The second the taxi wheels were rolling, I started to sprint toward the road. I needed to get that fucking bag back. The first motorcycle that passed I waved at the driver, shouting.
Human nature made him slow down in concern, giving me an opportunity to grab the handlebars of his bike. As the driver stepped back, trying to gain his balance, I jerked the bike, knocking him off-balance, and, in a supreme asshole move, I shoved him to the ground before swinging my leg over the bike.
“Are you hurt?”
The stunned driver shook his head.
“Sorry. I really need your bike,” I told him before I spun the bike around and headed one street over. Ahead of me, driving through a traffic circle, I saw the guy on the back of the bike with Blaire’s bag over his shoulders.
I worked to stay out of his line of vision by driving behind a truck until I was nearly upon him.
One look over his shoulder and he saw me. Then he gunned his bike. He had the advantage of a faster bike and a bike helmet. He weaved dangerously between traffic, forcing me to follow. I chased him over a bridge, through a pedestrian park, down three sets of stairs, through an outdoor mall and then onto the wrong side of another road.
He turned into a wet market which was nothing more than narrow walkways lined with kiosks selling fish, fruit and vegetables. He was moving much faster than me, but the crowds ahead of him were slowing him down. I could hear the pedestrian cries ahead, but I basically drove in his wake, trying to keep the bike upright on the slippery tiles.
I came around the corner, face-to-face with him at the end of the aisle. He was standing over his bike. When he twisted around, there was a semiautomatic gun in his hand.
Shit. I dove off my still-moving bike as he fired. Everything he shot seemed to explode on impact. Glass, liquid and ice cascaded around me. As I slid, I got one shot off, at his bike, before I moved out of view.
People screamed and stampeded around me.
I groaned as I kicked the heavy bike off my leg. Son of a bitch. Fuck, that fucking hurt. There was blood, my blood, creating a growing dark stain on my other pant leg. Motherfucker shot me. I righted the bike and backed it into the aisle. It was a carnage of busted-up fish and ice, and water was pouring everywhere, but miraculously, no one seemed to have been hit.
Except me.
I fired up the bike and gunned it. I followed him up a flight of cement stairs that led to the pedestrian cross park that connected the train, buses, a pond, and the market. In the distance, I saw him slowly driving toward the pond. My shot had miraculously hit its mark because now there was something wrong with his bike. It was smoking heavily. He kept looking over his shoulder at me. Aware that he had a pretty decent gun at his disposal, and I had limited coverage, I kept my distance. When his bike gave up, he dumped it and turned around, looking for me.
I pointed my gun at him, but I wasn’t necessarily interested in shooting the fucker.
When the crowd in the park saw our guns, pandemonium ensued as people ran screaming in all directions. But in a surprising act of retreat, he dumped the bag and raised his hands over his head.
I gunned my bike over to the bag and kept my weapon trained on him. “Do you speak English?”
“Yes.”
“Toss me the bag.”
He kicked it over to me.
I picked it up. Blaire’s passport was still in the front pocket. I looked down at my leg. The bullet had skimmed the very outside of my thigh, taking off a thick layer of skin. Blood was pouring out of my leg, but I was lucky the bullet hadn’t gone through muscle or bone.
“Who are you?”
“Just some guy doing a job.”
“Who hired you? What was the job?”
He gave me a cold smile. “Some French dude hired me to make your life difficult.”
“Difficult how?”
“He told me to pick a fight, but not to kill you. He also told me to separate you from the woman.”
My blood went cold at that statement. In the distance, I heard sirens.
“Get lost,” I told him.
Without hesitating, he turned and bolted toward the train station. I gunned the bike toward the road and eased into traffic, heading in the opposite direction of the sirens.
I had stupidly fallen for his ruse to separate me from Blaire. Had the taxi driver been part of the whole thing? Had they taken her?
By the time I ditched the bike in the airport’s short-term parking lot, I had all but convinced myself that I had made the wrong move and put Blaire’s life in peril.
Please be safe inside the airport. Please be safe.
I found her standing outside the front doors of the airport, pacing. She wasn’t near any security, and anyone with a vehicle could have easily grabbed her.
