Читать книгу Shannon McKenna Bundle: Ultimate Weapon, Extreme Danger, Behind Closed Doors, Hot Night, & Return to Me - Shannon McKenna - Страница 36

Connor stared out the windshield. His eyes burned like coals.

The atmosphere in the taxi had the tension of a bomb countdown.

There was nothing to say. It had already been said, repeated, hashed out, torn apart, attacked, picked to pieces. They were so on edge that anything anyone said annoyed the shit out of all the others, so they had collectively subsided into a gloomy, self-protective silence.

Connor sat in the front, clutching the monitor with the satellite map. Their driver sensed the weirdness, despite the language barrier, and kept casting nervous looks at him and the others, in the rearview mirror. Seth, Sean and Davy were crowded into the backseat, everyone red-eyed, grim, and tense from the strain of suppressing the thoughts of what might already have happened to Rachel, considering her ten-hour head start.

All they could do now was throw themselves at the location of the beacon in Rachel’s red coat and see what happened. Connor had called the FBI liaison in Budapest when they got to Hungary, and told him what was going on, just so that someone would be sure to follow up should the worst happen. They had been strictly forbidden to go anywhere near Novak.

What the fuck. To a man, not one of them had ever learned to do what they were told. And they were the only ones whose prime agenda was Rachel’s safety. They needed to be the first ones on the scene.

They were almost there, bumping over a narrow, ancient stone bridge over a narrow river and then down a long avenue next to a tall stone wall. All of them noted the cameras mounted at regular intervals along the top of it. The cab driver came to a stop at a big wrought iron gate. It was yawning wide open. Weird.

“We are arrive,” the driver ventured timidly.

As they watched, two men came sprinting out of the gate. They didn’t even look at the car, just ran, hell for leather, toward the bridge.

OK. Weirder.

The meter read 155 euros. Connor handed the guy two hundred-euro bills. They piled out and the cab peeled away, tires squealing. Connor didn’t blame him. It was very clearly a bad scene.

Then another guy came pounding out the gate. Davy grabbed him, slamming one of his thick forearms across the guy’s throat.

“What’s happening in there?” he demanded.

The guy gibbered in Hungarian. Davy gave him a shake and tried the same question in French, then in German. The guy just struggled and squawked, voice high. Finally, Davy flung him away in disgust.

“Get out of here,” he muttered.

The man stumbled, flailing, caught himself and ran.

“Rats leaving the ship,” Sean said. “Got a fix on Rachel?”

Connor peered at the handheld. “Got her. Let’s just go for it. They’re not manning the cameras now. The shit’s hit the fan. It’s every man for himself.”

They took off running, swift and silent, down the long, curving avenue of trees. No one challenged them; no one shot at them. A huge, decaying eighteenth-century palace came into view.

They veered around it to follow the signal, and found a long, low building that must once have been a stable. Getting closer. Forty meters. Thirty. The icon blipped on the screen, tantalizing them.

They burst into the building, peering around, guns at the ready.

No one was there, just a long row of covered parking slots. Fifteen meters, ten, eight. Dead silence.

The beacon was inside one of the cars. Connor’s heart pounded with dread. Five meters, four, three…there it was. A Mercedes coupe.

No one was inside it. They flashed their penlights in every direction. No one. The doors were locked.

They crowded around to the back of the vehicle, and stared at the trunk. The beacon was there. Connor tried it. Of course, it was locked.

He swallowed hard and pounded on it. “Rachel? Honey?”

No one answered. Seth elbowed through them, carrying a big, rusty garden implement, like heavy hedge clippers. “Everybody get the fuck out of the way.”

They all moved back, and Seth went berserk, smashing and pounding and cursing, until the back of the car was unrecognizable.

He finally jolted the lock loose. They wrenched the trunk open.

A puffy red child’s ski jacket lay there. No Rachel. Connor smelled urine. He put his hand on the carpeting under the coat, felt around.

Yes, there it was. Dampness. Pee.

“Baby piss,” he said. “They put her in the trunk. They put a three-year-old into the fucking trunk of a fucking car.”

There were about three seconds of appalled silence. Sean broke it. “Let’s move,” he said harshly. “Let’s go hunt. I need to kill something. Now.”

“Right on,” Seth growled.

A ragged burst of gunfire came from the direction of the mansion.

They took off running again.

He would recognize Rachel’s screaming anywhere. It would cut throught any kind of noise, a gun fight, an air raid, even the roaring and ringing of his ears. Val followed the sound, lurching forward in an unsteady, limping run fueled by unmixed adrenaline. He left a trail of blood behind him, but he didn’t care. If his blood supply lasted long enough to kill András, that was all he asked of it.

He lost the sound and stopped, straining to hear her again. The wounds throbbed and burned, all of them, the old ones and the new. There was a burning hole in his chest. Every panting breath hurt. Broken ribs, from the bullets that had punched into the Kevlar.

He rounded a corner. The shrill, faraway wail crescendoed. He launched himself forward again. Blood ran from the gouge in his hip, down his leg, into his boot. His foot squelched with every step.

