Chapter 19

Diana took a good look at her boss. He sat on the couch, fingers fidgeting, trying to get his focus. His hair was mussed, and he looked as though the medication was wearing off him while she and Reese watched.

Diana hung back in the doorway, only nodding when he’d asked if it was her. Reese sat closer, dragging her chair over by the couch. She pushed her face in toward Nick’s.

Clearly confused, Nick stared back at Reese, now planted firmly in front of him, sweatshirt and yoga pants, knees spread, and elbows resting on them. She looked stern. To Diana, she looked tired. Yet somehow she still looked like a dancer.

His blinks were slow and rhythmic as though it hurt just to move his eyelids. Chances were it did. Probably it hurt as bad as it looked, and since he’d bared the stitches, it looked pretty bad. “Can I have a Vicodin?”

“No, Nick. We have to talk and you’ll need all your faculties for this.” Reese’s voice was clear as a bell, soft, and almost soothing. Still it made Nick wince.

“Percocet then.”

“You weren’t prescribed any.” She shrugged.

Nick quickly described the bottle in the bathroom where she could find the round blue pills. He asked for two. She brought him one and chided him for having illegal medications in his possession.

The very act of swallowing the pill seemed to bring him around more and Nick’s attention bounced back and forth between them.

Just once, Reese popped a glance over her shoulder at Diana, and then she started filling Nick in. “While you were in your coma, someone came to see you. Conceivably to kill you.”

His face reacted before his mouth spat the sound out like a bitter taste. “Bun.”

Diana stepped forward, pushing herself into the conversation, whether Reese was ready for her to or not, and pointed to his head wound. “Did your grandfather do this to you?”

He looked away and Diana pushed again. “Because Phil Megan brought you into the ER, and his story was for shit.”

“Phil’s a good guy.” Nick worried his fingers, looked down at them.

“No, he’s not, Nick.” Reese leaned down and moved her head until she caught his eyes. “He’s a known associate of the Vasilescu family.”

Nick looked her in the eyes for a heartbeat, then his gaze jumped to Diana’s.

Reese darted her eyes back and forth as well, trying to keep up with the three-way conversation. Diana could almost feel her secrets and Nick’s trying to connect. Reese could see that things weren’t right, and Diana felt the strong urge to protect her.

Reese wanted none of that. “Nick, your grandfather is the local mafia lord, and he shot you, didn’t he?” She didn’t wait for an answer. “Then, while you were in a coma, a professional hit woman came to your door, dressed in scrubs, and Diana and I ran her down.”

Nick was suddenly completely and fully alert. “Who? What?”

Hard and angry at not being kept in the loop, Reese dug her own way in. “Thing is, I recognized her. I ran into her outside a bar—a known Vasilescu location—about a week ago. And Diana and I did our best the other night, but she got away.”

His hands shot out, grabbing hers before she could pull them away. “Reese, you have to leave. Get away from this, away from me. Clearly, it’s not safe.”

Diana was hoping Reese would take that advice, sling it over her shoulder along with her purse, and head right out the door. But she did pretty much the opposite. “No fucking way. I leveled a shovel at that woman and she shot at me. That bitch tried to nail Diana with a broken bottle to the face. No way in hell am I just walking away from this.”

Shaking his head at her, Nick begged. “Diana and I need to talk and you need to not be involved. Please go. Now.”

She bolted upright, nearly running into Diana as she verbally smacked back. “Oh, so Diana gets to stay?”

“Diana and I have some things to talk about.”

By the way he looked at her, Diana could easily read that he wanted to shake her down. He clearly knew some things he hadn’t told her and she held a few of those cards herself. She nodded to Reese, and thought, please go. Please.

Reese was breathing heavily and pacing. “How did you get on the force, Nick? How does someone with such heavy ties to the mafia become an officer?”

He sank back onto the couch; this was something he could answer. Something he could tell someone he worked with, someone he’d dated, however briefly. “They can’t keep you out because of your family. I had to have a much more thorough background check than everyone else. But I’m clean.”

