CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Luck, if it could be considered that and not an impending sense of doom, ran out the second we breached the doors. I’d been in the back, not one of the tall, tree-like men appointed to brute force our way through with jarring kicks meant to damage the doorjambs.
Because of their large sizes, I only heard a whirling click sound of something powering up. Leo’s considerable weight tackled me to the ground as a hailstorm of bullets rained down on the patch of dirt where we’d been standing. The strafe tore the grass up in clumps of dirt and body parts of the unfortunate who hadn’t been fast enough to duck out of the way.
Blood splattered and mixed into the soil, coating everything in a thin film of red, including us.
Eventually the guns whirled to a stop as they ran out of active movement to target.
“Are you guys okay? Shit, we should be there,” was the tamest response I deciphered from the craziness of my men on the other end of the line.
“Two casualties. The fox is fine,” Leo replied, rolling off me and crouching against the wall near the open door. Papatonis, along with four others from his ranks, had ended up on the opposite side. “He posted a sentry gun at the entrance.”
“The fuck?” Brock growled.
“Yeah, that’s probably what Papadopoulos and Aetos were thinking before they got turned into raw meat. Shit.” Leo swore again and glanced at his boss. “How the hell did this kid get his hands on a fucking sentry gun?”
Papatonis shook his head but didn’t verbalize a response as he gazed at his fallen men.
A shaky breath escaped me as I pushed my sweaty hair from my forehead. “Does this mean he wasn’t hoping I’d make it through unscathed?”
Papatonis stared at me. “Given your familiarity with him, he likely expected you to avoid barging in through the front door. This could still be a deterrent for everyone but you.”
Leo tossed a blood-soaked clod of dirt, and the gun roared to life, obliterating the projectile into sand and dust before it hit the ground.
One of the men behind Papatonis released a slightly hysterical giggle.
“Pull it together, Bouras,” Leo advised before switching to Greek, likely repeating the warning. He glanced at me. “Let’s mix things up. He’s thinking like you’re thinking like him, and if we let that circle around in our head too much, our brains might burst.”
Papatonis cocked his head to the side. “You have an idea.”
“Yeah, we follow Fox’s orders. Like we said before, he wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to… uh, play with her. He probably left one route decently open, hoping he could trap her alive. If we do what he thought Fox would do, then we could have a chance of reaching the heart of this place without losing anyone else.”
“So we’re going to outsmart him by doing exactly what he’d expect me to do?” I surmised.
A small smile danced on Leo’s lips, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “So much skepticism, little fox.”
“He’s right,” Payton agreed. “Do precisely what he anticipates. It’ll make him feel confident and in control.”
“Uh, that’s because he will be. We’ll be walking into whatever trap he has set up,” I countered, alarmed at the near unanimous agreement decorating the bloodstained faces around me.
“You know that’s not entirely true, luv,” Payton replied.
Right.
Still.
Papatonis, catching my mental turmoil, nodded at the downed bodies of two men who had been joking around and cutting loose with the others in Greek on the drive here. “Do you have a safer option that doesn’t end with the seven of us in body bags?”
No, I didn’t. “Fine, okay.” I took a deep breath to center my shaky thoughts. “Do you still have those portable acetylene torches we used on Tarasovich’s warehouse before?”
Leo unhooked said torch from his tool belt. “I like your thinking, especially if the fire didn’t hide how you gained entrance there, and he figured out how you did. Let’s circle around the building. We’ll meet in the back.”
“Not the back,” I corrected automatically, then I hesitated and doubled down. Think like Tarasovich thinking like me. “My… room was around there. I’d choose one of the two sides to avoid as many painful memories as possible and stay focused.”
Papatonis clipped out, “We’ll loop the building and meet you on your side.”
Rather than face the automated machine gun? Yeah, I didn’t blame them for taking the scenic route.
“Be careful,” I whispered to their retreating forms.
Five minutes later, the group of five men emerged out of the shadows, and Leo didn’t waste time cutting our entrance through the shell.
