Chapter 16

Chapter 16

Gregor

The ride back was too quiet. The matter of Michelle’s drawing hung between us, unspoken. I knew why, and so I kept quiet about it until we were home and Michelle had eaten her lunch and gone down for an afternoon nap.

Once that happened, Alissa sat down next to me on the couch, hands folded in her lap. She didn’t look at me for several seconds, and I felt cold reality running a finger down my spine. She already suspected something. I should just tell her. Pull off the band aid.

But I couldn’t. She was depending on me for her safety, and that of her child. If I scared her away now, she would end up in a perilous situation again. I hadn’t seen any sign of her ex since our confrontation, but I knew his fear of me might still be overcome by his obsession.

“So…” she started, and I turned and forced myself to look at her. “Do you want to tell me what really happened the night you rescued Michelle?”

“As I told you, I rescued her at gunpoint. It was a very tense scene, and, apparently, I made an impression on Michelle.”

“She seems to think you’re a hero. So do I. But I also think you’re holding back on what happened.” She looked me right in the eye as I wished she was a touch less observant.

“Look, if I’ve skimped on the details, it’s because they’re ugly and some of my sources do not want to be named. I did everything I could not to expose Michelle to anything violent, but it’s pretty clear she figured out something about how I got them to let her go.”

“And the burning house?”

All the words caught in my throat. How the hell was I going to explain that? “I…might have lost my temper when I found out what they were doing to kids.”

She stared at me. I waited, bracing myself. “Jesus,” she breathed finally. At least she was still talking to me, and not freaking out. “I’m guessing you got Michelle cleared out of there first?”

“Absolutely. Found her a hiding place outside after I bundled her up properly.”

“I…holy crap. Um, sorry, I just don’t know very many people who have burned a house down.”

“It wasn’t a house, it was more like a prison. A place of torture. I didn’t want to leave them with the ability to just take the whole thing up again as soon as they got their hands on more kids.”

She nodded, chewing her lip. I felt a tiny, tentative scrap of relief. “I guess I can’t blame you, but aren’t you worried about getting in trouble?”

“Not really. What are they going to do, go to the police and complain that their kiddie porn studio got burned down?” I was thankful that the story had dropped off the front pages of the newspapers, to be replaced instead by news of ice storms and the associated chaos. Alissa was probably too caught up in the tragedy of her own life, to pay much heed to the headlines of ‘Deadly explosion rocks quiet Highland Park neighborhood’. Fuck, I hated having to lie to her about what I do, but it’s the only way.

She let out a high laugh that sounded a little nervous. “I guess not.”

“Exactly.” I smiled at her, and she smiled tentatively back.

“Well, I mean, as long as nothing from it comes back to bite us.”

“It won’t,” I promised, even knowing that might be premature. “You’re not freaked out and planning to bail on me, are you?”

She hesitated, and then shook her head. “I don’t think I would ever have the nerve to burn a place down, or rescue someone by holding their captors at gunpoint. But, thinking about it, I’m glad you did.”

I sighed in relief. “Good. I don’t want you thinking I run around doing things like that for fun or anything. I do it…” I trailed off, suddenly forced to search for the right words. I do it because my boss orders it. I do it because the organization needs it. I do it because someone betrayed us, or is our enemy. “I have only done things like that because it was required of me.”

“Required?” I didn’t like the look on her face.

“As in, I either didn’t have a choice or knew I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t. Like burning that kiddie porn studio down.” After murdering everyone inside who was an adult.

I couldn’t feel bad about that, but I didn’t want to upset Alissa any more than I already had either.

“I get it,” she said finally, though the note of doubt in her voice told me she didn’t. “They deserved at least that, and with the police doing nothing, there was nobody around to hit back at those people but you.”

“Yes. Hence the picture.”

She went quiet for a nerve-wrackingly long time, her eyes fixed on the backs of her hands. But then, finally, she looked back up at me. “Okay. Just don’t make a habit of arson and all that, okay? It’d get really hard for me to explain to our daughter.”

I laughed gently, a bit shocked by the joke. But she had a good point. “Of course not. I promise.”

But deep down, I knew I wasn’t off the hook. One day, I would have to tell her much more if she wanted to stay with me. And though she was braver and more open-minded than I’d expected, I didn’t know if she could handle it when she found out that killing for the bratva was my job.

***

Vasily still hadn’t answered my message, and he hadn’t called me in to give out more work. It struck me as strange—there were often long spans of time between jobs due to the nature of my work, but he had been talking about a crackdown. Yet now he wasn’t answering my calls, and neither was Sergei.

Troubled, I left my phone on and put it on vibrate before leaving that night. Alissa was sound asleep in my bed with Feodor curled next to her, and Michelle was sound asleep in hers. They were safe. And I had a job to do, though it wasn’t a paying one, and it wasn’t for Vasily. It was for Alissa. It was for Michelle. It was for every vulnerable kid in this city.

The drive to the Ivanovs’ daycare barely took me fifteen minutes. It was a small property with two bungalows crammed onto it, the front one converted into the daycare facility. Tall, overgrown trees lined the property on three sides, which was secured by the kind of tall iron gate that one found at a cemetery. It looked completely out of place in front of a daycare.

Of course, it was securely locked and topped with spikes. I considered it as I drove past, then turned onto a side street and parked. The tall trees, the tall fence—on the surface it might look like they took the safety of their preschoolers seriously, but now I knew what they were capable of, these were more for the purpose of privacy and security for whatever hellish acts they decided to commit. But they had outsmarted themselves.