Reese was literally and figuratively in the middle of them. She wasn’t stupid. And she was a bit of a pit bull. So she turned to where her odds were better. “Diana, tell me. Tell me now.”

“Reese—”

“Don’t! I almost got shot out there by some crazy professional bitch. Tell me.”

This was why Diana didn’t have friends.

She’d stayed with Reese last night, needing to be away from home. Diana had spent the night before that—after Churkin got away—nursing her fresh bruises and talking to Will for the first time in a week. She’d staked out her own home, slept under the bed, and then packed and headed for Reese’s. The whole second night she stayed awake, wondering what she’d brought to her friend’s doorstep.

Not one to give up, Reese had a habit of getting things taken care of, solved. Her likelihood of hunting things down made Diana’s choices harder. If she didn’t throw her friend something satisfactory, Reese would dig. Fuck.

So she found a bone and tossed it. “Nick’s background check was incredibly thorough. They even went into his sealed juvenile record. He was vetted heavily by Fulton County PD and eventually allowed in. But I don’t know if that’s because he actually was clean at the time or if someone in Vasilescu covered it up. Aside from the juvenile misdemeanor and a single speeding ticket, he was as clean as anyone.” She shrugged. It hurt, giving that up. And it would mean she would have to give up more, more about herself.

“How the fuck do you know that?” Nick glared at her from the couch.

Her eyeballs hurt. They felt like Nick’s looked. The back of her jaw tensed and her nose burned. Diana guessed if she was prone to crying, this was what the precursor would feel like. “I have connections.” She turned back to Reese. “Like you, I have a lot of circumstantial evidence on him, but zero proof.” Then to Nick. “I’m not going to say anything or hand my evidence to anyone. I just want to know that you’re okay.”

“Donaldson, you need to leave.” He growled it out even as Reese snapped immediately back at him.

“You’ve seen me naked. You don’t get to call me by my last name at any place other than work.”

Okay. That had gone further than Reese said.

But Reese kept rolling over Nick each time he spoke, and he was in no position to fight it. “I’m the only reason you’re at home. I signed the paperwork saying I’d take care of you. I just brought you illegal drugs.”

“A prescription from my own damn bathroom!” He yelled it, standing as he did, then immediately went white and sank back down to the couch.

Reese jumped to take care of him. She lifted his chin, looked in his eyes, and forced him to sip water. The whole time he pushed her away and called her “Donaldson.” When she finally seemed satisfied with his state, she turned back to Diana. “I’m sorry I lied to you. But I know you like Nick, and I didn’t want you to think anything bad about him and me if I was wrong.”

“As for you—” She pointed at Nick. “I’ve been onto you for about a year now. Remember when the detectives pinned your desk with balloons for your birthday?”

Diana remembered. It had been facetious and she’d been in on it.

“I found out your mother’s name then, stumbled across it. Then, a week later, I found out you’d been at a Vasilescu bar with one of their lawyers. So I just started keeping an eye out for things that indicated some connection to your family.” She turned to Diana. “I’ve been digging more. I now have more than circumstantial evidence. I have everything shy of absolute proof.”

For some reason, Reese was on the verge of tears. “When he asked me out, I went, thinking I’d get something, some key piece of information or a clue that would lead me to something solid one way or the other. But then I realized I really like the bastard—Sorry, Nick, I mean that about the way you act, not your birth—and now I don’t know what to do.” She shrugged.

Diana didn’t know what to do either. So she reached out and hugged her friend. It seemed appropriate, and it might be the last time she got to do it. She could use a hug herself. While she was so close to Reese, she considered reaching around and putting pressure on her friend’s vagal nerve and putting her to sleep so Diana and Nick could have the discussion they clearly needed to have.

She was already bad enough at being a friend. Knocking the other woman out was not the way she wanted things to end between them. Diana knew that later she would look back at her time with Reese as the only uncolored friendship she ever had. So she left the other woman’s vagal nerve alone.

Pulling herself together quickly, but still holding the hug, Reese stared Diana down. “Don’t cut me out, Di. You need me and I need to know what’s going on.”

