Diana had pulled the trigger on Shvernik twice. She hit him dead center and, just like Churkin, it only made him stumble. Body armor, she thought, damnit. She’d suspected as much.
So she’d aimed for the heart, hoping for a clean kill but expecting only to knock him back a bit. She got the latter. Plus, he’d been on the move when she fired and even her skills left room for error with a head shot, so she’d gambled. She’d managed to get behind him and drive him inside, the cop brain and the assassin brain in her coming to the same conclusion.
If she shot at him outside, she could harm innocent people; neither side of her wanted that. But if she got him inside, the assassin could take him down and the cop could write it off as necessary.
All had gone well, until they’d rounded a corner, Diana already pulling the trigger. Just as she intended, he stumbled inside, but he’d gone right into Nick’s back. Right over Churkin, who was suddenly a heap. In her head Diana cheered, Way to go, Reese! Churkin was not an easy takedown; between the woman’s skills and her hard head, she was practically a machine, yet Reese had clearly nailed her. Churkin was out cold and still breathing, so Reese wouldn’t have to bear the burden of a kill.
But the takedown caused Diana trouble. Shvernik had stumbled back too far, slamming into Nick and taking both him and Reese down. Somewhere in there, a gun had gone off, and Diana had no idea if anyone had been hit or who might have pulled the trigger.
Unfortunately, Shvernik was the one who popped back up. He moved very quickly for a man of his size, and when he stood, he did so on the other side of the lump that was Nick, Reese, and Churkin. As he spotted Diana, his gun was already out and aimed at the pile on the ground. Regret bloomed in her that the three of them hadn’t decided body armor was a necessity. Apparently it was all the rage in the mafia world these days.
Her fault, too, most likely.
Shvernik spoke up, “You’re as good as your husband. That bastard glitched my shoulder.”
She didn’t even blink. She knew Will had a run-in with Shvernik in Chicago; he’d also told her when he lost the man. So she wasn’t overly shocked to jump out of her car in Nick’s driveway and find this particular asshole close on her heels. She was disappointed, though. Someone else would have been easier to take down, easier to maneuver.
Disliking her lack of response, Shvernik spoke again. “Don’t worry. My men put some holes in your husband last night. He won’t make it home. So sorry.”
She still didn’t blink. While his delivery was flawless, she knew he was lying. Will had texted this morning; he was on his way. She lifted her gun to aim for his head.
He clicked his tongue at her. “Bad idea, little girl.”
She shrugged.
“You can even kill me, but when I twitch, I’ll pull the trigger and one of these fine folks will get hit.”
She shrugged again. “Could be Churkin, which would be awesomely ironic.”
His smile was feral, cold. “Oh, I understand irony. Irony is that you got me promoted back in the day. You helped me get where I am.”
Nothing she hadn’t been thinking herself, so she ignored him and kept walking steadily forward, hoping to wedge herself between the hit man and the pile of people. The best she could do was scout the edges of the tumble that was partially made up of her friends. As she stepped carefully, she tried to check the three without taking her direct gaze off Shvernik. There appeared to be no blood running out from under the pile and no one moaned, but she didn’t have time to search out the missing bullet hole; her eyes were focused on Shvernik. In her periphery, she could see Nick, slowly moving, and Reese staying still, but watching carefully.
Shvernik saw what she was trying and wouldn’t let her get between him and her friends. She tried to outthink him, but couldn’t get past his smile. She was a cold killer; she knew that, but she’d never outright enjoyed a kill. She’d felt righteous, but never happy at the thought. This man seemed to revel in it, as though right now he was doing the thing he loved most.
Then he spoke. “About eight years ago, I worked for Pyotr Kurev. I found his body.”
“Good for you.” Her brain raced; she remembered Pyotr Kurev. Diana kept her expression composed. It wasn’t that she cared so much what this man thought of her, it was that he could easily out her to Nick. Reese had figured out about her past, but Nick hadn’t seemed to put two and two together yet.