The layout of the place was coming back. The sound seemed to come from above him, though it could be an aural illusion. He ran toward the grand staircase and took the steps three at a time, driven by terror. He would hang on as long as he could for Tamar’s sake, but he knew what his body could and could not do, wounded as he was. He knew that feeling: the faintness, the cold, the nasty tingle.

He had only minutes before his body failed him.

He stopped at the top to listen, guts sinking at the silence. There it was, a squeak, quickly cut off—to the left. He stumbled down the corridor toward the sound, abandoning all effort at stealth.

András rounded the corner, clutching a writhing, squirming Rachel under one arm, brandishing his gun with the other hand.

He stopped cold when he saw Val, jerking Rachel up so that she shielded his chest, neck and head.

Val dove for the nearest doorway as András opened fire on him, tearing the rotten door loose from its antique, rusty hinges. He pitched forward into the stifling darkness. Bullets crashed into walls, the floor, sending splinters and shards of wood, tile, and stucco flying.

At the first moment of silence, Val called out over the ringing in his ears. “It’s over, András. They’re dead. Put her down.”

“Who’s dead?” András demanded.

“Everyone,” Val said. “Dead, or else running. Didn’t you hear the guns?”

András paused. He had heard them, and not known what to make of them. “I’ll judge when it’s over, dickhead,” András growled, but there was uncertainty in his voice.

Rachel let loose with another piercing ultrahigh shriek that rattled all the molecules in his body. Val heard a slap, muffled cursing. “Shut up, you squeaking brat, or I’ll—”

His words were obscured by another shriek, more ear-shattering than the last. Val lunged for the door, peered around the frame.

Zing, a bullet flicked past his ear, ruffling his hair. He jerked back, having ascertained that Rachel’s squirming body still shielded all the good target points. Merde. Trapped, like a fucking rat in a cage. He couldn’t return fire, couldn’t give chase. He was useless.

“I’ve got the gun to her head,” said András, his voice taunting. “Throw your guns out into the corridor, and step out of the room with your hands before you. We’re going to talk to the boss.”

“He’s dead,” Val said wearily.

“Of course he is,” András crooned. “And this screaming little darling will be, too. It can’t be too soon for me.”

“It’s all over. Novak is dead. They’re all dead,” Val repeated.

“Really? If the boss is dead, what reason is there for me not to kill her right now? Or better yet, I could shoot something off her, a hand, a foot. It would be a pleasure, after the trouble she’s given me. At this range, I could probably blow her leg right off at the knee. Shall we see? Should I try it?”

“No,” Val said swiftly. “Don’t.”

“No? You don’t like that idea? Then throw out your guns, fuckhead. Now.”

The gun stocks were sticky with his drying blood. Val peeled them loose from his hand, the Beretta and the SIG he’d gleaned from the dead PSS agents.

“Did you hear what I said, you cocksucking man whore?” András’s voice sharpened with tension. “On the count of five, she loses a foot. One. Two. Three—”

Val let the guns drop. They clattered onto the tiles.

“Kick them out into the corridor,” András directed, pitching his voice over Rachel’s shrieks. “Then put out your hands.”

Val kicked the guns. They slid over the tiles with a clatter.

His hands were dripping blood. He held them out the door, fingers splayed wide, turning them to show that they were empty.

“Step out, and put them on top of your head.”

Val walked slowly out into the corridor, lifted his arms, placed his hands on his head.

András’s arm was clasped around Rachel’s waist, in a cruelly tight grip. Rachel kept struggling, undaunted.

Val wanted to applaud. The child did her mother proud. He stared at András, balancing like a tightrope walker suspended over a boiling lava pit. Blood trickled down his arm, slow and hot and ticklish.

Checkmate. Three steps back. Detached. Floating. Wait for it.

Rachel flailed, flopped, shrieked. András had to struggle to hold her. “Get down on your knees,” he growled. “Stay still, you little shit, or I’ll peel you like a grape.”

Val sank slowly to his knees. Waiting, watching for his opening. Widening out his senses, softening. Wait for it. Wait.

András adjusted his grip, lifting her higher. Rachel flung herself forward against his face, almost as if she were kissing him. Suddenly András yanked her away from his face and flung her to the ground. A red bite wound flamed on his cheek. Broken skin. Blood

Now!

Val let the Walther PPK slide from the sleeve of his jacket and into his hand as Rachel skittered on hands and knees, and darted into the door he had broken through. András shot after her, bullets pumping out, screaming something unintelligible, his hand to his distorted, bleeding face.

Val opened fire with the Walther. Bam, bam, bam. Head, throat, chest.

András toppled across the threshhold, a look of stupid surprise on his face. There was a hole in the center of his forehead.

The sudden silence was disorienting. Val’s cool detachment evaporated the instant there was no desperate use for it. He began shaking convulsively. He almost fell. Caught himself.

He lurched to his feet, limped over to András. Kneeled by him to make sure he was dead. He prodded the man with his gun. The condition of András’s skull convinced him. There was very little left inside it. Good.

He blundered into the room, bumping painfully into various obstacles and trying to intuit where a light source might be. The darkness was so dense. The room appeared to be crowded with bulky furniture covered with canvas dropcloths.

