CHAPTER TWELVE
The phone trembled in my grasp as I typed in the TOR address from memory that would direct me to the message.
“Calm down, du?o,” Brock soothed. “We will defeat Tarasovich, Petrov or no Petrov.”
I sniffed but nodded. “Yeah, that’s what Bryce said in our little heart-to-heart outside.”
Bryce scoffed. “I don’t do heart-to-hearts, Callina. You must be delusional.”
“Hush, guys, let her do her thing,” Duane commanded.
The message was curt and cut to the chase, and all in Russian. I translated it aloud.
I must admit, Callie, you’ve caught my attention. You’ve sought me at a slow point. I will dig deeper, and do not concern yourself with the CIA. They’ve failed to catch me thus far, and I’m in a much better place now than previously. I feel I should warn you, though, that going down this road might mean we have to get our hands dirty. Of course, knowing you, I’m sure you realized that before you reached out to me. Give me two weeks. If I haven’t contacted you before then with information, I’ll message you to let you know things might be more hopeless than I assumed.
—Vasily Petrov
“Get our hands dirty? What does he plan on having us do?” Jace questioned.
Nobody had an answer, and I worried once more if it’d been smart to ask Petrov for a favor like this. He’d kept our interactions shallow on a superficial level that neither encouraged nor discouraged a tighter bond.
There was a reason Natasia hadn’t liked him, and while I thought most of that might have been from when they were younger, I couldn’t rule out the very real possibility that I’d unleashed fire to fight fire.
Paride returned, still carrying an unsettled nature about him that seemed out of character from what we’d observed in the brief time we’d known him. “Okay, sorry about that. I needed a breath to sort things out in my head.”
“That’s understandable, Mr. Coppola,” Payton said before anyone on the team spilled the fact that Petrov had indeed replied to our message as we’d mistakenly assumed before.
“Maybe, maybe not.” Paride scrubbed a hand through his hair, obviously not convinced. “Callie, I shouldn’t have raised my voice at you like that. It was unnecessary.” He glanced around, his gaze lingering on Brock, Aleks, and Duane. “Not to mention suicidal.”
Nobody denied it, and a curious gleam lit his features as he studied our expressions.
Was he pondering our closeness? The guys’ protectiveness?
“It’s okay,” I offered to distract his musings.
He nodded, flashing me a quick smile that seemed only half forced. “I appreciate it. Now… I wasn’t entirely honest with you earlier.” Paride ignored the way we tensed. “I don’t just have places like this in Virginia. My safe houses span the globe. Europe, Asia, South America… name a country, and if I don’t have something there, I can usually procure one within seventy-two hours.”
“Why are you telling us this?” Brock asked. “Doesn’t it defeat the purpose of a safe house if people know about it?”
Paride spread his hands wide. “I’d like to think we can trust each other.” After a beat, he added, “And this network of mine will come in handy. We can’t work here with the CIA breathing down our necks, cataloging our every move. Who knows what Tarasovich gained from that hack job on your computer? He could have this address and be on his way here at this very second.”
Hair rose on the nape of my neck from the idea.
“There’s that, at least,” Duane replied. “We know Tarasovich is collaborating with a hacker, right? That has to change how we approach things.”
“Yes,” I agreed with a clear apology in my tone. His mention of receiving advice alleviated any doubt. “Tarasovich has a habit of biting the hand that feeds him, only working with people if they give him the leeway to run the show how he wants. Actively changing his behavior because of someone’s word of caution isn’t something I thought he’d ever allow himself to stoop to.”
“He did it for you,” Paride said, his brows jumping at the violent reaction his words garnered from the others. “Whoa, I didn’t say it was her fault, but his obsession with her comes first. Trust me, I’ve analyzed a lot of bad guys throughout my career. He also knows it’s dangerous, and he could end up in the same boat as Nikolai Ivanov. Since he changed his patterns, his driving force—the need to get his hands on Callie—beat out his aversion to following orders. Sick as it is, she’s the catalyst for his caution.”
Payton agreed. “Yes, his fixation hasn’t abated or dampened even now that he perceives you as a serious threat. In fact, this new perspective of you as being more powerful seems to have compounded his interest. While he claims he’s practicing caution and staying away for the moment, we shouldn’t trust it. He could lose his grip on what tenuous restraint he has and decide the temptation of having you within his grasp is too great to ignore.”
Nausea clogged my throat once more, making it hard to both swallow and breathe. “L-Lovely.”
Bryce shook his head. “Wow, you two are pillars of warmth and reassurance.”
Paride and Payton blinked. “What?” they asked, glancing at each other after their accidental twin-like behavior.
“Ignore them. It’ll be okay, babygirl.” Duane pulled me into a hug, leaning down to murmur in my ear. “With our last breath, we won’t let that bastard get his hands on you.”
That wasn’t the reassurance he probably intended it to be.
Paride cleared his throat. “So we’ll operate under the assumption that he’s actively pursuing you, not warning us to keep our distance, and maybe we’ll survive this mess. What do you say?”
I liked the sound of that.