If she could just hold steady, backup was on the way . . .
But if SWAT came in and heard this, she was screwed. Big time. She spoke again, to keep him from talking. “You must be proud. Sorry about Pyotr. I’m sure he was a really great guy.”
“Are you trying to shut me up?” He grinned as though he’d just solved a puzzle.
She was moving closer by inches. She just had to move his aim off Nick and Reese. “I just don’t really give a shit what you have to say. I don’t find it very interesting.”
She affected a bored expression. Inside she was pissed as hell. He’d seen through her in about two seconds. Her whole game had gone to crap. She was no longer in control of the situation . . . Hadn’t been since the day Ivan had whispered Hello, Sin in her ear.
He had figured her all out. Cynthia, the ninja, Diana. And she’d reacted. Ivan hadn’t told anyone exactly what he’d suspected, but he tested his theory on her, and those whispered words had made her jump. Now this idiot, Shvernik, was getting under her skin with no real effort. He was a sociopath, trying to figure out what was normal for real humans. Diana almost laughed. He picked the wrong girl if he wanted normal.
Small sounds filtered to her from beyond the walls: a bump, a soft scrape.
Nick moaned from where he lay, and she couldn’t tell whether it was simply opportune timing or if he was trying to cover the sounds.
Diana held her gun aimed at Shvernik’s head.
A noise from outside came, too big to ignore, and he gave a slight twitch, indicating he’d heard it.
Cavalry’s here, she thought. Time to act like an officer and not an assassin. Disarm, remove the threat. Don’t kill.
That last one grated. Badly.
A team that prepared for normal criminals, but not these two, waited just beyond the walls. She was ready when Shvernik realized just what was beyond the door.
He saw her coming but wasn’t fast enough.
Finally in close enough range, she shot her foot out, telescoping her kick and catching his gun hand just as she planned. Exactly as Shvernik had suggested he would, he twitched and pulled the trigger, shooting toward the cluster on the ground, now all moving. He didn’t give a shit if he hit Churkin . . . interesting. He’d gladly let her be collateral damage. Diana wondered if Yulia knew this.
It didn’t matter. Diana was already in motion. Though her kick made Shvernik fire the gun, it also re-aimed the bullet toward an innocuous wall. Diana was planting her foot even as she fired at his head, but he was moving. Beside her, Churkin popped up, backhanding Reese—who was also trying to get the upper hand—in the process.
The door behind her busted in—Diana heard the officers enter and nearly felt the house shake—as Churkin took one of her feet out. Suddenly, she was staring down into dark eyes set deep in olive skin. For a moment Diana recognized the hairstyle: cop hair. Yulia’s dark hair was wound up so that no one could get hold of it. Diana started; she had made this woman that she was staring at. Then Yulia was gone. Nick had knocked Churkin backward and the whole thing turned into one big clusterfuck with three out of the five people simply trying to take out legs.
But Diana couldn’t aim well with one leg being tackled, and when Churkin flew backward, Diana shot but only managed to hit her dead center.
Shvernik had lifted his partner off her feet and pulled her up, effectively taking her hostage, using her as a shield when he moved backward. Diana almost laughed out loud. She should just shoot both of them. But she couldn’t; the body armor made a clean hit difficult. It would also make her skill obvious. If she opened fire, so would they; there were men behind her and shooting first would endanger all of them.
Then the two were through the doorway and out of sight.
She ran after them, catching only a glimpse as Shvernik pushed out the front door and across the yard, shoving Yulia in front of him.
“I’ll shoot her!” He yelled, holding the muzzle of the gun to his partner’s head.
Diana bolted for the door but didn’t throw it open. She’d be directly in the line of fire and might ruin their chances at getting him. There were so many people to think about now. All the officers out there, she knew them, she worked with them. They coordinated as a group, each with a place and a position that made it all work. Her job now was not to get in the way. No wonder Reese was so good at it: it was a dance. All choreography and improv, but everyone had to work together.
