before they did the same to her.
Waterboarding.
Fingernail pulling.
Electric shock.
She still had a towel on her head and those little gold under-eye patches—getting dolled up for her execution, as it turned out. “Just make coffee and smile,” the EOD had said.
That never fucking worked out. It didn’t get her anywhere in her marriage, and it didn’t get her anywhere as a spy. She was going to have some words for Markus—if she lived.
They turned onto another road, a rougher ride. Her skull bounced against the floor of the van with each rut and pothole. No more lights from oncoming traffic. No chance of rescue.
The music changed to “Sweet Dreams” by the Eurythmics. In a dark van, being driven to her death to one of her favorite songs—this was surreal. One of the Russians started singing along in a heavy accent. She wanted to scream, “You’ve got the wrong person! I’m just a mom.” Did being a spy for one day even count?
If Gabby died today, her kids wouldn’t even know that she went down as an undercover EOD agent. If only she could live long enough to let her daughter know that she could do more than make bad casseroles. With Phil as his only influence, Lucas might become a finance bro.
If she made it out of this, she needed some way to defend herself. Maybe she sucked at shooting the first time, but she had fired literally only one shot. Didn’t everyone need practice? A bag of leaky trash and an old tube of Avon lash-extension mascara would never cut it.
The van slowed. Gabby was tied and lying down, but from the thin slice of sky, she could see the top of an industrial building. Gray concrete splashed with half-assed graffiti. She’d seen those shows where kidnapping victims guided the authorities to their location by describing a few left and right turns, the sound of a traffic noise, and the honking of cranes that only lived in one patch of grass that happened to be next to the bad guy’s lair. All Gabby had was a gray building with some gang tags.
After some rapid-fire Russian, they slid the door open. One of the guys grabbed her upper arm and yanked her up and out of the van. She stumbled out and scrambled to stay upright with her hands tied behind her back.
“Suka,” one of them yelled, and another guy laughed.
Gabby knew that word from driving with her grandma—bitch. Russian road rage vocab was all she knew.
With the slam of a heavy metal door, she was inside. A quick scan of the room showed nothing but a warehouse filled with boxes, some kind of illegal import-export business maybe. Her stomach flipped weirdly, and she struggled to move forward. Was this where she was going to meet her end?
They pushed her to a room in the back outfitted with a desk and some chairs, a makeshift office. Behind the desk sat a bear of a man, with tanned, leathery skin, and a pelt of thick dark hair.
In a Russian accent as thick as gravy he said, “Darcy. Good of you to join us.”
Darcy?
She gave him her best deer-in-the-headlights impression.
“Don’t pretend you’re surprised, Agent Dagger.” He leaned into “Dagger” hard.
“Ummm…” She thought fast. If he didn’t know Darcy was dead, he couldn’t be the killer. But then who the hell was he? Her mind tried to click through possibilities, but she couldn’t think of one.
“Agent Dagger, you with me? Or should I say, Mom?” He looked at the moniker emblazoned across the front of her pink fluffy robe. Her breasts were two loose cantaloupes under the fabric. She’d like them to be a little higher to face this guy down.
For once she said what she was thinking. “Next time you toss me in a van, could you let me put a bra on first?”
The guy threw back his head and laughed. “I see you haven’t lost your sarcasm.”
One of her kidnappers poked his head in. “Mr. Smirnov, do you need anything else?”
Mr. Smirnov… was that a code name? Was he staring at a bottle of vodka when he came up with it?
Smirnov glared and said, “Leave me. I’ll let you know when I want something.”
She took a breath. Act more like Darcy, less like herself. “Really. If you want to talk to me, you can just knock on the door, preferably before ten, because I like to get some sleep. If you throw me in a van while I’m taking out the trash, what do you expect?”
He ignored that one. “So where’ve you been, Darcy?” He leaned into her name again, making some kind of point. “You’ve missed every check-in for the last week.”
She blinked back, her mind devoid of anything but fear, which was short-circuiting all of her other thoughts.
“You’re lucky we didn’t take you out. I wouldn’t extend this courtesy to many people.”
