Ultimate Weapon (30 page)

He went back to the car, clenching and unclenching his hands to unload the tension. And the guilt.

He had to edit and send another piece of footage, the one from that morning, to Novak. This was killing him. It got worse every day.

He got into the car, booted up, attached the thin cable. Downloaded the footage. He watched it and relived it. The way she moved, the light shining off her body. Her hands, touching his hair, his face. Her back to the camera, slender and straight as a blade, the perfect curve of her hips swelling out as she straddled him.

His own face to the camera, his feelings revealed. Transfixed by her beauty.

He cut out as much of it as he could and still satisfy the filthy old satyr, and was trying to connect to the Web when the split second realization came to him. Air moved in the car that should not move. Tiny movements, plays of light and shadow, out of place. He froze.

A small sound.
No.
He reached for a gun that was not there.

Too late. A cold circle of metal pressed against the nape of his neck.

“Hello, Janos,” Hegel said.

T
am stood by the door, people swirling around her, and watched Val’s tall, broad shouldered form stride briskly back to the parking lot.

Anxiety clawed at her. A presentiment of doom. She wanted to run after him, grab his hand, beg him to stay close.

Grow the fuck up.
He’d been right to call her on that silly tantrum about Donatella. He’d nailed her right to the wall. His specialty.

God knows, what he’d done with Donatella was nothing she hadn’t done herself. Get-it-over-with sex to further whatever other agenda she might have. Like staying alive, for instance.

But she had to pull herself together, get back to work. She needed to organize her poison and drug supplies for tomorrow’s charade with Ana. Devise a plan for getting into the clinic and decide what she would do once she got there. She had to be smart, focused, ruthless.

She ran up the stairs. When she turned out of the staircase into the corridor, two men waited. Guns appeared suddenly in their hands.

“Don’t move,” one of them said.

They flanked her, seized her by both arms. A pistol jabbed, brutally hard, into the small of her back. She refused to gasp at the pain. The faces of the two men were unreadable. “Who—”

“Quiet,” one of them hissed.

They dragged her to the end of the corridor and into the emergency stairwell, then up two flights. They stopped outside the first door in the hall. One of them rapped on it.

“Come in,” said a familiar voice. The door opened.

Georg sat on the bed facing her, his legs wide, his hands on his knees. His ruined teeth had been capped. Their bright, unnatural whiteness gave his predatory grin a surreal effect.

Georg barked out orders in Hungarian for his men to leave. Tam was left standing before him, clutching her briefcase and purse. Forcing herself to smile. She hid her fear with the ease of long, hard practice.

He looked better than he had four years ago. He’d been a bald, scarred monstrosity during her nightmare sojourn with Kurt Novak. Since then, the scars on his face had been smoothed out with surgery and time. Instead of the twisting, ropy red worms crawling over his face, the scars were thin, silvery irregularities in his pallid skin. He looked like a man whose face had been taken apart and put back together not quite straight. One side of his mouth pulled up in a permanent smirk; one of his eye sockets was smaller than the other, the eyelid pulled too tight. His hair was buzz cut very short. He was thin, his prominent cheekbones blade sharp. His electric blue eyes glowed hot in deep eye sockets, like the headlights of a car in the dark.

A car that was about to run her down.

She sensed the vicious strength of his madness. She saw it in his eyes, his smile. It had started before she met him, and it had ripened to fullness since then. Her skin crawled. Her mouth was dry.

“Georg,” she said warmly. “What an unexpected pleasure. I had no idea you were still alive.”

Right. Such a delightful surprise. As if she hadn’t been dragged at gunpoint to his door. Whatever.

“I almost wasn’t,” he said. “I was confined to a prison hospital for almost a year. Old Novak got me out.”

“That was good of him,” she said. “And I never knew.”

His smile widened. “You couldn’t have known. You would have found a way to come to me. After what we shared, I was sure of that.”

She funneled her shudder of disgust expertly into another burst of projected warmth. “And how did you know that?”

“Because of what you did for me.” He said the words as if it should be obvious.

Hmm. This was a puzzle. As far as Tam knew, she had tried with every effort at her disposal to kill his scrawny, milk white ass. Under the circumstances, however, it seemed unwise to say so. Bursting his mad fantasy bubble would seal her doom. She was in no rush for that.

“And what exactly did I do?” She ventured a secret smile, as if they were playing a flirtatious game.

Georg smiled back. “You did for me what I was too weak to do for myself. Kurt was so strong, I could not see past his strength to realize my own. But you saw it. You saw my potential.”

