Last Kiss (Hitman #3) (6 page)

I move closer to her because she is irresistible. A landlocked siren calling me to my doom in this palatial suite high above the ground and far away from the water.

“You are moved by it,” I say, my words no more than a throaty whisper. Her eyes do not look into mine, but drop down to stare at my lips. She never looks me in the eye, but it does not make her gaze any less intense. Her perusal is as corporeal as a touch and I respond accordingly, leaning toward her, closing the distance between us.

“How?” she asks.

“You derive gratification from a well-written line. It is akin to a songwriter penning the perfect harmony or an artist achieving the right color. Your code is your poetry, your art, and you like it.”

Her eyes widen as she absorbs my words.

“
Like
is a relative word.”

“Too tame?” I arch an eyebrow.

“Too sentimental.” Her eyes are still caressing my lips.

“Then I’d say you love it.”

We are but a mouth width away because she has not moved as I slowly advanced. But at the word
love
, her gaze falls to her hands and she mumbles, “I don’t love anything.”

NAOMI

I am fascinated by this man.

It’s because I cannot predict what he will do, I think. Most men I’ve met are fairly easy to intuit, even for someone like me. If I offer something sexual, I expect it to be gladly accepted. This man watches me, but he will not accept.

This is not the result I expected from my hypothesis, and I am intrigued. What is it that causes him to hold back? Is it me? Am I the unappealing one? Or is there something else? I ponder this. Perhaps I will need a new hypothesis. Perhaps my old one is too vague.

After I shoo him away, he settles back down with his phone. He sits quietly and reads the screen, absorbing the information. His eyes flick back and forth, with interest. Too much interest.

I feel my eyes narrow with suspicion.

He thinks I’m doing this wrong.

He doesn’t trust me. He’s going to figure out how to do it himself and then go around me.
He’s checking up on me.

This infuriates me. Aspies don’t take criticism well, and I take it worse than most. Who is this man that thinks he can read one fucking book and become an expert? I inhale sharply, and then begin to breathe faster as the rage builds. “Are you trying to learn how to hack?” I ask, unable to stop myself.

He looks up from one of his books. His heavy brow creases and he studies me. “I simply wish to understand.”

Ah. This sounds like a non-answer to me. I hate non-answers, because I’m supposed to interpret hidden “meanings” or “nuance,” and those are simply beyond my comprehension. It’s like he’s deliberately trying to talk around me.

And this pisses me off even more. I look over at my laptop, running my bogus SQL query. I slam it shut and look over at Vasily with a sneer. “You’re the expert, you do it.”

All my happy feelings about him earlier have vanished. To think that I drank after this man. I scrub my mouth angrily and I leave the room, heading into the bedroom. If he comes after me, I’m going to fake a seizure. Those always shut down a conversation fast.

But he doesn’t come after me. Which is fine. If he’s so fucking smart, he can run all the queries he wants.

I’ve done a hard delete of the information he wanted. It’s still retrievable, but a little jiggling of the file, a few find/replaces of important strings, and even he won’t be able to find it.

Fuck him. If he wanted a hacker, he should have let me hack. Questioning my skill is the surest way to earn my ire.

Even as I stalk away, the hurt thought rises in my mind: does Vasily think I’m stupid, too? Just like everyone else?

Why does this bother me so much?

—

I doze in bed for hours, expecting someone to charge into my room and demand that I hack for them. No one comes, and this leaves me in a state of confusion. Didn’t Vasily tell my brother he wanted me for my expertise? Was it so he could learn from me, or did he want my skills? I don’t know, and I hate feeling uncertain. More than that, I hate this strange, opulent room. It makes me uncomfortable. With nothing to work on, I’m reminded that I’m hungry. I pull out the room service menu, but it’s written in Portuguese. I study it, trying to match root words with the bits of Spanish that I know. The only languages I’m really proficient in are computer ones.

A man arrives in my room. It is the other Russian. Not the wolf, but the weasel. His eyes are too close together and his teeth protrude a little in the front, reminding me of an animal. I hold the menu out to him. “I want a salad.”

He looks at the door, as if expecting an answer, then back at me. “I am not your servant. You are our guest.”

“No cheese. No tomatoes. Croutons are acceptable but only if they’re rye. Please make sure the dressing is either balsamic vinaigrette or green goddess. Extra avocado. Steak is acceptable as long as it is burned brown. No blood.” I’m hungry just thinking about food. All that green.

His eyes narrow at me. “Is breakfast time.”

He seems to be waiting for more from me, so I suggest, “And a root beer.”