We entered through the training room. Rodents had done a number on the mats. Ivanov’s right-hand man had beaten me just shy of death countless times before tossing me into the tank as punishment for failure. I shivered at the thought of Dell. God, I really hoped that was one part of my past that stayed in my past. Tarasovich was bad enough.
“This place must have sat empty for a while before Tarasovich set up shop.” Leo’s voice echoed up in the rafters.
“He was probably waiting for the dust to clear,” I whispered. Almost on cue, one of the men touched something, sending up motes that made him cough and sneeze. “Figuratively, not literally. Tarasovich is careful like that. Come on, this way.”
As I led them forward, my eyes roved the area, checking for any anomaly that couldn’t be explained away by neglect and abandonment through a harsh Russian winter season.
Something shiny caught my attention on one of the weightlifting machines, and I pointed it out to Leo. Leo assessed it while the others spread out to inspect the equipment as well.
Leo crouched down as he followed the wire to the box, leaning in for a sniff. “These weighted plates have been hollowed out and filled with explosives. Keep an eye on the floor. The trip wire runs through the mechanisms, down the pulley, and hides along the seams of these mats.”
Bouras leaned forward to copy Leo’s actions and smell for explosives, but he must have tripped a trigger, because the simple barbell had hidden a long, skinny wire that clamped his head down on the padded backrest, the gears grinding. His spinal column posed little problem for the machine’s loud cogs.
I slapped my hands over my ears and looked away, but that wasn’t enough to avoid the spray of blood and dull thud of something weighty hitting the floor.
“Don’t move,” Papatonis ordered his remaining men. They shifted like skittish cattle but listened to the order. “From now on, we don’t inspect or try to disarm the traps. I only care about continuing and getting this malákas six feet in the ground. Keep indicating the traps, clever fox, but if we can’t see anything that could affect us from a distance, then we press forward. She would most likely do the same, and that’s our play, right? Callie, you fall in line behind Leo and Kairos. They’ll check for tripwires and pressure plates. You just keep pointing out any differences from what you remember.”
CJ came on the comms just then, his voice more subdued than Jace’s taut sarcasm, sharpened to a fine point due to the intensity of the life-threatening situation. “Guys? I know you’re busy doing a million different things, but I just wanted to see how much longer you needed before I send out—”
“It’s still too early,” Paride cut him off. “If you send an alert now, we won’t have time for our temporary allies to get a head start. The need to exercise caution has lengthened our plans. We’re only now reaching the perimeter of the outbuilding. How about you, Emerson?”
“Same. We expect to enter within the next five minutes.”
Paride huffed. “Don’t get too ahead of us. It’ll be safer to coordinate our attacks. Let’s reset our clocks for—”
Reverb whistled through our earpieces, cutting off what he’d been about to say.
“Hello, Callie,” an amused voice said. “Sorry to drop in on you, but we’ve been watching you die off one by one through the video feeds, so I thought I’d offer you a boon to ensure you actually arrive in one piece.”
I clenched my jaw, staring down the long hallway littered with debris and probably fifty gruesome traps.
They’d hacked into our communications systems.
Had they heard the discussion with the others? Our entire plan hinged on…
Tarasovich continued when we failed to give him an audible reaction. “I’m going to let you all through, in fact, since I’m such an accommodating host. Consider it a free pass to cut in line.”
My group waited for Paride or Payton to reply since the main decision makers were on their teams, but when the silence stretched on, we figured their forced connection had isolated our line from theirs.
Was it accidental?
We needed more information.
Papatonis nodded at me, a nonverbal cue to take the lead since I was the distraction.
I licked my lips. “Not sure this is a line we want to cut. The side shows haven’t been very pleasant. Why skip to the main attraction?”
“What if I sweeten the pot and promise not to harm what’s left of your little team?” Tarasovich bartered.
I glanced at the others. Papatonis, Leo, and three other men whose names I hadn’t learned since they’d been so busy talking to each other in Greek were all that remained of our initial group. “My team?”