“Thank you,” she said. Take her out —she squeezed her thighs together. It was amazing she hadn’t peed herself yet. Lucas had been a ten-pound baby. Nothing had been the same after that.
So who was this guy?
· Not Darcy’s killer
· Not the EOD
· Russian accents. Dirty warehouse filled with boxes.
It hit her like a Nerf bullet straight to the forehead. Russian. Criminal. These guys were the Russian Mafia.
Meaning… Darcy had been working for the Russians and the EOD. She had been a double fucking agent. No wonder she had gotten herself killed.
FUCK. Gabby wanted to scream all of the obscenities. All of the cells in her body vibrated with fear and anger and righteous indignation. What had the EOD gotten her into? What had she gotten herself into? It was one thing to take the place of an EOD agent, entirely another to take the place of a double agent. Darcy, that double-crossing bitch—how was Gabby supposed to get out of this?
“Can I have a chair?” Gabby asked, trying to sound like she wasn’t completely freaking out. “And dear god, can I have a drink?” Anything to calm her nerves. She gestured to the bar cart behind Smirnov.
Smirnov laughed and poured her a tumbler of vodka.
Gabby wasn’t a heavy drinker, just normal wine-mom stuff, which she didn’t think qualified as alcoholism, although it was hard to know. Maybe she had crossed a line since the divorce, but this wasn’t the moment to worry. She threw back this vodka like it was water. It blazed a trail straight down her esophagus.
Smirnov gave her a nod of approval. “A lady who knows how to drink. I should have known.”
“Don’t patronize me, Smirnov.” Drinking wasn’t a talent. It was a vice.
He refilled her glass. This one she didn’t throw back. She wanted to calm her nerves, not get table-dancing, walk-of-shame-from-her-kidnapper’s-warehouse loose.
More serious, Smirnov said, “So where’ve you been?”
Better to stick with the same lie for everyone. She pointed to her nose. “Notice anything different about me?” She flashed him her aquiline profile.
He squinted. “You’re telling me you had a nose job and took a week off without telling me?” He laughed like it was the dumbest thing he’d ever heard.
Gabby doubled down. She had no choice. “Um, not a nose job. I had a deviated septum, and it was a whole thing with my sinuses.” She made a swirling motion around the front of her face, her best explanation for nasal abnormalities she was inventing on the spot. “It’s the first time in my life I feel like I can breathe clearly.” She took a loud, deep breath to demonstrate. “At least now that the swelling went down. The first couple of days were no good.”
“It’s going to be the only day you can breathe clearly,” he hissed. “Do you know who I am?” He leaned forward over his desk menacingly.
“Yes, and I’m very sorry. It’s just that I had a bad reaction to the anesthesia, and I was out of commission for a few days, which was unexpected. The doctor didn’t advise it, but he said I should have been able to get back to work almost immediately. And he is the best surgeon in SoCal. He does work for all the actresses who say they haven’t had any work done.” She was blathering.
Smirnov had settled back in his chair, mixing himself another drink. He dropped in a couple of olives, which looked delicious, but she didn’t want to push it.
He swirled the drink and took a sip, letting her stew in her own lies for a minute.
“Do you like it?” she asked, unsure what to do. All she knew was that she could not be a double agent. She’d been balancing three identities for about two minutes now, and it felt about as doable as carrying a tray of drinks with one hand over her head through a crowded restaurant. Gabby had been fired on her first day from Chili’s, sent home with a Quesadilla Explosion Salad for dinner and no job.
He gave her a cold, unflinching look.
She decided to stick with what was working: the truth. “I want out. I’m tired, and it’s too much to balance. The EOD is pissed that I missed a week.” She gestured to him. “Now you’re upset too. At this point, I’m just failing at two jobs.”
“Are you out of your mind?”
“I know it sounds crazy, but the EOD didn’t really care about my nose job. You know health care in this country, not to mention work-life balance issues.”
“You have lost your mind.” Apparently, the Russian Mafia didn’t care about her job satisfaction. That tracked.
