Chapter Twenty-Three
“Where is he?” Maisa pushed up one of the front window blinds to look out on Sam’s front yard. It’d been three hours since he’d left, and it was already getting dark—in midwinter the light began fading midafternoon. There really wasn’t much to see outside.
Still. She couldn’t stop herself from looking.
Beside her, Otter whimpered.
Maisa glanced down at him absently. Maybe he had to be fed—although he had eaten quite a bit of leftover breakfast.
“He will return,” Dyadya said.
She looked at him. He sat in one of the mission chairs facing the window overlooking the lake. He had another cigarette between his lips, though so far he’d abstained from lighting it. Maisa couldn’t tell from his voice whether he truly believed that Sam would return safely or if he was just trying to placate her. He looked so calm, so relaxed, while she hadn’t been able to sit for the last hour or so.
Maisa huffed out a breath and went to the kitchen closet. “How do you know Ilya Kasyanov?”
Dyadya waved a hand. “When I was Gigo Meskhi’s man, many years ago in Moscow, Ilya was a young boy, just learning to bake the books.”
Maisa frowned over that one for a second before her brow cleared. “Cook the books.”
“Da. That.” She saw the back of Dyadya’s head nod. “He was a vain man but very intelligent—though, perhaps, not as intelligent as he thought himself.”
Maisa snorted and dragged out the big bag of dog food. There was enough in there to feed Otter for at least a year. The terrier had trotted after her to watch and he barked when he saw what she had.
She smiled at the little dog. “Just wait a minute.”
Otter didn’t even look at her. His eyes were fixed on the happy yellow lab on the dog food bag. He whined and pawed at the bag.
There was a dog food bowl and water dish in the corner of the kitchen, and she dragged the bag of dog food over to them. “So he followed Meskhi to the U.S.?”
Dyadya shrugged. “Yes, though by then he was one of Meskhi’s main accountants.”
“Then why wasn’t he imprisoned when Meskhi was?”
“Because he was crafty,” Dyadya replied drily. “He’d moved on to working with Beridze by the time Meskhi was at trial. A smart move, but perhaps a dangerous one. Meskhi is a murderer, but he is not crazy like his nephew.”
Maisa shivered at her uncle’s words. Crazy. The word was overused to mean someone mad or out of control, but from what she’d seen and heard, Beridze wasn’t just that. He was truly crazy: a psychopath.
Otter was practically dancing in front of his dish. She blew out a breath and concentrated on feeding him. There was a scoop already in the bag and she used it to fill Otter’s dog food bowl. Although… She looked doubtfully at the dog noisily gulping the food. It seemed like quite a lot for such a small dog.
Otter looked up suddenly, his little body tense.
Then he exploded, barking wildly, his claws scrabbling on the floor as he raced to the front door.
Maisa grabbed for something, anything, and ended up gripping a pewter pitcher from the counter.
The front door opened and Otter launched himself at it.
Sam came in, holding Doc Meijer against his side. There was blood on Doc’s leg, on Sam’s side. Blood on the floor.
Maisa dropped the pitcher. It clattered against the kitchen tiles.
Sam’s face was like granite: hard and still and cold.
“What’s happened?” Dyadya asked sharply.
Sam nudged Otter aside. He was looking straight at her, ignoring everything else in the room.
She didn’t know how she crossed the room, but she was in front of him suddenly, searching his expression, almost afraid to touch him or Doc. Sam’s electric blue eyes were the only sign of life in his face.
“Doc’s been shot,” Becky said from behind Sam, she held two shotguns in her hands. “He’s losing blood. We need to get it stopped.”
“Of course.” Maisa ran back to the kitchen to fetch the first-aid box. But it held mostly Band-Aids. Those wouldn’t stop a bullet wound from bleeding.
“May, go upstairs and get some of my T-shirts,” Sam said, his voice calm and steady in the midst of Maisa’s frantic thoughts. “Second drawer down in my dresser.”
She nodded, turning to run up the stairs. It wasn’t until she was rummaging through his T-shirts, wondering if it made a difference if they were colored—of course it didn’t!—that she realized she was crying.
“Stop it,” she whispered fiercely to herself, wiping her face with her sleeve. The last thing Sam needed was her going into hysterics. She took a breath and dashed back down the stairs.
Sam and Becky had Doc on the futon in the spare bedroom. They’d removed Doc’s boots and Sam was cutting off the right leg of his jeans.
