He struggled to his feet, but before Frank could reach it the knob turned and the door opened.
The next moment Shaw and Frank were standing eye to eye with Anna’s parents.
Wolfgang’s face flushed. He reached out to grab Shaw, but Shaw stepped back, out of the man’s range.
“No, Wolfgang, no!” screamed his wife.
“This monster, this monster.” Wolfgang was so incensed he was sputtering, choking on the few words, his eyes all the time shooting dangerous volleys at Shaw, who hung back, unsure of what to do.
“Now just hold on,” Frank said. “He’s hurting too.”
“What are you doing here?” demanded Natascha, clutching at her husband’s arm, trying to hold him back.
“Do not talk to him, to that filth,” yelled Wolfgang. “He killed our daughter. He killed Anna.”
Now Shaw took a step forward, his eyes flashing like blue acid. “What the hell are you talking about? I had nothing to do with Anna’s death.”
“Shaw, let me handle this,” Frank said.
Wolfgang pointed a fat finger directly in Shaw’s face. “Anna would not be dead but for you. You killed her.”
Frank yelled, “Wait a minute. That’s bullshit!”
Shaw started to move past him, but Wolfgang suddenly charged forward, grabbed him around the throat, and his heavy bulk caused both men to fall back hard against the wall. Natascha screamed and tried to pull her husband off. “No! No! Wolfgang. No!”
Frank tried to tug Wolfgang off Shaw but the man was too heavy.
Wolfgang’s thick shoulder collided with Shaw’s wounded arm and he grunted in pain. He managed to lever the big German away from him by pushing a knee against his gut. When Wolfgang charged him again, Shaw sidestepped the far slower man, who was breathing so hard and whose face was so red, Shaw thought he might be having a heart attack. Wolfgang struck the wall. Before he could turn around again and attack, Shaw used his hand to pinch a nerve right next to the man’s thick neck. Wolfgang slumped to the floor crying out in pain.
The next instant Natascha’s heavy purse struck Shaw in the face, cutting his cheek. He felt the blood ooze down. Frank ripped the purse from the woman’s hand and threw it across the room. Natascha knelt next to her husband, her arms protectively around him.
His chest heaving, blood running in his mouth, Shaw stared down at them. “Is he all right?”
“You go. You go now!” Natascha screamed at him. “You leave us alone. You have done enough. Enough!”
“I had nothing-” Shaw stopped. What the hell is the use?
Frank was pulling him to the door. “Let’s get out of here before somebody really gets hurt.”
Shaw wiped the blood off, turned and left, shutting the door behind him.
As they walked down the stairs Frank said, “They were not told you were some kind of monster, Shaw. We just-”
Shaw suddenly stopped, sat down on the steps, and let out a sob so loud that it seemed to clang off the walls like the boom of artillery. The remaining blood on his face was washed away by the tears that were coming in droves. For ten minutes he wept uncontrollably, his body thrashing from side to side.
Frank just stood there looking down, his hands clenched in fists, his own eyes moist.
And then Shaw stopped crying as abruptly as he’d started. He stood up, wiped his face dry.
“Shaw?” Frank said, eyeing him warily. “You okay?”
“I’m perfect,” he answered in a mechanical tone. Then he rushed down the steps, leaving Frank to gape after him.
When Shaw hit the street he started jogging. Jogging with a purpose. He was done with mourning. What was the point of trying to cope by letting the normal grieving process take place? He would never get over Anna’s death. So now he had to get back to something that really mattered: revenge. He would not lose sight of that again. And he would never stop until he’d gotten it.
And he knew just where to start.
Katie James.
This time he wouldn’t take no for an answer.
CHAPTER 62
“I CHECKED ON YOUR STORY about Krakow and about your father,” Katie said. She and Aron Lesnik were sitting in his tiny room at the hostel near the Thames in a far less fashionable part of London than The Phoenix Group digs. She’d brought him food and coffee, which he was devouring as she spoke.
“You check?” he said between mouthfuls of ham sandwich and crisps.
“Of course I checked. Journalists just assume everyone is lying to them.”
“I not lie to you!” Lesnik exclaimed and then took a gulp of coffee.
She looked at her notes. “Your father was Elisaz Lesnik, editor of a daily newspaper in Krakow. He was killed in 1989.”
“The Soviets murdered him. Poland was fighting for freedom then. We had Lech Walesa, the liberator, fighting for us. But my father he writes the truth and the Soviets they do not like that. They come one night when I am little boy and then he is dead.”
“That was never proven,” she pointed out.
“I do not need proof! I know!” Lesnik pounded his fist against the wall.
“So you have quite the grudge against the Russians?”
He gaped at her. “You do not believe me? You think I make this up because I hate Russians? I see people dead. I see blood everywhere. You ask me questions, I tell you truth.” He stared at her defiantly and took a vicious bite of his sandwich.
“So why are you afraid to go to the police?”
“I go to police and they think I have something to do with it. To them, Pole is like Russian. And then they tell people and killers come after me. I see what they do to my father. I no want to die like that.”
“You say you’re good with computers; mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“Ask.”
She fired off some highly technical questions that she didn’t understand at all, but that a techno-friend had given her along with the answers. Lesnik responded to each of them correctly.
“Do you have computer you want me to fix, if you still not convinced?” he said crossly.
“Can’t blame a girl for checking,” she said sweetly. “Now about this Harris fellow? Tell me about him.” She’d gotten a description of Harris and wanted to see if it jibed with what Lesnik said.
“He is okay guy. Old. White hair, smells like cigar. We talk about job. He likes me, I think. He say it is good place to work, this Phoenix place. I drink some water and then I go to bathroom down the hall. Coming back is when I hear shots downstairs. I hide. Like I say already to you.”
Katie was writing all of this down. “Okay, now talk to me about-”
She didn’t finish because the door had been kicked open and he was standing there.
“Shaw! How did you know…?” She glared at him. “You followed me!”
He didn’t bother to respond. Shaw only had eyes for Lesnik, who’d shrunk back in the corner, his half-eaten ham sandwich forgotten, his coffee spilled on the floor.
He marched toward the small man, who pressed back until the wall stopped him from going anywhere else. Lesnik cried out, “Don’t let him hurt me. Don’t let him. Please!”
“Shaw, you’re scaring him.”
Shaw took a fistful of Lesnik’s shirt in his good hand. “He should be scared.”
“You say no one else know!” screamed Lesnik as he looked pitifully at Katie.
“Shaw, let him go.”
“You’re going to tell me everything you saw and heard that day. And you better not leave one damn apostrophe out! I just heard the part about you going to the john and hiding, now pick it up from there.”
Lesnik looked ready to faint, his knees buckled.
“Shaw!”
Katie grabbed at his good shoulder to try and pull him off, which was akin to a gnat harassing an elephant.
“Don’t get in the way, Katie,” Shaw said menacingly as he glanced at her.
Lesnik, however, used this moment of distraction to pluck up his courage and nail Shaw with his fist directly on the man’s bandaged arm.