Caroline is the mole.
Maybe it was the blood loss—already, it was a spreading red lake beneath me—but I couldn’t make my brain focus on anything aside from the betrayal. I’d thought she was a friend. Myonlyfriend. But she’d been Grushin’s inside woman from the start. She’d taken the bullets from Evidence to frame Gennadiy, and the cocaine to frame me. She must have told Grushin my address so he could send the assassin to my apartment. That’s why she’d hugged me so hard when she showed up afterwards: she’d been wracked with guilt. And she warned Grushin we were coming for him tonight, that’s how he’d laid the trap and waited down the street. It was all so fucking obvious, now. The only thing I didn’t understand was…
“Why?” I rasped.
Tears were flooding down Caroline’s cheeks. I just didn’t understand it.Money?Did he bribe her? She’d always been such a warm, kind person. Either I’d utterly misjudged her, all this time, or?—
Oh. Ohfuck.
Jack. Her kid with a heart condition. The one who’d suddenlygotten better, a year ago. “Grushin gave him a new heart,” I whispered.
Her face crumpled, and she dissolved into sobbing. “He was going to die!”
Oh God.Grushin had shown up on her doorstep and offered to save her kid. What wouldIhave done? What would any mother have done? And once she’d accepted his offer, he owned her.
The toe of a leather shoe hooked under my cheek, and I was flipped onto my front. There was a nuclear flash of pain from my ankle, and I screamed, and then the wound in my back opened up, and I gave a guttural grunt, tears springing to my eyes. I lay there terrified to move, because the slightest movement hurt so much.
Viktor Grushin stared down at me, shaking his head. “I don’t understand why he’d want someone who’s so much trouble,” he told me. He glanced towards Caroline. “Come inside. Once they’re all dead, you’ll help me burn the place down. We can make it look like the Aristovs had a fight with the Irish.” He started strolling towards the house. Then, as he passed me, he?—
NO GOD NO PLEASE?—
—grabbed my broken ankle.
I screamed long and loud as he dragged me along the ground behind him. Before we even reached the house, the pain and the blood loss had made my vision shrink to a dark tunnel.
My last thought before I passed out was a horrible realization. Caroline hadn’t told the FBI we were here. Which meant no one was coming to save us.
70
GENNADIY
Gunfirefrom the doorway forced me back behind the bed again. I shot back, and Grushin’s man ducked behind the wall. He wasn’t getting in, but I wasn’t getting out, either. I lay there on the floor panting. I didn’t care that I was about to die, as soon as the guy brought some friends. I was thinking of Alison, downstairs. I had to get to her.
More gunfire, but this was further away, and I realized I was hearing it through the wall. “Valentin?” I yelled.
“It’s Finn!” And he banged on the wall, only a few feet from my head. He must be in the bedroom next to me.
Then I heard Mikhail’s bass roar. “Valentin’s with me! We’re at the end of the hall!”
I looked at the wall next to me, building a mental map. Finn was next door, Mikhail and Valentin next door to him. So close! If only we could go out into the hallway and meet up! I looked despairingly in their direction...and then the ugly, flowery wallpaper caught my eye, and I focused on the wall itself.
What if...what if we didn’t go out into the hallway?
“Finn,” I called through the wall. “Keep them busy!”
I heard him curse under his breath, but then he must havedodged towards the door because the machine gun opened up again, pounding our ears. And the guy at the door to my room drew back, out of the way.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Mikhail. When he answered, I put my lips right to the phone so he could hear me over the gunfire. “Break the wall!”
I looked around and saw the bed I’d been hiding behind. The frame was made of painted iron, and I heaved it up and unscrewed one leg. That gave me a foot-long chunk of iron with a screw thread pointing out of one end. It wasn’t exactly an ax, but it would have to do. I slammed it into the drywall, and it made a satisfying dent. I started frantically swinging it, shattering the plaster and caving in the thin drywall. It started to work, chunks tumbling to the floor and a hole beginning to form between two of the studs. The deafening sound of the machine gun covered what I was doing. But as soon as it stopped and Grushin’s man in the hallway came back, I was dead. Standing there hacking at the wall, I was completely exposed.
I kept frantically swinging, panting with effort, drywall dust filling my lungs and sticking to my dripping face. I finally broke through the second layer of drywall, and I could see Finn’s room. He was still acting as our decoy, jumping forward to catch the attention of the machine gunner upstairs, then pulling back as the bullets chewed up the floor by his feet. “What’s the matter, you fucker?” he was yelling as he danced back. “Can’t shoot straight?”
I felt a little more of the hate slip away. He was brave as hell.
I swung the bed leg again and again, shoulders burning. I had a person-sized hole in my side of the drywall, now, and I was just getting started on the second layer, when suddenly everything went quiet. The gunner must have gotten suspicious because I heard him shout in Russian.Check what they’re doing.Fuck. The hole wasn’t done.
I backed off from the hole just as the guy in the hallway peeked in. He saw my half-finished escape route, and his eyes widened. Then he raised his gun.
