Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(150)

The kid put his hands over his eyes. His shoulders began to shake. From behind, he heard snippets of Tam’s conversation with the kid. “Stop that! Oh, God, don’t touch that, it’s filled with sulfuric acid!”

“Pretty,” the little girl gurgled. “Pretty.”

He looked at the stained mattresses, the wall lined with plastic bags stuffed with rotting trash that no one had bothered to haul out. “Holy shit,” he murmured softly. “Those filthy *s.”

The tall young guy stepped forward. “Hey! You speak English, mister?”

Nick swung around, startled. “You’re an American?”

“Hell, yeah! Me and my sister Carrie. The rest of these kids are Ukrainian, I think. They dumped us in this room today. And there was this other girl, too, Sveti. They took her away a couple hours ago. Look, man, have you seen my sister Becca around here?”

Nick’s chest flash-froze. The world fell away, whirling and shifting, everything changing around that phrase. “Who are you?” he asked.

“I’m Josh Cattrell,” the guy said. “That fat guy, the mobster dude, I think he’s got my big sister Becca locked up someplace too. Maybe she’s here. You haven’t seen her around, have you?”

Nick stared at the kid’s wide-set green eyes. Just like Becca’s. So were the reddened eyes of the girl hugging her knees on the floor. Josh and Carrie. Holy f*cking shit. What had he done?

He swallowed hard. “She’s not here.” His throat closed tight around the words, strangling them so they were barely audible.

“How do you know, if you don’t—hey.” The kids’s eyes narrowed to wary slits. “Wait a sec. You know Becca. Don’t you?”

“You could say that,” Nick said, his voice raw. “I thought I did.”

Suspicion dawned on the kid’s battered face. “Wait a freakin’ minute. You must be the thug,” he said. “Becca’s boy toy. The one Becca was having the hot affair with. You’re that guy I talked to on the phone, right?”

“Yeah. Did she meet you today? At a house on Gavin Street?”

“Yeah, that’s where Nadia took me,” Josh said. “She said it was her place, but I guess it was this mobster guy’s house all along—hey, man, are you OK? You look like you’re going to be sick, or something.”

Nick was so f*cked. More than f*cked. He was doomed.

“So where the hell is my sister?” Josh demanded.

He tried to suck in enough air to answer. “Somewhere she shouldn’t be,” he said. “I’ve got to haul ass to go fix it.” He turned to Tam, who was trying to throw her deadly pendants over her shoulder.

The baby was grabbing for them, chortling with glee.

“Becca was telling the truth,” he said. “I have to go get her. Zhoglo had her tagged. He could trace her to the place where I left her.”

“Ay. That’s bad. Go, then.” Tam’s eyes went bleak. “We’ll finish here without you. Run like the devil is after you, Nikolai. Because he is.”

He did, spurred on by bone-chilling fear, and wild, crazy hope.

Chapter

33

T here was screaming in the room behind the picture window. Something shattered against the wall. Zhoglo was in a bloody rage.

Eventually he would take it out on her. That was going to be bad.

But it hadn’t happened yet. One thing at a time. Becca still had a few moments to smell the pines, throw her head back, look up at the moon lighting the holes in the clouds, and weep for joy.

Josh and Carrie were safe. She’d seen it with her own eyes on the monitor. Seen Nick, bursting in at the last moment and stopping those monsters from cutting that poor girl. And if Sveti was saved, then Josh and Carrie were, too. And all the rest of them, too. Free and clear. Saved.

Zhoglo’s henchmen had forgotten the monitor, which kept on transmitting the live video feed. Sveti still lay on the table, with a woman in scrubs bending over her, checking her pulse. Seth stood next to her, half visible on the screen, grimly holding a gun on someone or many someones, all of whom were off camera. Someone was moaning and babbling in pain. Not Sveti. Seth didn’t appear at all concerned about it.

Becca was crying, but she didn’t care. She flung her head back, sniffling, listening to the trees rustle above her head. Dragging in lungfuls of the sweet breeze. A big circle opened in the clouds, lined with light. Stars, clouds, moon, trees. Beautiful.

Carrie and Josh would have to live it for her. Love it for her.

She ached with sorrow for her own loss, but Josh and Carrie would go on. They would grow up, choose mates, make families. Ripen into strong, happy people. Live long, full lives. She hoped for it desperately. Wished it for them, with all her strength, all her love.

And when it came to living fully, well. She may have skimped on life experience up to a week ago, but her affair with Nick had been so intense, it was like years of living crammed into a few short days.

She’d loved him. Fully. Not wisely, but well. That was a blessing. More than a lot of women had to look back on at the end of their lives.

She would cling to that as best she could, when the time came.



Nick had never driven so fast in his life. He floored it through the interior of the warehouse complex, his flesh creeping at the thought of Becca, staked out in the dark. The virgin sacrifice. Innocent.