She yelled from behind the door, “SHOOT HIM!”
But no one did.
When she heard the engine start on a vehicle, she knew Shvernik and Churkin had gotten into a car, and she immediately bolted out the front. Officers ran after them, aiming for the tires—which were far more difficult to hit than one might believe. Only Will could have pulled that one off. So though they hit the vehicle, they didn’t stop it.
Two officers were jumping in a squad car when several of them turned to look at her. She stood in the doorway as one of the men getting ready to give chase climbed back out. “Kincaid?”
“Yes.” She stared at them all. “Get them!” She pointed furiously.
The two officers dove back into the car and squealed off, leaving black streaks and rubber stink and time for Shvernik and Churkin to have put plenty of distance between them. Those two were in the wind now.
How had all these men just let them walk out? They must have thought Churkin was some innocent hostage. Diana gave them all a piece of her mind. “That was the woman who attacked Donaldson and me outside the hospital! You should have shot them both!”
It was Rick Bastille who stepped forward. “Kincaid, we thought it was you. He had her hostage; we didn’t want to jeopardize you.”
“What?” Diana was stunned, How could they think. . ?
Bastille shrugged, clearly grasping for a way to explain the mistake. He nearly waved his loaded gun around, he was so flummoxed. “She had her face turned toward him. Your hair color, your build. . . . We knew you would get out of it, but we weren’t going to risk shooting you.”
They thought it was her? She felt her shoulders sag. There had been plenty of open shots, plenty of chances to get both Shvernik and Churkin. Yet both had walked—driven—away. There was no way those two squad cars were going to run them down. A chase like that was far too dangerous, especially when those two would have no concern for wreckage left in their wake. They didn’t require immediate takedown; they weren’t a threat to the average citizen, just to Diana and Will. And Nick . . . and likely now Reese.
Forcing a nod, Diana let the other officer know she didn’t blame him. She should be glad they weren’t willing to shoot her point-blank, but she was having trouble mustering joy. Diana turned and headed inside to where Reese and Nick were being helped up and checked over and separated.
Diana looked at her friends, caught a slight nod from Reese, and turned to face Nick directly. “How’s your head?”
“Well . . .” He frowned and then raised his hand to touch the stitches. “My wound is seemingly fine, but I’m high as a kite. Do I have all my limbs?”
She had to laugh. It was that or scream, and in this crowd screaming would get her locked up. “Yes, Nick. All appendages are intact. You went through the house with a loaded gun while you were on . . . Vicodin?”
“Percocet. But man is my statement going to be fun. I get to tell them that I saw you and Reese each do a couple of moves from sci-fi. Reese dematerialized and then kicked Churkin in the head and you—”
“Hey, I really did that!” Reese interrupted Nick, jabbing her finger at his chest. “Don’t you dare say that was the drugs. I was super cool.”
Diana didn’t know whether Reese was covering up Nick’s statements so that he wouldn’t announce what he’d “seen” Diana do, or if she was really just doing fine and found it important to get credit for being a badass. Diana smiled and found herself locked into a surprising hug from Reese.
“Did our guys get them? I didn’t hear any shots.”
Diana shook her head, all bad news. “I saw him haul her out like a hostage, and apparently, they thought she was me. So they didn’t shoot.”
“Diana?” Nick had an odd look on his face.
“Are you okay?” Reese managed to ask him before she did.
“No. No.” But Nick looked more confused than anything. With a calmness suggesting a lie, he turned and waded through the growing number of officers. One by one he pushed them each out of the way saying, “I don’t feel well.”
Then he went into the bathroom and shut the door.
A moment later, noises indicated he was vomiting.
“Nick!”
Reese and Diana followed him then pounded on the door. The two women looked at each other and all Diana could think was, What is going on?