My fear of what could have happened, compounded with my own stupidity in letting her out of my sight, made my voice cut coldly. “I thought I told you to stand by security.”
She spun around when she saw me. “Oh, thank god.”
I tried not to limp as I moved toward her.
She rushed toward me and then her sweet arms were clinging to my neck. “Viktor.”
God, she felt so fucking good.
And this was exactly the kind of shit that had gotten us in trouble in the first place. I gently disentangled myself from her arms. “I need a place to change, and I need your help to clean up.”
We found an unused staff bathroom in a back hallway of the airport, and together we squeezed into the small room. I pulled out my medical kit and then dropped my pants.
She covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh my god, is that a bullet wound?”
“It’s just a scratch.” What really hurt like a son of a bitch was my other leg. The leg that had taken the full weight of the bike as I slid across the floor of the market. I needed half a bottle of vodka, an ice bath and several shots of cortisone.
Instead, I had a distraught Blaire, about three decent Band-Aids and a couple of T3s. I pocketed them. I would be taking those on the flight, preferably with vodka.
“Can you wrap it up for me?” I asked her. It hurt to bend over. Everything hurt so goddamn much.
She knelt in front of me and, with a concentrated expression, cleaned and bandaged the wound. Then she stood by while I gingerly pulled on a clean pair of pants. I dumped all my weapons in the garbage can. I could declare them, but I didn’t want to risk it on a fake passport.
“What happened?” Her face was pinched and her expression white as she watched me.
It hurt to speak. “I caught up to him. He said someone hired him to mess with us.”
“Who?”
“He didn’t say.”
“Is he dead?”
“I let him walk away after he gave me your backpack.”
She dug through her bag. “Lucy is still here.”
“Glad to hear it,” I said in a dry voice. It was almost impossible to push her away when I constantly had an overwhelming urge to pull her close.
She gave me a watery smile. “Every time I think we’re in the clear, something shit happens.”
She had that right. “Let’s get past security. I’ll feel a lot better.”
But I didn’t feel better. I just felt progressively worse. The flight was my version of hell. While Blaire slept beside me, using the little neck rest I had bought her, I was in serious pain. The Tylenol wore off about six hours into the flight, and the flight steward cut me off after my eighth vodka.
The vodka and the antibiotics combined didn’t do any favors for my stomach, so I felt really rough for the last eight hours of the flight. I hurt too much to sleep, so my body was struggling physically to reset.
I lay there, counting the minutes until we landed on Canadian soil. I was shocked that we had made it onto a flight back to Canada. If I had been the sniper, this job would be done already. It didn’t make sense that the only person who had tried to interfere was the guy on the motorcycle.
I leaned back in my seat and thought about the sniper. What is your end game? I was missing a big piece of the puzzle and it nagged at me, but the pain was making everything fuzzy. That and the vodka.
By the time they turned on the cabin lights and started serving breakfast, Blaire looked slightly rumpled but fresh after her epic sleep.
“I’m starving.” She looked over at me. “Wow, you look like shit.”
“Don’t hold back.”
She touched my arm in concern. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Nope.”
She looked at me closer. “You’re in pain.”
The truth was, my entire body felt like it had been through a meat grinder. I felt worse than bad. “I need that vacation.”
She looked so worried. “What can I do?”
“Let’s just focus on getting back to Vancouver.”
We landed and made it through customs, but my ass was dragging hard as I took special measures to lose whoever might be following us. I felt like a paranoid asshole, but every time I let my guard down, something dangerous happened, and eventually our luck would run out. When a person was fatigued, they took shortcuts. And those kinds of shortcuts got a person killed.
I was hurting so badly, and I was so tired; I knew it was only a matter of time before I missed something or made a mistake that could cost us both.
I got the cab driver to drop us off near a garage that had one of our ghost cars available in the back. Once we were in the car, I drove around for another thirty minutes, making sure we didn’t have a tail.
It was close to 2 p.m. Vancouver time when I pulled up to one of our infrequently used safe houses. It had a high-tech security system, excess weapons, telecoms and food.
I pulled into the garage, and it was only when the doors locked behind us that I breathed a low sigh of relief.
