THE HOLE VINCENT had used to escape the fenced in scrapyard was hardly a hole, Drake discovered. More like a place where the dogs had dug out a few inches of dirt below the fence. Still, the dirt was loose and it was easy enough to enlarge it to accommodate the larger bulk of a full-grown man wearing a tactical vest. He just hated wasting the time.
He knelt in the dirt and used the stock of the shotgun to dig, jabbing it furiously into the earth and ramming the soil out of his way. Usually, situations like this, he was able to keep his heart rate low, slow his breathing, stay focused and in control. But after everything that had happened in the past twenty-four hours, knowing Hart was in there along with innocent children, knowing the killing spree Kasanov had gleefully left in his wake, there was no way in hell Drake was in control. What he felt was the exact opposite of being in command of the situation, more like a berserker frenzy.
Which was exactly why Mandy Devlin hadn’t wanted him involved. Too much emotion, too much adrenaline, and he could get everyone killed.
He cleared enough space beneath the fence. Shedding his vest, he stacked it and the shotgun against the fence and belly crawled through. Spitting dirt, he reached back and dragged the Remington and his vest through, then knelt there for a moment, his vision hazed red. Breathe, damn it. His fingers fumbled the vest back into place, a quick check of the pockets to make sure he still had the flex-cuffs, extra ammo, paint can, OC spray, and flashlight.
Still shaky and breathing too fast, he climbed to his feet. Saw a shadow overhead: the drone. He waved at it and it did a quick circle in acknowledgment. Mandy had come through with the cell and radio jammer. He drew in a deep breath. Finally, something had gone right tonight.
Time to finish this.
His plan was simple: take out the guards and sneak into the car dealership while the SWAT team got in position. Vincent had shown him how to access the car building via a side entrance away from the bombs—Kasanov’s exit strategy, Drake guessed.
He skirted the piles of broken-down vehicles until the blazing lights of the car dealership came into sight. The large, plate-glass windows of the showroom revealed everything: children lying still on the floor, Kasanov standing, holding a detonator in one hand and a pistol in the other, and Hart. Kneeling. With a suicide bomb vest strapped to her body.
Time for a change of plan.
<<<>>>
“YOU DID ALL this, killed innocent people, just to kill yourself?” Cassie asked.
“They weren’t all innocent. Certainly not Alicia Fairstone. In a way, you owe your fate to her. She killed my grandson, Anton. Anton was to be the future of my little enterprise. He would carry on my bloodline. Without him, I’m nothing. There’s nothing left for me. Except death. A death of my choosing, not some random whim of fate.”
Cassie looked past him to the children who all now lay unconscious on the floor. “That’s ridiculous. Look at those children. You could have raised one of them to carry on—”
He leapt to his feet. “Blood is everything,” he thundered down at her. “My worthless daughter, Natasha, might be content leaving my legacy to gaje, but that’s not why my father died, not what my mother taught me.”
Speaking of Natasha, where was she? The woman had vanished. Cassie focused on the immediate problem—reasoning with Kasanov. “Please. They’re just children.”
“You think I care? That I haven’t killed women and children before? I had a lot of fun in my youth searching out women who could have been Rosa—I even killed my fellow Roma and others who knew her during the war, trying to find her. You see, she disappeared so completely we could find no trace. My mother didn’t know Padraic Hart’s name, much less where they might have taken the gold. It wasn’t until the Berlin wall came down and the Stasi opened its archives that I even found a photo of Rosa.”
“That was almost fifty years after she left France—you were still looking for her?”
“Of course. She owed me a blood debt. I was not about to forget that. By then I had lost much of the fury that drove me as a youth, learned more patience. With the info I found in the Stasi files, I tracked her here, to Pennsylvania, but then lost her once more. When it came time to get Anton the computer skills necessary to revitalize our family enterprise, I sent him here with Natasha and she kept looking.”
His face twisted with pain. “Fate is cruel, though. After Anton was killed, when I saw the police file and investigated the detectives involved in his case, I found Drake—and photos of you, the spitting image of Rosa. Too late to save my family, but never too late to savor vengeance.”
“Do it, then,” she challenged him. It was the only way she could save Drake and the other police officers. He’d be here soon. “Kill me now. Let’s die together.”
His grimace of pain turned triumphant. “It won’t be that easy. Not for the last person on earth who has Rosa Costello’s blood. You deserve a fate that will make the universe forever curse her name as I have. And your Drake? He’ll be a withered husk of a man after tonight, after he witnesses what you have caused. Guilt will gnaw at him, eat him alive, twist and tear at his heart better than any torture I could devise. You’ll die knowing you destroyed the man you love. It’s not the justice my father deserves, but it’s the closest thing I can give him.”
Tears burned Cassie’s eyes even though she didn’t dare wipe them away for fear of detonating the bomb. She should, she knew. Just jump up, end it all before Drake or the other police officers came in and got themselves killed.
But she couldn’t. Not because she was afraid of dying, rather because she could not give up hope. Life is hope.
Typical Rosa. Always had to be right.
Drake would find a way. He always did.