“Roman, time to let me go. You’re not going to shoot your own man, are you?” Will was banking on the fact that Roman wouldn’t but there was no guarantee, no telling what the youngest, most impetuous Kurev would actually do.
“I’m not going to let a UC get the best of me.” The gun didn’t waver.
Damn. The kid was holding on to the undercover cop theory. Though Roman might be untried and temper-driven, he was also more skilled with his weapon than Will would have guessed. When Will had been in the business of killing off the Kurevs, their men had fought back with quantity rather than quality. They won by sheer willingness to pull the trigger, repeatedly. They had no aim, no training, and nothing on their side other than bravado and copious amounts of ammunition.
Will and Diana, on the other hand, fought with skill and precision. The game had been: stay on your feet, keep your eyes open, and work fast. Now it was a much harder game; the playing field had apparently become more level, and Will wasn’t in the fighting shape he’d been in. Now he was hiding behind the very hit man who’d come up the ranks to replace the ones he’d taken out a handful of years ago.
Maybe he shouldn’t have killed them all. Lord knows, at the time it hadn’t been a decision, just a drive. But—if he was entertaining some delusions of grandeur—he’d helped create Churkin and Shvernik. He’d even pushed the Kurevs to need the training that Roman had clearly received.
For a moment Will considered that he had cut off the head of the beast and three had grown back. While one of those heads was already severed, two remained. He wondered if Diana realized that Ivan had likely been better prepared for her than they expected. Maybe it all happened too fast for her to see that. Maybe she’d gotten lucky . . . if starting this whole goatfuck could be called anything resembling “lucky.”
Roman held a steady hand on the gun. Where Will could see around Shvernik’s neck, he was looking right down the barrel. He put himself behind the hit man’s neck because that would be the least likely place Kurev would be willing to shoot if he actually wanted to keep his man alive.
The odds were in favor of that. Shvernik was valuable. Unlike the old breed, Shverniks were hard to come by. There weren’t that many people in the world who were trained like this. And you couldn’t easily create one—the way you could a good garden-variety hit man—simply by handing him a powerful weapon and having him hose down a few people from behind the butt of his gun. No, a Shvernik took years to mold. Likely had to be taught and coached before he came over to the game, before he chose sides. A lot of the people who trained like that were indoctrinated with the “don’t fight/protect the innocent” mantra, making a Shvernik that much harder to find.
Again, Will went with the “if he was going to do it, he’d have already pulled the trigger” theory. However, Shvernik was trained, and Will was holding his good arm behind his back. While the man was clearly in pain, he was on his feet—not down by anyone’s count. So it wasn’t just Roman who was a threat, but the very man he currently had control of. That could change at any moment.
Impossible to tell from where he stood what communication might currently be passing between the other two, Will knew without a doubt that this man was doing exactly what he himself had done: biding his time, waiting for an opening. Will had to act faster than expected.
He yanked the arm up, eliciting a grunt from Shvernik and a small jerk from Kurev. In that moment, Will lifted his right leg, sliding his hand into the slice he’d stitched into his pants for just such a purpose. He pulled the Springfield he had holstered at his ankle by lowering his leg against his grip on the butt. He had the gun aimed on Kurev before his foot hit the ground, before he registered the noise that was Kurev shooting at the kneecap Will had exposed for a moment beyond the boundaries of his human shield.
The first shot upped the game. Someone would look out the window. The police would come. Those police could easily be in Kurev’s pocket. They could shoot Will point-blank, and it would look clean, like another suicide by cop.
He didn’t want to look like a dead man in any form.
So he peeked around Shvernik’s neck again, still staring almost directly down the barrel of the gun Roman had taken off him just a few minutes earlier. Laying his finger alongside the barrel of the one he held, Will aimed from Shvernik’s waist and pulled the trigger.
Kurev twisted, his left shoulder blowing back, his entire body rippling with the shock of the blow his body had taken at such close range.
Blood bloomed on his upper left torso.
Not a fatal shot and not where Will had aimed.
He’d have corrected that, but the wave of reaction through Kurev seemed to have jerked his hand into a squeeze, thus pulling the trigger at Will, twice. Ducking behind Shvernik again, he tugged the hit man one way then another, as though that could actually be fast enough to block the bullets coming this way.
A quick check told him that Kurev was still on a backward trajectory and his gun hand was aiming off into the neighborhood. That was not good, and Will’s time was limited from every angle of inspection.