The one surrounding me or…
“Your team. The group you’re with.” A noticeable pause followed. “You do know the term for collaborating with a general cluster of people, right? I will spare their lives if they turn around and leave right now.”
Oddly enough, his failure to mention the other teams didn’t reassure me like I thought it would. Instead, the thought popped up that maybe they’d lost contact with us because they’d been bombed or something equally heinous.
Calm yourself, Callie,I scolded, attempting to quell my racing breaths. Operate as if everything is going to plan until we get hard confirmation to a contradictory conclusion.
Papatonis shook his head in the negative when I glanced his way.
That answered that.
“We don’t believe you.” I turned down his offer. “The second they leave me alone, you will have exactly what you wanted. You’d have even more reason to kill them off then.”
“Oh, well. More’s the pity. I guess we’ll just have to watch them get picked off one by bloody one.”
I bit my lip, looking around at the ones with me. We’d started as a group of nine and were already down to six. Could we afford to lose more men?
Papatonis was an untamed beast, ready to bite off our hands, but I’d recently begun to consider Leo an ally.
My indecision all boiled down to timing. We’d meant to strike simultaneously but had also planned on the possibility of losing touch with each other. Without glancing at my watch, which would almost certainly put Tarasovich on high alert, I couldn’t guess how much time had passed since or if anyone had run into snags that would throw the entire strategy off.
“Wait!” I called out, hoping we hadn’t lost the opportunity. The others glanced at me. “Y-You’ll let them go?”
Leo frowned, but it was Papatonis who said, “No, don’t believe him. It’s like you said, what reason would he have—”
“You heard the lady,” Tarasovich interrupted. “She took the deal. I’ve disabled all the traps so long as you take a direct route, and since I’m in such a good mood, you can even escort her there.”
“A direct route to where?” I asked. If the outbuilding had still been standing, I’d assume he would want to torture me by making me relive a replica of the tank, especially since we’d destroyed the original.
In answer, a breaker flipped, echoing from a distance, and a trail of bulbs along the ceiling lit our path.
We stood there for a second, just staring.
“Paths to hell and all that? That’s an American saying, yes?” Leo joked.
“Come on,” Papatonis ordered. “We might as well see this through.”
After two turns, I guessed where Tarasovich was leading us—the auditorium room where Ivanov used to host large meetings for people under his control.
It made the most logical sense. The remaining rooms were small offices and kitchens, none of which were large or impressive. Those weren’t suitable for the grand finale showdown that he envisioned, where he would emerge triumphant with his prized possession.
A morass of writhing snakes unleashed in my stomach, making it difficult to swallow, difficult to breathe, and difficult to think.
Had I made the wrong choice in accepting this safe passage? By some unlucky stroke of fate, we’d breached on the opposite side of the destination. No matter how careful we picked our way through, the odds of us reaching our target without more losses were slim to none.
The next turn we took confirmed my suspicions.
“We’re going to the auditorium,” I informed them under my breath, but Tarasovich still heard it.
“Yes, very clever, dear Callie. I hope you’re clever enough to play the game I set up for you as well. Are you ready?” Luckily, he didn’t wait for an answer because it would have been a quick and resounding “no.” “While you’ve been hiding away and licking your wounds, we’ve had your father locked up and in our care.”
My breath stuttered to a halt, and my feet slowed to match.
“Ah, ah, Callie. Don’t chicken out now. The timer’s already ticking.”
Although Callum had seemingly abandoned us, I couldn’t help but feel hope over the chance that he might have only intended to step out for a breather like he’d said when he was kidnapped.
Huh, who knew tendencies for being taken against one’s will was an inherited trait?
The dread that followed stemmed from the fact that if Callum hadn’t completely abandoned us and was being leveraged by Tarasovich, then the odds of him surviving were slim to none.
Who was I kidding? I would have felt the same level of fear even if he’d betrayed me.
