Cold Silence (A High Stakes Thriller) (21 page)

Perhaps they suspected, but if they didn't, it would stay that way. Oskar would look a fool if someone knew his son had been screwing his top male accountant. And Oskar Kirov was no fool. He had worked too hard for his position. When he went, it would be quickly and like a man. There would be no loss of face.

Feliks's face went white and he gripped the railing outside the warehouse door for support. "Oh, God. What have you done to him?"

"Nothing less than I'd have done to you if you weren't my son."

Feliks launched himself at Oskar, taking him by surprise. He grabbed his collar, and Oskar was knocked backward before Sasha could step forward. His son clawing at his chest, he hit the ground with a hard thud, which knocked the wind from his lungs. The anger in his son's face was familiar. He saw himself as a young man as he never had before.

For a moment he felt a bond with his son. But then he remembered why they were there. Gary and Feliks. He shook his head. It was too much to think about.

Sasha pulled Feliks off, but he was unable to help Oskar because Feliks was still fighting him. Oskar pulled himself up and commanded Sasha to release him.

Feliks stumbled back and righted his suit jacket. He turned his gaze to his father. "You should never have stepped where it isn't your business."

"I'm your father. This is my business."

Disgust muddied Feliks's expression. "Not anymore, it isn't." He turned his back and entered the warehouse.

Sasha looked to Oskar, but Oskar shook his head. "Let him go," he said.

Slowly Oskar followed. He was still outside the door when he heard his son's anguished cry. Oskar suppressed a smile. Now Feliks would learn to control his urges, to handle them more discreetly.

As he crossed into the shadowed warehouse, he blinked to adjust his eyes to the darkness. In a far corner of the warehouse, Gary was strung up like they always were. From his limp, pale body, Oskar knew it had been rough for him. He'd been weak to begin with, though. That could not be helped.

"Let him down now, Sasha."

There were a series of hushed whispers as Sasha and two of his other guards, Ivan and Mikhail, swarmed Gary like bees. No one touched him.

Oskar halted. "What? What is it?"

Feliks collapsed to the ground, wailing.

Oskar waved to them as he started crossing the room. "Jesus, get him up."

Sasha and Mikhail lifted Feliks to his feet and held him, his feet dangling like a prisoner being hung.

Oskar waved Ivan to Gary. "Bring him down, I said."

Ivan looked confused.

Feliks stood up, his face tearstained.

"Wipe your face, man," Oskar said.

Feliks pushed away from the men and stepped toward Oskar.
"On umer,"
Feliks spit at his father.
"Tei yevo ubival." He's dead. You've killed him.

"Nonsense," Oskar said, waving his hand. "He'll be fine." He looked at his son. "Don't be so soft, Feliks." Oskar stopped in front of Mikhail and looked up at the dangling body of Gary. It wasn't hard to see why Feliks thought he was dead. "Bring him down," he ordered Mikhail in Russian.

Mikhail struggled to loosen the ropes, and as the body was lowered, Oskar could see the wounds on his arms and hands from the pliers. He glanced at his fingers. He still had those. Oskar had told them explicitly not to kill Gary—at least not until he arrived. If Feliks refused to obey his rules, Oskar intended to kill Gary himself.

A few of the toes on Gary's left foot looked bloody and broken, and Oskar guessed that, too, had been the pliers. They'd been thorough. Oskar had known they would be. Thievery from within was a serious offense. He could have punished him another way, but he wanted to be sure Gary disappeared from his son's life. Surely he wouldn't stick around after this lesson.

Oskar stepped forward and smacked Gary's cheek. The head bobbed to one side and then fell forward again. As the head turned, Oskar noticed a line of blood running from one ear.

He grabbed Gary's arm and felt for his pulse.

"He's dead, I told you," Feliks repeated in English. "He's dead and you've killed him."

Oskar looked from Mikhail to Ivan to Sasha. They glanced at each other and then to the ground. He
was
dead.

Oskar shrugged and then turned to his son. He nodded. "He is dead."

Feliks threw his arms up and yelled toward the ceiling. The others stepped back from him, but Oskar did not move. He would allow his son this tirade. Then it would be over.

Feliks spun around and screamed, "You monster. You dirty bastard. You killed your own wife. You killed her like she was a peasant woman." He pressed his splayed hands across his chest, tears rolling down his cheeks. "My mother. Murdered her!" He let out another howl and bent over and sobbed into his knees. He was quiet for a moment, and Oskar thought he was winding down.

"Wait for me outside," he commanded the others.

They obeyed immediately without looking back at Feliks. But they had taken only a few steps when Feliks rose again, holding a weapon someone had left by the body.

"Nobody move!" he screamed, then repeated himself in Russian. Feliks pointed the 9mm at his father. Oskar didn't move. He knew Feliks would never kill him. The men behind him started to go for their own weapons, but Feliks turned and shot. Oskar heard a short moan and then a shuffle as Mikhail dropped to the floor, dead. The others remained silent and still.

Feliks turned his weapon toward his father.
"Menya goshnit,"
he said to him. "You make me sick." He pointed to himself. "I am not the one who is
slabi.
You... you are weak."

Oskar didn't respond. A wave of nausea struck him and he swallowed it back. Not now. He needed to be strong, firm. He had to teach Feliks a lesson. Oskar would wait until his son had let out this anger before he scolded him. Mikhail had been one of his best men.