The weasel throws his hands up in the air and mutters something to himself, snatches the menu out of my hand, and then storms off to the far side of the room.

I watch him, because he seems extra twitchy today. He’s been twitchy in the past, but today, he’s not making eye contact and seems to constantly touch his pocket. Aspie, perhaps? I wait for him to call in my salad.

Instead, he pulls out a cell phone and begins to talk in a low voice, his gaze darting over at me. He speaks in Russian, but I catch one word in broken, heavily accented English. “Retarded.”

And then he looks at me.

Hurt spirals through me. He’s talking about me. I’ve been called names hundreds of times before, but this one stings more than normal. This is Vasily’s friend, and if he thinks I’m retarded, does Vasily think that as well?

Is that why he doesn’t trust me? Is that why Vasily doesn’t want to see me naked anymore? Because now he thinks I am “special” and not in a sexy way?

For some reason, this makes me sad. Even though I didn’t act on it, I wanted things to be different between us. I liked it when Vasily looked at me with appreciation. When he looked at my breasts. It was like I was a normal girl, however brief. And I liked being normal in his eyes.

I pull the blankets tightly around my body and put my favorite baseball cap back on my head and feel a little better. The brim hides my eyes, which I prefer. The naked face is so open, and I’m told my gaze is weird because I don’t like to look people in the eye when I talk.

The weasel nods into his phone, says something, and then
hangs up. I watch him as he goes to the door, checks it, and then looks back at me. “Come with me.”

“Where are we going?” I don’t get off the bed. I’m not happy here, but I’ve learned that
come with me
doesn’t always mean I’m heading to a better place.

The weasel comes to my side and grabs me by the arm. He pulls out a knife and holds it to my throat. “You will come with me, and you will be silent.”

I blink down at the knife. At first, I think, Russians sure do like knives in faces. Vasily shoved one near my eye earlier so I could hot-wire the car. Except this time, I have not asked for a knife.

I look up at the weasel’s face. I can’t read emotions, but I can see he’s sweating despite the cool air-conditioning of the room. Sweat is a physiological response to fear or anxiety.

This man is afraid. Curious. He’s holding a knife to my throat and he’s afraid of what will happen. This can only mean that he’s not supposed to do this.

Suddenly, my own fear strikes. I suck in a breath. His hand could slip and he could slice my throat open. I would die in minutes, because the human body has approximately only ten pints of blood, and if he hits an artery, I can bleed out long before any paramedic could arrive.

The knife pushes a little harder into my throat. “You understand? Good. Let us go to the lobby downstairs. Quietly now. We do not wish to wake the sleeping
Volk
.”

“What is a
Volk
?”

“Quietly,” he repeats, and the knife digs in a bit more.

I bite my lip so I don’t breathe louder than I should, and nod to show I understand. I’m trembling with fear now. It’s hard to
frighten me, but when I am afraid, it’s near overwhelming. I’m having a hard time thinking—my thoughts are frantic, scurrying things, and my hands are shaking.

The man nods as I stand and discard my blanket, my movements slow and quiet. He gestures toward the bathroom door—opposite of the one that will lead to the living area where I last saw Vasily, and we head in that direction. This man is taller than me and he’s able to keep the knife at my throat with ease as we shuffle through the opulent bathroom and through the maze of corridors and adjoining rooms that make up the suite. I watch my feet so I don’t trip over something and give this man reason to cut my throat. So much DNA would be everywhere. I picture the crime scene and the splatters I would make on the wall, and then force back hideous thoughts.

Itsy bitsy spider
 . . . I recite the lyrics to myself to calm down.

We make it to the hall, but the weasel avoids the elevator, heading instead for the fire exit stairs. We go through the door together after he carefully eases it open and nudges me forward. He drags me down the stairwell, barely allowing my feet to touch the stairs. When we reach the bottom, he finds a room and thrusts me into it. Once inside, he blocks the door with his weight and pulls his phone out to check it, the knife no longer at my throat.

I don’t run. I simply wait. I’m not stupid and I want to live. It’s clear this man is doing something that he thinks will get him in trouble. He’s sweating so much that droplets are running down his forehead and I wrinkle my nose, instinctively trying to get away so none of his sweat touches my skin.

He sees me flinch away and automatically locks an arm around my throat again. “
Nyet
,” he says, speaking slowly. “No. Bad girl.”

I want to roll my eyes. I’m not a dog. Nor am I retarded like he
thinks I am. My fear is dropping away to irritation as he begins to text something into his phone with one hand. I slide my gaze over and look at his screen, but it’s in Russian—Cyrillic. Shoot.