He shoved the hit man toward his boss, bringing up a foot and driving it into the back of Shvernik’s knees, ensuring that the man would not stay on his feet. Before he let go of the one good arm his shield had left, Will lifted the Springfield and twisted his wrist to bring the butt of the gun up and across the back of the man’s skull.
He didn’t take a moment to thank Diana and a few good anatomy books for the knowledge. He simply followed through, watching the heavier man fall, unconscious now. The youngest Kurev, unable to get out of the way fast enough, had instinctively grabbed for the man shoved at him.
Roman glared up at Will as he tumbled backward, out of control, trying to maintain both himself and Shvernik, who was now nothing but well-aimed dead weight.
Kurev’s head hit the sidewalk, and Will watched as the younger man’s eyes went hazy and as his own foot kicked out, planting on the other man’s wrist and corralling the gun. Will’s gun.
Kurev blinked, and Will considered taking a moment to completely knock him out, but the distant call of a police siren swayed him against that decision. He just leaned over and picked up the Springfield, taking one last look into Kurev’s glazed eyes.
Will wanted to tell what he had done while Roman couldn’t respond. Wanted to say, “I killed your father and my wife killed your brother,” but he couldn’t give that information away.
Sadly, Will and Diana were both safer if Roman thought Will was an undercover cop—as dangerous as that belief was. It would get him killed just as fast. But only him. And probably clean.
So he tucked the gun he’d just stolen back into the pocket he’d sewn into the waistband of his jeans and held the second one low at his side. Tugging the ball cap down a little lower on his head, he turned and walked back down the street.
He considered going right past his own car—not giving Kurev any info on it—but then climbed in. Kurev knew he was being followed. Chances were that the car had been made, maybe even the license plate. So Will simply drove away, watching in the rearview mirror as Roman finally managed to push Shvernik off him. The sound of sirens was much closer so he didn’t have time to wonder if he was making a mistake leaving the two of them alive.
Diana raced down the hallway to the wailing of crazy thoughts ricocheting around her brain. She was almost directly behind Reese, who was already slamming through the fire door that swung back toward her as Churkin had bolted through it at high speed just a half moment before.
Diana’s brain ran through questions at warp speed. Why was Churkin here? Why outside Nick’s hospital room? Had she played into putting him there? Was she coming to finish the job?
As her hands hit the metal bar, Diana’s brain registered the noise. Churkin had set off the emergency alarm as she bolted through the door. Glancing back over her shoulder, Diana saw the staff coming to their feet, looking at her and Reese chasing the woman in blue scrubs down the hall. Diana yelled out to them, “Call the PD. Get Stelian a detail!” and she burst through the door following the others into the stairwell.
The staff almost had time to nod in response to her demand. She could only hope they accomplished something in time to keep Nick safe. Safer than he’d been earlier tonight for certain.
Reese’s boots rang below on the metal stairs, and Diana wondered if anyone had thought to call to the ground floor to alert security that someone was headed down who shouldn’t be. Then again, maybe it was better if security stayed out of the way—though armed, these people wouldn’t be ready for Churkin’s kind.
It was more than possible even Reese wasn’t.
Diana stepped up her pace, telling herself Reese was tough, smart, and she’d seen a glimpse of Churkin in action the other night. She’d be cautious. Still, Diana didn’t want her friend to face the assassin alone. She’d lost precious time by being three steps behind from the start. She’d had to turn around and register the situation, and by then Reese and Churkin had already taken off. Diana had also taken that single moment to shout at the hospital staff, and the two had moved just a few more steps ahead of her.
Taking a risk, she grabbed the railing and jumped down the half flight of stairs, threw herself around the corner, and did it again. The pounding of two sets of feet sounded closer now despite the ringing of the metal staircase.
As she made another flight, Reese came into view, her gun already in hand, Good girl. Diana pulled hers, too, her feet not pausing in their rhythm, back to pounding down individual stairs, no longer willing to risk a sprained ankle in order to catch up. They’d all hit the bottom soon enough.
The sound of Churkin banging through the external door registered a moment before she heard Reese pass through. A heartbeat later, she rounded the bottom corner and took in the whole view.
Again, the door was on its backswing, closing off the shot of Churkin hauling ass down the dark alley, part of the view blocked by Reese, close on her tail. To Diana’s right, a hospital security guard came into the stairwell, his forest-green uniform at odds with the cautious hold on his own gun that gave away his lack of training. Relief swept over his face as he saw Diana grab the metal railing and haul her mass around the corner toward the slowly closing door.
