Kissing The Enemy (25 page)

A
ll of us
ducked as the SUV exploded. One of Vasiliy’s men had crept up to the house and rigged it to blow to act as a diversion, drawing everyone to the front. Meanwhile, we’d go in the back.

We’d been joined at Moscow airport by five of Vasiliy’s men from Moscow and Luka, his son. Luka, six-foot-something of chiseled muscle in a suit, had spent most of the short flight up into the mountains glaring at me. At one point, he’d muttered something to Vasiliy in Russian. I didn’t understand it, but I was pretty sure from the tone that it involved wanting to kill me.

Vasiliy had glanced across at me and muttered what I guessed was
get in line.
If we came through this alive, my life expectancy was not looking good.
Fine.
I was past caring. The only thing that mattered was getting Irina out.

As we crept towards the house, Vasiliy started snapping out orders to his men. He was the experienced general, rallying his troops, and Luka was the young captain leading the charge. It reminded me of something but I couldn’t figure out what.

Gunfire ate away at the brickwork just ahead of us and we ducked back behind cover. Luka looked at Vasiliy for orders and that’s when I got it: they reminded me of myself and my dad, back when he was alive.

“Forward,” snapped Vasiliy. “He knows we’re here. We have to do this fast. Two men go forward, the rest will cover them. Luka, take Yuri—”

He broke off, catching himself.

Shit.

Vasiliy didn’t look at me. He was very studiously avoiding looking at me, but I could see his powerful shoulders shaking with rage. If he looked at me, he’d likely shoot me. Luka, meanwhile, was looking right at me, his knuckles white where he gripped his gun. He was only held back by his father’s word, and then only barely.

I stepped forward. “I’ll do it. I’ll go in with Luka.”

Vasiliy spun and glared at me...then nodded. Luka grunted in displeasure but readied himself.

Then we were running for the house, Vasiliy and the other men covering us. Bullets hissed through the air all around us, but we made it to the cover of the house and I kicked in the door and ran inside.

It was some sort of games room with a huge pool table and a bar. The room rose the full height of the mansion, with a wooden gallery stretching across it high above, the sort of place minstrels sat playing lutes in old King Arthur movies. At the other end of the room, through a hallway, I could see an ornate wooden staircase leading upwards.
That’s where we need to be.
I was guessing Mikhail would have Irina upstairs.

Before we could move, the guards inside the house opened up with automatic weapons. Fluttering tufts of green fluff and lethal shards of pool ball filled the air as gunfire chewed up the baize. We fired back, but there were too many of them: we were forced to take cover behind the pool table. For a second, we sat side by side, our backs pressed against the wood, as we reloaded. Pool balls rolled off the table and hit the floor between us.
Shit!
Vasiliy and his men were still outside, so we were on our own.

I was still reloading when one of Mikhail’s men raced around the corner of the table and pointed his gun at me. I scrambled to rise but there was no way I could get out of the way in time—

There was a shot and the guy staggered backward. Next to me, Luka lowered his smoking gun.

“Thanks,” I said, finally getting my own gun loaded.

Luka frowned and grunted. “He would have shot me next.”

The guy he’d shot staggered back another step and fell right into one of the huge, open fires Mikhail seemed to like so much. Flaming logs went rolling across the wooden floor, a few of them hitting the drapes. Flames licked hungrily at the fabric, quickly spreading up it.
Shit!
I told myself it didn’t matter, that we’d be out of there long before the fire really took hold. But half the place seemed to be made of wood and we were still pinned down. Vasiliy’s men seemed to be more experienced and better trained but Mikhail had the advantage of numbers.

What if Mikhail was escaping with Irina right this moment?

M
y eyes flew open
. Mikhail had let go of the free end of the handcuffs and was turning, open-mouthed in shock, trying to determine the direction of the explosion. Then he stalked towards the door. “Stay there!” he ordered.

My mind spun. Was this a rescue? Had Angelo somehow found me, all the way out here in the wilds of Russia?

