Artur was right. I was now a Kozar.
Zane parked three blocks away from the restaurant in an alley. It was the restaurant we were going to demolish. Along with the occupants inside it. Katie hadn’t been lying. Daniil’s former in-laws were out for blood, all evidence Lion Security had found proving their treachery.
Daniil let me come along by my own fierce willpower. A trip to Russia when the doctor had just ordered me on bedrest, had been a hard one to achieve, but I had managed to coax him into allowing me to go. It was his former in-law's money that had funded my kidnapping. I wanted to see it all the way to its end. I needed this closure for my own sanity.
Our group stayed in the shadows, not going anywhere near cameras. After marching down another alley, we arrived at our destination, the back entrance to the bakery directly across the street from the restaurant. As we broke in, we found out it had the oldest surveillance system known to man, which actually took us longer than a high-tech system would to bypass, each of them having to stop and think about what needed to be done since this wasn’t the norm. We hadn’t had time to properly case the place since Daniil and I had both been concerned with tonight’s occupants in the restaurant, spending more time on figuring them out, so it wasn’t exactly a welcome surprise.
Eventually, we made it to the third floor, to the windows we had spotted earlier in the day. In harmony, Zane and Daniil unloaded their sniper rifles and got into place on either side of the room, sighting on the restaurant directly across the street. I grabbed my night vision binoculars, still obeying Daniil’s one demand that I do not do anything strenuous. The place was just closing up, the last of the employees leaving, but a party was in full swing upstairs on the second floor, the windows glowing with light and merriment as the family ate their dinner that had already been served.
I evaluated the occupants and breathed a sigh of relief seeing our research had been correct. There were no children at this party. It was all adults. I checked out the entire room and saw bodyguards lining it, which wasn’t a surprise. Obviously, these people weren’t stupid. They knew they had enemies.
And then, I gasped. “You see that?”
Instant from Daniil. “Where?”
“Right corner. Second floor.”
I studied it, and Zane muttered, “Jesus. They’re fucking sick.”
I agreed one hundred percent.
There was a large table in the corner of the room where birthday gifts were placed. And dead center was a birthday cake. It was one of those cakes that would cost me a month’s worth of salary, specially made to view before you ate it.
It was in the shape of our house in New York. But it looked like there was blood running down its rock walls. And on the perfectly reconstructed front lawn around the fountain, there were miniature people that looked remarkably like Daniil’s family, lying on the grass, bits of them everywhere with blood all around. I was pretty sure I even saw one that looked like me.
“Insane, more like,” I muttered, pulling my view away from that disturbing visual and focusing on the room at large.
“Hey. Daniil’s toy head is in the fountain, while his body is on the front stairs.” Zane chuckled roughly, muttering, “I hope they make this pretty.”
Daniil grunted. “They will.”
I refocused my binoculars, leaving my gun as it was, checking out the sidewalk below. “There are three on the ground.”
Daniil corrected, “Four. The last one’s in a car at the end of the block.”
I glanced to the right but didn’t see anything, and then to the left.
Ah. There you are. “How many in the car?”
“A loner, I think.”
I zoomed in and agreed. I couldn’t see anyone but the driver. Probably the get-a-way car if needed.
We waited.
And waited even longer.
No one tells you how nerve-racking waiting can be. In the beginning, when I was a young reporter, waiting had really bothered me. I have more energy than most, and it was hard for me to grasp the concept of finding a balance between serenity and alertness. I had actually flubbed a job or two before I overcame my issues. I employed one of my old tactics and started examining each individual, trying to assess their threat level, giving me something constructive to do in the quiet.
At the end of a half hour, I had pretty much decided they were all whacked out murderers. Even grandma, who kept staring at the cake with a gleeful smile while she played with a knife in her hands, twirling it damn expertly for someone with liver spots. I couldn’t repress the shiver that consumed me. If Grigori and Kirill couldn’t get this job done, we were going to have to come back and take care of these people. Watching them had brought to mind images of patients escaping a loony bin while toting machine guns.
Crazy. As. Fuck.
“Someone’s moving around on the first floor,” Zane stated quickly.
Again, I aimed my binoculars at the ground level. I couldn’t see what Zane had. “Where?”
“Left side. Wait for it,” he murmured quietly.