“Officer.” He stepped out of her way and Diana was hit by the realization that she was still in uniform. As was Reese.
Shit.
They were chasing down a Kurev operative from outside the room of the Vasilescu heir and she was legally bound to operate as an officer of the law.
It was something Reese would have no problem with, but Diana was swearing a blue streak. Just her luck she was stuck in her blues. She wondered if Churkin had registered that fact.
The woman seemed to recognize something about Diana.
There was a disturbingly real possibility that Diana was running toward the very person who would blow her five-year cover wide open and to Reese nonetheless.
Shitshitshit.
Just turning and running the other way suddenly became a viable option. Head home. Pack everything. Wipe down the house. Text Will on the burner phone and disappear. She could do it.
But she was already in the alley, the door closing behind her, and in a second it would lock itself, leaving her here with nowhere to go but forward, chasing Reese and Churkin.
There was the second and deeply concerning problem that though Reese recognized trouble, and would be on guard, no matter how alert her friend was, no matter how good she was, she might not be able to defend herself against Churkin. If nothing else, the assassin would fight dirty. Officer Reese Donaldson would not.
Diana ran toward the end of the alley, turning the corner as she heard Reese yell out, “Police, stop!”
They were out of district, but in uniform. It didn’t matter much, because Churkin didn’t stop. She turned the next corner, making Diana proud of Reese for not having stopped and planted her feet. She would have committed to shooting and Churkin would have gotten away.
Though maybe that would be better.
Diana caught up just as Reese entered the next pool of light where the alley crossed out onto a very dark street, the tall brick wall obscuring everything to her right. With a final push, she leapt out, grabbing the back of Reese’s belt and stopping her from making the turn.
She couldn’t stop her own momentum though and wound up hauling her partner past the opening rather than just stopping her cold. The two tumbled to the ground, both blowing out breath before they hit, both seeing Churkin come out from around the corner, the gun aimed head height, exactly where Reese should have been.
Churkin hadn’t made the shot. Though she’d aimed and popped out, ready to fire one into Reese, she hadn’t pulled the trigger.
That was scary to Diana. That kind of control . . . Diana knew exactly what it could accomplish, and she cursed her own fear, her own concern that something would happen to Reese, that Churkin would out her, that Will would be hurt by her death.
The fact was she had everything to lose. Churkin appeared to have nothing.
Diana pushed, but Reese was already rolling off and onto her feet. Having landed partially under her friend, Diana was slower to rise and didn’t even try. She threw herself to the left, her right foot lashing out and catching Churkin’s left ankle with a hard hook.
The assassin wasn’t able to maintain her own stance against the strength of Diana’s blow. She flipped onto her back, her hand still maintaining control of the gun.
As Diana gained her feet, and Reese watched, Churkin hit the ground and used her own momentum to roll backward and quickly upright again.
Reese’s eyes widened. There could be no better display of what they were up against than a professional, reflexive move like that. Diana had no choice.
“I’ve got this.” She held her arm out like a parent holding a child to the seat during a sudden stop. It was about as effective.
She already had one gun out, in hand. While Churkin and Reese stood motionless, each taking stock, Diana reached across with her left hand and pulled her baton from her belt. With a flick of her wrist, she opened it, the zip of extending metal loud in the cold dark. She held it along her leg, a warning to anyone who looked.
Churkin’s eyebrows went up. Reese’s gun was trained on her, but Churkin’s was aimed at Diana.
Three . . . two . . . one.
Diana slowed her breathing with each count. Without moving her eyes, she took in the surroundings. Tall brick walls, hospital windows looking down. Though it was the dead of night, she had to assume someone would be watching. When there were this many windows someone always was. Behind Churkin, tools stood propped against the wall. The road was blacktop, dirty with chunks of litter and things too ground in to be identifiable.
The three of them stood stock-still for a moment, then Reese took the initiative.
“You’re under arrest. Drop your gun. Hold your hands out.”
Nothing happened. Reese’s voice bounced around the alley to no effect.
Then, a slight move of the shoulders. A sigh. Churkin released the grip she held on her gun, letting it swing by the trigger guard, rocking benignly from her first finger.
Now that the gun was no longer aimed, she started to move it toward Reese, as though to hand it over. No idiot, Reese cautiously stepped forward, her own Glock gripped tightly in the standard two-handed grasp. She was going by the book.