Well, crap. Diana felt like a big marshmallow. Like someone had just jammed a stick through her and she highly suspected she was about to get roasted.

But she was going to get roasted either way. Turning to Nick, she made herself clear. “Reese stays.” To Reese, she warned, “If you ever repeat what you hear between us, Nick or I may have to kill you.”

After the other night with Churkin, Diana didn’t worry about Reese taking it as a joke. Luckily, Reese smiled and pulled up another chair. “Then let’s make this official and get down to business.”

Diana decided to lay some ground rules. “One: Nothing leaves this room . . . Except to Will. I get to tell Will.”

Reese raised her eyebrows, but Nick seemed to already understand and accept that caveat. Maybe he knew more than Diana had given him credit for. “It won’t go further than Will. I can promise you that. Two: When all is said and done, Reese knew nothing. She gets to walk away from this scot-free.”

Nick nodded again. Then added his own rule. “Three: We’re here to help each other.”

It was as though something was pushing her backward. As though her chair would tip any moment and crack her head against the hard wood floor of his living room. “I can’t, Nick. I can’t promise to cover things that hurt people. Reese won’t either. I know what Vasilescu does . . .”

“What Vasilescu does is changing. Quickly. In the right direction.” He gritted his teeth, clearly upset by the implications. “I will try not to offend your sensitive morals.” He hurled the words at Diana, making it clear he was already well aware her moral compass didn’t point exactly north.

Reese put her hand on each of their arms, steadying the people as well as the conversation. “Look, I have a feeling we’re all going to regret this decision at some point along the way, but we’re already tied in. So let’s do our best by each other and get shit done. Now, someone needs to tell their side of what’s going on.”

Neither Diana nor Nick spoke, and Reese took a long-suffering sigh. “Okay, we got a hit on the fingerprints from the alley bottle.” She explained to Nick how the woman had wielded it, and they’d lifted a decent set. “It doesn’t match to anyone in the system, but it does tie to a few crimes from about five years ago. She looked and acted professional. She was highly trained at hand-to-hand, and she was wearing Kevlar, so she expected problems and possibly bullets. Do you know who it is, Nick?”

“I didn’t even see her.” He shrugged. “Can’t think of a woman who would want to kill me.”

Reese raised her eyebrows. Adding sex into the story of their dating but him needing “time for his family” didn’t bode well for Nick. Diana had to actually hide a smirk, but when no one spoke, she swallowed it and offered what she could. “I recognized her. Her name is Yulia Churkin.”

Nick visibly started. He knew the name.

Leaning in, Reese almost soothed him as she asked, “Who is she?”

“She’s a trained hit man for the Kurev association out of Chicago.” Nick leaned back, taking that in. He looked deeply disturbed by Churkin’s involvement. He should be; she had intent on all three of their lives at one time or other that night.

“So . . . ,” Reese thought for a moment. “This links back to Ivan Kurev’s death here.”

“And then some.” Diana didn’t know why she’d said it. It was stupid.

“Why did you recognize her, Diana?” Nick searched her face. Nicolae had talked to Kaspar Kurev about the ninja . . . why was he looking at her that way?

But Diana didn’t get long to worry. Reese gave her a sharp look, too. “Yes, it’s time for you to tell us how you’re involved, Diana.”

Fuck, this was painful.

And then it got more painful.

Reese’s eyes narrowed. “Tell us, Cynthia.”

Will had considered going into the house he’d seen Roman coming out of, the one with the girls. But he couldn’t figure out how to get what he needed without paying for sex. Despite yelling at Diana that she wasn’t his wife, he wasn’t about to do that.

He reasoned that he could go in and—behind closed doors—question the girl about her boss, her job, etc., but even that wouldn’t get him very far. He didn’t mind paying for information. In fact, he considered it a perfectly acceptable use of Sam and Bethy’s life insurance money. Regardless, any halfway smart or trained girl would immediately tell someone higher up that the strange man didn’t want to fuck; he wanted information about the goings on. Hell, any smart girl wouldn’t give it to him in the first place. So that was off the table.