I led Blaire into the main room of the house. The first thing I did was head to the medical closet. I gave myself three injections.
“What is that?” Blaire stood behind me, in the middle of the kitchen, clutching her bag. She watched me with big eyes.
“It’s a mixture of cortisone and a numbing agent.”
I allowed myself to dry-swallow one T3. Then I walked into the kitchen and poured myself two healthy shots of vodka.
“Is this your home?”
I looked around the sparsely decorated place. It was completely devoid of anything personal and was only here to keep people alive. I guess I deserved that question. “This is a safe house.”
“Oh.” She sounded disappointed.
I moved to the weapons cabinet, pulled out four weapons and put them on the high table. I checked and loaded them all.
I pulled off my shirt.
“Viktor, your back,” Blaire gasped from behind me.
I had a bad case of road rash, but nothing that wouldn’t heal. It was my leg that was my biggest concern. It would definitely slow me down.
“It’s nothing,” I told her as I pulled on a long-sleeved black shirt from my pack.
I caught her look of dismay and concern. “What?”
“It’s just that your entire body seems so beat up.”
I leaned over the table and kissed her hard on the mouth. “Your flattery will get you everywhere.”
She sounded scared. “What happens now?”
I put on a plated armor vest over the shirt. Her worried eyes watched me.
“It’s almost over. This is the end.”
“Like the end of the bad guys and the start of better things, right?”
I could feel her anxiety. “We’re done the hard part. Now I just need to finish the job.”
“But what are you doing?”
“I’m going to go give Drake what he wants. And then he’s going to tell me where your grandfather is.”
“Then should we call the police?”
God, I adored her. “Let me handle this, okay?”
“Maybe they can help you?”
This situation was way beyond any municipal police force. “I’m going to need you to stay here. You don’t answer the door to anyone. You don’t call anyone. You don’t do anything until I get back.”
“I think I should come with you.”
“Absolutely not.”
“I can help.”
“No.”
“But don’t you think—”
“Blaire. It’s not going to happen.”
She exhaled violently. “It’s so hard to wait.”
“Just a bit longer, okay?”
“Okay.”
The shot and the pill had taken the edge off the mind-altering pain, which in turn gave me renewed energy. I ate two energy bars and drank a bottle of water while I carefully packed a weapons bag, holstered my weapons, and put a dark jacket over it all.
I took a burner phone out of the closet and then locked it up again.
I turned to her. “Watch TV or sleep, but stay away from the windows and don’t answer the door.”
She rushed to me and put her arms around my neck. Her kiss was so sweet.
“Be careful,” she whispered.
I stood in the dark shadows of the abandoned warehouse and waited for Drake to show up. I could sense his men drawing in closer.
“Well, shit. I didn’t think you’d make it back here,” Drake drawled, as I stepped out of the shadows.
I didn’t answer.
His grin was sly. “How was Asia?”
“It was a shit trip, thanks for asking.”
“You know, the enemy of my enemy is my friend. Which practically makes us BFFs.”
“And yet I want to pound your face until you’re unrecognizable.”
He laughed. He knew I wouldn’t lay a hand on him—not while his men were present. “Do you have the drive?”
“First you call your dogs off Andrusha and his wife.”
He put his phone to his ear. “Escort our guests back home. They are officially off our radar.”
He hung up and looked at me. “Your friends will be home in about fifteen minutes. You can give them a call there.”
“I want answers.”
He shrugged. “Since our bromance is brand new, I’m feeling generous. What do you want to know?”
“Is the old man dirty? What is his role in all of this?”
“He’s an innocent bystander.”
“How?”
“The Canadian government decided to go after a broker who specializes in stealing government secrets and selling them to the highest bidder. They were running a bust, with fake information, in hopes of smoking them out. At the last hour, the courier, who was a captain of a cargo ship heading to Asia, had an unfortunate accident. That’s why they approached ol’ Grandpops to smuggle it on his ship.”
“And he agreed?”
“He didn’t have much choice. We threatened his family if he didn’t comply. But someone fucked up, and the sale, much to the anger of the broker, was called off. Unfortunately, the flash drive was already on its way to the Philippines, and that’s when things went off the rails.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “I thought you said the information was fake. Why go to all this trouble to retrieve fake data?”