I shouldered through the double doors, my eyes drawn to the brightly lit stage where I caught my first glimpse of my half-sister, the one who had helped make all this possible. Callum had whispered, “Georgia,” right before he wiped everything.
Was that her name?
From a distance, we looked nothing alike. Her long limbs and sleek, strawberry blonde hair contrasted with my five-foot frame and normally dark brunette curls.
Were her eyes hazel too?
“If you can beat your sister, then your father goes free.” Tarasovich’s voice echoed from the stage, and I saw his image plastered on the big screen. “But you better hurry, she’s already started. I told her that wasn’t exactly playing fair, but jealousy is a potent motivator for hatred, and she seems to harbor quite a grudge against you.”
My feet automatically took a few steps forward, seeing the empty computer setup, but Leo tugged me to a halt. “Where is he?”
Tarasovich grinned and pressed a button that raised the blood-red curtains on the stage, revealing a replica of the tank I’d been expecting earlier.
As I stood there trying to comprehend the turn of events, thumping sounded out from within the metal contraption. “Callie!”
“No!” I cried, pulling against Leo’s hold. We’d made it halfway down the middle aisle splitting the seats while the others cleared each row for hidden surprises. “I have to help him!”
“We’re going as fast as we can, little fox.”
How was this possible? Callum shouldn’t have been here. I was so sure that—
My eyes drew to the digital clock counting down from five minutes and some change.
“Ah.” Tarasovich grinned. “I see you’ve noticed the timer. Would you like to know what happens when we reach zero?”
I swallowed, tears burning my vision. “N-Nothing good.”
Tarasovich chuckled in agreement. “You’re not wrong about that. You see, I’ve made some modifications to this tank. If you haven’t taken control of your sister’s computer by the end, then the spikes I installed in the tank will spring up and turn your father into a pin cushion.”
To hell with clearing the seating. I grabbed Leo’s forearms, which were banded around my waist, using them as leverage to pull my legs up and lift them into the air—really high since Leo was a big man. At the height of my arch, I swung back down, curling my core tightly and rolling him right over my shoulder.
Papatonis didn’t intervene once I’d downed his man, so I booked it to the stage, rushing for the empty computer on the opposite side of the platform like this was some sick, twisted form of Family Feud.
My shaking fingers shook the mouse. Someone had already logged me on as “guest.”
How considerate.
“And Callie’s off, ladies and gentlemen,” Tarasovich narrated in his role as task master.
Glancing around, I was unsure if the big screen would mirror my desktop, but it seemed that the coding wasn’t flashy enough to rate displaying in such a place of prominence. Instead, Tarasovich’s face had been minimized to the upper corner to make room for a video feed from inside the tank, showing Callum treading water.
My hands shook over the keys as I sifted through the files. There wasn’t anything on the hard drive, not even a background picture.
To the TOR it was.
I glanced over at my sister, wondering if she was monitoring me instead. Tarasovich would have no idea if she’d cheated beforehand. Of course, he might even encourage it. Nothing was ever fair with him.
Even if you won his sick games, you lost.
My fingers froze for a split second, but I rushed to continue. His backup traps had backups. What would he take if I happened to win and set Callum free? There’d be a pound of flesh. Would he toss Georgia in the tank as punishment for failing him?
I brought a thumb drive with the version of ALPHA 2.0 on it, but it’d be too conspicuous to plug it in. Luckily, I’d uploaded the program to the site CJ and I had created together just for this purpose.
We’d made a couple of adjustments to the software because of the security breach my father posed, but at the last second, I clicked on the version we’d had before.
It was probably stupid.
No, it was definitely stupid, but I had to know. I had to know if he’d betrayed me and sold out our secrets. If he had, Georgia would have put measures in place to null the effects of the original rendering.
In no time at all, I’d typed in the URL, opened the application, and locked my sister’s computer down. From the corner of my eye, I saw her straighten, her lips drawing down in confusion.
It worked.