Instead, he went into one of the meth houses and bought himself a nice little baggie of pink crystals. It was a little pricey compared to regular street meth, but it was being marketed as a newer, better, cleaner version. Acting as though he bought that crap along with the drugs had required digging deep. Then he’d changed clothes and gone to the second and third houses and done the same thing.

All the houses were neat and clean inside as well as out. Will figured that meant at least maids and a lawn service, because the men on the couch were not the type to do that themselves. They wore business casual clothing even though it was Saturday. They also bore a recent polish of manners that seemed learned rather than ingrained, as though the street had only recently been washed off of them. They clearly enjoyed the Middle America home, the living room set up with a TV and a separate screen with a full gaming system. The kitchen held fresh coffee, and snacks were laid out on the bar.

Will had concocted a bio-break at each house and found all three to be roughly the same setup. One or two bedrooms were made up. It didn’t look as though any one person was living there, but the beds were getting used. The last room was set up for work: file cabinets, computers . . . he didn’t get to examine things much further than that as one of the guys invariably came down the hallway and disappeared into the office, supposedly to work; most likely they were checking on him. They always closed the door, blocking his view and his information.

Will checked out the bathrooms, too. The medicine cabinet was set up for guests with over-the-counter meds but not much more.

In each house there was clearly a job to be done. Though they might play, the men and women who ran the place dropped their games or paused their show every time someone purchased, happy to help with all your meth and street drug needs. Their names were obviously recently concocted, only a few of them well worn. And someone left the room, disappearing down the hall to the office each time something changed hands.

Will was ready to bet the offices held meticulous records of the business goings on here. If the Kurev family held over any business practices from the old days, it would take a serious decryption system to get any real information out of the files.

After three nearly identical visits, Will had two jewelry-sized plastic bags of pink meth as well as doses of codeine, Roxanol, and Adderall.

In the past, Will had driven around big cities—even this city—with illegal guns. He’d carried a phone that could readily implicate Diana in a crime. He’d driven in his darks, with the means for the murder he’d just committed tucked under the seat or stashed in the trunk. But he’d never been so nervous as he was now with all the drugs. He tucked them up under the dash but figured any decent cop would look there if searching the car.

So he focused on what he’d learned, what he could do.

And what he could do was get rid of the drugs, give the info to Diana, and get the hell out of town.

Go home.

Something in his heart cracked at the idea of seeing Diana again. It was that simple to realize it was the right decision. What they did, they’d do together.

He wanted to think he’d been silly and rash to leave as he did, but in his life he often came to times where there was only one decision to make. He chalked up walking away from White Oak in the same category. They’d learned a lot from his trip.

One of the main things he’d learned was that they were both out of practice—worse than they’d even thought. They were also up against much better trained opponents than they ever had been in the past—which was a problem of their own making. Sure, it had been an inadvertent side effect of what they’d done, but Will and Diana had taught the Kurev family that they needed more intelligent, more skilled, more highly precise muscle. Apparently, the Kurev family had taken that lesson to heart.

It was a bitter pill to swallow.

Will headed to Union Station, where he used a restroom stall to flush three of the drug packets. He then went a short way down West Adams to the McDonald’s there and flushed the rest. Lastly, the baggies went into trash receptacles outside the Kurev home. It seemed fitting.

He was dog tired by the time he pulled into his motel lot. Out of habit as much as vigilance, he trudged up the stairs, bone weary, but still made his standard sweep of the room. He waited with guns at the ready for anyone behind him until he was sure he was in the clear, and then he locked himself in the bathroom—the only place with no windows. A few minutes were well spent texting Diana to tell her what he’d learned. Not only was the pink meth definitively a Kurev operation, but it was theirs exclusively. They were moving into the Atlanta area for some reason, and that may be how Ivan had come across Diana in the first place.

As he stepped into the main room, lights swept through the parking lot below him, barely visible through the pulled curtains. Will wouldn’t have even noticed except for the loud sound of the engine as it roared through. When the car didn’t park but went around the building, Will’s usual suspicious nature took over.

