The remaining seven of us sneak out the side in case we’re being watched. We head into the forest, cram into one of the vehicles we have stashed over the ridge, and crash out the side road.
It takes forever. Viktor has agreed to text me when the action starts. We have to reach Mira before they arrive. Once they suspect her of warning us, she’s done. Does she realize what she did?
The traffic is shit. I go up on the shoulder at one point. Let the cops try to stop us. Tito argues with me, tells me to be smart.
I’m not thinking straight, I know. I just need to get to her.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mira
Lazarus holds the phone, knuckles white, wild eyes turned to me. “You little bitch!”
I back up. “What?”
“‘Happy baby animals’ was a code, wasn’t it?” He throws the phone at the door. “The place blew as soon as they entered.”
I hit the wall.
He’s in my face, digging his fingers into my shoulders.
“You’re h-hurting me.” He’s going to kill me.
“You tipped him off.”
“You think we have codes?” I rip out of Lazarus’s grip and move along the wall toward the window. I’m scared out of my mind. I feel like he can see right through me.
Lazarus advances on me with murder in his eyes. He grabs me again.
It’s then that the door bursts open. I gasp when I see Aleksio shoved in…his lip is bloody, and two of Lazarus’s guys are right behind him, guns at his head.
“Grabbed him out in the hall,” one of them says, setting Aleksio’s weapons on the table. Clack. clack. Clack.
Lazarus wraps an arm around my shoulders. Aleksio’s eyes shine with hatred.
“I get not taking the finger. But showing up like this?” He smiles. “Why, this is just too delicious. And I’m in such a mood.”
Aleksio’s watching us, steady on his feet…barely.
“Ioannis, how many men did I lose out there?” Lazarus asks.
“Twenty-one we know of,” Ioannis says.
“That’s going to be twenty-one hours I’ll need to hear her beg to die. Or should I split it up between the two of you?” He grabs my hair. “Maybe I’ll play it by ear. And I’ll make Mira tell all about this social worker of yours so that we find Little Kiro, too. Just so that you die knowing that’s handled. It’s good to have closure, don’t you think?”
The blank look on Aleksio’s face is killing me because of what it conceals. This is all my fault for leaving.
“We’ll have to get Konstantin involved, too,” Lazarus continues. “We don’t want to leave him out.”
Ioannis smiles.
Aleksio jerks away from the guys holding him, but they take him back easily. It’s not enough that he’s fucked up with a bloody lip and face and his ankle and who knows how many injuries—no, two guys have guns on him. Like he’s this huge threat. Like he’s a nuclear bomb, liable to go off.
“You had to come for Mira,” Lazarus says. “I can’t imagine she was that good. Guess we’ll see about that.”
Aleksio goes at him then. He actually manages to rip out of one guy’s hold. All the attention is on him.
All off me.
Suddenly it’s like I’m animated from some other planet—I see myself reaching for nearby weapons, taking one from Lazarus’s back belt and one from another guy’s holster. I take off the safeties before they can even react, and I put one to Lazarus’s head and one to Ioannis’s head. “Let him go.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
Aleksio
It’s sheer and utter madness. Mira, taking their guns. She hates guns.
One second I’m utterly fucked in a hotel suite with some of the biggest hitters on the planet, all with pieces trained on me, and then Mira moves like a fucking goddess of lightning and wrath.
Two cannons in her hand, one pointed at Lazarus, the other at his brother, Ioannis. The two people in the room who matter.
But I’m freaking. What if they call her bluff? Everyone knows she hates guns. I know it most of all. Mira would never shoot a guy in cold blood. It’s not in her.
Lazarus smirks. “Mira, Mira. You don’t do firearms. I bet you don’t even know if the safety is on or off.”
He’s trying to shake her. My heart thunders.
“On or off,” he says sweetly. “You don’t have the balls.” Lazarus’s about to make a move.
Then she speaks. Or more like, she growls, “You go ahead and try me, motherfucker.”
That voice—it’s like she’s possessed by a demon or something. Everybody freezes.
“You try me.” Oh, God, it’s not the voice of a demon—it’s the voice of Sergei Kazan, Russian action star. And then she starts spinning the fucking pieces like a hoodlum.
It’s a total mindfuck—Mira, talking like that and spinning guns, Wild West style. Like the sun rising at night. Like the moon crashing into the stars.
“I’ll fill you so full of lead it’ll be coming out of your ass,” she says.
I don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Mira’s holding a room. With guns.
This is what Yuri and the guys taught her, the gift they didn’t realize they were giving her. In a flash the guns stop spinning and come to rest in her hands like she was born with them there. Like she’s itching to shoot up the room.
Again she trains them on Lazarus and Ioannis. Right on their heads like she’s Jesse fucking James. Like she was born to it.
The atmosphere in the room shifts completely. A minute ago I was the biggest problem in the room. Now it’s Mira, and like magic all of the guns come off me and go onto her. The men do this instinctively. She’s a wild card. Something they don’t understand.
But I understand. This is the woman I love. She makes everything possible.
She’s given me a window, and I’m not wasting it. I take the distraction to grab a guy and use him as a shield while I grab another guy’s weapon. I knock my first guy out, grab Ioannis by what hair he has left, and shove the piece into his cheek. “Everyone but Mira, weapons down. And I mean all of them.”
People comply. Nobody wants Ioannis to be hurt. I have Mira collect the weapons into a pillowcase and sets them by the door. She does it, and then she straightens, looking unsure. Damn. “Rondo, tie Lazarus—now! Hands and feet.”
Rondo looks to Lazarus. Lazarus nods. He’s unpredictable, but he won’t do anything to me while I have Ioannis. I have the room under control now.
Rondo ties Lazarus and then the rest of the guys, hands and feet. They’ve got enough zip ties around.
That’s when things go wrong. Rondo senses Mira’s wavering. Senses that it was all an act, probably.
I see it like a slow-motion train wreck. I see him going for his ankle. A third piece. “Don’t do it,” I grate, trying to be powerful enough for both of us.
I can’t stop him. I see it all in slow motion, and I can’t fucking stop it.
He pulls out his weapon and goes for Mira—just goes at her, a charging bull. She spooks and shoots. The Beretta she nabbed has mad stopping power—it throws her backwards.