Callum hadn’t betrayed me entirely, rather he’d acted in the best interest of both his daughters by neutralizing only.
I kept a careful mask in place, worried that any hint of triumph would cause Tarasovich to jump to one of his contingencies, and I wasn’t finished just yet.
My sister didn’t sound the alarm—not wanting to get on Tarasovich’s bad side? Whatever her reasoning, it gave me a window of opportunity.
I opened a dialogue and shot CJ a message, keeping things brief and cryptic.
BYTE-SYZED: Is everything okay?
MEGABYTE_1: Yes, you?
BYTE-SYZED: I think so. I have an idea. Can you gain access to the computer I’m using?
MEGABYTE_1: Maybe. How much time do I have?
I glanced up at the timer.
BYTE-SYZED: Two minutes? More or less?
He didn’t reply, and I assumed that meant he was going to cut it close and didn’t want to waste time on a response.
Either way, he could join in if he did. He was highly intelligent. It wouldn’t take him long to figure out my plan and how to assist, so I got to work.
The message box I’d slid to the corner of my screen flashed red, and I glanced over to see a thumbs-up.
CJ was in, and he approved my plan.
The timer ran out, but I kept doing my thing.
I could feel Georgia’s stony stare boring into me, but she still said nothing about how she’d lost control.
“While I enjoy watching a drowning puppy’s futile fight to survive, I’m afraid time’s up,” Tarasovich stated.
Finally, Georgia burst out, speaking her first words to me. “What the hell is wrong with you? Don’t you care that Daddy’s going to die? Why aren’t you trying to stop this?”
Good, draw this out.
Tarasovich’s disdainful laugh echoed in the acoustics of the cavernous ceiling. “Oh, what’s the problem? Did you discover you cared about your father after all, despite your little tantrum that brought him here?” he said before he addressed Papatonis and the rest of my team. “You can put your weapons down now. Don’t get any crazy ideas.”
Papatonis ignored him, turning to me. “Fox?”
“Yeah, just one more—” My computer cut to black.
Apparently, Tarasovich had an override switch for the power, wherever he’d holed himself up.
I sighed, taking a more careful glance around the room now, knowing it could be wired for traps.
The desperate sounds in the tank to my right grew worse, and the feed of my father’s anguished face vanished from the big screen.
I did my best to ignore it despite the sweat breaking out along my spine.
Georgia screamed, launching herself at the metal contraption.
Amidst everything, my computer suddenly revived, showing a huge smiley face dominating the screen.
Oh, CJ, you sweet, beautiful, brilliant man.
I glanced at Papatonis and gave him a subtle nod.
Overhead, a television channel showing breaking news replaced the view from inside the tank. A series of several high-ranking politicians’ names scrolled across the screen, saying they were wanted for questioning in connection with murders.
Tarasovich’s face was still on the corner, so I got the satisfaction of watching his brows draw down in a frown. “What’s…” He trailed off in recognition. “You… Those are people I’ve worked for. Every one of them.”
“Yes,” I agreed, “and they know now that their names have been released, packaged neatly for the media on one neat, anonymous list. How long before police start knocking on their doors, I wonder? It won’t take your benefactors long to realize you have more to gain by telling their secrets to the authorities.”
“But I don’t tell secrets. They know that.”
“Do they? That’s an awful lot of people there. It only takes one weak link to break the chain. Are your services worth the risk? No, I’m guessing with people cold enough to associate with you, it won’t be much of a leap for them to turn on you to keep you quiet.”
Tarasovich’s face morphed from an innocent teen boy, revealing the enraged monster lurking beneath. “You painted a target on my back.”
“Yes, I did. Your blackmail on them isn’t worth the risk of being associated with you, so good luck getting any of your criminal buddies to release you this time around. If they don’t kill you, you’ll spend your life rotting in jail.”
“If you make it to the authorities,” Papatonis remarked, his voice dark. “Where is he, Callie?”
“He’s—”
Guns whirred to life on the viewing balconies.
“Get down!” Leo bellowed. “Sentry guns!”