“Agreed,” Payton answered on behalf of the team, then he hesitated. “My apologies, Callie. I can’t imagine how terrifying it would be to know how much the warped mind behind those awful videos wants you.”
“Oh, now he understands that,” Bryce drawled.
Payton ignored him. “But there was one other thing I felt worth mentioning from Tarasovich’s words. Would you like to step outside?”
I braced myself. “No, I’d rather know.”
Payton nodded. “He mentioned putting you up on a pedestal, surpassing his expectations. When these psychopathic types do that, things go wrong in very bad ways once their delusions are broken.”
Paride nodded, rubbing his chin. “Yeah, I’ve seen that before.” He shuddered. “Never ends well for the victim.”
“Again,” Bryce gritted out, wrapping his arm around me. “Tact. Get some.”
“Sorry, Callie.”
Payton glanced at me, his gaze a silent question of whether or not it was okay to continue. I nodded. Payton tugged his waistcoat. “Right, that is common, of course. What concerns me is how cognizant he seemed to be of that fact. He said ‘be the first to admit’ as if he found doing something so textbook was a failing on his part. Has he ever studied psychology?”
I tucked my hair behind my ear, and no one commented on how much my fingers trembled. “Not that I ever found, not in an official capacity.”
Payton nodded. “I know it goes without saying, but we need to exercise great caution. If not self-taught, he must at least analyze the psychology of those he tortures and kills. Ethically speaking, only serial killers can truly understand a human’s actions and reactions when in mortal peril. Having access to knowledge we don’t makes him a very dangerous opponent. We must assume he’ll always be one step ahead of us.”
His words hit with the impact of asteroids blowing craters in Earth’s crust.
Paride nodded. “So we’ll take all precautions and use any measures available to us.”
“To be clear, though, you’re suggesting we go rogue, correct?” Jace asked. “I mean, Rollins didn’t get a chance to state it explicitly, what with all the time she spent tossing around words like ‘Gitmo’ and ‘prison for life,’ but I’m pretty sure we can infer things like going dark, leaving the country, or emailing Petrov back would be frowned on.”
Paride scratched the back of his neck. “Well, when you put it like that, it sounds worse. I’ll be straight with you. Your lives are going to be upended.”
That was a fair point. Tarasovich had threatened my loved ones, and while Director Rollins’ eerie promise was directed at me, I didn’t doubt she’d toss the guys in prison alongside me if she felt she could get away with it. At least we were all in this together, which raised a valid point.
I tilted my head. “Do you have family, Paride?”
He shrugged. “A mother in Naples. No wife and kids though. I married my job. Don’t mind me. I was just griping to gripe. Things won’t get so hopeless. We won’t leave this monster out on the street to brutalize more people, and we certainly won’t abandon you to face him on your own. Right, boys?”
They chorused off a variety of affirmatives, but Aleks’s was the most adamant and in Russian.
Paride glanced at him, and I wondered for a second if he’d understood what Aleks said, but then Paride dismissed Aleks without comment.
“Now that we’ve settled that part,” Payton began, “Mr. Petrov emailed Callie.”
Paride’s arms dropped to his sides. “What? Why didn’t you mention it earlier? What’d he say?”
After reading the email, Paride agreed that it was rather ominous, especially because Petrov left the warning so vague. “There isn’t much we can do about that at this point. Even if you send a retraction, he might not be deterred.”
“He is sort of bullheaded when he gets on the trail of something,” I admitted, already having drawn the same conclusion.
“Is bullheaded a nicer way of saying ruthless and relentless as hell?” Jace questioned. “Because then, yeah, sure, Petrov’s bullheaded.”
Paride shrugged. “In any case, this solidifies our need to get off the grid. We can’t have the CIA knowing he’s actively working with us on this. Rollins’ grudge against Petrov blinds her from seeing the world with nuance. Sometimes, you have to make a deal with the devil to defeat the monsters.”
“You have a plan?” Payton asked.
“Yes, and the first step is to procure some cash to replace Callie’s laptop. There’s no way I trust that thing after a fritz like that.” He pointed at the closed computer.
It seemed to ooze evil, even with the lid shut and no outward changes.
“Medvezhonok said same.” Aleks stepped toward the sleeping device.
My breath stalled, because I half expected it to swing open and attack, but it remained dormant as Aleks hefted it in his plate-sized hands.
“I destroy for you.”
“No need,” Paride offered. “Just leave it here. If the CIA finds this place, it’ll do them good to view the footage. Rollins might be more lenient on us when they inevitably find out we hopped into bed with Petrov.”
“No,” CJ and I stated in unison.
CJ nodded at me to speak.
I licked my lips. “No, there’s too much installed on there. They’d know my best tricks. If they get on our trail, it would severely limit our options. Just in case you’re going to ask, no, it’s not as simple as clearing my browser history, especially not after that cyberattack on steroids. There’s no telling what commands are corrupted by this point.”
Paride didn’t seem happy, but he relented, and Aleks went about his task with relish until even CJ, with his Dr. Frankenstein skills, couldn’t find anything salvageable in the wreckage.
