69. Radimir

69

RADIMIR

The panel closed and I was in blackness again. I wasted precious seconds getting my phone out and turning on the flashlight, then ran to the wall and felt the wall panel. It was smooth, painted metal like all the others: if I hadn’t seen it open for Spartak, I wouldn’t have even known it was a door. I pushed on it like he did, but it refused to open: he must have locked it from the other side. My plan was falling apart: I hadn’t bet on him having a secret escape route. I’d glimpsed stairs behind the door, leading down. I had to get downstairs and find Bronwyn, now, or he’d escape with her and—my stomach flipped. I didn’t want to think about what he and his men would do to her.

First, though, I had another problem. The last of Spartak’s bodyguards had been fumbling with his phone, trying to get his flashlight on so he could see. But now I’d turned mine on, he was going for his gun instead?—

There was no time to turn my flashlight off. I dodged, and covered my phone with my jacket, and we were in darkness again. A shot rang out and I felt a bullet hiss past me, horribly close.

I ran for where I thought the noise had come from, hoping to shoulder-charge him. But instead of whacking into him, I stumbled on and on...and then suddenly had to pull up short, arms windmilling, when I felt a breeze in front of me: I’d very nearly run straight out of the hole in the glass wall and gone plunging to my death. I stood there shaking and sweating for a second, trying to figure out where the bodyguard was. Then he slammed into my side, and we crashed to the floor together, rolling and struggling in total darkness.

Broken glass crunched under me. Then he punched me in the face, and I reeled, dazed. Another punch from the other side and now I was barely conscious: I couldn’t avoid them, couldn’t even see where they were coming from…

Bright white light suddenly washed across us. I could see the man straddling me as he looked up in surprise...and then there was a shot, and he fell backwards off me. Alexei stepped into view, just as coolly professional as I remembered him all those years ago.

I nodded my thanks, and something passed between us. My throat tightened, thinking of all the times I should have called him, over the last decade, all the times I could have made things right, and didn’t.

He reached down and offered his hand, and I took it gratefully. “He took her,” I told him as he hauled me to my feet. “Downstairs somewhere.”

Alexei stepped over to the hole in the glass wall and looked down at the scene below, shining the flashlight on his gun so we could see. It was total panic down there, hundreds of people, mostly drunk or on drugs, crushed together in total darkness. The stairs and balconies would be even worse. And Spartak’s men would be everywhere, looking for us. “Is not good,” Alexei summarized.

“I know,” I said softly. The plan had been to grab Bronwyn and run: we should be gone by now. “But we’ve got to find her.”

Alexei nodded and handed me a gun: a pistol with a flashlight attached, the same as his. I took a deep breath...and we set off into the darkness.