Sam didn’t look up as she entered. “Put the T-shirts there.” He jerked his chin at the table next to the futon. “Becky, I’ve got a bottle of rubbing alcohol in my downstairs bathroom cabinet.”
Becky left without a word.
Maisa stood there, staring at Doc’s bloodstained leg, feeling completely useless.
“Didn’t hit the artery at least,” Sam muttered. Carefully he raised the leg, ignoring Doc’s groan. “Looks like the bullet went through.”
“That’s good, right?” Maisa said.
Sam didn’t answer her.
Becky came back in with the bottle of rubbing alcohol.
“Okay, Doc,” Sam said, sure and steady. “We’re going to disinfect the wound as well as we can here and patch it up until we can get you to a hospital.”
He unscrewed the bottle cap and poured the rubbing alcohol directly in the bullet wound.
“Fuck!” Doc gasped. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
“Turn a bit so I can get the exit wound,” Sam said, ignoring him.
Sam repeated the process on the back of his leg.
Doc grit his teeth and then exhaled hard. “Son, I’m rethinking that promotion I was pushing you into.”
“I bet you are,” Sam said, his voice firm but his hands gentle. “Worst is over now.”
He took two T-shirts, made them into pads, and bound them tight to Doc’s leg before pushing a couple of pillows under the leg to raise it.
By the time he’d finished, Doc was half asleep and Maisa could see the weariness in Sam’s eyes.
She looked at Becky. “Can you stay with Doc?”
“ ’Course,” Becky said, her chin lifted.
Maisa smiled at her in gratitude. “Come on.” She took Sam’s arm. “You need to wash your hands.”
She led him back into the outer room where Ilya had collapsed on one of the chairs by the kitchen window. Dyadya was in the other, talking quietly to the Russian.
Sam went to the kitchen sink. He turned the faucet on and thrust his hands beneath the running water.
The water turned pink in the sink.
Maisa watched him for a second and picked up the bar of soap by the sink and put it in his hands. “What happened, Sam?”
“Beridze showed up at the police station.” He was rubbing the soap between his hands. “Demanded Ilya. We were outgunned so I said we ought to make a run for it, but…”
His hands were clean so Maisa turned off the water. She picked up the towel hanging by the sink and carefully dried his hands.
Sam suddenly looked up. “It was my fault.”
Her heart twisted, but she kept her voice steady. “How do you figure that?”
“I didn’t see anyone out back, but they must’ve been waiting for us to run. They shot Doc.”
Maisa threw aside the towel and silently wrapped her arms around Sam’s waist, giving comfort. She knew how important Doc was to Sam.
“What would’ve happened if you’d stayed?” she asked.
He shook his head.
She pulled back to look at him. “You already said you were outgunned. Sounds to me like you didn’t have much choice.”
He shook his head and pulled her back into his arms. She felt Sam bury his face in her hair and exhale. “We lost them pretty quick outside of town, but then the Silverado got stuck on a back road. Took me a couple hours to get her shoveled out.” He raised his head and looked at her and she saw that his eyes were hard. “I need to go back out and find Beridze.”
Tears pricked at her eyes again. No. Oh, no. “That sounds like a real good way to get killed.”
His mouth tightened. “There’s no telling what Beridze and his men are doing in town. I—”
Maisa placed her palm on Sam’s cheek, feeling the chill of the outside air, the end-of-the-day rasp of stubble. “Have you eaten since breakfast?”
He frowned. “No, but—”
“I found some ground meat in your freezer and a couple of cans of black beans in your cupboard. Do you like chili?” She used the cuff of her shirt to swipe at her eyes.
“May—”
“We all have to eat,” she said firmly. “You can’t leave us, Sam.”
“I can’t just leave them in my town.”
“I know.” She patted his chest, blinking back tears again. “I know, but it’s dark and there’s only you. Can’t we wait until morning? Until the other policemen show up?”
He ran his hand through his hair. “We don’t know where Tick and Dylan are—the radios are down and none of the cell phones work.”
“All the more reason to wait until morning,” Maisa said, her voice calm and steady, as she led him into the kitchen. If he went out now, tired and hungry and with the light almost gone, he might not return. “Sam, if we lose you, we’ll be all by ourselves. They need you. I need you.”
“Yeah. Okay.” He frowned as he caught sight of Otter attempting to eat the entire bag of abandoned dog food in one go. He squatted and scooped the terrier up in his arms, ruffling his ears absently. “But in the morning I’ve got to go out, May.” He looked up, and she wanted to weep at the stillness in his eyes. “It’s my town and I have to protect it.”