48. Cassie
CASSIE
I looked out the window of the rented SUV as we climbed into the mountains around Kedrovsk, Russia. It was only mid-November but the peaks were already covered with snow, the towering trees dusted white.
“I never pictured Russia like this.”
Hawk looked over. “How did you picture it?”
He looked devastatingly handsome in sunglasses, his long hair brushing against his black coat.
“Colder,” I guess. “More desolate.”
“Give it a month on the colder part,” Vigo said from the back seat.
Up ahead, Bram drove a beat up truck, Jagger in the passenger seat. We’d need more than one car for the approach to Dimitri Kaprolov’s mountain compound.
“How much farther?” I asked.
Hawk laughed. “Are you asking are we there yet?”
“I have to pee.” I’d had to pee for the last hour, since we’d left the small airport in Kedrovsk, a barely-there mountain town with a general store, a tavern/restaurant, and a rental car company that shared space with a hardware store.
Luckily the general store had stocked an assortment of basic cold weather gear, and we’d been able to buy snow boots, coats, gloves, and hats in a motley assortment of patterns and colors.
My boots were a little big, and Bram’s coat was a little small, but they were better than nothing.
“Almost there,” Hawk said, glancing at the GPS.
We’d left Capri early the morning after the White Night gala, Alina’s tracker pinging the app on Vigo’s phone.
It was strange to know exactly where she was after all the time I’d spent thinking about her, weird to watch the little dot move around within the tiny radius of Dimitri’s compound after the weeks Alina had spent jet setting around the world.
She wasn’t here to party. She was home.
Bram turned on his blinker and slowed down to make the turn onto a narrow dirt road that climbed a hill.
“I hope Rafe didn’t set us up to get ax murdered,” Vigo said, looking out the window at the towering pines that lined the road.
“He set us up to be hidden,” Hawk said. “It’s what they’re good at.”
I’d been heartened — and a little surprised — by the help we’d gotten along the way to finding Dimitri.
Lilah had given me the information about Imperium Fratrum, the Kings didn’t seem to mind that fact that we still had their plane (although Hawk had grumbled that it was definitely going to cost us, and by us I think he meant the Hawks), Daisy and Sarai had helped me figure out Alina’s social media handle, and now Rafe, Jude, and Nolan — Lilah’s men — had found us a safe house in an obscure mountain town in Russia.
Bram and I weren’t as alone as I’d thought when I’d first stepped into the tunnel from the Hunt.
Maybe we never had been.
“That looks… small.” Hawk said when we emerged from the dirt road into a clearing ringed by trees.
A dark, abandoned log cabin, about as big as the living room and kitchen in Blackwell Falls combined, sat on a knoll that backed up to the mountain.
“It’s cozy,” Vigo said from the back seat.
Probably why Hawk wasn’t happy. It was one thing to travel with Bram to Capri where we’d had separate rooms. Staying in such close quarters with my brother and the three men I was fucking wasn’t ideal.
Not that there would be any fucking.
I was exhausted and hungry again, and we had plans to make for later that night when we’d breach Dimitri’s compound.
I said we because I was determined to go with Bram and the Hawks, although I had a feeling they had something else in mind.
Little did they know I had no intention of staying alone at this little house on the mountain while they killed the man who’d killed my parents, first because the house was isolated and more than a little spooky, and second because I’d been through too much at Dimitri Kaprolov’s hands to sit back, miles away, while someone else did the dirty work of killing him.
Even if that someone else was Bram. Especially if that someone else was Bram.
I wanted to be there. I was owed that much.
We parked next to the truck driven by Bram and got out of the car as he and Jagger did the same.
It was colder up here than it had been when we’d landed in the valley, and I watched my breath leave my body in a puff of air. “I take back what I said about the cold. It’s freezing.”
“Let’s get inside,” Jagger said. “There’s a chimney and that means there’s a fireplace.”
The guys grabbed our bags and we filed up the wood stairs. Bram lifted the mat in front of the door and used the key he found there to unlock the door.
It opened with a creak and Bram stepped inside to get the light.
By the time I filed in after Hawk, Vigo and Jagger behind me, the main living area was awash in weak yellow light from an end table next to a worn plaid sofa. There was a TV — an old one with an antennae — and a coffee table, and through a doorway I spotted a small kitchen.
I walked hesitantly down the hall and found a single bathroom and two small bedrooms, both with stripped mattresses.
“We need Daisy,” I said when I returned to the living room. “This place is bleak.”
“We won’t be here long,” Jagger said, carrying the two bags of groceries we’d acquired at the general store into the kitchen.
“Looks like Rafe came through,” Jagger said, crouching next to a row of duffel bags, one of which was unzipped to reveal several big guns, the kind the men at the paper mill had been carrying when they’d tried to kill the Hawks and me.
I instinctively recoiled. “That’s a lot of guns.”
“You know better than anyone that Dimitri’s men are armed to the teeth,” Hawk said. “Being prepared means the difference between life and death.”
I swallowed my repulsion. In a perfect world, I wouldn’t have to think about guns, about violence.