Standing on a chair he pulled up beside the window, he looked through a slit he’d cut horizontally at the top of the curtains just after arriving. It was strange how the lifestyle filtered back to him. Always be aware; always be looking for ways to be aware without looking like it.

Two hotels ago, he’d been on the second floor like this—figuring it afforded more ways out of a situation if necessary. The front door was one. The adjoining door to the next room over was two. The front window served as option three and from any of the front exits, there were two directions to go as well as right over the railing if necessary. Plus the fact that anyone coming for him would have to come up one of the staircases at either end just to get to his door. He was sold.

He’d been searching for a way to keep his curtains closed and yet still be able to look out when he’d wanted. People expected the face to peek around the sides, in the middle where the curtains joined, somewhere at standard human height. So he’d pulled up the chair and sliced a four-inch cut into the fabric just under the seam. The gap was big enough to see out in several directions. The location of the cut was odd enough that no one should look there first, and the placement—toward the edge—allowed him to stand behind the wall, rather than in front of the window, in order to get his view.

In spite of the fact that the Kurevs had stepped up their game, and in spite of the fact that he’d been made before, he still felt there were some areas where he was improving. This was good, because he was more and more convinced that he and Diana couldn’t go on as the Kincaids much longer.

He stood there for an amount of time that could only be called paranoid, then decided to get back to the business of heading home. Diana was no longer in their house. He didn’t know where she was, but he had to trust her to stay safe.

For a while, he entertained a way to get the encryption for the records from the meth houses. Shutting them down and putting the cooks and the sales reps in jail would definitely hurt the Kurev business.

It was a tempting dream, but he knew it was just that: a dream. He didn’t even know if the meth houses could be tied directly back to the Kurev brothers. If they couldn’t, then it would hurt their pockets, but not much else. Will wanted to cut off the head of the beast, not just swat it with a rolled-up newspaper. While they had accomplished something like that once before, it had taken the two of them weeks of planning to pull it off . . . as well as some help from the FBI. In the end, they’d put a lot of people in jail. Even with all that, Kolya had managed a life sentence, with parole options, in the cushiest jail around. It had been a sharp sting to think they had shut down most of the business, but the head of the largest, most successful modern day mafia in the United States had suffered only what was essentially a time-out for a fistful of years.

Will had found his own answer to that frustration.

Besides, even Kolya’s ultimate demise hadn’t been enough to stop things. Roots had been left, and the plant had grown up sturdy and getting stronger. The brothers had worked together, altered their direction slightly, set up a new shop, and continued in the absence of their father.

It was a depressing thought.

He wasn’t here to cut off any heads of any beasts. As tempting as the dream was, it was unachievable. His goal now had to be keeping himself and Diana safe. Out of Kurev clutches. Away from Churkin and Shvernik—who were proving to be highly problematic.

He texted Diana again.


Coming home.


Then he heard another car in the back lot and his paranoia insisted he check it out. He shouldn’t hear much at night; there weren’t but three rooms rented out on the back side. He chose this motel, this room, because of this setup—he wanted to hear when anyone came back here, wanted to be alerted to the comings and goings of his neighbors.

Climbing the chair again, he peeked out the slit and saw two cars pull into the lot.

They stopped crosswise in the traffic pattern, engines cutting off and doors opening.

Shit!

He was off the chair in less than a blink. They were here for him, no doubt, and if they weren’t then he would chalk himself up as one unbelievably lucky son of a bitch. He shoved his arms into his leather jacket. It was too warm by half for the temperature, but if he skidded across pavement or took a knife, it would all be worth it.

Grabbing the duffel with his right hand, he pulled it up and over his head and had it positioned cross body in one fluid movement, the bag positioned in the best place on his left should he have to execute his full plan. Even as he adjusted the strap, he pushed his left hand into the bag and pulled out a fourth Springfield already loaded and fitted with a silencer. Then he grabbed three magazines and shoved them into the spare pockets and loops on the pants he had purchased and altered for a moment just like this.