I heard Mikhail yelling orders to his guards and my heart sank when I saw men grabbing machine guns and running downstairs. This wasn’t like the mansion back in New York. This was Mikhail’s personal fortress. If Angelo had come, he’d be killed.

Mikhail ran back into the room, pulling his gun.

“What is it?” I asked. “What’s going on?”

He glared at me. “It’s Vasiliy. Come here!”

Vasiliy?!
That made no sense. As far as Vasiliy knew, I was here of my own free will. Unless....
had Vasiliy somehow found out about the blackmail? About Yuri?
If that was true then Angelo was dead.
No! Please no!

When I just stood there, too shocked to move, Mikhail grabbed the free end of the handcuffs and jerked me towards him, making me stagger. “Let me put my clothes on,” I said desperately. I was trying to assemble a plan in my head: get a gun or a knife, get away from him and
run.
But I couldn’t run out into a Russian winter in a bra and panties.

“You don’t need clothes,” he spat. He stared at the handcuffs for a moment, then locked the free end around one of his wrists so that we were bound together.

Chyort!
I looked down at the metal chain in horror. “Vasiliy must know what you’ve done,” I croaked. “You can’t marry me now. It’s over. You don’t need me.”

“Vasiliy will hunt me down and kill me...but he won’t shoot at his niece. If my men can’t hold them, you’re my way out of here.” His eyes gleamed. “There are plenty of places I can take you, far from Russia. And Vasiliy has enough enemies around the world who’d love to play with you, just to get to him. I’m sure I can sell you, once I get tired of you.”

He dragged me out into the hallway and then started making his way towards the stairs. I didn’t have a choice: when I hung back, he simply jerked on the handcuffs and the metal cut into my skin.

Our progress was slow: whenever he heard gunfire ahead, Mikhail would backtrack and find another route through the huge building. Even with me as a hostage, he preferred to take the coward’s way out and slip away from the fight rather than face Vasiliy. The mansion was big enough that he might just be able to pull it off. What if Vasiliy didn’t find us in time? I had no doubt Mikhail could make good on his threat: with his Swiss bank accounts and homes around the world, he could take me almost anywhere. No one would ever find us.

I staggered onward, my wrist already scraped and bruised from the cuff, my shoulder aching from the constant jerking. I looked around for something I could grab with my free hand to hit Mikhail with, but there was nothing. And however much I tried to stay calm and efficient, as Vasiliy had taught me, my eyes still blurred with tears.
Angelo. Angelo is dead.

The air started to grow hazy with white smoke: it was rising up the staircases, filling the upper floors. It got worse as we descended through the mansion and I could hear the roar of flames below.
The house is on fire!

By the time we reached the next landing, the heat was ferocious and the smoke seemed to fill every square inch of space, even low to the ground. I could barely breathe and I was sweating, even in my underwear.

We reached the next door and Mikhail swung it open, then quickly slammed it: the next room was engulfed in orange flame. “This way!” he snapped, pulling me back towards the stairs. I could barely see and I was having to fight for every breath of air. Mikhail pulled out his phone and called someone, muttering orders I couldn’t hear.

“We have to find a way downstairs!” I told him. I heard timber creaking and giving way beneath us. “Mikhail, the whole place is going to come down!”

But he shook his head and jerked on the handcuffs again, leading me back upstairs instead. Whatever his plan was, it was going to get us both killed.

W
e’d made
it up to the top floor and were going room-to-room. The fighting had died down: two of Vasiliy’s men had been injured but overall we seemed to be winning. The problem was that progress was painfully slow. There was still no sign of Mikhail or Irina and the fire was turning the mansion into a smoke-filled, blazing death trap. “This is no good!” I told the Russians. “We need to move faster!”

Luka muttered something to Vasiliy in Russian and he nodded. Then, for my benefit, he grudgingly repeated it in English. “We split up,” he said. “Two groups. Find her quicker.” He nodded to the remaining one of Vasiliy’s men—the other two were still downstairs, mopping up the defenders. “He and I will go together. You and Vasiliy go together.”