Diana kept her own Glock aimed on Churkin, her baton still at her side, grip tight, ready. She wanted to yell out to her friend not to fall for it, that it was just a setup. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Yulia Churkin had something to gain by letting them haul her ass in. Though Reese didn’t know it, Diana and Churkin were both well aware they couldn’t keep the woman in jail. She’d make bail; a Kurev lawyer would have her out before sunrise.
Diana watched and stayed alert.
Still it all happened too fast to stop it.
As Reese got close enough to reach for Yulia’s wrist, the woman regrasped the gun and used it as a weight. Her arm swung straight, with shocking force for the dead stop she’d started from, and smashed the back of her hand into Reese’s face, sending the officer staggering backward onto her ass.
That was all the signal Diana needed.
She had been constrained by the blue uniform, but Yulia’s action set her free. Police officers were allowed to use deadly force, by any means necessary, if their lives were in danger, and that was suddenly clearly the case here.
She stepped forward, aiming for the torso that Yulia had left wide open as she swung her gun hand around, and pulled the trigger.
One round. Two. Three.
Diana fired shot after shot. Watching as Churkin staggered, her body reacting, dropping the gun, stumbling, each bullet a blow sending her backward. Diana stepped into it each time she fired and was within arm’s reach as Churkin smacked up against the wall behind her.
She was close enough to see there was no blood on Churkin. The pale-blue scrub top, already getting dirty, now bore three neat little holes, but no blood. Diana’s confusion was her only hint that things were not as they seemed, and she was aiming her fist, the gun as ballast—much the way Churkin had done to Reese—to clip the woman under the chin even as her brain registered that Churkin must have been wearing Kevlar.
Her enemy yanked her head to the side, bringing up her knee as she did it, giving Diana multiple strikes to parry.
She stepped into the leg, cross-sweeping it, and sending the other woman in the direction her head had been pulling to. Churkin’s fist caught her in her lower torso, just above her kidney. Her own body armor dispersed the force of the blow even as Diana smashed her knuckles against the brick.
It should have been the assassin’s jaw, but the head duck and the weight of the gun worked against her.
Son of a bitch.
Yulia Churkin was a master. She was already out of the position Diana had pinned her into. Surely she was at least bruised on her torso if not bearing broken ribs, having been shot at point-blank range three times, but she was on her feet and decidedly not dead. She also had a keen advantage. Not only was Churkin trained, she was practiced, something Diana was only recently reacquiring. There was something about an actual fight, the adrenaline, the need for cold focus, that couldn’t be rehearsed.
Churkin’s Kevlar was a keen disappointment. It was an advantage Diana had hoped for her friend and herself, and Churkin had taken that away, leveling the one thing Diana hoped to be ahead in.
That pissed Diana off. It pissed Diana off that Churkin had hit her best friend. She hadn’t had one for so long, and Reese was precious for being the only real one. Diana hadn’t been prepared for how angry Yulia Churkin’s fist smashing against Reese’s face would make her. But she tamped the anger down, erased it. Cold calculation was her only friend right now.
Churkin would kill her, no question about it. After that first hit, Diana felt the same way. When she added in that killing Churkin would shut her up, the decision was clear. She felt the flood of anger, rash and crazy, drain away. She felt Churkin move around to her right and Diana waited, one heartbeat. Two.
Lightning fast, she spun, this time aiming the butt of the gun to the other woman’s temple, knowing a body shot was pointless with that Kevlar, that she would only hurt her own hand. But if she could get the range, a kick might do some damage to the already forming bruises and likely cracked ribs.
The gun connected but glanced off the top of Churkin’s head because she was already bobbing out of the way. Diana used the change in attention to lash out with a foot to the other woman’s leg, her heavy boot an advantage to the cushy sneakers Churkin wore. A good thing as she needed some advantages here. Diana pulled her toes toward her, hitting Churkin’s knee sideways with the flat of her boot sole, hoping the thick treads would help rub the assassin’s kneecap out of position.
But Yulia was good. She didn’t let Diana accomplish what she wanted. She turned her leg—turned her whole body—around, and though she couldn’t turn the tables completely, she did manage to tangle their legs and drop both of them mercilessly onto the pavement. Diana rounded her back and partially tucked her head at the same time, thus keeping her tailbone and head from smacking the hard ground and using her own vest to disperse the impact. It still reverberated through her body; her only consolation was that Churkin thudded as hard as she did.
