Don't Look Back, page 32
Rand crossed to the door when he heard the sound of shattering glass through his headphones. He didn’t lose stride. Assuming Kira would be safer in Laskin’s household as opposed to Kulik’s had been an epic fuckup. But then, they hadn’t known Laskin would leave the siblings alone, or that Kira would learn enough from their conversation to make herself a clear and present danger to Reuben.
He reached for the doorknob and yanked it down. It didn’t budge.
He was locked in.
He hesitated. It was imperative that his activities of the last two hours remain secret if he and Kira were going to leave this house alive. He could save Kira, but only if he stuck to his role.
He kicked at the door and cursed. “Funny fucking joke, asshole.” He directed his voice down the hall, toward the office where Grigory’s flunky worked.
He kicked at the knob again then spotted the flunky through the window as he ran toward the conference room door. He was almost there when Rand’s fourth kick shattered the frame and the door slammed open. Splinters of wood sprayed the hall and man.
“What the fuck? Mr. Laskin will—” He ran out of words as he took in the damage.
“If you didn’t want me to break the door, you shouldn’t have locked me in.”
“What kind of asshole destroys a door like that? I gave you my cell number!”
“This kind of asshole. What were you thinking, locking me in?”
“You shouldn’t have been in the tech room! And the maid doesn’t belong in this hall!”
Rand was glad to confirm the guy had acted on his own. He probably thought he was being clever in locking the door. Nadia out. Rand in.
Think again, asshole.
“One of us is Grigory’s guest. The other is his tool. Guess which one you are?”
Rand would feel bad if the guy didn’t work for a murdering prick. But also, he’d locked Rand in a conference room when Kira needed him. He pushed him aside, perhaps putting a little unnecessary force in the motion, and continued down the hall.
He’d tuned out the sounds while dealing with man and door, but he vaguely remembered hearing Reuben express delight at hurting his sister.
The house was massive, and Kira was at the far end from the office wing. He wanted to run. Could he run?
Laskin didn’t have a camera on him now.
In his ear, Freya said, “Her phone is dead and the pendant camera and mic just went down. I don’t know where she is.”
Rand ran. As he did, he said, “She must still be in the house. It’s only been a few minutes.” He’d made a mistake and spoken directly to Freya, but he didn’t care.
Where. Is. Kira?
He located the gallery and spotted an overturned pillar. Broken glass littered the floor. That must’ve been the crash he’d heard. He spotted streaks of blood on the floor by the glass shards.
Kira’s blood?
Footsteps behind him had him turning toward the door. He recognized Aleksandr from his photos. “Where is Kira?”
“Who are you?”
“Her boyfriend.”
Aleksandr smirked. “This is awkward. She’s my fiancée.”
He put menace into his voice. “Where is she?”
Aleksandr’s gaze dropped to the shards and blood. “She had a mishap and is getting cleaned up.”
“Bullshit.”
The familiar beat of a helicopter coming to life sounded from outside, growing louder as the blades picked up speed.
Rand shoved past Laskin’s son and searched for an exit. He spotted a door to the pool area and yanked it open. He skirted the infinity pool, following the sound of rotor blades to a field beyond the gardens.
The helicopter lifted. He scanned the cabin for a sign Kira was inside. The sun reflected off the window. All he could see was blinding yellow light. After the helo cleared the buildings and trees, the tail swung around and headed southeast. Back to the island of Malta.
Was Reuben taking her home, or someplace even worse?
Chapter Fifty-Three
Teague’s hunch about the hiring and security clearance of Ben Kinder paid off. At least, everyone thought it had.
It didn’t take long to identify a pattern of questionable clearances in the last eight months. Five men all taking low-level jobs with base access. Three were civilian employees at JEB Little Creek. They all had impeccable résumés that made them overqualified for jobs on the lower end of the government pay scale. Two worked for military housing—which was run by a contractor, but employees still had a background check. Odds were, the person who’d cleared each applicant had a big, fat bank account waiting for them in Malta. Laskin and Kulik didn’t even have to fuss with international banking to make the payoff.
Of note, the housing employees had access to all the bases in the region, including the NAS Oceana Dam Neck Annex—the home of DEVGRU, better known as SEAL Team Six.
The big breakthrough came when they realized the initials of the men matched those used in cryptic chats they’d found on Kinder’s laptop. With the hiring data, they had names and addresses to match the conspirators.
It had only been a few hours since Dr. Hanson had blown the lid open by identifying Ben Kinder as a former employee of Kulik’s, and NSWC had already identified the workplace of each man.
It was 1000 in DC and 1600 in Malta. Most civilians who could afford to had taken today off. Combined with the Independence Day holiday tomorrow, they had a four-day weekend culminating in barbecues and fireworks on the bay.
While none of the identified conspirators had officially taken leave, none had reported to work that morning. Another sign they were on the right track.
Reuben Kulik’s words to Dr. Hanson just before he assaulted her echoed in Teague’s mind. “You’ll find out. Tomorrow.”