Will arrived earlier than expected from the looks of things. He’d bypassed his own home and gone on to drive by Stelian’s, since that was the last place he’d heard Diana would be.
Police cars surrounded the small house. Officers crawled the lawn, looking at the grass as though they were searching for four-leaf clovers. A pair of CSIs knelt on the front porch, dusting the doorknob and frame in the open doorway. Whatever had gone down here hadn’t been good. Just as he rolled near, Diana gingerly stepped out to speak to someone.
She didn’t see his car, wouldn’t recognize it, though she might recognize the features. She was frowning while she, too, scanned the lawn as dusk dropped like fog obscuring everything.
A few men pulled in behind Will, trying to maneuver a truck full of lights and other crime-scene apparatus. Tugging his standard ball cap low, Will backed up and waved, briefly obscuring his face. Though the new darker hair helped disguise him, if someone here did recognize him, there wouldn’t be an easy way to explain why he’d seen that things were wrong and then went the other way. He had to get out before anyone spotted him.
Diana was upright, talking, and all was well. He’d just have to wait.
The car seemed determined to take him home, even though this car had never been there before, and even though Will and Diana had decided that their home wasn’t the safest place to be. But it was home, and he was pretty sure it would beat driving around for hours, wasting time.
Parking several blocks away—just far enough that the neighbors wouldn’t recognize him—he rearranged his backpack. He wasn’t carrying the whole duffel of guns; his wounded side wouldn’t take it. But he made sure he had two of the Springfields outfitted with silencers, loaded and ready. He pushed spare magazines into his pants pockets and figured he was fine as long as no one searched him. It was the best he could do.
Walking easily—faking it, because the neat stitches in his side kept trying to pull—he headed casually up his own driveway and around the back corner of the house. While he’d moved openly on the driveway, as soon as he was out of sight, he ducked into the bushes at the back wall. No one would have shot at him while he was walking up; it would have been seen. No, anyone wanting to plug him would wait until he was in the backyard.
Nothing moved. He would feel stupid, except he had a few too many close encounters in the past few weeks to feel stupid crouching in his own bushes. Paranoia saved him more times than he could count and he embraced it.
While ducked down, he slid the backpack around and removed both guns. He slung the pack back on his good side and quietly tracked his way up to the back door. This led into the garage and didn’t squeak at all if one put pressure on the knob, lifting the door slightly upward. It was an old trick Diana had learned, allowing someone who knew about it sneak in, but others likely couldn’t.
A broken toothpick fell to the floor under the hinges, another good sign. He and Diana stuck them in doors when they were concerned. For years, they’d always kept a small box of cheap wooden toothpicks, never using them here, but now he was glad they’d kept them. At least no one had come in this way, or if they had, they’d replaced the broken pick when they left.
He put his ear to the mudroom door, listening as long as the hitch in his side would allow, and when he finally gave up, he pushed up on the knob, turned, and walked in.
The stale feeling the house was uninhabited was reassuring. But that instantaneous gut reaction wasn’t enough to make him put down his weapon and go whistling through the rooms.
With a wall at his back, he stalked his own home. Each time he turned a corner, gun out, he wondered if he was going to come face-to-face with someone. At least he knew it wouldn’t be his wife this time as he’d just seen her elsewhere, but he wouldn’t put it past the Kurev hit team to camp out in his house after running from Nick’s. It was highly likely they’d been watching it and knew there were no current occupants.
When the house was cleared, he sat down in the hallway, out of sight of any windows but in easy hearing range of any doors opening. He pulled out the burner phone and powered it up, not admitting he was also resting.
Though he didn’t want to link this phone to this location, he had to tell Diana he was home. He’d given her an ETA earlier but heard no response yet. From the looks of things at her boss’s house, she was neck deep in something bad and likely hadn’t seen his message.
