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What the fuck is going on here?
The hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention, and I discreetly pat the side where my firearm is holstered. The last thing I want to do is alert the cops that I’m carrying, but when my instincts tell me something isn’t right, I can’t help but check.
“Okay, we get that she went through the light, Mr. Michaels, but I don’t think that would cause such an explosion. Are you sure you didn’t see anything else?”
The officer’s right to ask. A car doesn’t explode like that without some sort of help.
“Nope. No, sir,” he insists, glancing my way but looking back down before our eyes meet.
Something here…
No.
No fucking way.No.
Is this the man who…
I can’t even think it.
I squeeze my eyes shut and wander back to the worst day of my life, one I have not willingly revisited in a long, long time.
When Clara and I crashed, we were T-boned by a big rig.
They hit her side of the car and killed her. I was injured but not badly. Not badly at all. But when they pulled me out of the car, there was a man, a truck driver, who kept insisting we’d run a red light…
Holy fuck. It’s the same man.
What are the chances that the same guy driving a big rig T-bones one of the Alekseev cars several years later…
That’s when my phone rings, startling me out of my reverie. I see Charleigh and her sister now sitting on the sidewalk curb, clutching each other. I grab the call, thinking it’s one of our security guys.
“Yeah?” I snap.
I shouldn’t take it out on them. This is beyond their control. And yet, if we can’t avoid what I suspect was a simple car bomb, why are we spending so much on security? Someone’s dead in spite of all our efforts, and that someone could have been any of us. Or Charleigh. And her sister.
For a moment, there is no sound but breathing on the phone and I figure it’s a wrong number or fucking solicitation. But just as I start to hang up, someone finally speaks, slowly and deliberately. “I hear things are getting a littlehotin your part of town, Kir. Sorry I didn’t manage tofire upthe right people.”
Fucking Dimitri. He tops off his vile joke by cackling like the sick person he is.
I turn away from the crowd and lower my voice. The last thing I need is to give the cops any tips that would lead right back to me or my brothers.
“Dimitri, I have two words for you.You’re dead.”
“Kir,” he says, tsking his tongue. “That’s not really two words. It’s more like two and a half.”
Oh that he were right in front of me at this moment. It would be his last, alive.
“I don’t know where the fuck you are, but you know your days are numbered. You can’t hide forever. And when we do find you, you’ll know a slow, excruciating death, which is probably better than you deserve, but which my brothers and I will enjoy immensely.”
“Challenge accepted, my childhood friend,” he singsongs.
I should have beaten the fucker to death when I had the chance, back when I was ten years old and I could have lied and said he hit his head on the playground andoh well.
But that’s okay. We’re grown-ups now and finishing him off will be much more satisfying than it would have been twenty-plus years earlier.
* * *
CHAPTERTWO
