Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(39)

Arkady Solokov had gotten away clean, with the girl. While Zhoglo’s armed, highly trained, ruthless guards tripped over their feet and died. The man was a professional killer—but who had hired him? And why?

The list of candidates was endless. It baffled him.

He was furious with himself. He should have known. In fact, he had known on some level. Solokov had been too calm, too sealed, too difficult to read. High-risk. He should have shot the man where he sat.

But no, Zhoglo had decided to wait, to observe Solokov’s behavior during the orgy he’d planned and the subsequent execution, before drawing his final conclusions. He had miscalculated. Nothing infuriated him more.

It did not track. Killing the girl would have pulled Solokov still deeper into the Vor’s confidence. In fact, he’d suspected that Solokov had brought the girl here just for that purpose. Aside from the other man’s wish to have something to f*ck on long, boring nights, she would have been a gift of blood for the Vor.

So. The girl’s continued existence was important to the man for some reason, but if this were the case, why in God’s name bring her here, to certain death? It made no sense.

It had been decades since he had gotten his own hands red. He had long ago delegated such duties to the eager young thugs on the bottom rung of the power ladder, hungry to show how ruthless they could be. But he was so furious, he wanted to slash and cut again. Watch hot blood spatter and fly. Feel muscles and nerves twist in agony against the slick blade of his knife. Hear the screams ring in his ears.

If he got his hands on the throat of that treacherous whore, he would kill her himself. No, both of them, taking turns, making it last for days. Until their throats were too ruined to scream.

The murder in his eyes had silenced even Zhoglo’s tedious dinner guest. The Heckler & Koch that Pavel had pointed in his face, and the presence of four bloody bodies had done their part to subdue him.

He cowered in the wingback chair, eyes wide.

Zhoglo had no reason to think that the doctor was responsible for this debacle, but he still wanted to kill the man. His air of entitlement was acutely annoying to a man who had grown up fighting the dogs on the streets of Kiev for scraps.

It would be enjoyable to watch Mathes grovel and beg for mercy. But as always, thrift prevailed. He had invested a fortune in this project. The profit potential was vast.

And the man did have a useful skill. Zhoglo himself was alive because of it. He rubbed the surgical scar, thinking of the young, muscular heart inside that pumped his blood so vigorously. It had belonged to the eighteen-year-old son of a man who had tried to defraud him with a seventy-million-dollar bank scam.

The man had been very contrite. He had, after all, other children.

The doctor’s eyes glittered with excitement. A thrill junkie, Zhoglo realized, with a twinge of disgust. Another addict. The world seemed overrun with them sometimes. That annoyed him too. It grated upon his nerves that this fool dared to associate with Vadim Zhoglo for the amusement value. No doubt he wanted to alleviate his boredom with his respectable, privileged life. The urge to kill the man swelled.

He took a calming breath, let the impulse subside. There would be killing enough later on to satisfy him. All in good time.

He turned to Pavel. Pavel seemed steady, but there was a subtle tremor to the gun that only Zhoglo’s trained eyes could see.

“You were the one who arranged for this man to handle security, were you not, Pavel?” Zhoglo asked. “You were the one who put this poisonous snake into my pocket.”

He made a quick gesture at Kristoff. The man stepped forward promptly, jerking his gun up to train it on Pavel. Best to be careful.

Beads of sweat hung on Pavel’s gray forehead. The man forced himself to speak, through stiff looking, whitened lips. “I knew the man, Vor. He was with Avia. He worked as a middleman for the—”

“He almost destroyed us,” Zhoglo echoed softly, nudging Yevgeni’s limp corpse with the shining toe of his dress shoe.

“When Pyotr—Pyotr was supposed to take care of security, and when he—” Pavel stopped, swallowed a few times.

“When he shot himself in the head, you mean? Your worthless nephew? Clearly, incompetence is an inherited family weakness.”

“After Pyotr…died, I had to find someone quickly.”

“You chose the wrong man,” Zhoglo said. “Whose idea was it, Pavel, to use Solokov? Who put it into your empty head?”

Pavel’s mouth worked. “I think, ah, Ludmilla mentioned to me that Solokov was in the area. I thought—having a man already in place…and his English is excellent, so—”

“Ludmilla? Who is Ludmilla?”

Pavel’s eyes squeezed shut, as if he were bracing for a blow. “She runs an escort service,” he said. “In Seattle.”

Zhoglo stared at him for a moment. “An escort service? Poor Marya. How disappointed she would be. But then again. Fucking whores is nothing compared to what you have already done to disappoint her. I doubt she would notice, or care, at this point.”

Pavel dropped heavily to his knees. The gun sagged in his limp grip. “Please, Vor,” he said raggedly. “Take me instead.”

Zhoglo scowled at him. “Take you? What are you talking about?”

“Send Sasha back to his mother. Take my heart, liver, eyes, kidneys, all of it. Barter them, sell them, whatever.”