“Yuri,” someone said, speaking Russian. “I’m so fucking tired. Cover for me, and I’ll get your back in an hour.” When there was no answer, the guard hesitated. “Yuri?”
Seriously? If this was what Maksim was working with, he had bigger problems on his hands than just me.
The guard noticed the body on the ground in front of me. I’d pressed myself against the wall, and he didn’t seem to see me. He wouldn’t if I didn’t move. He walked to Yuri’s body, realizing he was dead. He opened his mouth to scream when I stepped out of the shadow. He looked up at my tall frame, shock on his face. But he was alert, and a fighter. Instead of freezing or running, he attacked.
Brownie points for the fucker if he was on my side. But he worked for Maksim. He’d signed his own death warrant without knowing what he was doing at the time. The poor asshole.
He put up a solid fight for his height and weight. It just wasn’t enough. He got in a blow, but it didn’t do much to me. I hit him under the chin with an elbow, punched him in the stomach so he doubled over, and hit him behind the head. He fell to the ground. I pulled the trigger on the gun I’d taken from Yuri. A silencer was a good thing, and I didn’t have one of my own. The guard didn’t move where his body had fallen.
But the others had heard it. Two more were still up and running, and they came at me with their guns drawn. I pointed at one, firing from the hip before he had a chance to pull the trigger. When he fell, the other guard stumbled over the dead body. I aimed down sight and pulled the trigger another time. The bullet hit home, and the last body fell on the one just in front of him.
This was too easy, which was suspicious. There had to be more to it. Was this a trap?
I stood still in the darkness, away from the sodium lights that were placed along the walls at intervals and strained to listen. The generator hummed a short distance away, drowning out the sounds of the forest at night. I heard conversation inside, Maksim’s voice roaring over the others. I curled my hands into fists, my lips pulling up involuntarily in an animalistic snarl.
Hearing his voice brought back feelings of hatred. Not only for him, but for myself, too. For the person I had been.
I was going to fucking kill him.
But not yet. I had to bide my time. I had to make sure I knew where everyone was. I was just one man. I had to play it right and make sure Angela was safe.
So instead of charging into the building and grabbing the son of a bitch by the neck like I wanted to, I backed away slowly, back into the trees, to calculate my next move. I had to see how long it would take before he noticed his guards were gone. He would check on them soon. As soon as he mobilized them all, I’d know how many he had.
I sank into a crouch between the trees, waiting, watching.
Angela
I was wide awake. I couldn’t go back to sleep. Not in this shitty position on the chair. I was freezing, goosebumps on my skin. My lower lip trembled. An icy breeze blew in through the broken windows. Even the Russians, who were used to the cold and snow, wore jackets. I was wearing nothing but a thin shirt. A shirt I’d bought when I was with Viktor.
I had to get the hell out of there. He would come in the morning; I was sure of that. It was too dangerous to move through the forest at night. I had to get away as soon as possible so I could find him and warn him. He was being led into a trap.
My mind ran feverishly through all the ways I could escape. I thought about sawing through the ropes the way they did in movies, behind my back. But I had nothing to do it with. How did the heroines always have a nail file or something handy? It was so ridiculous.
Getting out of the ropes wasn’t going to happen unless someone untied me. This was reality, and in reality, ropes didn’t just fall off because I really, really wanted them to.
How was I going to convince them to untie me? I could complain about being uncomfortable, but that wasn’t going to make a difference. Quite simply, they didn’t give a shit about what I felt.
But if there was a reason…
Aleks walked past me. He eyed me, and it made me shiver, the way he looked at me. He had a weird way about him; he looked predatory. Again, I kicked myself for not listening to my gut when he’d approached on the road with the cab driver.
“I need to pee,” I said.
“So,” Aleks replied, looking blandly at me. “Pee.”
I looked at him, horrified. “You can’t seriously think I’ll just wet my pants?”
“I don’t care what you do,” Aleks said and walked on.
Maksim was at his desk, looking at his computers again. He was very worried about his computer and his radars.
“Please, Maksim,” I called. “I need to pee.”
He groaned. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
I was going to pull out all the stops. “How can you say that you’ll keep me safe but treat me like a prisoner? Please, just let me pee. You can send your guards with me or whatever. I just… I can’t just go, you know? It’s…embarrassing.”
Maksim sighed exaggeratedly. “Fine,” he said, gesturing to Crutch. “Take her.”
The guy with the crutch – Mikael, I’d learned – looked up at Maksim, surprised. Me?” he asked.
“You’re just sitting there, aren’t you? Make yourself useful.”
This was better than I’d expected it would be. Mikael wasn’t very mobile on his crutch. I could get away from him if I planned it right.
“Fine,” he said, hobbling to me.
He dropped the crutch and balanced on one leg while he fumbled with the ropes, trying to untie them. It took him quite some time, and I struggled to be patient. Finally, the ropes slackened around my waist and arms and I rubbed my wrists and ankles where they hurt. My skin was red, and touching my wrists stung.
“Don’t try anything funny,” Mikael said. He pulled out a gun and pointed it at me.
“I won’t,” I said, and for a moment I truly meant it. I didn’t want him to shoot me. He poked me with the gun, and I yelped.
“That way,” he said, and I started moving, with him hobbling after me with his gun.
I walked in the direction he kept waving at, finally going through a half-broken door that led into a toilet stall. The place smelled like stale urine even though it hadn’t been used for what seemed to be years. The toilet bowl didn’t have a cover. The door didn’t close properly, and Mikael hovered outside. I watched him, nervous. I pulled down my pants and peed. I actually did have to go; it had been hours since I’d been to a bathroom.
When I pulled up my pants again, I knew my time was running out, and I still didn’t know how I was going to get out. I tried to flush, but apparently the toilet didn’t work. The basin had running water, so I washed my hands. When I pushed the door open, shaking my hands to get rid of the excess water, Mikael nodded and waved the gun at me again.
“Can you not point that thing at me?” I asked. I hated the feel of a gun trained on me.
Mikael laughed and pointed the weapon at my face. “Does it scare you?” He moved a little closer, struggling to keep his balance on his crappy crutch with his other arm up in the air. He took one more step, and the crutch slipped out from under him, probably from the water I’d splashed all over the place, and he fell backward. The gun flew up, and when Mikael hit the ground, he fired an accidental shot. The ceiling fell in patches around us.