“Yes,” she said obediently. “Yes, I did.”

“It was meant for me!” Georg waved his arm around. “The money, the power, the whole empire! But I would never have been anything but Kurt’s servant if you had not freed me.”

A deep breath. She took the plunge. “It was a huge risk,” she said slowly. “But in the end, it was worth it. Look what you have become.”

“I am grateful,” he said solemnly. “I nearly died for it, but thanks to you, it was Kurt that died. And you are like his widow. You were born to rule at the emperor’s side, but instead of being Kurt’s consort, you were meant to be mine, Tamara. Do you see? Do you feel it?”

She widened her eyes, as if in wondering realization. Her destiny revealed. “Ah. Yes. Now I understand.”

He got up and walked slowly toward her, circling her. “You did not know, but I have been protecting you for years,” he said.

Her knees weakened as she thought of Rachel. “Me? Really?”

“I told old Novak you died. That I had seen your bleeding body.”

She let her jaw drop in theatrical amazement. That would explain why she had survived for so long. It had always seemed improbable to her. Too good to be true that the old man had ignored her for so long.

“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I thought no one knew where I was. But I might have known I could never hide from you.”

“I hear you have an adopted child,” he said. “This is of some concern to me. I hope you understand what a commitment of time and energy it will be to stand at my side and help run the global organization that I have in hand. To say nothing of how much it is about to expand.”

Tam gave him a supremely casual shrug. “Don’t worry about my priorities,” she assured him. “I’ll make arrangements for the child. There will be no conflicts at all.”

Georg’s smile widened. “I knew you would understand. And now, Tamara…give me what I have been waiting for…for years now.”

“And, ah, what is that?” She braced herself.

His pale lips thinned over those big fake teeth. “You.”

Her stomach twisted unpleasantly. She put down her briefcase, smiling, shining, glowing at him while a rapid-fire situation analysis crunched in her mind. She was alone with him, and that was a plus, but he was certainly armed to the teeth. He was a lethally quick fighter. Thin though he was, he had to outweigh her by over a third, and he had a much longer reach. He was a tall man, over six two. Insane, perhaps, but not stupid. He would be on his guard.

Her best bet were the earrings, but not until he was writhing on top of her, distracted by sexual pleasure. Then, once he was safely knocked out, she could kill him at her leisure in any of a dozen ways.

The trick would be to keep from vomiting or passing out while being intimate with him. She had lost her professional cool, and she had Val Janos and his manly mojo to thank for it. It was much easier to calmly contemplate the pits of hell when one didn’t have a shining paradise to compare it to. Damn him.

She shoved the thoughts away. This was all about survival now. She would deal with the mess later.

Georg held out his hand imperiously. “Well? Come here.”

She lurched toward him as if she’d been shoved from behind. His hand clamped her wrist. It was damp. Clammy and horribly strong, like the strangling coils of a snake.

“What, ah, do you want?” she asked faintly.

He grinned like a carnivorous dinosaur. “Take off your clothes.”

“Interesting footage you’ve got there.” Hegel let out an oily chuckle. “I see why you’ve been dragging your heels. Didn’t want to stop fucking her, hmm? And immortalizing the experience, too. Run back that last bit. I love the shape of her ass when she bends over you. And I go wild for a shaved pussy. Silky soft. Mmm. Run it back.”

“Fuck you,” Val said.

The gun dug harder into his neck. “Run it back,” Hegel repeated.

Val snapped the screen closed. “No,” he said.

Hegel leaned forward until Val could feel the moist heat of the man’s breath. “Don’t fuck with me, Janos. Do you know how bad your behavior made me look? Do you have the faintest idea how pissed I am with you? Because you’re just about to find out.”

Val started to turn. The gun dug deeper. “One false move, Janos,” Hegel muttered. “Pulling this trigger would be a pleasure.”

Three steps back.
Val set the mechanism in operation, let the matrix start to turn in his mind, and floated apart from it. Or rather, he tried to, but the anxious question flew out of him without his permission. “Where is she? What is happening to her?”

“I expect she’s at the hotel with Georg. Although that twisted freak needs lots of help to get it on. You know, I bet she’ll thank me in the end for forcing the issue.”

Val could imagine exactly what Tamar would say if she heard those words. “You think so?” he said distantly.