I free climbed one of the tall trees, climbed out onto a sturdy limb overhanging the property, and used a length of rope to lower myself to the grass. I looked around quickly, looking for cameras, watchdogs, anything that might actually threaten me. Nothing. Both houses were dark and silent.

Breaking into the daycare was ridiculously easy. I used a credit card to pop the latch. There was no deadbolt, I supposed that they thought the spiked gate was deterrent enough for anyone who wanted to break in. I slipped inside into the darkness, casing the place for people, information, evidence. I knew what they had been up to, but I had a nagging feeling there was more to the story than what I had been told or had found on those confiscated laptops.

I found two more laptops that went into my bag, along with two hefty rolls of twenty-dollar bills I fished out of one of the desks. No cameras. Apparently, they were a lot less security conscious than they appeared on the surface—or they didn’t want footage of what they themselves were doing.

It took me less than half an hour to clear the first building. That left the back house, where I was almost certain I would find the swine who had done this to Michelle.

Or, at least, some of them. Once this was done and the Ivanovs were ready for their graves, I had to make sure that this nightmare truly was over. No stragglers, no unpunished scumbags. But this time, I had to let them live a few minutes while I got all the information out of them that I could.

There was nobody in the yard and grounds, no cameras covering it. It astonished me. The place I had rescued Michelle from had been full of security. Here, there was none. It didn’t make any sense. In fact, as I started creeping around the second house’s perimeter, I noticed spots where the cameras had been removed recently. Why the hell would they cut down on their own security? What were they so eager to avoid getting filmed that they would remove the cameras?

I didn’t like this. I didn’t get scared, but the hairs on the back of my neck were starting to prickle. There was a car sitting in the driveway, so someone was clearly home. But as I approached the driveway side of the house, I noticed something odd. The car was completely glazed with ice.

I frowned and approached it, eye out for a dashcam. The whole thing gleamed, the ice was an inch thick in spots, and had turned into a curtain of icicles along its bottom edges. Even the tires were iced over and flat on the bottoms, like they were frozen to the ground. That car had gone through the last snowstorm and successive thaws undisturbed, as if it hadn’t been used in days.

The whole thing felt off, but I still didn’t understand why. My instincts were prickling at me, telling me I should keep my gun handy and my wits about me. But I couldn’t locate the danger.

I tried checking through the windows of the house. It was pitch-black inside, and heavy curtains hid most of the interior. I pulled out my night vision binoculars and checked again. The place looked empty. But when I checked the bedroom windows, I saw two human-sized shapes under the covers. They were home.

I should have been reassured by that, but as I peered at those shapes under the blankets, my hackles were still up. Something wasn’t right, the binoculars worked by thermal imaging, and the heat signature was far weaker than you’d expect. Not knowing what else to do, I drew my pistol and headed around to the back door, expecting it to have a weaker lock.

It had a window in it, and I peered through the shades on it while I tried the credit card trick. This latch was stronger, so I pulled out my glass cutter instead.

The cutter had a suction cup that I stuck to the glass, and a blade on a string to make a circle around it. I cut a hole a little bigger than my forearm and pulled the glass back out, then grabbed my night vision binoculars again to check inside.

As I put my face near the hole, a rush of cold, stinking air alerted me. It smelled like chemicals and rotting bodies. It was the smell they added to natural gas so you could tell if there was a gas leak. Every single one of the burner knobs on the stove across from me was turned on, without a hint of flame.

As I realized this, I noticed a faint light on the table. I turned my sights on it and took a shocked step backwards when I saw what it was.

A wire led from it to the door. Booby trap, my brain said, registering the bundle of plastic explosive and detonator on the table.

But all that gas didn’t even need a detonator. All it needed was a spark, which could happen any second.

I ran straight to the side fence and out, moving as fast as I could to get the other house between me and the rigged one. My mind was yammering that they knew I was coming, they set me up, someone warned them, and then my brain was swept clear by a deep boom and the sound of shattering glass.

A wave of hot air hit me from behind, lifting me off my feet and sending me flying toward the front gate. Chunks of the car sailed past me on my left, some of them on fire. Pieces of house were landing on the lawn all around me as I hit the icy ground and slid belly-down across it. My body was half numb from the impact. My chest hurt when I breathed—probably a fractured rib or two.

I pushed myself up gingerly and turned to see the front house with the daycare on fire and the one behind it obliterated. Parts of the lawn were burning, and some of the ice had melted instantly into puddles that now steamed and even bubbled in spots. A mushroom of smoke and ash was dissipating over the second house’s wreckage, and the roar of its blaze stung my explosion-damaged ears.

Some motherfucker had just tried to blow me up. The Ivanovs were either dead in that room, or those were decoys and they’d already skipped town.

A chunk of chimney had sailed over my head and slammed into the front gate, knocking it completely off its hinges. I hurried out, thinking only of warning Vasily, Sergei…Alissa.

But as I reached my car, checking under it and under the hood for tampering first, something else popped into my head again. Who the hell knew I was coming? Who sold me out?

There were only two people who had the knowledge and opportunity to do this, and thinking of either of them made me sick. For the only men to know that I was coming after the Ivanovs here were the same two I wanted to warn.

I didn’t call either of them. My head was spinning, so I followed my gut. And my gut said keep silent and get the hell home to those I cared about.

Who might also be the next on my enemy’s kill list.