Two Evils (27 page)

“You know that and I know that. But try telling a four-star general that.”

John had to shrug. “Then I’m as lost as you are as to what we’re going to do about Wainright. You know he’s going to expect some kind of progress report at some point.”

Billie drew a breath. “I do actually have an idea, but no one is going to like it much—I know I don’t. But it’s all I’ve got.”

“What’s the idea?” he asked.

When she told him, he felt his eyes widen. There was merit to the idea, but as to whether or not it could be done…

“Well, it’s certainly not the ideal way t
o go about it,” he said when she’d finished. “But you’re right about two things. One, it’s all we’ve got.”

“And the other thing?” she pressed.

He looked over at her. “I don’t think your guys are going to like it one bit.”



When they pulled up to her father’s house, Billie looked to the neighbor’s. The Ellis house was still and there was police tape across the door. She imagined that the widower was staying elsewhere for the time being. Seeing the place so quiet renewed her anger at Andre, who she was determined to put an end to herself as soon as she found him.

John had pulled up to the curb as her father’s and Kevin’s cars were both in the driveway. She wondered what they were both doing here in the early afternoon—surely the city of Langley needed their top engineer and Howe’s Contracting needed their newest project manager? Her father’s house seemed just as quiet and foreboding as the one next door where a woman had been killed in her own bathtub, and a feeling she refused to put words to crept down her spine, leading her to draw one of her Glocks as she got out of the battle-scarred Explorer.

“Billie?” John queried.

“Something is wrong,” she said. “Dad and Kevin should be at work—it’s the middle of the damn day.”

Normally she would have gone to her father’s office to check on him for that very reason. But something—some inner instinct, perhaps, or the memory that a woman had been killed just yards away from him—had prompted her to direct John to bring her home instead.

“I’m sure it’s nothing,” he said in a vain attempt at reassurance.

Billie shook her head and began walking slowly toward the house. She was about halfway up the yard when Kevin burst through the door.

“Billie, run!” he yelled, just as a man she had never seen before appeared in the doorway and fired a gun.

“
Kevin!
” she screamed as her brother’s body jerked and fell to the ground in a heap. Her gun was up and firing before the shooter had a chance to close the door, and a loud grunt just before it slammed shut told her she’d hit him.

“Kevin!” Billie cried again as she scrambled low to the ground to her brother’s side. He wasn’t moving and there was a spreading bloodstain on his back. John was by her side with his gun drawn and pointed toward the door, his cell phone in his other hand as he dialed for backup.

“This is Special Agent John Courtney, Central Intelligence Agency,” he said, spouting off his serial number for verification. “Shots fired at 116 Weatherford. I have one civilian down, white male early 30s, GSW to the back, right side. Victim is unresponsive. Shooter is a white male, late 20s to early 30s, dressed in black and holed up inside this location. Possible 207 in progress. Request medics and backup units from local LEOs.”

“Kevin Alexander Ryan, wake the fuck up!” Billie yelled in her brother’s ear. He couldn’t be dying—she would not,
could not
, believe that.

“Billie, we need to get out of the line of fire,” John said then.

“I am
not
leaving my brother!”

John took her by the arm. “I am not suggesting we leave him here. We’ll drag him to the street behind the Explorer—but we have
got
to move before whoever’s in there decides to start shooting at us again!”

She knew she couldn’t argue with his reasoning, but once Kevin was safely in the street, what about her father?

Each of them took hold of Kevin under the arm and dragged him backward toward the street, holding their guns at the ready and pointed toward the house. Once they had him laid in the street in relative safety, Billie holstered her gun and gave him her full attention. “Kevin, come on. Time to quit screwing around, you gotta wake up for me.”

John held his phone to his ear even as he pointed his gun toward the house over the hood of the car. “They want to know if he’s got a pulse, if he’s breathing at all.”

Billie put her fingers to his throat. The pulse she found there was almost non-existent, and she could feel no movement from his chest at all. Fear unlike any she had known before seized her heart, and she squinted her eyes against it.

“Billie!” John said sharply to get her attention.

She blinked. “Uh, pulse is very weak. I’m not feeling any breathing at all. John, there’s so much blood,” she said, feeling tears come to her eyes.

He relayed the information to whoever was on the phone. In the distance she could finally hear sirens, their pealing getting louder as the seconds passed. Then John turned to her and said, “Billie, I promise medics are on the way.”

She nodded and took a deep breath. She remembered that her brother was tough, and prayed that Kevin could hold on. And she remembered that her father was most likely still inside the house with at least one man who had a gun.

Rage that her home and her family had been violated filled her. Leaning down she kissed Kevin’s flushed temple, then she pulled one of her guns from its holster and started to move around the Explorer.

“Billie, what the hell are you doing?” John asked, his voice incredulous.

“I have a feeling that Andre Sardetsky is in there holding my father hostage,” she said. “I’m going to end this.”

“We should wait for the police. You know they’ll bring SWAT for a barricade situation,” he told her.

“John, you know as well as I do that Andre will drag this out until he gets what he wants, which is me. If the SWAT team goes in, there’s a risk my father will be injured. I’m not going to take that risk. I can end this. I
will
end this, once and for all.”

She ignored his further protests and moved around the front end of the car, walking up the front walk with her gun held low. No shots were fired as she approached the house, which she had kind of expected. But then, Andre had made this personal by taking her father and brother hostage. She’d killed three of his men in the last two days, guys that were probably friends of his. So he’d struck back, hitting her where the most damage would be done.

And she was refusing to allow one more person she loved be taken away from her.