Outfitted with three more guns on him, all loaded, he counted five extra magazines. The problem would not be in quantity, but in his ability to maneuver. He’d never unpacked anything other than the things he’d outfitted the room with—the screamer that would signal if the window glass was broken, the Club lock bar, usually for a steering wheel, that he’d fitted unobtrusively into the window to keep someone from sliding it open. All were counted as a loss as he stood at the door connecting his room to the adjacent one.

Placing the silencer tip near the jamb where the lock was, he shot out the wood in the two bolted spots and opened the first door then repeated the process quickly with the second door even as he heard several sets of feet coming up the corner staircase.

He was fairly certain he could hear someone coming up the far staircase, too. He wasn’t positive, but since it only meant the difference between being fucked and being royally fucked, Will didn’t stop to check.

No one was in the adjacent room—not a surprise since he’d picked his room partially based on the lack of neighbors. The last thing he wanted to do was bring someone else into his personal shithole.

He couldn’t quite pull the door closed behind him. The more he could leave the room he’d occupied looking empty or abandoned, the better off he’d be. But the doorknob hung at an odd angle, the fittings having been damaged when he shot his way through, and while it didn’t scream “he went this way,” it wasn’t very stealthy either.

The door at least still fitted into the allotted rectangle. He’d pulled it as best he could and was heading toward the front of the second room when he heard the shots slam through the furniture of the room he’d just left.

His stomach turned.

There was no finesse here. They hadn’t even opened the door, just opened fire.

On his hands and knees, he threw himself into the gap between the two cheap beds and thanked God he’d jacked his way into this room. He couldn’t afford to be near the window, nor could he afford to stay back near the connecting door.

With two rapid, forcibly deep breaths, he took himself out of the equation—quit worrying about what could happen, and simply looked at it like a problem. He listened as the gunfire stopped, but no one walked away.

Through the wall he heard the door to his room bang open, though it didn’t sound quite right. Will guessed that it was rather bullet riddled and thus not a full door anymore.

That sound meant he had probably less than three seconds to decide if he should make a run for it or see if he could hide here.

A quick look told him what he already knew—he’d checked these rooms out first thing. There was no ductwork to escape into. If there had been, he’d already be in it. There was no way through the back wall. These rooms were boxes with one access side, great for business, but hard to get out of if there was a fire . . . or gunfire.

The decision was easy because it had been made the night he checked in.

He carefully turned the knob, the door to this room a good thirty feet away from the one that had just been breached at full volume with more bullets than necessary. The door opened in, and he pulled it back as quietly as he could quickly do it, and then he was down the walkway in a flash. He didn’t look back. His feet pounded away from the room he’d stayed in, past another red door, two, three.

They saw him. Yells and gunshots and chips of cheap stucco flew, some of it stinging his skin as he fled for the end.

He hit the corner and swung a sharp left at full speed, already having walked this path and planned his route. Still on his feet, he went three steps past the turn and reached his right hand out for the decorative metal piece that trailed iron vines from rail to roof. Using it as a pivot, he launched his feet up and over the railing and dropped down almost a story onto the roof of his dusk-colored car.

The car had been backed into the spot, and he already had the keys at his waist, held with a breakaway clasp that he yanked out and unlocked the car with even as he hit the roof. He slid off the top, aiming himself away from the back lot, as shielded as possible from that direction.

As he rolled into the driver’s seat and started the car, he was aware of heavy footsteps and knew that he was going to exit perfectly or wind up very dead very fast. He jammed his boot onto the gas and squealed the tires in a sharp left, leading a short path out of the parking lot.

Several armed men hung over the balcony; another was pounding down the steps. Someone stepped out of the front office as Will sped away, his heart beating at a rate that was as likely to kill him as the bullets had been.

But the cars didn’t follow. They couldn’t. Will had been primed for a getaway; they had been ready to count him dead.

While he slowed his breathing and heart rate, he drove through town, losing himself in the traffic that still flowed in reasonable amounts even at this time of night. Only five turns later, when he felt he could count himself alive and away, did he notice the sharp pain in his left side. He looked down to see his entire side soaked, thick red blood spilling over the car seat, and pooling onto the cheap vinyl beside his leg.