19. Timur
TIMUR
Icycle through the security cameras on the monitors one at a time from the booth above the gym floor, tapping the toggle on my console to switch angles.
The ring's lit up below and two middleweights are going at each other in their third round.
The crowd is a bit raucous tonight, though from up in my perch, I can't hear a damn thing if I don't want to and I have that feature muted.
I lean back in my chair and rub my eyes, tired after such a long week.
I'm still reeling over dinner with Kira and how incredible she is.
Morin keeps trying to warn me not to let her get in my head, but for now, she's the only one I've let in my head.
Everything about her has me so tangled up in my emotions and thoughts of what the future may hold for us, I'm barely doing anything else.
But Kazimir's warning about keeping my feet on the ground still circles back every now and then.
With my eyes on the monitor, watching for threats, I pick up my phone and dial Stepan's number.
I haven't heard from him about those photos, and tonight's a slow night.
Sitting up here alone is boring, and I could use the distraction.
"Tim, I was gonna call you." Stepan sounds winded, like he's been working out or running.
"Where are we on those photos of Kirianna Belova?
" Picking up my coffee, I sip the black bitter brew and hear him suck in a few deep breaths.
I hear some shouting behind him and figure he's in a gym, and miss those days I used to sit watching him spar with Kaz, before the family started expanding and Stepan went out on the road.
"Marina's got them, buddy. We'll send them to you via email tonight. It was a nightmare getting anyone to cough things up. Sergei's obnoxious." He chuckles, and I hear something scrape over the phone's mic.
"Tonight when? I'm at the fights. I'd like them before I go home." I see movement on the camera that I'm not fond of, a man looking frightened and looking around like he's searching for someone or something.
"Within the hour. She's formatting them now. You'll have them. What's the rush?"
"No rush, really," I say, half distracted by the images on the screen now, but still, nothing is overly alarming.
“I just want to get Kaz off my back. He's being a nag after everything we put him through with Zora.
" I chuckle, and Stepan laughs too. He was party to all the nonsense when our family almost got taken out by a mole.
"Yeah, well, I'll be home soon and I'll take care of him. We'll get 'em to you. Look, I gotta run. We'll talk later?"
"That's okay. I might have a situation..." My voice is trailing off again even as I hear the call end and the line go dead.
I hang up and set the phone down, watching Kazimir move through the crowd near the VIP tables.
He stops at one of them and leans down to talk to someone and their body language isn't great.
Kaz has his hands up, palms out, like he's trying to calm someone down.
Whoever he's talking to is gesturing hard, jabbing a finger at the table.
Just another shred of evidence that Federov's weaselly ways are affecting people.
But the man standing near the locker room doors doesn't belong there. His hunched shoulders and frantic glances look suspicious. He's either afraid of something or he's up to no good. Either way, he's caught my attention.
I zoom the camera in and the image gets grainier.
I can't see perfectly clear, but I can see he's shaking, and his coat is zipped up all the way.
In fact, it appears that something under that coat is bulging, like he's got pillows stuffed in there, or he's wearing extra layers.
It's not right, and it's raising red flags for me.
So I key the comms. "Kaz."
There's a moment of static before Kazimir's voice comes over the com unit. "Little busy, Tim."
"I have a man near the locker room entrance looking flighty. He's not right. Something's going on."
"I've got Federov's cousin in my face right now threatening to pull his action over a payout discrepancy. Can it wait two minutes?"
"No." The man is getting fidgety, tapping his foot, running his hand through his hair. "You gotta go now."
"Then send someone."
There's no one. Yegor and Radimir are off with Roman tonight, and with Dryden at the house with Kira, Morin out hunting Mirovs, and Rostik still hurt, we are down too many men. The others have to man their stations or we end up leaving an opening, which can't happen.
I grab my earpiece and my sidearm from the desk drawer as I stand. "I'm going down myself. Keep your comms open."
"Tim, don't—"
But I'm already out the door.
I don't like leaving my post, and I don’t like using this weapon in my hand, but my gut usually isn't wrong about things.
I've held to my assertion that Kira is telling me the truth so long that it's become annoying to hear my family fact checking me.
So when my gut screams that the man I saw on the cameras is off, I listen.
The crowd throngs around me, making it hard to squeeze through them, especially when the fighters really start going at it. I have to wedge myself in between them and the wall, and by the time I get to where the man was standing, he's not there anymore.
But up the hallway I see a dark jacket swaying from side to side. His crop of shaggy dark hair flings around as he glances over his shoulder, and I confirm the same face that I saw on the monitor. Raising my weapon, I shout, "Stop now or I'll shoot."
The man whips around and has both hands up, but there's something clutched in his right hand—the trigger for a bomb. Oh, shit...
"Don't move," I tell him. "Hands where I can see them."
"Please," he says. His eyes are wet and red and darting everywhere.
"Please, I don't want to do this." He looks strung out, meth maybe, and he reeks of marijuana and body odor, and I'm still several yards away from him.
I glance over my shoulder and see we're mostly alone, but I see Kazimir coming toward the tunnel that leads to the locker rooms.
"Do what?" I stop three meters from him and widen my stance. "What's under the coat?"
"They made me." His chin crumples and he pulls at the collar of his coat with both hands like it's choking him. "They put it on me. I didn't have a choice."
"Open the coat. Slowly. Show me what's under there." Now my heart is pounding, drilling into my ribs like it's trying to escape because I was right. That thing in his hand is a detonator. He's got a fucking bomb strapped to his chest.
His fingers fumble with the zipper. It takes him three tries to get it started and when he pulls it down, I see the vest strapped to his torso. Wires running in bundles along the front, taped to blocks of something C4, connected to a small device mounted at his sternum where a red light blinks.