He quickly punched in the message and turned the phone off. At least that way no one could triangulate the signal and say, “He’s right there, right now.” But he honestly wasn’t sure if it was better to turn it off and on or not. It was yet another thing he needed to learn more about in order to do his best at keeping them alive.
Dragging a chair into the bathroom, he intended to prop it under the doorknob—it was far more effective than the little lock in the handle. Those were only useful against people who didn’t know the room was occupied . . . and maybe toddlers. With a glance around the room he realized what he needed.
Exhausted didn’t begin to cover what he was. He’d lost a lot of blood; he was pounding whole bottles of sports drinks as easy as a frat boy doing shots. He was sucking down vitamins and echinacea like movie candies, all in an attempt to stay healthy through healing this rather serious hole in his side. He had to be strong enough and fast enough to not get any more of these.
Now he was slinking through his own house looking for something plastic to sit on. He found a stepstool in the kitchen and brought it. It had rubber feet, but setting it in the shower was likely to rust the metal frame. He just didn’t give a shit. He wasn’t going to need a kitchen stepstool possibly ever again, but right now he definitely needed a way to sit in the shower so he didn’t collapse, didn’t slip and injure himself and become an even bigger burden than he already was.
So he wrangled the stool into the shower—just getting it into the tub was a stark reminder that he was not at the top of his game, precisely when he needed to be. Turning, he shoved the wooden chair under the doorknob after clicking the lock on the handle because it was lame, but it didn’t hurt. Then he turned on the water and stripped down. The bandage on his side was a square, white reminder of his error and his need to take it easy. Will glanced around, realizing he couldn’t hear with the water running, and made a few adjustments.
Carefully reaching up, he pulled the handle that doubled as a showerhead and let it dangle at the end of the hose, close to the floor of the tub. Minimizing the distance the water fell would minimize the noise. The handheld showerhead made it easier to wash around wounds, to avoid spattering something incriminating all over the tile, or to wash blood and dirt or other identifying factors right down the drain. It should bother him that he thought of his home appliances in terms of their use in destroying evidence, but right now he was just grateful.
Sitting on the stool like an old man, he used the showerhead to wash his hair. He sudsed up his limbs and half his torso, keeping the bandage nearly dry in the process. It was a war to turn off the hot water and drag his sorry ass out of the shower because the heat felt so good. But the thought of imminent death, that someone could be right beyond the door, and the pounding water might obscure the sound of them creeping up on him was enough to get him to haul himself out of the tub.
He replaced the bandage, balling up the trash and burying it under the papers and such already in the can. It was his own blood in his own house, but he thought there was a real likelihood of someone coming in since he and Diana had all but abandoned the place. He didn’t want to leave any obvious evidence that anyone had been here.
He used paper towels to wipe out the tub, at least enough so it would dry in the next thirty minutes or so. That had to be good enough. He was grateful that the handheld sprayer hadn’t splashed the whole enclosure; he didn’t think he had enough energy for that. Will buried the paper towels in the kitchen trash, wiped down the stool, and returned everything to its rightful place.
Having only touched what he absolutely had to since arriving, he dressed in a change of clothing carefully culled from his closet and pushed Todd’s shirt and the pants he’d been wearing into the bottom of the hamper. Dry now and wearing a clean bandage under the clothes, he checked his phone for any messages from Diana.
Nothing.
He hadn’t expected it. She was involved in something at Stelian’s and shouldn’t whip out a burner phone to check it. She was alive and upright when he’d been there, just a little while ago; if anyone could stay that way, it was his girl.
Will texted one more time, letting her know he was at the house, hidden and probably about to become comatose, then he shut off the phone, checked his weapons, and grabbed the backpack. It was the only thing he’d brought in with him, so he took it into the guest room where the daybed awaited. Though he wanted to pull the comforter off and curl up, he couldn’t.