"You are also poor," Feliks said, wild-eyed. "Gary
had
been helping me steal from you. Donations, actually. Huge corporate donations. You looked at the books every week, but you never understood them. I knew it from the start. Your money has gone to protect and counsel abused women. Almost seven million dollars so far." Feliks smiled. "For Mama."

Oskar felt his tongue slide to the back of his mouth and he coughed. "What nonsense are you talking?"

"You're poor. You're ruined. We were almost done. You were almost tapped out. The house is mortgaged to the hilt; we've borrowed against all your assets." He waved his hand around. "Even your little torture chamber. You won't make it another month."

"That's ridiculous. How would you live?"

Feliks looked at Gary and shook his head. "Gary and I had a little nest egg of our own tucked away in the Bahamas."

"You stole from me?" Oskar stepped forward, but Feliks kept the gun on him.

"I stole from you and I'm proud. I hope you rot in hell."

Oskar pushed his chest out. "Well, now that your Gary is gone, you'll just have to return the money. Go and get it back."

Feliks smiled just like a child then. "Go to hell, Father."

Oskar stood facing his son. Feliks raised the gun to Oskar's face and Oskar found he couldn't keep his eyes open. He shut them, waiting for the blow. Killed by his own son.

The gun went off and he jumped. When he opened his eyes, his son Feliks was lying on the floor in front of him in a growing pool of his own blood, the gun still in his mouth.

The pain in Oskar's gut sharpened and he caught himself from falling back. Feliks had killed himself. He was nauseous from the iron smell of the blood. Sophya, then Viktor and Feliks. He staggered back and gripped his stomach.

Sasha took his arm, but Oskar pushed him off. He struggled for his breath and then turned his back on the sight of his dead son. Another dead son. He took another breath and then started for the warehouse door. His throat was closed as he tried to form words.

He thought about the money. What if Feliks had told the truth? What if it was all gone? How would he live?

Money had always been his security net if his health and his family didn't hold strong. And they couldn't have been weaker.
Slabi,
he realized. He was
slabi
—weak and also very old. Too old to start again.

Only one son left. Would he soon be alone and poor? He staggered into the street, bracing himself on the side of the building. Even outside, he could see an image of Feliks's shattered head when he blinked. "Dear God," he whispered. What had he done?

Chapter 20

Cody had spent the rest of the day at home. The colonel was still researching the bugs, Travis had made no progress on his end, and she couldn't get herself to move out of the chair. The dark gray sky and heavy rain outside exactly mirrored her disposition.

Travis had called to tell her the meeting with McCue was set up for seven p.m. at his office in San Jose. He'd chosen the evening hour because there would be fewer people in the office and they would have more privacy. Though the last thing she wanted to do was drive fifty miles in the dark and rain, she would be there.

She wouldn't have much to offer to the meeting anyway, since it was Landon's life they would be looking into. She should have been relieved, but though her own life was terrifying, the thought of what hidden evils were in Landon's was equally so. What sort of past employees had left, vengeful?

Cody had no new information from the website. That hadn't kept her from working with it, though. She'd magnified the photo and divided it into twenty-two two-inch quadrants. She'd then magnified each of those by 200 percent and then printed them on the high-resolution color printer she used for her jobs. She'd studied each photo individually and then set up a large puzzle with the pieces on the floor. All in search of one clue as to where they were.

Behind Ryan was mostly white wall. It looked like clean paint, no prints that she could see. It was smooth, like new construction, and the two electrical outlets she saw were grounded, so the room had either been redone or was newer. The floor was a neutral Berber carpet. It looked like a bedroom. She saw the edge of something navy. She guessed it was a comforter or bedsheet, but it was impossible to be certain.

There was a single nail in the wall, and from her best guess, something had been hanging there recently. So whoever had taken the picture was being cautious not to give anything away. She was not especially impressed with the precaution. It didn't take a rocket scientist to realize showing a picture would be dumb.

Besides that, she saw something that looked like an average twig on the floor by Ryan's foot. No needles, no leaves, no fruit. Nothing to learn from it except that it was deciduous and therefore Ryan was somewhere where trees lost leaves. But it was the fall and that could have been most anywhere in the northern hemisphere.

The twig was about two inches long, but that was all she had, so she couldn't even begin to guess what type of tree it had come from. If the sawfly was any clue, it was probably something from the mountains.

Then there was the corner of a wooden table or ledge in one corner. It could have been anything, but it struck her as a rich wood, not something that had been bought for $19.99 and home-assembled. The corner of it was not enough to gain any clue as to how to track it down or even to judge what it was.

When the doorbell rang at shortly after five, Cody knew it was the colonel again. He'd been by twice earlier since she'd left his house, once to bring her an article on the two sawflies he'd matched to Ryan's photo, the
Cimbex rubida
and the
Cimbex pacifica.
The article listed the various known locations of the bugs. There were too many to even count. The second time he'd been by to check on her.

After peering out the peephole, she opened the door and waved him in out of the rain. She could see her breath in the evening air, a rare occurrence in the Bay Area, and she shivered as she imagined where Ryan was at that moment.

The colonel held a large Tupperware container in his hands.

"I'm not real hungry, Colonel."

He nodded and stepped by her. "You will be. This is my special stew. It'll shake off the chill."