He was worried about Dr. Hanson, but his focus had to remain here, especially knowing they’d been correct in assuming the attack would happen on the Fourth of July. The problem was, they still had no clue what Laskin had planned, and they now had both Little Creek and Dam Neck as potential targets.
Rand was about to lose his motherfucking mind. His first challenge had been getting to the boat. He’d had to resort to stealing Aleksandr’s cherry-red convertible from the driveway when Laskin’s driver refused to deliver him back to the marina.
It was better that he drove himself. Maltese drivers were known for being reckless, and Rand fit right in, cutting several minutes from the drive time.
Once on the water, Rand opened up the engines, and the boat raced across the sea. Wind whipped at his face and the engine roar blocked out everything. Still, in his head, he could hear the sounds of Kira being beaten by her brother.
He barely remembered the crossing from Gozo to Malta and the harbor just outside Valletta, but suddenly, he was there, and he slowed the boat to a crawl as he entered the no wake zone.
He demanded another update and got the same answers as before.
Kira was missing.
Freya had searched Laskin’s security footage to see if Kira had boarded the helicopter with Reuben, but none of the cameras focused on the landing pad. NSWC searched the air to determine where the helicopter had gone. All they knew was it had not gone straight to the Kulik villa as expected. It must have stopped somewhere first.
Drones monitoring Kulik’s property had caught Reuben—and only Reuben—exiting the helo and entering the villa.
A team of SEALs was ready to deploy from Sigonella, but there was no point in sending them when they didn’t have a destination.
He docked the boat with the skill of a lifetime on the water, locked the helm, and descended to the stern. To Freya, he said, “Still no signal?”
“You know I’d tell you if there was. But it’s early yet. She might not be conscious.”
He wanted to puke. This was a thousand times worse than last December, when Kira had been taken by another billionaire who wanted to control her. He’d come to Malta to protect her, but instead, he’d put her in the line of fire.
It didn’t matter that she’d agreed to the change in mission. He’d still failed her.
She hadn’t sent a plea for help this time. No. He’d listened live and then to the recording. No help from her lips to be heard. Just a sharp gasp of pain before she stopped making any sounds at all.
Rand would tear Reuben Kulik limb from limb.
He removed the tactical gear he’d received in the darkest hours of the night from the lazarette. As soon as they had a location, other SEALs would join him. Until then, he was alone.
He placed his body armor and weapons on the bed where he’d last made love to Kira. A few feet away was the shower in which he hadn’t made love to her when they’d finally gone to bed last night.
Another promise broken.
Everything ached. Her head. Her back. Her thighs. Kira slowly came to consciousness, and the stinging pain from the cuts on her thighs were the least of her worries. At first.
But as the nerves woke along with her brain, her legs throbbed. A dozen—probably more—cuts reopened as she shifted on the hard ground.
Where was she?
Beneath her hands and cut-up thighs, she felt dirt and sand and rocks. The darkness was complete and the air cool in a way that wasn’t possible in Malta without air-conditioning. Unless she was underground.
She’d wanted to see the Ħal Saflieni Hypogeum. Perhaps her brother had been kind enough to arrange a private tour of the Neolithic archaeological site. Generous considering tickets were impossible to get at the last minute.
But somehow, she didn’t think that was what Reuben had done. Not that he wouldn’t be happy to bury her in a prehistoric necropolis. He’d made his feelings toward her clear. But it was unlikely even a billionaire could get access to dump her body in one of Malta’s most precious World Heritage sites.
There was another person in here with her. But they would be no help. From the stench, she guessed they’d been dead for at least a day. Maybe two?
Well, Reuben had said he’d take her to Cousin Andre. Apparently, he was a man of his word. Not comforting given that he wanted her dead and had said as much.
She ran a hand down her body. Her pendant was gone. No phone. No purse. He hadn’t bothered with tying her up, which meant wherever he’d dumped her had to be secure. But then, who needed bound hands when she couldn’t see said hands in front of her face?
Reuben had pocketed her pendant and smashed her phone. Not that either of those could transmit from underground. They’d be useless to her here. There was nothing like several feet of limestone and earth to prevent a signal.
She ran her fingers through her hair.
Help me, Obi-Wan. You’re my only hope.
Damn, Star Wars again.
In this instance, Obi-Wan was Leah Ellis, the drone engineer who’d asked Freya to beta test her new toy.
Kira searched her scalp and felt a rush of relief when she found the burr-like ball Reuben had missed in his search. She wished she had a light to examine the tiny device that was a half centimeter in diameter. She pressed it between her fingers and counted to ten, just like she’d practiced this morning. When she released it, she felt the spider legs unfurl with a touch that flicked against her skin, soft as butterfly wings.
She should have waited until she’d explored the space, but she’d been too eager to see if she still had the key to her rescue. Now she’d have to crawl around in the dark, holding the precious item in one hand.
In the end, she decided to skip the three-limb crawl because she needed both hands to explore in the pitch darkness. She placed the tiny spider drone on top of her head and checked periodically to make sure it hadn’t moved as she crawled around the mazelike space.
At least, she thought it was a maze. Very hypogeum-like. At last, she found steps cut into the earth, but they went down, not up.