There might be no light source at all. Back in his time, entire wings of the old palace had been left to fall into decay just as they had been in the eighteenth century. No wiring, no modern plumbing.

“Rachel?” He got down to his knees with a grunt of pain, putting himself in the glow of twilight from the door so that she could see him, wherever she was. If she was alive. If András had not shot her.

“Rachel?” He tried to pitch his voice normally, but it rasped and quavered, barely recognizable. “It’s Val, remember? Your Mamma’s friend? It’s all right now. Come out to me.”

She did, to his astonishment. He heard a rustle, a squeak, and a tiny body scrabbled across the floor toward him. Rachel ran into him full on, knocking him onto his ass, and wound her arms around his neck. He grabbed her, held her, chest shaking uncontrollably. She was alive.

Ah, no. Not yet. Please. He could not fall apart. Not yet.

He picked her up, swaying dangerously. He didn’t have much time left. He had to find someone to care for her, to make the phone calls, the arrangements. He could not slide down into oblivion and leave Rachel alone in this slaughterhouse just because all his blood had drained out of his body.

That was no fucking excuse. He had promised Tamar.

He lurched out into the corridor, gasping for air.

“Mamma?” Rachel asked, her voice breathless.

His chest tightened around his heart like a fist. “I’m sorry. I don’t know about Mamma, baby,” he whispered. “We’ll see about Mamma.”

Rachel squeezed her eyes shut, digging her fingers into the blood-soaked fabric of his coat. “Mamma. Mamma. Mamma. Mamma,” she repeated. Like a mantra. Blocking out the world with the magic word.

He envied her the trick.

He scooped up the guns and staggered back toward the Saints Salon, following his own trail of blood. He was not sure what the fuck to do now. He couldn’t show Rachel her mamma naked and covered in blood, not if the unspeakable had happened. Yet Tamar’s vibe dragged at him like a steel cable attached to his insides. Someone was reeling it mercilessly in.

He had a bad moment when he turned the corner outside the Saints Salon and saw the two men, but as soon as he focused his eyes, the shock of blond hair struck an instant chord of recognition.

Connor McCloud, Seth Mackey. Val was so relieved, he might even have wept. He didn’t care.

Connor hurried toward them, his face gray with strain. “Oh, thank God, thank God,” he muttered. “Rachel? Honey? You OK? Holy Jesus, Janos, what’s all this blood? Is she—”

“Not hers,” he said, exhausted. “She’s all right.”

Connor reached out. The little girl relinquished her grip on Val and transferred it willingly enough to the other man. “Mamma?” she asked.

“Oh, honey, I don’t know,” Connor said helplessly.

Rachel began to sob. Val turned away from the sound, and shuffled like one of the living dead into the blood-drenched Saints Salon.

The place was cold and dark. Wind whispered through it. Davy and Sean were bent over Tamar’s still form, muttering to each other. A thermal blanket was thrown over her. Davy was pumping on her chest.

Val fell to his knees next to them, only dimly aware of the glass shards digging into his flesh. “How is she?”

“Alive,” Sean said. “I don’t know how, or for how long, considering the condition he’s in.” He indicated Georg’s gruesome corpse, bent backward in a contorted arc. The man’s mouth, nose and bulging eyes all streamed blood. “She must have taken the same poison he did.”

“She kissed him, and he died,” Val said.

“That’s what I figured.” Sean’s voice was grim. “She has a tongue stud in. Some kind of poison capsule. The chick is a fucking head case. She makes me tired.”

Val cupped her jaw, tried to open her mouth. Sean batted his hand away. “Don’t touch her, for Christ’s sake! Some of the stuff she uses goes right through the skin. We can’t even do mouth to mouth.”

“I don’t care about the poison,” Val said. “I will give her mouth to mouth.”

Davy gave him a steely glance. “Like hell you will. Things suck enough without you croaking on us, too. Try it and I’ll knock you out.”

It would hardly be necessary, Val thought, swaying. He caught himself against the floor as he stared down at Tamar’s still form.

Her face looked like a pale, delicate wax effigy.

“I must call someone,” he said, shaking himself. “Medics, doctors. For Rachel, too. Someone give me a cell phone. An ambulance—”

“Connor’s already on it,” Davy interrupted him. “The FBI liaison’s taking care of it. Everybody’s on their way. So, these bodies…uh, what the hell happened here? Did you waste them all?”

“No. Just a few of them,” he said vaguely. “Seven or eight, maybe. They mostly killed each other. What are you doing to her arm?”

“It’s broken,” Sean said roughly. “Those filthy pigfuckers had her hanging from a goddamn rope with a broken arm. I can’t do shit about her crazy poisons, but at least I can splint her arm.”

Glass crunched as Val thudded down onto his ass. He caught himself with a bloody hand. The dim room was fading away.

He struggled to stay awake, alert. He didn’t want to leave Tamar while she still breathed. What a waste of precious moments with her.

But he could not support the weight of consciousness any longer. He was collapsing under it. On his way down the long slippery slide.

Oh, for fuck’s sake, he’s shot, he heard one of them say in an exasperated tone, before he pitched face first into nothing.