Reacting quickly, Diana popped up, using Churkin’s tangled legs as an anchor for the rapid sit-up, gun in hand, barrel moving as Diana lined it up with Churkin’s head.
She felt the assassin working to free her legs but didn’t realize one of them was actually loose until the foot smacked broadside against her gun hand, sending the shot wild and the gun spinning. Her Vermont Technique had worked against her there, the foot smashing into the barrel and consequently the finger Diana had aimed alongside it. Thank God for the cushy sneakers, but it didn’t feel good against the already shredded knuckles she was fighting with.
Cleanly taking advantage of Diana’s loose hands and the automatic jerk back at the kick she’d sustained, Churkin yanked both her legs free. Rather than scramble backward, she used the momentum, and Diana saw only the beginning as Churkin put her legs over her head and rolled backward a second time.
Diana was not against fighters using what they knew, repeating what they’re good at. It was a flashy move, showing the world that she was a professional. But Diana couldn’t copy it, couldn’t roll away. Churkin had the open pavement; Diana had the wall within arm’s reach.
When she lay back, it wasn’t to roll. Using her fingertips she pushed at the flat of a shovel, tipping it over on herself and popping her hand up to grab the handle as it fell toward her. She was already coming to her feet, the fight coming back to her, the calculations coming more naturally.
Upright, she spotted Churkin over Reese’s still-prone form, reaching for her partner’s fallen Glock. The baton was still clenched in Diana’s left hand, and it wouldn’t be helpful wielding the long, heavy shovel. But it could be useful right this moment.
Hitting the button, she activated the retraction, taking it from long baton to compact, heavy cylinder—exactly what Diana needed. Without moving her body, she lifted her elbow, locked her wrist, and extended the arm quickly in a knife throw.
As expected, the baton rotated around the center of mass. Without practicing with this specific item, she couldn’t have any idea about the number of rotations or distance she would need. Still, the baton whizzed through the air and found its mark even before Churkin knew it was coming.
The baton’s rubberized grip worked against Diana. Even though it conked the assassin on the back of the skull, it didn’t take her down. How many head hits could Churkin take? What kind of skull did this woman have?
Even before the baton hit, Diana had planted her feet and now held the shovel cross body. When Yulia looked over her shoulder, attention no longer on the fallen Reese, she saw the shovel, saw that Diana had taken the game from hand-to-hand and back up to weapons.
Diana closed the six-foot distance, not moving the shovel until the last moment, and coming in with a rapid strike to the side of Churkin’s head. Diana was too fast; though Churkin could block it, she couldn’t react in time to grab it.
Flat-sided, it missed the intended skull—again—because of Churkin’s speed and skill. The woman managed to flash her arm up, curled to protect the side of her head, but Diana still was able to glance the part of the shovel where the metal met the wood off her enemy’s shoulder.
Keeping her new weapon moving, she increased the speed, swinging the shovel around to the right and rotating it as she brought it back down. She could have swept out Churkin’s feet with it, but that hadn’t proved effective in the previous several tries, so Diana switched direction at the last minute, using the top edge of the blade to grab the woman’s ankle and yank it forward.
She only got one foot with it, and it didn’t completely take Churkin down, but it did pull her off guard. Diana kept the shovel in motion, hit after hit. She pulled back and then shoved the tip directly into the other woman’s torso—knowing she wouldn’t slice her open because of the vest, but managing to push her upper half backward while her feet were still moving forward.
Churkin could only react.
Diana saw the tip of the blade bend against the Kevlar and she counted that as a point toward her force. Still she used the natural motion of the blade sliding up Churkin’s shoulder and kept up the momentum.
Using her grip to rotate the shaft, she let go with her right hand and pushed with her left. Catching the wooden dowel nearer the blade, Diana then pushed with her left hand, finding a new grip as she whipped the handle around and hit the woman’s upper arm.
But Churkin’s hand flashed out, grabbing it and giving it a good jerk toward her body.
Her face pulled into a growl as Diana felt her own rage come into play and she used both hands to help Churkin pull the shovel closer, Diana pushing it up under the other woman’s chin.
The fantasy of cutting off air lasted only a moment as Churkin swept out her leg and tried to take Diana’s feet out from under her. But Diana wasn’t having it.
Both of them had a firm grip on the tool, and Diana used that strength to pull herself up, jumping, pushing against the shovel Churkin was holding for her. She brought her own boots hard against Churkin’s Kevlar, pulling on the shovel and pushing against the woman.
They both let go.