My attention was shifted from the recollection of helping Vasily from a bloodstained trunk in the bus station parking lot and giving him a fistful of money. “Yeah,” I answered cautiously. “What’s going on, Zakharov?”
“Nothing much.” There was another pause, not as long as the first. “Where are you, pal?” Such a casual question and so very casually posed. I was fucked all right, thoroughly fucked. Dmitri was not especially adept or clever, and he was as aware of that as anyone. That he was attempting to be other than what he was brought home the tense nature of the situation.
“None of your damn business,” I responded flatly. “Now tell me what the hell is going on, Dmitri. I don’t have time to screw around here.” The discomfort of the tree bristling against my back, the ache of the scrape on my jaw all faded. Every nerve ending I had, every sense I possessed; all were centered on the voice in my ear. And then the next three words shocked those senses numb.
“Konstantin is dead.”
Konstantin? Dead? How could that be? People died, but Konstantin? He was a malevolent force of nature; the tidal wave that wiped out cities, the lightning storm that decimated the church picnic, the wildfire that destroyed half a state. How could someone . . . something like that die? My job had been to protect him and I had, but not at any time had I ever been able to picture him actually dying; not even when in the basement of Koschecka when I’d taken out his cousin with a vodka bottle. It just wasn’t conceivable.
“Dead?” I said hoarsely. “What do you mean ‘dead’?” Because that was such an ambiguous word, wasn’t it?
“I mean that someone splattered his brains all over the inside of his car. Give me your fax number and I’ll send you a sketch. Jesus Christ, Stefan, what did you do?” he hissed, the sound oddly hollow from the hand I could so easily picture cupped between his mouth and the phone.
“Not a goddamn thing,” I snapped back. “What the hell, Dmitri? You know better than that. You know who my father is. I’m loyal.” As if there was any other choice for me.
“You don’t show up yesterday and Konstantin ends up a trip. I ain’t the only one connecting those dots.”
A corpse. I still couldn’t summon the image. Immaculate gray hair awash in blood and brain matter proved elusive to my imagination. “I had family business to take care of. I had to move fast.” And asking for a leave of absence for what anyone would have classified as a wild-goose chase hadn’t been precisely practical. I couldn’t see my boss dead, but I had no difficulty picturing the expression on his face at the bizarrely mundane request for time off.
“So come back and explain it then. They’ll listen to you, Stefan; they’d have to. You’re Anatoly’s kid.” It was the same wheedling tone he’d used two weeks ago bargaining over the vodka. Getting me back would be some kind of feather in his cap. He had delusions of grandeur, did my pal Dmitri. He yearned to step out from behind that bar to bigger and better things, oblivious to the fact that those very things would swallow him whole. He didn’t have the balls for the work or the brains to recognize the lack thereof.
In one respect, however, he was right. They would have listened to me because of Anatoly, “would have” being key words of the past. At one time I would’ve been untouchable, but with my father pulling a disappearing act that had lasted well over a year, that was no longer true. His dominance, once bedrock solid, was now on the wane. He still had his contacts, but the tentacles of influence had become like phantoms. He was the monster under the bed . . . terrifying, but given enough time, he could be forgotten in the light of day. If I went back, the Korsak name wouldn’t save me and neither would the truth. I had called for help, but I would no longer find it here.
I disconnected, not bothering to spout protests of innocence. Dmitri wasn’t the one I had to convince and the one I did wouldn’t believe me. Konstantin’s son was a chip off the old diabolical block but with a looser grip on his temper. He would put me down before the first word left my mouth. It was entirely possible that he’d been the one to pull the trigger on his father. I hadn’t shown up; he’d seen his chance and next thing you knew, the head of Gurov senior was popping like a party balloon. It could have been him or it could’ve been one of Konstantin’s many rivals. Whoever was genuinely responsible didn’t matter. My ass was now grass in the city of Miami, if not the entire state.
I had made the call looking for names, for contacts that could provide us with a safe house for a night or two. That plan was shot to hell. I hadn’t planned on going back, even once Lukas was safe, but neither had I planned on having bridges burned so thoroughly. I wondered whether I was making a mistake by not contacting the police, but in the next second I changed my mind. They had found us. . . . That man Jericho had found us so quickly, so effortlessly, I found it hard to believe he didn’t have some government resources to draw upon.
My resources weren’t nearly as high-flying, but I still had them, although locating the one I had in mind wasn’t going to be easy. Anatoly hadn’t vanished from only the authorities and the Family; he’d disappeared from my life as well. He was still in the country, I was fairly certain. He would’ve let me know if he was leaving. I did receive the occasional message, such as the Christmas picture, but Anatoly had made it clear before he went on the run that even I had to stay mostly in the dark. Whether it was a matter of trust or he actually wanted to keep me out of his legal troubles, the bottom line was I had no idea where he was—not yet. But I did have a list of places memorized where he might go. My father hadn’t given me specifics, but our history had given me a place to start.
I made the first call.
Two hours later I gave up for the night. I was on day two of no sleep and even punching in numbers on the cell became a drunken fumble. Walking back to the car, I tripped twice and only once was from navigating the darkness. If I didn’t get some rest, Michael’s theoretical driving would be the only thing getting us around. Blissfully unaware of his potential chauffeuring duties, he slept on in the backseat. He was curled up all knees and elbows under the muffling blanket, and his brown hair shone in the overhead light. Deceptively pale, it looked almost as blond as I remembered it.
Sliding clumsily into the driver’s seat, I closed the door with quiet care. The huddled form in the back shifted but didn’t wake. I reclined the seat and folded arms against the raw breeze drifting through the empty windshield frame. It was in the fifties, unseasonably cold as it had been all the month of January. I let Michael keep both blankets. With exhaustion dragging me down with every heartbeat, a little cool air wasn’t going to keep me awake. It didn’t. I fell asleep between one breath and the next. It was as swift as a stumble and fall into a chasm. Slick fake leather grazed my cheek as I exhaled, and then I was gone.
Dreams of Konstantin followed me every step of the way. With a bloody hand resting on a seven-year-old Lukas’s shoulder, he smiled at me coldly through scarlet-stained teeth. Unaware of the crimson fingerprints that marred the white of his Spider-Man T-shirt, Lukas waved solemnly.
The chill that chased me through the night had nothing to do with the cold.
Chapter 13
It was raining when I woke up. I could hear it drumming steadily against the window glass. I luxuriated in it for a moment. There was nothing more satisfying in the world than to lie in a tangle of warm blankets and hide from a wet and dreary morning. I turned over on my side, moving my hand to tuck it under the pillow, when I realized something. There was no pillow, there were no blankets, and the rain wasn’t spattering on the window of my condo. It was hitting the roof of the car, and it was hitting me.