CHAPTER 24
Josie
The world comes back in pieces.
Sound first, except it’s not sound.
It’s the absence of it.
Only a high flat ring like someone struck a tuning fork against the bone.
Then touch.
The floor.
I’m on the floor and I don’t remember getting here. There’s grit under my cheek and something wet at my hairline and the taste of copper in my mouth.
I open my eyes and the room is wrong.
So much smoke. The great room is full of it, gray and rolling, lit from behind by something that shouldn’t be glowing. Where the wall of windows was there’s a ragged black mouth full of cold air and the smell of chemicals.
A hand on my shoulder. Finn’s face, close, smeared with soot and blood, his mouth moving but I have no clue what he’s saying.
But wait… yes, I can hear him. It’s tinny, as if from a distance.
His voice reaches me from very far away, swimming up through the cotton. “Josie. Josie. Are you okay? Look at me, babe.”
And beyond that, I hear the shrieking of the house alarm. It steadily gets louder, breaking through the haze of my disorientation and I have a split second of solace that the police will be called.
I get a hand under myself. “I’m—” My voice is gone too, just a rasp. “I’m okay. I think I’m okay.”
“Can you move? We have to—”
And then I see it.
Past Finn’s shoulder, through the smoke. A shape. A man shape. Stepping up over the threshold of broken glass and into Finn’s house like he has every right to be there. It’s unhurried, confident and wholly terrifying.
I can’t see any features, but I know who it is.
It can only be one man and he’s clearly not getting taken down by Jameson tonight on the water.
It’s Mikhail Sokolov. He’s come after us. The explosion on The Quartermaster makes sense.
He’s come for all of us.
“Finn.” It comes out of me as pure instinct. “Finn, behind you—”
Finn moves before I finish the word.
He doesn’t run. That’s the thing I’ll carry forever, the thing I’ll see every time I close my eyes for the rest of my life. He doesn’t run but rather throws himself the other way, toward the figure to protect me.
The gunshot is enormous, even through the cotton in my ears.
Finn jerks, I scream, and his whole body snaps backward in a hard recoil before collapsing to the ground.
“No!” I shriek. “No, no, Finn—”
“Go.” His face is angled toward me, blood spreading across the right side of his chest. He wheezes, coughs wetly as he stares at me with pained eyes. “Josie. Go.”
A second shot, the round punching into the floor inches from my hip, sprays tile chips across my body with such force, I feel them shred my jeans. Somewhere underneath the grief and the terror, a reflex kicks in that I didn’t know I had.
Move or you die.
I move, scrambling on glass and grit. I get the kitchen island between me and the shape just as the third shot blows a fist-sized crater out of the cabinet where my head was half a second ago.
I press my spine to the island’s base, my chest heaving and my hands shaking so hard I can barely make fists.
Think, Josie.
Fucking think.
My gun’s upstairs. In the nightstand on my side of the bed, where it’s been every night since I moved in. It’s loaded and ready to go but on an entirely different floor from where I’m at now.
I didn’t carry it with me because I didn’t think it was necessary. I was safe in Finn’s house with an alarm set and doors locked. I think I trusted that Connie didn’t give us up and tonight Mikhail was going to be apprehended.
I shouldn’t have needed that fucking gun, but well, here I am, about to die.
Mikhail is between me and Finn and coming closer. I hear his boots now, crunching glass, calm, taking his time, despite the fact he doesn’t have all night. Not only will the security alarm notify the police, but the neighbors will have called in the explosion.
Two minutes. Maybe five. I just have to stay alive that long.
The boots stop on the other side of the island. “You should have drowned.” Mikhail’s voice is thick, accented, almost gentle. Conversational. “That night. We thought the water took you. Mr. Voronin does not like loose ends, and you have been a very loose end.”
I don’t answer. Answering tells him exactly where I am.
I reach up, slow, and find the wooden block on the counter above me by feel, and I close my hand around the handle of the chef’s knife and slide it free without a sound.
It’s nothing. A joke, really. A knife against a gun, but it’s something in my hand.
The footsteps start again, coming around the long way, around the far end of the island.
I go the short way, crouching low for the first few steps, but when I reach the near corner, I bolt.
Not toward Finn, I can’t, but down the hall toward the study. Behind me, the gun goes off twice, and I feel one round pass close enough to move the air by my ear. Then I’m through the study door.
I have the advantage.
It’s dark and Mikhail doesn’t know the house, this room, not the way I do.
