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He stumbled backward before her onslaught, hastily scooping up his SIG from where he’d left it on her dresser. Leaving a fully loaded piece lying around within reach while lopping off a chick’s hair with his pocketknife was not one of the brighter moves of his spotty career.
He allowed himself to be herded out the door. It slammed in his face. The sound reverberated in his ears.
Well, hell. He’d burned his bridges. Spectacularly. But then again. Burning bridges came naturally to him.
He moved down the stairs, like he’d been preprogrammed by someone else. Someone who did not wish him well. Out with the keys, into the truck. Put it in gear. Conflicting thoughts jostled in his head. He should have left her a number. If the worst happened, and Zhoglo—
No.
A) Chances of something happening diminished exponentially if she had no contact with him. B) If Zhoglo found her, she wouldn’t have a chance to call for help. She would never see it coming.
And he’d be better off not knowing.
He drove, mechanically, to his condo. Parked in his slot. Sat there, for a long, timeless interval, mind blank. He finally dug into his pocket and pulled out the coiled-up hank of satiny brown hair that he’d swiped.
Fondling it. It was the only word that fit. It was so amazingly soft. What the hell was this, something sick, like a trophy? He didn’t know.
He’d better jump-start his brain, start thinking again, if he wanted to survive. He tried, but it was like flogging a dead horse.
The only sure thing was that he should stay on the move. And the hell away from Becca. A brief stop here to get his shit together, and he was gone. If Zhoglo took him down, the first thing the guy would go for when he started to hurt him would be Becca’s whereabouts. Nick had no illusions about how long he’d be able to hold out under a highly skilled torturer. It didn’t matter how tough you were. Eventually, they got to you.
He wished he’d scared her bad enough to make her run someplace far and unknown even to him, but she was impossible to intimidate. Though it was also true that he could not un-know her name or former address. The biggest threat to Becca’s safety right now was the information inside his own brain. He wasn’t going to sleep at night knowing Zhoglo was out there, nosing around for her.
Not that he slept much anyhow. Not since Sveti and Sergei.
He wandered around his condo, at a loss. The apartment seemed unfamiliar. Empty, cold. A parking place for his stuff and, occasionally, his body. Never a home. He hadn’t spent any real time there for years.
It didn’t take long. There wasn’t much. A couple of guns, some favorite knives. His hard drive, his laptop. Some photos of his mother. He had none of his father and wanted none. Besides, if he wanted to remember what Dad looked like, all he had to do was go to the mirror and give himself a snake-eyed, sealed-mouth, pinched nostril glare. He was a dead ringer for the man. All that was missing was the smell of alcohol that had exuded from Dad’s every pore.
He took down the photo of Sergei and Sveti that hung on the blank wall. It was grainy, poor quality, snapped on a cell phone. He wasn’t sure why he’d framed it. He was never in this house to look at it.
He snapped open the cheap frame, and tucked the photo into the padded envelope. Looking at Sveti’s sweet smile made his stomach cramp. He stared at it. Tried to swallow it down. The truth, like a nasty pill.
The best he could do for Sveti at this point would be to simply eliminate Zhoglo. That was starting to look impossible, aside from suicidal. But hey. What the fuck else did he have to do with himself?
One more thing. He pulled his fly fishing tackle box out of the closet, and rummaged till he found a plastic ziplock baggie, the kind drug dealers used to portion out their wares. He pulled the feathery fishing fly out of it, tossed it into the guts of the box and rooted around till he found a length of thread. Then he sat down under the light at his dining room table, and took Becca’s hair out of his pocket.
It took him a while, to soothe and stroke and restore the handful of hair back to its original glossy perfection, but once it was done, he coiled it into a circle and threaded the red filament carefully around to hold it in place. His fingers were deft from years of tying fishing flies. The one thing Dad taught him that had been of any use.
Then he tucked the ring of hair into the plastic envelope with the photos. A moment later, he plucked it out, put it back into his pocket.
Christ, he was so tired. Down to his bones. Sometimes he caught himself wishing that Zhoglo would just get a move on and kill him already, so he could get some fucking rest. But the joke would be on him. He’d probably go straight to the hot place. Pitchforks and flames.
Life sucked. Why should death be any different?
He was pondering that heartening thought when his cell phone buzzed. He read the display. Aw, fuck. It was Tamara.
He might as well get the red-hot-poker reaming session over with sooner rather than later. He picked up the phone. “Yeah,” he muttered.
“You idiot.” Her voice burned through the like acid. “You can’t even get yourself killed like a real man.”
He rolled his eyes as he stalked into the bathroom, and tucked the phone between shoulder and chin as he rooted through the cabinet for the clippers. The blades on the thing were dull for sure. He hadn’t cut his hair in over three years. “Thanks for your touching concern.” His lame attempt at irony reminded him of Becca’s prickly sarcasm.
Bravado, covering up that cream-puff interior.
“Concern. Pah. Stupid goat’s dick excuse for a man,” Tam hissed in Ukrainian. “I just got a hysterical phone call from Ludmilla. She thinks she’s going to get her tits cut off, and she has good reason to think so. Smooth move, Nikolai. Whatever the fuck you did, it is going to cost me. I should never have tried to help you. You were supposed to kill him, you asshole! I thought you were on a suicide mission!”
Man, that bitch could be cold when she was inconvenienced. “I was,” he said. “Then it morphed into murder suicide. And I choked.”