I dove for the tank, the closest form of cover up here, while the others dropped down between the rows of seating.
Hot bullets pinged off the thick metal in front of me, and a burn lit my arm on fire.
My steps faltered, but Papatonis was there to drag me the last few steps to safety.
“You okay?” he questioned.
I nodded, my breath fast.
The gunfire slowed with the lack of movement. Unfortunately, they’d read the big screen as movement, and it was riddled with bullet holes.
With no means of communication, we were left in the dark.
Had they captured Tarasovich, or was the whole place seconds away from detonating?
“Are those guns still active, little fox?” Leo called from the seating.
“Not sure. Toss something up and test them like you did before.”
A few seconds later, bullets ripped through the air.
“I’m going with not disarmed,” one of Leo’s men shouted from the left.
“Astute observation.”
“We can’t stay here. If he’s still free, he’ll likely cut his losses and blow the place to pieces.”
Papatonis stared at me a beat, his face giving nothing away, but eventually, our comms interrupted the silence.
“Are you guys there? Can you hear us?” CJ’s voice called.
“Yes! We can hear you. Is—”
“Tarasovich is down,” CJ replied, cutting me off.
“And Callum?”
“He’s fine too. We secured him first.”
So Tarasovich had been bluffing about him being here on stage.
I slumped down. “Oh, thank God.”
Georgia had ended up behind the tank as well and must have tuned into my conversation when I mentioned our father’s name. She frowned in confusion, glancing between the steel cube at our backs and my obvious relief. “What? But… He’s not in there?”
“Never was.”
Leo’s voice echoed from both the earpiece and the room. “We have live sentry guns in here. Whatever magic button Tarasovich punched to neutralize the traps must have been flipped again.”
“We’re working on it. Hold tight,” CJ replied.
I sighed, reclining back, hearing the dull thud reverberate up the metal walls.
“How could you be certain he wasn’t in there?” Georgia demanded. “Even I thought he was.”
I thumped my head back once more, this time with purpose. “I am well acquainted with the acoustics of these tanks. If Tarasovich had been less intent on dredging up old memories and changed the design, I wouldn’t have been sure and might have doubted the intel we uncovered when we traced your signal to two locations, but I’m disgustingly familiar with the echoes of someone meeting their demise within these four walls.”
It wasn’t a noise that a brain could easily forget.
I closed my eyes, letting my morbid backrest support more of my weight. “Bet if you crank it open, you’ll find nothing but another audio system, like the one that convinced us that woman was being murdered in Serbia. The thing with Tarasovich’s traps, though, is there’s no escaping them. You’ve already lost before they begin, and the only way to ensure nothing could foil his plans was to make sure we had zero hope of rescuing… him—” I cut off in a yawn.
Had they dimmed the lights?
Papatonis cast a sharp glance my way, his eyes roving over my armored vest before zeroing in on his own hand. “You’re bleeding.”
Wobbling, I sat forward and glanced down at the origin of a burning pain. It was hard to spot because of the black material of my long-sleeved shirt. “Oh, huh. Would you look at that? One of the bullets grazed me.”
Papatonis lifted my arm. “That’s a lot of blood for a graze, little fox.”
I leaned back, my head heavy.
“Guys, I don’t mean to rush you,” Leo began, “but I’m getting a cramp down here, and I’m pretty sure there’s an old coffee cup growing mold by my face, so I will. Callie was shot.”
“What?” Brock boomed on cue, along with several others that his shout drowned out.
“Uh, that’s not our only problem,” CJ added. “Remember the plan where I send out a distress beacon to the authorities? Apparently the CIA was a lot closer than we assumed.”
I rolled my head in my sister’s direction. “You’ve been naughty. Why do you hate me?”
She didn’t reply, but her eyes burned with emotion that I was too fuzzy to decipher.
Papatonis glanced around, squeezing my bicep until the sharp pain pierced the haze. “What’s the ETA?”
“They are already here.”