But this wasn’t a perfect world. I knew that better than anyone too.
Bram and the Hawks — my brother, my men — would be taking on a group of men trained to protect Dimitri. If being well armed gave them a better chance of coming out of it alive, then I wanted them well armed.
“Let’s make some food,” Jagger said. “Start a fire.”
“Then what?” I asked.
Hawk started looking around for matches and paper to start a fire with the wood stacked next to the fireplace. “Then we plan.”
I helped Jagger make dinner, nothing fancy, just something to give us energy and keep us warm: pasta with jarred spaghetti sauce (and American brand, of all things), garlic bread, and broccoli (there had been mo fresh produce for a salad at the general store).
We ate in the living room, the fire Hawk had started crackling in the hearth, the cabin cozy in the firelight where it had before been small and dark.
Jagger poured shots of vodka but I passed. I was already tired and didn’t trust myself not to nod off, and I was determined to stay awake to make my case for going with Bram and the Hawks to Dimitri’s compound.
The guys were more than happy to partake though and I was happy to see they were getting along, Bram as friendly as Bram ever got.
“This is the main house,” Jagger said, pointing to his laptop after we’d fished eating.
I was surprised the cabin had WiFi, but I guess I shouldn’t have been: Rafe had set us up here and Rafe seemed prepared for anything.
I looked at the house on Jagger’s screen, the image slightly grainy thanks to the satellite that was beaming us the image.
The Kaprolov house wasn’t as big as I would have expected, not a multi-wing mansion but a luxury lodge with two floors and three chimneys built in a clearing at the end of a long driveway.
“What are these?” Bram asked, pointing to four smaller structures tucked near the tree line.
“Hard to say,” Jagger said. “Could be quarters for security.”
“Do we know how many men?” Hawk asked.
“We can only see what the satellite image shows us,” Jagger said, “but from what I’ve seen I’m guessing around a dozen.”
“Twelve to four,” Bram said.
“Those are fun odds,” Vigo said.
Bram glared. “Nothing about this is fun.”
“So what’s our way in?” Hawk asked.
Jagger adjusted the angle on the satellite image.
“There’s a defunct surface road about half a mile below the property.” He zoomed in and a narrow road, half-covered with snow, came into a view below the hill on one side of the house. “Here.”
“We ditch the cars and go in on foot,” Bram said.
Jagger nodded. “We’ll be as quiet as we can, but we should expect to take fire.”
“What about cameras?” Vigo asked.
“Aloha’s got those. They’ll start looping at midnight,” Bram said.
“Do we know where Alina is?” I asked. “Inside the house, I mean.”
I didn’t mean Alina any harm. I just wanted Dimitri dead, and I hoped there was a way to get in and do it without confronting Alina.
Jagger shook his head. “I’d assume with a house this size the sleeping quarters will be separated from each other, but we won’t know until we get inside.”
“So we climb up the hill, get through the guards to the house, and find Dimitri,” Vigo said.
“You forgot the most important part,” Bram said.
Vigo took another shot of vodka. “What’s that?”
“Kill him.”
“Goes without saying,” Vigo said.
“What will we do about Alina?” I asked. “If she shows up while we’re there.”
Bram turned to look at me. “First of all, no one is going to hurt Alina. It’s not a crime to be spoiled. Second, “we” aren’t doing anything. You’re staying here while we take care of this.”
“No,” I said. “I’m going.”
“The fuck you are,” Hawk said.
Vigo draped an arm around my shoulders. “Sorry, mouse. I’m with them.”
“You’d rather I stay here alone? In this cabin in the middle of nowhere? With Dimitri and his men less than two miles away?”
Hesitation flashed across their features.
Vigo scratched his jaw. “Now that you put it that way…”
“Are you insane?” Bram asked him. “She’s not going. It’s way too dangerous.”
“She does have a point,” Hawk said.
I wanted to point out that “she” was right here, but it kind felt like they were getting to the logical conclusion in their own.
Bram’s dark eyes spit fire. “I’m not putting my sister in the line of fire.”
“We’re not exactly eager to put Cass in danger,” Jagger said. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re in love with her.”
A warm flush spread through my chest at the confession, but Bram clearly didn’t feel the same way.
His mouth flattened into a line.
“Yeah, we’d never do anything to hurt our mouse,” Vigo said. “But if I have to bet on her safety, I’d take the bet where we’re the ones protecting her over the one where we leave her in an abandoned cabin in the middle of the Russian mountains two miles from the guy who’s been trying to kill her.”
Bram cursed.
“There are four of us,” Hawk said.
“We’ve got plenty of weapons,” Vigo said. “We’ll keep her covered.”
Jagger met my eyes. “Plus, this is Cassie’s fight too. It’s really her decision.”
Thank you, Jagger.
Vigo nodded and looked at Bram. “And didn’t you say you were going to let her grow up, make her own decisions?”
Bram looked like he wanted to murder every one of them.
But we he was definitely starting with Vigo.
“Fuck.” Bram sighed and looked at Hawk. “There better be flak jackets in those duffels from Rafe.”