She kept looking. Even if she had to go down before she could go up, she would wait to explore in that direction.
She moved slowly in the dark and always knew she was close to where she’d started when the stench of dead fake cousin grew stronger.
She had no idea how much time passed as she searched. Thirty minutes? An hour? Time had no meaning in the relentless dark.
She moved one slow inch at a time, necessary to avoid precipitous drops into an unexpected void. Several times, she moved a hand forward to find no ground to place it on.
After she’d likely gone in circles at least three times, she found another opening that led to more stairs. These weren’t cut into limestone; they were metal.
And they went up.
She climbed to the top and felt the door. Wood with a sturdy metal lock and a knob that wouldn’t budge. No light came through the edges, but she felt a gap at the bottom. It could be night outside, or it led to another underground chamber. Either way, it was her best bet for an escape route.
She plucked the drone spider from her hair and held it on her hand by the gap under the door, then spoke the wake-word and gave the spider drone the instruction that could save her life. “Find a signal. Transmit location.”
The spider came to life, and she felt the feathery touch of its legs as it left her palm and slipped under the door, then she crawled back down the stairs and found a crevice in which the stench of dead fake cousin was least overwhelming.
Now she would wait and hope the drone transmitted her location before Reuben returned.
Chapter Fifty-Four
“You need to go to Kulik’s. Can you do that without killing him?” Freya’s question was deadly serious.
Rand gave it the consideration it deserved. She was right. His character would show up at Kulik’s and demand to see Kira, having no idea that she’d a) been abducted, and b) seen video of him kissing Nadia. But he did see blood and broken glass and had met her supercilious “fiancé.” Hostility was warranted.
“Sixty-forty chance I won’t hurt him. Depends on what the prick tells me.”
“Sixty-forty isn’t good enough, Fallon.”
Again, she was right.
He closed his eyes and saw the blood on the floor. He remembered how Kira had looked in December when he’d turned her over and saw the cut on her forehead and bruises from multiple blows to her face.
His fault then. His fault now.
There was a click on the line, and he realized Freya had dropped NSWC from their connection. This was now a private conversation. “I love her too, Rand. In a lot of ways, she’s the only family I have left. From before.”
He heard the tears in her voice and felt his own eyes burn.
His feelings for Kira couldn’t be conveyed with words. She was, quite simply, everything.
And he’d left her vulnerable to that prick.
He cleared his throat. “I can do it. But if he even hints that he’s hurt her, it’s open season. It’s what Reece Foresman would do.”
And that was who he’d been playing today. The thriller writer who killed with words—“Sweetheart, I’m also deadly with paper”—and bodybuilder who knew how to throw a punch.
“Fair.” Freya let out a shuddering breath. “We’ll get her back. He can’t risk killing her, not when his father was expecting to see her. She’s alive somewhere, waiting until he needs her again. He’s hidden every move he’s made against Kira from his father. He won’t blow it now.”
Rand believed that. It was the only reason he wasn’t charging in with a team of SEALs already.
He dressed carefully for his visit to the Kulik villa. A man confused about why his girlfriend left without a word. Worried because someone had clearly been hurt when an expensive piece of artwork broke.
He drove to the estate, and the gate opened without him even having to slow the vehicle. He parked by the fountain and marched up the path to the ornate doors.
Reuben met him in the entryway. “What do you want?”
“Kira.”
His brow furrowed. “Why? Did you lose her somewhere?”
Rand’s right hand curled into a fist. He took a deep breath. “I was told she left Laskin’s estate on the helicopter with you.” He was told no such thing, but the lie was reasonable.
“Who said that? The maid you kissed? Kira saw the video, you know.”
“She came on to me. I humored her because it was the only way to get rid of her.”
“Right. I hope your fiction is better than that or you’ll starve.”
Rand took a step closer to Reuben, entering his personal space and spreading his shoulders in a posture sure to intimidate the smaller man.
This guy had hurt Kira. Rand didn’t know what he’d done—Freya said the locket had gone into a pocket after the initial blows—but he’d heard Kira’s groans and Reuben’s nasty words.
“Where. Is. Kira?”
“I have no idea.”
Footsteps sounded on the staircase, and Rand looked up to see Luka Kulik descending the wide, curved steps to the right of the entry hall.
“You again,” Luka said. “Where is my daughter? She said she was coming to see her mother’s paintings.”
Rand had noticed the man’s yellowish skin yesterday. Was it more pronounced today or was it the lighting? Could be hepatitis, but also, there were several poisons that triggered jaundice. He wouldn’t put it past Reuben to be slowly poisoning his father. If the man already had a chronic hepatitis B diagnosis, it could be assumed to be a flare-up.
If he was dying—or believed he was dying—it could explain his desire to see Kira to the point of luring her to Malta. Even the July third deadline made sense. He couldn’t let her put off the trip, not when he didn’t have much time left.
No wonder Reuben was scared. He’d been so close to having it all. His father’s fortune, a political ally in Laskin, and a strike on the US military that would secure his political position.