Diana had placed several plastic bins with sweaters under the edge of the bed, so he raided those for coverings, shoved a few into a ball for a makeshift pillow before he crawled under, pulling the bins in behind him. He fiddled with the dust ruffle for a moment. Just like the showerhead, it had been added, not with decor in mind, but with the fact that it concealed a human-sized hiding spot under the bed. He knew he was bound for a deep sleep, maybe a long one.
Behind the bins, in his pile of warm sweaters, Will lay on his right side, babying the left, and felt the black overtake him.
Something had woken him.
No streetlamps cast a glow into the back room here, and with the house technically “abandoned,” he wasn’t about to put a light on and check the time, but it was likely the middle of the night.
Will lay stock-still for probably five minutes before he figured it out.
Someone was in the kitchen.
He’d left all the room doors open, so he could clearly hear two sets of feet.
Had Diana come back and brought Reese? Or Stelian?
No, none of the footfalls were hers. Though he couldn’t put his finger on it, like all husbands he knew his wife’s walk, and this wasn’t it.
Feet softly checked the entire house, much like he had, but faster, as there were two of them at it. He knew when they came in and cased the guest room, walking around to see if anyone was crouched behind the bed and out of sight from the doorway. From under the dust ruffle, he could see only the soles of a pair of shoes and suspected they belonged to a female—probably Churkin. He watched as a foot kicked under the dust ruffle and swept the full length of the bed; the shoe encountered bin after bin.
The voice came from above him, “Clear.”
Definitely Churkin.
This must have been the last room she had to check. It only made sense that she had someone else from the Chicago Kurev organization with her. Likely Shvernik, given Diana’s communications and the fact that Will hadn’t seen him in several days. It would have been easy for the man to get here well ahead of him. But it wasn’t a guarantee.
The male voice confirmed his suspicions. “Only two hours.”
“Of course.” She clearly disliked the statement, seemed to take it to mean she was stupid.
Desperate to turn on the phone—always set to silent—Will wanted to tell Diana these two were here, but the feet stayed too close. They walked out only to the hallway, just inches beyond the door.
They hadn’t put on the hall light, and the light of his phone might be enough to draw attention his way. Will knew he was in no shape to take on one of them, let alone two, so he stayed still, breathing only the most shallow of air, listening.
“I like being in her house.” There was satisfaction with a touch of glee in Churkin’s voice.
“Not for long. She’s tied up, and her husband’s dead by now, but she’ll be free soon, and if nothing else, she’ll come here to grab some things.”
Churkin sighed. “I hate her. No, ‘hate’ isn’t strong enough.”
There was a bitter laugh, a concerned laugh, from Shvernik. “You go off the rails when you talk about her. That’s probably why Ivan didn’t tell you what he suspected. Didn’t want you tearing random folks limb from limb if he was wrong.”
Shuffling noises and a click leading to a subtle change in light from that direction told Will they’d opened the hall closet.
Sure enough, he could hear them pulling down the extra blankets and pillows, laying out bedding in the hallway. Will knew it was the most protected place in the house with the most exits. The hall light went off, but Churkin’s feet came back into the guest room. She stalked carefully around the desk.
“What the hell are you doing?”
There was another smile in Churkin’s voice. “I’m leaving her a note. I want her to know we were here.”
She must have found what she wanted, because she went back out into the hallway, where a small scuffle ensued.
“You can’t leave a note. The last thing we want is for anyone to get evidence.”
“Give me that. I know.” Another grab? “I’ll put it in the mailbox, and I’ll make sure it isn’t anything she can show anyone without incriminating herself. They don’t know what she is.”
“And if someone else gets it first?”
“Then they’ll learn what she is and I’ll get to enjoy watching them haul her off.”
Some kind of stalemate must have been reached, because shallow snores started a few moments later. Soft scratching indicated that Churkin was making good on her threat. Her voice was soft, “Stop snoring, you idiot.”
A grunt, more shuffling, and the snoring stopped.
Will didn’t know what light Churkin could possibly be writing with. But he did know this: he was well and truly stuck.