Vasiliy and I glared at each other. I’ve never been a soldier, but I’ve been in fights often enough to know that you need someone to watch your back. He trusted me about as much as I trusted him. In the smoke-filled hallways, with no witnesses, he could easily kill me and then tell Irina whatever story he wanted. He’d been reluctant to kill me himself, but if he could blame it on one of Mikhail’s men….

It didn’t matter. I didn’t have a choice and there was no time to argue anyway, not if I wanted to save Irina. “Sure,” I said. “I’ll go in front.” And I led the way into the smoke, already feeling Vasiliy’s gun on my back.

Visibility was down to a few feet. I could only see faint outlines and the glow of flames. Several times, a wall loomed up out of nowhere and I barely stopped before I ran into it.
Goddammit!
I could feel the sweat pouring down my face.
How the hell did I wind up here?
Thousands of miles from home, my mortal enemy right behind me with a gun aimed at my back—

Irina.
That’s how. And she was worth it.

I forged on, the heat growing even more intense. We were moving closer and closer to the fire, now: we must be close to the games room where it had first started. I could hear breaking glass and explosions and remembered the bar: all the whiskey and vodka must be going up. Then there was an enormous crash that shook the whole house. As we passed through the next door, all I could see was billowing white smoke, lit up orange by the flames. I took another step and—

The carpet beneath me dipped under my weight, turning into a ramp.
What the fuck?!
I fell onto my back, sliding, grabbing for anything that would stop me—

My hand found the edge of the carpet and I clung to it, my feet kicking in space.
Where the fuck is the floor?!

There was the sound of shattering glass below. The fire must have gotten hot enough to break the windows in the games room and a freezing winter wind blew through the room, snowflakes hissing as they hit the flames. The smoke cleared for a second and my stomach lurched when I saw what had happened.

There was no floor.

The “room” we’d been about to walk through had once been the wooden gallery that looked down on the games room. The entire middle section had collapsed, leaving a few feet of carpet sticking out into space. That’s what I’d stepped on. Now I was hanging twenty feet above an inferno, the flames singing my legs. I twisted around to look for Vasiliy.

He’d backed up a few feet and was looking down at me. So many emotions played across his face: rage, hatred, jealousy...and something else.

I saw his hand lift, as if he was going to grab me. I reached for him—

Vasily’s hand dropped back to his side. Indecision played across his face. His hand rose again—

There was a splintering, cracking sound and the remainder of the gallery came away from the wall. Both of us cursed as it slumped sideways, tilted at a crazy angle. Vasiliy hit what was left of the handrail but his muscled body was too big and the rail was too weak. He went smashing through it and fell. He would have fallen straight down to the floor far below, but his fingers caught the edge and clung. Now we were
both
dangling, and in another few minutes the whole gallery would collapse into the fire.

The smoke was curling down into my chest, making me cough and rasp. Every gulp of red-hot air I took in scorched my lungs. I tried to use the carpet to haul myself up but, as soon as I pulled, I heard the distant sound of ripping. It was only held in place by carpet tacks and my struggles were tearing it free.
Shit!
I started climbing, hand over hand, but the edge of a carpet isn’t the easiest thing to hang onto. I heaved myself inch by inch back onto the gallery, but I could feel the tacks letting go:
pop, pop, pop—

The whole carpet suddenly slid with me still on it. I was just high enough to make a grab for one of the handrail supports and it creaked...but held. Beneath me, the carpet hissed past, carried by its momentum, and fell into the fire.

I crawled on hands and knees towards Vasiliy. He was a tough old guy but his strength was fading. One hand slipped from the wood.
Shit.
I tried to crawl faster.

He looked up as he saw me. A wry smile crept onto his face.

I wasn’t going to reach him in time. “No,” I gasped.

“Tell Irina—” he panted.

I forced my limbs to move faster. “
No! Hang on, you stupid Russian bastard!”

His fingers squeaked as they lost their grip and slid along the wood. “Tell Irina I love her.”

I lunged for him. “
No!
”