Standing on the hinge side of the door as she had at the cabin that morning, Billie reached for the door handle and turned it, pushing the door open. There was blood on the carpet in front of the stairs to the second floor that trailed into the living room, and she swung her gun in that direction as she stepped inside, shutting the door behind her. Some of the furniture had been knocked out of place, she noted, indicating that her father and
/or Kevin had struggled with their captors. A smile of satisfaction flitted across her face for a brief moment before she turned and faced the arched doorway that led to the back of the house.

S
he found them in the dining room. The man she’d shot was slumped on the floor against the short dividing wall separating the dining room from the kitchen. His gun was in his hand but he didn’t lift it—she must have hit an artery as his breathing was shallow and his face sweaty, his lips already beginning to turn blue. When she neared him she kicked the gun out of his reach; the man didn’t even flinch.

Her father was seated in one of the chairs at the table. Andre Sardetsky stood behind him with a gun to his head.

“Wilhelmina Ryan,” the Russian said slowly. “We meet at last.”

She raised her gun and pointed it at his head. “Let my father go.”

“I’m afraid I can’t do that. You see, like his lovely neighbor, he’s seen my face. I cannot allow him to identify me to the authorities.”

She smirked as the sound of sirens grew almost deafening and several vehicles screeched to a halt out on the street. “Sounds like the authorities are already here. Give up now and just maybe you won’t get the death penalty.”

“
Poshel na khuy, suka!
” Andre spat snidely. “I killed my own uncle—do you think I am afraid to die?!”

“I think you’re afraid that grandpa’s going to find out you’re a fucking failure at this hitman thing. If memory serves, ol’ Grigori doesn’t tolerate incompetence,” she shot back. “Maybe you should pray for the death penalty, come to think of it. The chair or the needle have to be better than whatever Grigori’s people will do to you, and you know as well as I do that he’s got his fingers in a lot of pies. He’d get to you even in solitary.”

Billie hefted her gun, firming up her stance. “Now let my father go. This is between you and me.”

Her words had cut deep. She could see in his eyes that Andre was getting scared. His entire crew was either dead or dying. She had him cornered. If he gave himself up to the police now, he could possibly be killed even before his case went to trial. He certainly wouldn’t last long in prison. She knew that Grigori had the ability to have him executed even behind bars, and Andre knew that too.

“I want to cut a deal,” he said suddenly. “To, uh, turn state’s evidence. Isn’t that what you Americans call it? For immunity from prosecution, I’ll tell you what I know.”

Billie scoffed. “Which is what? You’re a low-level hitman for your grandfather and you aren’t even any good at it,” she countered with a sneer. “What could you possibly have to offer that would be of interest to me or my government?”

“I could tell you how we found out who you really are,” Andre replied. “
Dedushka
was livid when
Dyadya
Piotr left the family. We quickly discovered that a recent acquaintance of his, Nastasja Aldorev, was responsible for convincing him to betray us.
Dedushka
searched for her endlessly and found nothing—it was as though he were chasing a phantom. And then one day not very long ago, he got a phone call. Not only had this person given him the location of the traitor Piotr, but also that
lakhudra
Nastasja—who was, in fact, an American who was a soldier before she was a spy. The two of them were hiding out together, tending bar on the beach as though they had not once been each other’s enemy.”

Anger and pain surged through her at his callous disregard for his own uncle. Sergei was someone else she missed terribly, someone else she had lost to a violent, senseless death.

Like Travis. Like Eddie.

Billie looked at her father. His breathing was even but a little shallow, his eyes wide with a fear she knew he was trying his best not to show. Even now, when a madman had a gun to his head, he was trying to be strong for his little girl. Her heart swelled with love and pride, and she hated the fact that he had ever been exposed to the violence that had become part and parcel in her life. She vowed then that not only would she get him out of this alive, but that she would do her damnedest to make sure he never had to go through something like this again.

“You’ll tell us anyway if you want to live,” she said at last. “Telling us everything you know might just get you a new identity for your extended stay as a guest of the United States. That should keep you safe. But make no mistake,
kozel
, you
will
go to prison if you walk out of here.”

Andre pushed the gun in his hand into the back of her father
’s head. “No prison! I get freedom or you get nothing!”

She tightened her grip on the Glock. “You’ve killed at least three people in as many days, Andre: your own uncle, a teenage girl, and a young woman. Your dead or dying friend over here shot my brother, and if
he
dies, I guarantee you won’t live another day.”

The gun at his skull was used to push her father’s head forward. “And if I kill your father?” Andre asked in Russian.

“Kill him and you won’t live long enough to take another breath,” she replied coldly in the same language.

A sadistic smile crossed her opponent’s features. “Then it would seem we are at an impasse.”

“Seems pretty clear to me what should happen next,” Billie retorted. “You let my father walk out of here, and then you give yourself up. You’re cornered, Andre. Langley SWAT’s probably got the house surrounded, which means you only have two ways out available to you: walk out on your own two feet, or get carried out in a body bag.”

“Get me the deal and I will gladly surrender,” he told her. “
Otherwise, your father joins me in taking option number two.”

Billie’s mind raced. Andre might be a bottom-rung thug in the grand scheme of things, but he
was
a member of one of the most brutal criminal organizations in the world—was a blood relation to the founding family, even. What little he did know about the inner workings of the Sardetsky mafia could possibly prove useful to somebody. He knew names. He knew faces. Identifying even a small number of the family to the authorities was enough to put a serious kink in their operation, and she was well aware that there were a number of law enforcement agencies around the world who would be willing to give him immunity for that alone. Including hers.