“We wait for confirmation, and then we go.” He breathes on my neck, and his breath smells a bit like alcohol.

“Is Vasily sick?” I ask since he’s not here. I wish he were. I like him better than the weasel.

“Vasily will not be coming,” the weasel says, and my words make his hands tremble a bit more. Aha. Maybe it is Vasily he is afraid of.

“Did the
Volk
get him? Is that like food poisoning?” I ask, repeating the strange word from earlier. It’s one of the sneaky things I do. When someone uses a word I don’t understand, I throw it back at them. Usually they will then take time to correct the “retard,” and I get my answer. It’s annoying but effective.

He mutters something under his breath. “It is not food poisoning. Vasily is
volk
. Wolf.”

Oh. Right.
Volk
is the word Vasily used when describing the painting. Madonna and
volk
. I think of his fierce features, the cold eyes, the piercing stare. It fits. Wolves are hunters, and I am certainly feeling like prey at the moment. I begin to wonder if Vasily even knows I’m in this hall. I thought he and the weasel were working together, but maybe they are rivals? I don’t know.

All I know is that I don’t want to go with this man. I’m frightened of what will happen if I do. I think of Hudson, who kept me in a small, dark room for eighteen months, three days, and sixteen hours, simply because he wanted the Emperor to funnel money out of accounts for him. What will this man do with the Emperor? All Vasily wanted was to learn how to hack better than me.

I wish he were here. I feel charged with nervous energy when
around Vasily, but I don’t dislike him. Quite the opposite, really. I have a feeling that if I don’t leave this room soon, I’m not going to like what happens.

Time to pull out the nuclear method.

I jerk in the weasel’s arms. It causes the knife to scratch my throat, but I ignore it. Instead, I snap my head backward and straighten my limbs, making my body as stiff as I can. Then, I roll my eyes back in my head and begin to shake as I pretend to have a seizure.

VASILY

I lay silently where Aleksei believes I am unconscious from his drugging. Outside of the room, they are talking but their voices are too low for me to decipher the individual words.

Somehow I knew Aleksei would betray me. I knew it yet it still saddened me because it was a loss, and my life has been full of losses.

The door opens and then closes. I wait three more heartbeats and rise.

A quick look at the main living room and the foyer reveals no one. The suite is empty, eerily silent. I open the door quietly and see the elevator is unmoving. The stairs then.

Aleksei is sadly overconfident in his tactics and does not notice he is being followed. At the door of his new room, I pause to listen while Aleksei explains to Naomi why he is spiriting her away and
to whom, but waiting is swept aside when I hear him begin to panic. I push open the door that I’ve surreptitiously unlocked while Aleksei is trying to reason with Naomi.

Inside the room he is bent over a convulsing Naomi.

“Idiot!” I push him aside. He falls away easily. “She’s seizing.”

I did not realize she was sick, although perhaps I should have noted the episode in the van when we were escaping from Hudson’s compound in Brazil. The noise and the guns sent her into a panic and she rocked on the floor with her ears covered, shouting something repeatedly. But I thought nothing of it at the time, because many people do not respond well to bullets ricocheting around and mad men trying to kill them. Rocking in the corner is a normal response. Our disinterest is the oddity.

“Naomi. Naomi.” If I hadn’t been watching her closely, I would have missed a slight muscle twitch, an interruption in the rhythm of her convulsions that did not seem organic. I lift her in my arms, ignoring Aleksei’s protests.

“Don’t move her; she’ll bite her tongue off,” he cries.

“Then she won’t be able to talk back, eh?” I say and again, her face moves strangely in almost a scowl. Aleksei hovers behind me like a frantic mother. But what do I know of seizures? It doesn’t serve me if she cannot talk. Laying her on the sofa, I pull my belt off and stick it between her teeth. There is a fair amount of resistance as I insert the leather, and I succeed, but not before she bites my fingers hard. Now I’m certain she is glaring. Her eyes snap open and she looks at me with great clarity until her gaze slides away as it is wont to do, past my cheek and over my shoulder. But in that moment, I see her—bright, sound of mind, and mysterious. Her eyes are a shocking blue, fathoms deep like the Sea of Okhotsk. And with that one look, the siren has captured me. My
heart races, fast like a bird. There is a shift inside me. A door has cracked open, or perhaps it is my soul that she has speared.

I shudder visibly, unsure whether I want to free myself or dive deeper into her grasp.