“That was the fuck-up. One of our agents went rogue and put some real and very dangerous information on that drive—and naturally our government wanted it back.”
“Why didn’t you just intercept the boat and search for the damn thing yourself?”
“I managed to put someone on the boat, but they couldn’t find it. There are over nine hundred containers on that ship. They didn’t know where to start looking. That’s when we decided to work with Blaire.”
“Why did you think Blaire could help?”
“We squeezed the captain pretty hard, and suddenly he admitted that the grandfather said that if something went wrong, Blaire would show up. But we weren’t sure he wasn’t just saying that to get us off his case. Regardless, it was a lead we were willing to pursue.”
I shook my head. “You know, this is why people have a healthy distrust of the government. What a complete fuck-up.”
“We made a tactical error when we sent the grandfather in alone to get the USB drive back when he was in Manila. And since it was blowing up in our face, we could afford no paper trails. We needed to send Blaire in with a skilled individual who could make it happen. You should know that your reputation—as one of the best in the business—precedes you.”
“I’ve left that life behind.”
“Sometimes that life doesn’t let us leave.”
This prick was getting on my nerves. “Who has the grandfather?”
He looked regretful. “We think the broker figured out, in part, what was going on. They still want that information—so they took the old man for leverage.”
“Why not just go get the grandfather yourself? He knows where he hid the flash drive.”
“At first, we weren’t sure where he was or even if he was alive. We decided to focus our resources on retrieving the data ourselves.”
“You realize that your logic and strategy are so flawed it’s almost laughable.”
His eyes narrowed. “I don’t know why you are complaining—this all worked out.”
“Who has the grandfather now?”
“The broker contracted his capture out to a third party. A particularly vicious group is holding him down at an old canning factory near the Ballantyne Pier building.”
I stared at him in disbelief. “He’s in Vancouver?”
“I found out recently that he’s been here since before you left.”
I shook my head in disgust. “You could have saved him.”
He seemed genuinely confused. “Why do you care so much about him?”
This whole situation disgusted me, reminding me of why I had left this world. “When are you sending in a team to extract him?”
He shook his head. “Nice try, but we didn’t get sign-off. Upper management doesn’t want any part of this stink trailing back to them.”
“Fucking cowards. How much time do I have?”
He shrugged. “Two hours? Maybe three? And then I think the gig will be up. Our mole will be arrested, and the broker will know the deal is over.”
I yanked off the chain around my neck and tossed it at him. It held the flash drive. “The sniper that followed us never made a move. Is he one of yours?”
His mouth tightened. “That’s classified.”
“What can you tell me about him?”
“Absolutely nothing.”
His body jerked in a familiar way before he was knocked practically off his feet. A second later, the piercing sound of a bullet whizzed by my ear.
I dove to the ground, rolling behind a large wooden box. Around me, Drake’s men shouted. Gunfire lit up the building, and the sound was so deafening it sounded like thunder.
I crawled on the ground and grabbed Drake’s coat collar, pulling him along the ground until he was out of the sniper’s scope.
He was wheezing pretty badly. “How bad is it?”
I covered his chest wound with both my hands, but I could feel his lifeblood spurt out with each pump of his dying heart. “Hang in there, Drake.”
He reached up and pulled me closer to his face. “I have a cat. I don’t want her going to a shelter.”
“Don’t you have any friends?”
He stared at me with fading eyes. “You’re my friend, remember?”
I fucking hated cats. “What’s her name?”
His voice was a near mumble. “Beatrice… She likes having her chin scratched. She needs a lot of cuddles.”
I gritted my teeth. “Okay.”
He wasn’t looking too good; he started to wheeze. “Now the sniper is here for you, not the USB drive.”
“What?” I leaned in closer. I could smell the mint of his breath mingled with the sharp coppery smell of his blood.
“You’re the one the sniper is hunting. Word is he’s gone rogue, and he won’t stop. Not until he’s done with you.”
“Why is he after me?”
“Because of Beirut,” he gasped on his dying breath, and then he was gone.