I’ve read in here. I’ve watched Finn work at that desk.
I know there’s a low ottoman two steps in on the left that will break a stranger’s shin and I know the floor lamp is heavy iron with a marble base.
I know the fireplace set hangs on a stand by the cold hearth, so I drop the useless knife on the desk before lifting the iron poker off its hook.
Pressing myself flat to the wall beside the door, I stop breathing and I wait.
His silhouette fills the doorway and Mikhail pauses, trying to listen past the wailing alarm. I’m grateful for it, even if it masks his location.
He takes one step in, gun up, sweeping the room away from me, toward the desk, toward where I’d be if I were stupid enough to—
I swing the poker with everything I have.
I aim for the place where his head meets his neck and I put fifteen years of being underestimated into it.
While my strength is on point, my aim not so much, and I manage to connect with his upper arm just a few inches below his shoulder joint.
The shock of it travels up my arms, rattling my teeth, and Mikhail goes down to one knee with a guttural grunt of pain.
More importantly, he’s right-handed and the gun skitters across the floor, right under Finn’s desk.
I don’t wait around but take off out of the study, intent on hitting the staircase and getting my gun from upstairs. I keep hold of the iron poker and make it three strides when Mikhail’s hand shoots out and catches my ankle.
I start to fall, twisting backward, and in some crazy move I’ll never know how I pull off, I bring the poker down again. It hits his wrist and he lets go with a snarl. For good measure, I kick out with my foot and catch his chin, snapping his head back.
“You fucking bitch,” he roars, but I’m up on my feet and moving.
I break for the door while he’s down and bleeding and roaring something in Russian behind me. I run for the one thing in this house that can actually save me.
The stairs.
I take them three at a time even though my legs feel like jelly and my lungs are full of smoke. I claw up the railing hand over hand, and as I go, I scream it, I can’t help it, I scream it down into the great room, “Finn! Finn, hold on, I’m coming, hold on—”
I risk one glance back, and below me, at the bottom of the stairs, I see it happen.
Finn—broken, shot through the chest, a man who shouldn’t be able to move—has dragged himself across the floor into the mouth of the hallway. I almost stop and go to him, but then Mikhail is lurching out of the study and I can see he has his gun in his hand.
I don’t want him to see Finn, so I scream at him, “Hey, asshole… come and get me if you think you’re fast enough.”
Mikhail’s face contorts with fury and through the bleating house alarm—is that my imagination or are those… police sirens?
I can’t contemplate it anymore as Mikhail raises his gun and aims straight at me. He fires a round that hits the wall two feet from my head but before he can fire again, his body jerks.
I see that Finn has grabbed his leg and my heart breaks as I see it for what it is. A miniscule distraction with a dying man’s grip. It costs Mikhail a single stutter-step and after he kicks free of Finn, he raises his gun and points it at the man I love.
Instinct kicks in, and without a thought I throw the fire poker down the stairwell toward Mikhail. It doesn’t come anywhere close to hitting him, but it does bounce off the stairwell and get his attention, which is now locked on me.
“Come on, you pussy,” I taunt from the top of the stairs. “You know I’m the one you want. Come and get me if you have the guts.”
Please, please, please let his ego not be able to tolerate a woman belittling him.
I turn and sprint down the hall out of sight, thankful I don’t hear another gunshot but rather booted steps lurching up the staircase.
I enter Finn’s bedroom, my shoulder smashing into the doorframe but right myself quick. I go for the nightstand at a dead run, ripping the drawer all the way out. It crashes to the floor and the gun’s there. I lunge for it, get my hand around the grip and spin toward the door.
Mikhail’s already there.
He fills the doorway, his face a mask of blood and fury. His gun comes up and there’s no time for me to consider the ramifications. There’s no clean shot, there’s only the two of us, fifteen feet apart and raising weapons in unison.
We fire together and I brace for an impact that never arrives.
My gun bucks and my round goes low and wide. His blows the headboard apart a foot from my hip, goose-down and wood exploding into the air.
I aim for another shot but Mikhail is somehow there, charging at me like an enraged bull. Two hundred pounds of muscle and male ego driving into my chest. We slam into the wall with a force that empties my lungs and I realize, my gun is gone and I have no idea where it went.
It doesn’t matter, though, because Mikhail’s forearm is across my throat now and his weight is on it. The air is gone, just gone, like a door slammed on my windpipe.
I claw at his arm, but it’s futile.