“Do you need a doctor?” It is a bit of a stupid question because if she truly is seizing, how could she answer? A quick, impersonal pat along her legs and waist reveal no needle full of medication. If the seizures were a regular thing, she would carry a kit of medication and needles, but none is to be found. One of the Petrovich boys is allergic to bee stings and carries his antidote with him at all times. She has nothing like this.

It occurs to me that I could call her brother, Daniel, and simply ask but I do not want to contact him until we are out of the country, until he is not a threat to us. I’ve just gained the Emperor. I will not lose her. Not to the traitor Aleksei, not to a rival
Bratva
, and not to her family. She is mine until I see fit to release her.

“What did you do to her, Aleksei?” I ask, coming to a comfortable conclusion. There is a risk, albeit a small one, that she is truly ill. But I think not.

“N-n-nothing,” he stutters. “But what are you doing here?”

I am saddened to see such a warrior subdued and sniveling. I am heartsore over what our brotherhood has turned into. I blame this on Sergei and Elena, who have treated us like dogs and set us against each other. “Aleksei.” I turn, but keep a hand on the stomach of Naomi—her center. Under my palm, I can feel her steady breaths. She’ll not be able to move without my knowing. “You tried drugging me, but I have this.” I hold up a straw.

“The straw? It is an effeminate touch.” He sniffs.

“It also detects poisons. I have used it for years. A dip into the liquid and the straw becomes striped. A subtle change only visible
to someone who is looking for it. I admit I did not believe the traitor in the
Bratva
would be you. We have been comrades, brothers, for so long. Why wait until now to betray me?”

He is silent for once. He glances longingly at the door, calculating whether he can escape before I take action.

I pull out my gun fitted with its suppressor and point it at him. “Come over here. I do not want to shoot you by the door,” I order wearily.

Pfffft
goes the gun when I press the trigger. He howls like a dog and falls to the ground, clutching his thigh. “Close the door and come sit down,” I say with strained patience. “Or next time the bullet will be between your legs and not in the fleshy part of your thigh.”

My sorrow over his betrayal is pushed aside. Later, after I have disposed of him, I will mourn the loss of another valuable member of the
Bratva
, but for now I must focus on eliminating a danger.

Limping and bleeding all over the floor, Aleksei manages to close the door and hobble over to the chair. There are tears in his eyes as he glares at me.

“Why did you shoot me?” He whines like a child. I had forgotten he is so delicate and dislikes even an ounce of pain.

“Because you were looking at the door when you should have been crossing the room to sit down.” Naomi’s stomach clenches at my words and after a pause, her breathing starts up again. I give her a little pat and rise to shove a chair under the door.

I don’t know who will be after us, but we need no interruptions at this moment.

“Do you care to tell me who you sold me out to?” I hold my gun loosely at my side. There is no need to point it at Aleksei now. He now knows I will shoot him if I have the slightest belief he is going to do something to annoy me.

“The Golubevs,” he says sullenly.

I’m offended. “Those brainless bastards? I cannot believe you dealt with them. Am I such a kitten that you think the Golubevs could bring me down?” I sit again by Naomi, for I feel better with her even breathing behind me.

“They offer me much money.”

“Enough to leave Russia? Because there would be no place in Russia or all of Europe that I would not be able to find you.”

“Yes, enough. Besides you would be . . .” He trails off.

“Dead?”

He nods.

Closing my eyes, I give thanks that his stupidity is revealed before it can do me more harm. “You are so dumb, friend. I am taking the
Bratva
in a new and better direction, and you could have been part of that. Instead, you sell out to imbeciles, and for what? To have your blood and brains decorate an empty hotel room in Brazil? You could have lived like a king.”

Aleksei erupts at my words, shooting to his feet and then falling back down when the pain strikes him. Moaning, he yells at me. “We were making plenty of money under Sergei. Your plan to stop selling krokodil or females who are no better than sheep, because of some grander vision, is insanity. Sergei may have been a bad leader, but you are worse. Your belief that we are a brotherhood, your investments—” He spits out the last word as if it is a curse. “We are criminals! Retrieving the Emperor so he—or she—can run credit card scams, skim off bank funds, or ruin people is a superb idea, but using her to find a stupid painting? Bah.” He spits. “You are no better than the Golubevs.”

Naomi has sat up now. She cannot hide her intense interest. I turn to her. “It is an immense insult. The Golubevs are petty thieves
who survive only on protection money. Their power is in their might, but one stone from a sling can take down a giant.”