“I’m just telling you I want out.”
“No.” He leaned back in his chair, tipping it onto the back two legs and staring her down, just how she told her kids not to. (“If you tip your chair back one more time, you will eat on the floor!” She never followed through on that threat.) Smirnov was the Mafia, though—he could live dangerously if he wanted.
“Do you know who I am? I think you should rethink the tone you are taking with me, Gabriella Greene .”
All the air left her lungs, and her world started to spin. He had used her real name. Fuck. Fuck. Fuuuuuuck. The expletive grew in volume in her mind as the implication hit. “What did you say?”
“It was very clever of you to hide your family from me all this time, Gabriella. Very clever. I always thought I had no leverage with you. What was I going to do—key your stupid car?” He shook his head in silent appreciation. “Darcy Dagger, a woman with nothing to lose—what a clever lie.” One corner of his mouth pulled up into a sinister half smile.
Despite her efforts to calm herself, her breathing was erratic. This mobster knew her name, knew she had a family.
“Gabriella Greene is a woman with everything to lose,” he said, smiling through his threats in a way that made her blood run cold. “Did you forget who I am because you are treating me like a dickless office boss?”
It would be nice if he answered that question instead of asking it over and over again.
A line of sweat trickled down her back. Her kids.
Smirnov slid some photos across the desk toward her.
“Lucas,” he said. “Such a cute boy. Sort of naughty, but that’s good in boys.”
Smirnov would think that. She was at toxic masculinity HQ.
“Kyle.” He shook his head. “My niece is doing this too—wearing overalls and going by a boy’s name. What is with this generation? If you’re born with a dick, enjoy it. If you’re born with a pussy—I’m sure that’s fine too.”
Could mobsters get canceled for transphobia? That would save her some work.
“Philip.” He slid a picture of Phil standing at the kitchen counter staring at his phone—probably sexting one of his assistants. “How long have you been married?”
Instead of saying, “You can have that one!” Gabby gasped like she meant it. “Not Phil!” she said in a breathless tone.
“If you don’t follow through with our plans, I will kill your family.” He took a sip of his drink, taking his time with his threat like he enjoyed watching her sweat. “Don’t try to be cute and move them. It won’t work. I see everything. Like Santa Claus.”
Instead of feeling sad and powerless, Gabby felt something inside her harden. She would not let this man near her family, no matter what she had to do. All business, she asked, “What do you need?”
With annoyance he said, “Just follow our original plan. I need you to get Kramer’s codes to transfer the laundered money to me.”
“And Sergei Orlov?” she asked for clarification.
“Did you get a lobotomy with that nose job?”
There are no stupid questions, especially when considering the stakes. “I just want to make sure everything is crystal clear.”
“Orlov can go fuck himself. He’s no concern of mine.”
Okay, so Orlov and Smirnov were not working together. She was dealing with rival Russian mobsters, a money-laundering finance bro, and an elite branch of the CIA. Last week, she had thought the bake sale was too much. “ No, I really can’t add cookie making to my life, Barb ,” she’d said.
“And don’t even think of trying anything. Do your job, clean and simple, and I will give you the cut we agreed on.”
A cut—she squashed her impulse to ask how much it was. Horse camp was expensive, and college was coming up. Even state schools cost a lot these days. With a gasp, she stopped herself from free-falling into a life of crime to pay for horse camp. Get a hold of yourself, Gabby!
“Like I said, don’t fuck with me.”
She nodded. “No plans to. Sorry I didn’t tell you in advance about the nose surgery.”
He blew out a breath in annoyance. “I have someone on the inside watching you.”
Someone on the inside… It couldn’t be Markus. Valentina?
“Don’t forget to check in this time. I’ll kill Phil first. I don’t want to start with the babies, but I will take out your family, Gabriella.”
Why did men always call her Gabriella? They said it like she would inhabit the role and become Sophia Loren before their eyes.
“Mischa, take our guest home. Be nice this time.”
“No zip ties?”
“No. She will behave herself.”
As she walked out of the office, Smirnov called after her, “The nose looks good, by the way.”