Chapter 7 #4
He caught a glimpse—just a glimpse—of Timea’s face, her hand reaching for him before the blast threw her over the rail.
And lifted him into the air.
He hit the sea as if it were made of concrete, and it punched the air from his chest. Something cracked inside him—ribs splintering.
Heat seared through him, crumpled him.
He gulped air, got water.
Coughed, blinded, sinking—
He clawed toward the surface, but his leg wouldn’t work right. Every kick sent fresh agony through his body. His lungs screamed for air.
He broke through into a hellscape.
The boat was a torch, the sea aflame, debris raining into the water. Black smoke boiled up, choking him. Spilled fuel slicked the waves.
“Timea!” The name tore his throat raw. Salt water flooded his mouth. “Tim—”
Something floated past—part of the deck bench where they’d sat moments ago. He lunged for it, gasping as broken ribs shifted. Found purchase. He tried to pull himself up, but his leg exploded with fresh pain.
“Please.” He didn’t know whom he begged. The sea? God? “Please.”
He got his other leg up, clung to the bench.
The second explosion nearly knocked him back into the water.
This time, something hard cracked against his skull. Darkness edged his vision. He tried to hold on to consciousness, on to her name, but darkness, smoke, pain pulled him down, down into the cold dark, where memory dissolved into nothing.
And all he could think was…Please, don’t let her be dead.
Beeping penetrated the darkness. Steady, mechanical. He swam in shadow, oxygen pouring into his lungs.
Timea.
He practically lunged forward, back to consciousness.
Into the light. He opened his eyes and the pain hit in waves—his leg, suspended and weighted, spots of agony where pins jutted through skin.
His chest, each breath filled with shattered glass.
The left side of his head throbbed, bandages pulled tight against swollen flesh.
Hospital.
The sharp bite of antiseptic burned his nose. Scratchy sheets grazed burns he couldn’t see. He’d closed his eyes against the splash of pain, but forced his eyes open now, blinked against fluorescent lights that made his head spin.
White walls. Medical equipment crowded around his bed, shadows long in the late-afternoon light. A window looked out onto nothing—just gray sky and the edge of another building. Someone had left a cup of water.
Timea.
He tried to sit up, but again fire ripped through his chest, black spots dancing in his vision. “Tim—” His voice came out as a rasp, his throat raw from smoke or screaming or both. He lay back.
A nurse appeared. Young, dark-haired like his wife, but nothing else the same. Not her eyes, not her smile. Not her.
“You must lie still. Your ribs—” Her English emerged broken, with the hint of a Greek accent.
“My wife.” He grabbed for the nurse’s arm, but tubes and wires tangled around him, an IV pulling sharply against his hand. “The boat—there was a woman—”
“Sir, you need to calm down.” She pressed him back against the pillows. “You’ve been unconscious for three days. The doctor will—”
“I don’t care about the doctor! Where is my wife?”
The nurse’s face shifted. Pity, there and gone like a shadow. “I’ll get the doctor.”
“Don’t go!”
But her footsteps faded down the hall, past voices speaking rapid Greek.
Three days. Three days of Timea lost at sea.
“Alexander Steele.”
The voice froze his blood.
“Or should I say, Alan Martin?”
Damien Gustov stood in the doorway, elegant in a black suit. “Or perhaps…James Cooper?” The traitor had made something of himself, clearly. Probably pulling the trigger for his Bratva pals.
“Did you really think you could just—” Damien crossed to the window, looked out at the gray sky. A ferry horn sounded somewhere in the distance. “Disappear? Start a new life?” He turned, smiled. “A little house on Crete? How domestic of you.”
James didn’t know what to call himself, really, but his heart stopped. “You were watching us.”
“Not me.” Damien moved away from the window, his reflection fragmenting in the medical equipment. “Your own people. The CIA doesn’t like it when their assets try to…retire.” His lip curled on the word. “Especially assets with your particular skill set.”
The monitor’s beeping increased. Why had he used his real name? Stupid!
“You didn’t think Crowley—or the CIA—would just let you walk away?
With everything you know?” Damien pulled a chair close to the bed.
The scrape of metal on tile sent shards of pain through James’s skull.
“They’ve been watching since Budapest. Since you fell in love with a professor’s daughter and forgot who owned you. ”
The truth settled like ice in his veins. They’d known. They’d always known.
“Tom Crowley signed the order himself.” Damien’s voice dropped low, intimate. “The same man who stood at his daughter’s funeral. Who watched them lower his grandson into the ground. You thought he was your friend.”
James turned his face to the window. Gray sky pressed against the glass.
“The bomb was CIA,” Damien continued. “The fishing boat that fired the second shot? CIA. They needed to be sure.” He leaned forward. “They’ll say it was an engine malfunction. A terrible accident. They’re very good at writing fiction, your former employers.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m offering you something they never will.” Damien’s smile returned. “Revenge.”
James snorted. Oh, that hurt. “You expect me to believe the Bratva wants to help me?”
“The Bratva wants what the Bratva wants. But for now…” Damien stood, brushed invisible lint from his sleeve. “For now, our interests align. You want to hurt the people who took your family. We want to hurt the United States. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”
“And if I say no?”
“You won’t.” Damien moved to the door. “Because right now, revenge is all you have left. That, and the question that will haunt you until the day you die.”
“What question?”
Damien smiled. “Whether Timea might have survived. Whether someone pulled her from the water while you were unconscious. Whether somewhere”—he paused in the doorway—“somewhere, your child still grows.”
James went cold.
“Welcome to your new life, Alexander. Or James. Or whatever you want to call yourself. We don’t care as long as you answer the phone. Welcome to the Petrov Bratva.”
The door clicked shut.
Outside, a ferry horn sounded again, mournful against the daylight that was too bright in his eyes.
Alan. Call him Alan Martin. Because it seemed the role he couldn’t escape.
Besides, he wanted them to know who was after them.
Who would find them.
And who would make them pay.