She nods solemnly. “I’ve read that story. First book of Samuel in the Bible. David takes down the Philistine giant. Goliath’s height was determined to be between six feet nine inches or nine feet nine inches. Either way, quite tall. You know the statue of David by Michelangelo is uncircumcised.”

Like me.
I’m beginning to follow her wandering mind. “I’ve seen it at the Accademia. It is quite impressive.”

“I’d like to see it,” she says.

“Then you shall.”

“Now would be a good time. Well, after Rome,” she says, and then her eyelids flutter down so that I cannot even see a glimpse of the ocean. But I catch her meaning. She knows something and she’s telling me that we should go to Italy. Energized, I smile. Dangerous, seductive, but perhaps willing to help.

“This is not tea time,” Aleksei interrupts with a growl.

“One minute, Naomi.” I lift my index finger. “I have to take care of this, and then we shall talk about our travel plans.”

She gives me a curt nod of her head, one motion up and down. With deep regret, I turn to Aleksei. “As criminals we were
volk
. Dangerous predators, yes, but we were hunted, too. By the law, by other criminals. It is no way to live. To be truly free Aleksei, we must control the
volk
, not be the
volk
.”

“You and your fairy tales. It is from being cosseted by Elena Petrovich,” he sneers.

“What Elena Petrovich wanted, Elena Petrovich received. She wanted her children to be educated and we were,” I answer.

“You are not her child. You were her toy,” he retorts. “You are
some whelp from a village that Alexsandr stole so that you could become part of his
ubitsya
army.”

“I did not realize you were so jealous of me. I am sorry you are not as pretty as I and that Elena did not take a close interest in you,” I mock. But Aleksei and I both know he was the fortunate one to have escaped Elena’s attention. I did not ask to be chosen by Elena. I did not ask or want to be noticed. At first, it confused me, then it disgusted me, and finally I realized I could use it to my advantage. Her hungry eyes and her touch will always send me to a dark place, but I also know that despite that she is the devil herself, I cannot cast her aside or have her killed. Not yet.

If returning with this painting will solidify my hold on the Petrovich
Bratva
, then this errand is worthwhile. Once I am in control, I will no longer be a pawn of any man or any woman, and my family will be free.

Aleksei looks away, ashamed. Sullenly, he replies, “The
Bratva
depends on girls and drugs. You are trying to push us into things that we do not understand.”

“When you were a child, did you understand adult things? Did you understand that you brushed your teeth to prevent decay? That you must eat good food to balance the candy and sweets? That to please a woman, you must do more than plow her field? That when you split open the guts of another man, you can see his spirit rise to the heavens? As a child you know nothing. You grow and learn. We are children in the business world, but we will conquer it because we know certain things can bring success. What we don’t know, we will learn by acquiring the right people.” I gesture to Naomi. “We need someone who can infiltrate any technological barrier in the world, and now we have the Emperor.”

“She is no emperor. She is but a weak, puny girl. Look at her. She can no more break into Neuer Arbat in Moscow than she could into the Vatican or Vauxhall Cross. She could not even break into a grocery store.”

“Hey, I can, too. There is no system that I can’t breach. I could break into your stupid Kremlin,” Naomi protests indignantly. “I can probably tell you in five minutes everything you own, everything you’ve done in your life. In fact, I could probably tell you where you shit two nights ago.”

I bark out a laugh. “There you go, Aleksei. Why do you doubt her?”

“She doesn’t eat real food. She stares at her monitor and mouths things repeatedly like a maniac.”

“Don’t call me that,” she yells at him, getting up onto her feet, her tiny hands forming tiny fists. I want to scoop her in my arms for being adorable but this is not the time.

“She doesn’t even look you in the eye, not even now.” He points at her face, which turns deep red at his accusation. My laughter dies and I place a soothing hand on her arm.

“But, Aleksei, you look me in the eye and lie to me. It’s as if you kissed me on the mouth with the same lips that you used to suck the cock of another man, so her lack of eye contact means nothing.”

His eyes widen and he opens his mouth to beg for his life, but we have no time to listen to pleas that will change nothing. Before another word is released from his mouth, I shoot him. He falls to the side and then tumbles to the ground.

Naomi flinches at the gunshot but says nothing. Grabbing my belt from the cushions where she had abandoned it, I slide the leather through the loops with one hand while holding the gun in
the other. It is difficult to fasten a belt one-handed and after watching me try again, she comes over and bats my hands away. In two swift moves, she has fixed my belt, but the proximity of her hands near my waist and her soft, sweetly scented body next to mine make my pants fit about one size too tight. I step back before I can alert her to this fact.