“Oh, yes. There are worse things than being pounded by one of the richest guys in the world, even if he is out of his fucking gourd. And that kind of woman is sure to realize it real fast. You’ve done all right for yourself, Janos, but you can’t compete with hundreds of millions in drug, prostitution, and gun-running money. And if the moves he’s about to make pan out, his empire is going to expand. I’ll do everything I can to see that happen. This is the ass to kiss, Janos. Too bad you dipped your wick in the sacred well, you bad boy. Georg won’t like that. In spite of his sexual quirks.”

He hated to give Hegel the satisfaction, but fear prevailed, and the question burst out. “What sexual quirks?”

“Oh, nothing really that dirty,” Hegel said lightly. “He likes being watched, that’s all. No matter what he does, even if it’s just a blow job, someone has to be standing there watching, or else his dick goes south. I don’t mind watching myself. Particularly when he gets generous afterward. Me, I don’t mind a buttered bun now and then.”

Sexual confidences from Hegel—ugh. Val’s stomach churned. He changed the subject. “Who were those men at the Sea-Tac airport?”

“Oh, the ones you slaughtered? That was just an insurance policy. A local team based out of Olympia. I mobilized them when it looked like I couldn’t count on you. They were incompetent fucks, but wonder of wonders, you ended up doing your job anyway, Janos. Convenient, getting her over the pond without us having to deal with her kid. That would have been a big pain in the ass, having to keep a three-year-old’s ass wiped. Start the car.”

“How did you find me?”

“I have my ways,” Hegel said. “You’re not as smart as you think you are, Janos. And we need to get something straight right now. I’ve got no problem killing you where you sit. You know how I always told you how dangerous it is to get attached? I practice what I preach.”

“I do not doubt it,” Val muttered.

“I am not attached to you. Yes, we invested tens of millions in training you, but that’s OK. We got more than our money’s worth by now. And even the most expensive machine eventually breaks down. Repairs cost more and more, you reach the point of diminishing returns, and it’s off to the wrecking yard. Start the car up, shitbird, or the bullet goes into the base of your skull. Nobody’s watching. Nobody cares. We’ve got the woman now. Congratulations, asshole. You are now officially irrelevant.”

Val revved up all his senses, hyperalert for a split second chance to do something, anything, as he put the car into reverse and backed out of the lot.

Hegel directed him through the town and out onto a winding, potholed road that wound up the mountainside. They reached a wide spot in the road, with a decayed, crumbling stonework wall. An overlook point at a steep cliff. There was a deep, rocky gully from rain washout behind.

It was the kind of remote, forgotten place where lovers came to park and junkies came to shoot up. In point of fact, the ground was liberally scattered with condoms and syringes.

“Stop here,” Hegel said. “Hold out your right hand.”

Val hesitated. Hegel intended to send him over the cliff, attached to the car. He had to play for time. Good thing the car was a stick shift. “How will I change gears?”

“Shut the fuck up and hold out your right hand. Keep your left on the steering wheel where I can see it or I’ll blow out your brains.”

Val held it up. Hegel snapped a cuff onto it with one hand, grinding the muzzle of his gun into Val’s neck with the other.

A cell phone beeped. A text message arriving. Not his.

Hegel laughed. “The guy works fast.”

Val’s gut crawled with apprehension. “Meaning?”

“Meaning Georg’s hot to fuck her now. Jealous?” Hegel chuckled. “Fucking asshole. He just texted me his room number. He wants his audience and I’m the lucky winner. My treat, for hunting you two down. Maybe he’ll even give me a ride when he’s done. He likes watching as much as he likes being watched, and he’ll be in a generous mood once he blows his wad. And man, I would like to make that hellcat squeal—”

Val whipped the empty handcuff back into Hegel’s face, lightning quick, with an explosion of energy from far beyond his conscious mind. He jerked himself sideways without thinking, just as the gun went off.

It barely missed him. The windshield crumbled. Val wrenched the car into reverse, accelerating hard toward the deep, rocky ditch behind them. Time dilated. Hegel bellowed. Val flinched as the gun blasted again. A hole appeared in the dashboard. Stuffing exploded out of the seat next to Val’s shoulder. They rattled, bumped, sped backward—

They tipped.
Crash
, the car landed on its ass in the gully. It toppled onto its side, bouncing, tipping. Glass blew out, metal shrieked. The bones in Val’s skeleton tried to shake loose of each other.

As soon as he was sure he was still alive, Val shoved open the warped driver’s side door and scrambled out, vaulting over rocks. His legs were weak and shaking. He dropped behind a large boulder, braced for the bullets to start flying from the broken, crumpled car windows. Hot blood trickled down his face.

Silence.

The laptop. The footage. Imre. Ah, fuck,
no.