“Alright, considering Virginia and the entire eastern United States is the CIA’s backyard, we should leave the country. I’ll obtain paperwork and an exit strategy. In the meantime, pack what you need, drive to separate public transportation hubs, and ditch your phones in people’s belongings. Pick big grandma purses or those obnoxiously large packs hardcore campers and backpackers wear—something where they are not as likely to stumble across your phone right away. It’ll buy us some time. Bring any cash you have in personal safes, and then meet me at this location by dusk, preferably in a car not connected to you.”
“What’s there?” Payton asked, accepting the address on a scrap of paper.
“Confiscated woodlands, where the owner was paid big bucks to clear out a section of trees on the back of his property for an illegal runway for the drug cartel to import their product.”
Corbin’s eyes rounded. “That’s how we’re getting out of the country?”
“Yep. Now scram. I have to commission some forgeries and secure an aircraft with enough range to cross the Atlantic.” Paride did an about face. “Oh, one more thing, no discussing any of this in your cars or house. They are probably bugged, so hash out any details you need to before you leave here, and then remember to keep up a normal, everyday dialogue on your way home—ah, normal for what you’ve been through, that is. The CIA will be expecting you to converse about the threat they made this morning.”
God, was it only this morning? That meeting had triggered a chain of events that seemed to pick up speed instead of slowing down.
“Of course,” Payton agreed. “We have some training in covert operations. Everyone at Delta does.”
Paride held his hands up as he walked backwards. “Hey, don’t blame me. Some people forget to apply what they are taught in a classroom. See you at nightfall.”
Corbin nudged me. “What’s on your mind, Callie-Cat? Why are you staring after Parade Day like that? Not looking to ditch your harem already, are you? Because I have to say, your boyfriends might not take that well.”
“Never, Cor,” I assured him, facing the others. “Is it normal for agents at Delta to have such wide-reaching resources?”
“It depends,” Payton began, but Bryce cut in with a hard stare.
“No,” he argued. “Trust me. My skill is schmoozing people, so I’m familiar with all the ins and outs of Delta’s funding. Coppola implied he can get documents forged in less than twelve hours, good enough to withstand international scrutiny. In that same time frame, he plans to find an airplane big enough to haul ten on a transatlantic flight. Bragging about that kind of accomplishment is my parents’ dream, so believe me when I tell you those are not easy feats. He’d need an aircraft with a range of, at minimum, twenty-four hundred nautical miles to err on the side of caution. He could layover in Iceland, but you’re still talking about a pricey piece of metal.”
“So, to summarize, he’s a little too connected to be plain Joe Delta,” Jace guessed.
“He did want us to leave the laptop behind,” CJ murmured, following the same line of thought.
“But he defended our case to Director Rollins,” Corbin countered.
“To endear him to us?” Duane postulated.
The conversation further devolved until Payton cut through with a whistle. “That’s not the pressing matter right now. Regardless of his story, he was visibly disturbed by what we witnessed on that video. I think it’s safe to say that our goals align at least that much, so we play along. He can get us out of the country, and between the nine of us, we have the skills and resources to shake him while we’re further outside the CIA’s reach. Agreed?”
We did, and Brock added, “I’ll pack survival gear. We can go off-grid and make plans. Any surveillance can be slipped with a two-week camp deep in the woods.”
“Brilliant,” Payton praised. “Do you have enough for all of us?”
Brock gave a short affirmative but didn’t elaborate.
He’d had to flee his childhood home to escape the attack on his village. I didn’t consider the time he would have had to survive on his own as a newly orphaned child with nothing but the clothes on his back until he wound up in an orphanage several countries away in Russia, where he first met Aleks.
I wondered if he enjoyed camping and hiking because he liked to hone the skills he must have learned to see his younger self through such an impossible ordeal. Maybe being prepared to bug out in an emergency gave him a sense of peace.
“Excellent.” Payton rolled his shirt sleeves up. “I’ll pair you off so you know whom to accompany when you ditch your phones, then we’ll meet back here, park our vehicles inside this warehouse, and find a ride for the last leg of the journey.”
Corbin raised his hand and waited to be called on like a student in class. “Yeah, uh, I just wanted to ask and make sure we were on the same page because Parade Day implied the same thing. You realize you’re talking about boosting a car, right, Mr. E?”
Payton nodded. “It’s necessary. I plan to reimburse the unfortunate owners, but I assume you’ll have no problems wiring a car with your mechanical prowess, will you, Mr. Myers?”
“No, siree! I’ll get us on the road.”
We left after another twenty minutes, during which we verified the plan and how to act, with some refreshers since this was my first official covert case. They were surprised at how much I remembered considering I was such a bad liar. I didn’t have the heart to remind them that I’d been using similar skills to fly under the radar dating back to my preteens.
More than one person was buzzing with restrained excitement from the adrenaline rush. Even Brock cracked a small smile about the challenge ahead.
This was what I’d been missing when we were on separate jobs, almost living separate lives. I liked it when we pulled together as a team and used all our considerable talents to get something done. Despite the dark nature that had spurred this, it felt like the beginnings of an adventure, and I was ready to stretch my muscles.