The corridor behind me has maybe thirty people in it between here and the main floor.
Beyond that, three hundred more are packed into the gym watching the fights.
This is fucked. There's enough C4 on that man's chest to take out half the building, killing everyone inside.
I knew it was bad, I just never imagined this.
"Who sent you?" I ask. My mouth has gone dry and I can hear my own blood in my ears whirring past my eardrums.
My mind goes to Kira, home alone at my house waiting for me. She's probably thinking I'm gonna come home and pour her a glass of vodka and tell her about the fights. But what If I never go home? What if I never see her again?
"I don't know." He's crying now and the tears on his face mingle with his sweat. Whoever put this thing on him scared the shit out of him. I don’t know if I can get him out of it in time. I don’t know that I want to risk my life.
"They grabbed me outside my apartment. They put this on me and told me to walk inside and stand by the doors.
I don't know who they are. I swear to God I don't know. "
"Mirov. Was it Mirov?"
"I don't know any Mirov. I'm a plumber. I fix pipes. Please, I have a daughter." He's crying so hard, snot bubbles bulge on his face. I want to tell him I'm not sure I can save him, but how do you tell a man he's about to die when he's innocent?
Fuck.
I key my comms with my free hand. "Kaz, I need the south corridor cleared now. We have an IED. Get everyone away from the locker rooms and lock down the exits."
"What?"
"Do it now!" I shout and then hear him start barking orders through the earpiece. But I turn my focus back on the man in front of me. If a Mirov really did this, there's no way I'll ever know. It sounds like this man has been kidnapped and forced to do this.
"Listen to me," I say to the man. "We're gonna walk outside.
You and me. We're gonna go through that door behind you and into the alley and we're going to get you away from these people.
Can you do that?" I'm walking toward him, ushering him with movements of my hand, flicks of my weapon.
With that thing strapped to his chest, he doesn't have to fear my gun, but he moves with me, albeit slowly.
"I can't move. They said if I move, it goes off."
"Who said that?"
"The men—fuck! The men who put it on me."
"It's on a timer. You see that red light? That's a timer, not a trigger. It's gonna go off whether you move or not, so you can stand here and kill three hundred people or you can walk with me and we get clear."
His whole body is shaking so hard, his teeth are chattering. Then he nods and I holster my gun and put my hand on his shoulder.
"Walk with me. Don't run... Steady steps." My dinner might just come up. Never in my life have I stood so close to a ticking time bomb.
We move toward the emergency exit at the end of the hall.
My hand stays on his shoulder and I match his pace, which is slow and stiff.
When we hit the door, cold air rushes in and I guide him through, past the dumpsters, past the loading dock, toward the far end of the alley where it opens onto the street.
"Keep going," I tell him. "Don't stop." But I stop. I'm not putting my life any closer to that risk than I have to. I don't know how to disarm a bomb, and if I try taking that vest off, who knows what happens to me. This is insane.
"My daughter," he says. "Tell my daughter—"
"Move," I shout, but my voice cracks and the realization of what’s happening has me just as frightened as that man. I start backing away, but before I get back to the building, the damn thing erupts.
The boom is deafening, rattling my bones and slamming me back against the cinderblock wall of the building. I feel a hard body behind me and hear Kazimir snarl as I bump into him before we both fall over and watch the ball of fire in the distance.
"Fuck!" he hisses, turning over and covering his head as debris rains down on us, blood and innards, garbage from the dumpster, which flies through the air.
And it's all over in a split second. But the ringing in my ears may last for days. It throbs inside my head alongside my pulse, and I cough a few times, feeling dirt and dust in my throat.
When I roll over, pushing off Kazimir, and sit up, my head screams at me, having knocked it against the wall.
He sits up too, dusting his chest off as a few more guards dash out the door in our general direction before a flurry of men start filing out.
Everyone inside the building has heard the explosion, and they’re coming to investigate.
Luckily, the building hasn't been touched.
"What the fuck," Kaz grumbles, pushing himself to his feet before offering me a hand.
Before I'm even on my feet to answer Kazimir's questions, my phone is ringing. I pull it from my pocket and see Morin's face, angry enough to smash the damn thing against the wall of the building.
"What the holy hell!" I snarl as soon as I answer.
"You okay, Tim?" He sounds worried. "I heard there was a bomb threat... You need to get people out of the building and—"
"You're too late," I hiss, locking eyes with Kaz. "It's done. Some guy in a C4 vest just exploded out back."
Morin goes quiet, but where I'm standing is growing louder by the second, and I already hear sirens in the distance.
I turn to Kaz. "Clean it up. They're gonna want to search the building.
We can't let them see the betting sheets...
" I flick my head toward the entrance and he grabs our guards, pushing back inside. Then I turn my attention back to Morin.
"You knew this would happen?" I snarl, locking my eyes now on the fire burning at the end of the alley. It's small, but I see blood spatter everywhere.
"I just found out. I called you right away... Fuck, I should've been there." He sounds angry with himself, but I can't blame him.
"It was Mirov? The man said he was just a plumber and knew nothing." My heart is finally starting to calm down, but there's no way we get out of this without telling Ro. And he's gonna wanna know about Kira. I really hope Stepan comes through fast.
"It was... I have confirmed texts I traced..."
"Fuck!" I kick a board, sending it sailing across the alley, and it sends a shockwave of pain up my leg, but I'm so mad I could kill. This isn't good. People almost got killed. This is a major escalation. "Take them out... All of them... Tonight," I snarl, then I hang up.
Victor Mirov has to be taken out.
Because if he hurts one more person around me, I'm gonna lose my mind.