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“Oh? What are you working on?”
“Sorry, Mom. I can’t really talk about it.”
She chuckled. “Just like your father. Well, it wasn’t that hecouldn’ttalk about his cases. He just didn’t like to worry me.”
Alice smiled. Her dad died from cancer when she was just eight years old but she remembered him well enough to believe that was exactly something he would do. He adored her mother and tried to keep the ugly side of his job as a homicide detective away from her. He was a good man, and part of the reason that Alice became an FBI agent was because he was a cop. She wanted to honor him by going into the same line of work. It wasn’t always a satisfying career, especially lately, but she liked to believe that he’d be proud of her.
“Speaking of work, I wanted to let you know that I’ll be unreachable for a while. Maybe a couple of weeks.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Alice assured her. “Just work stuff keeping me busy. I’ll call you again as soon as I can, I promise.”
She just hoped that was a promise she would be able to keep. She was about to go into a den of lions, and she just hoped she could make it out unscathed.
2
NICKOLAY
“Get down!”Nickolay shouted as he ducked down behind a sedan parked at the curb just before the sound of gunshots split the still night.
He wasn’t sure what made him look in the direction of the street as the truck was driving by, but he was damn lucky that he did. Three men in latex animal masks were inside and they all pointed semi-automatic guns at him and the people he was with.
A month ago, he would have been completely perplexed by this, but this particular group of freaks had been terrorizing the streets for the past two weeks. They were vigilantes, out patrolling Davinapolis for people that they deemed were criminals and needed to be put down.
They had a lot of righteous ideology that they happily shared with local news outlets, proud of what they were doing, even though their snap judgments about who was a criminal were inaccurate half the time. They’d killed innocent bystanders that were unlucky enough to be on the street in bad neighborhoods or look shady enough to draw the attention of these self-proclaimed heroes.
Of course, they weren’t wrong in their assessment of Nickolay and his companions tonight. He’d come here with members of the Bratva to meet with a dealer that they often worked with, passing along a new product. Still, these men were completely crazy to open fire on them in the middle of the street.
The drug dealer, a man known as Roco, was crouched beside him with a Beretta in his hand. Two of his men had been gunned down immediately, but Nickolay’s guys had listened to his command and gotten down in time to avoid getting hit.
“These crazy bastards think that they can shoot at me in front of my own house?” Roco snarled, rage flaring in his eyes.
“Apparently, they can,” Nickolay said, pulling his own handgun out of a holster on his ankle.
Roco’s home was a well-known drug house, so it wasn’t entirely surprising that these vigilantes would have heard of it. The timing of their attack was just unfortunate because Nickolay and his guys were here. The Bratva had been attempting to keep a low profile lately, aware that the FBI was snooping around, trying to find something on them that would stick. A shoot-out in the street, even in a shitty neighborhood at midnight, was not a good way to keep their hands clean. But what choice did they have now?
The three guys that Nickolay brought with him were also crouched behind cars, along with the only man that Roco had left out here. The shooting was constant, but as soon as it seemed that the bullets were focused elsewhere, Nickolay popped up from behind the car just long enough to take in the scene. The truck had stopped in front of Roco’s house, and all three men were hanging out of the windows.
As Nickolay came back down into a crouch, Roco seemed to let his anger overtake him. Moving around the car, he let out a roar as he started shooting at the truck with no cover.
Idiot.
He managed to hit one of the men in the arm, making him drop his weapon, but a car racing down the street from the opposite direction with two more masked men inside aimed their guns at him. Nickolay tried to shout a warning, but he was too late this time.
Roco took two hits to the chest. As he fell, the front door of his house opened and five men came out with their own semi-automatic weapons. The sound was deafening as the men in the truck exchanged fire with the ones on the porch. Nickolay met the gaze of one of his men, jerking his head in the direction of the SUV they came in, parked a block down the street.
But the guys in the car weren’t distracted by the men on the porch. Instead, the two men in the car focused on Nickolay’s men as they started to move between the parked vehicles on the street, a hail of gunfire coming from their weapons.
Staying behind, Nickolay took a deep breath and rose to his feet again. Holding his gun with both hands, he fired at the back windshield of the car over and over, drawing their attention away from his men.
Suddenly, the sound of tires squealing indicated that the truck was taking off. As the sound of gunfire behind him died down, Nickolay could hear sirens approaching. The vigilantes must have been monitoring a police scanner. That explained why they hadn’t been caught despite these public shootings.
The car started to take off too, and rage drove his next actions. Stepping out into the street, Nickolay adjusted his aim to the tire of the car and took it out in one easy shot. The car veered to the left, the driver losing control and crashing into a streetlamp. He rushed forward, his men right behind him, and ripped open the driver’s side door. The driver was slumped over the wheel, and Nickolay saw that he was bleeding heavily from a wound to the chest. He probably wouldn’t have made it even if he hadn’t crashed.
On the other side of the car, the passenger stumbled out, his mask off. He looked young with brown hair, but that was all that Nickolay could take in before he was forced to take cover to avoid the bullets. The passenger had managed to keep a hold of his weapon.
“We’ve got to go,” Horace, one of his men said from behind him. “The cops are close.”
