In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(13)

He’d rifled through her boxes with latex-gloved hands and had found nothing of interest. No computers, tablets, or external drives. No photographs. Her electronics must be at Cray’s Cove, where she’d been holed up for days, to his jaw-cracking frustration. No matter. Tonight, he would extract everything she knew. He was a very good interrogator.

Jason Kang, one of the Triad snakehead thugs he’d hired for this special job, was peering out the window. Cretin.

“Taxi at the curb,” Kang said. “She’s getting out.”

“Get your head out of the f*cking window!” Josef snarled.

Kang jerked his head down out of sight, his thick face sullen and clouded. He was not especially bright, nor was his colleague Chan Yun, waiting downstairs in the van. Both men were fresh out of prison and very much out of favor with their previous employer. But Josef couldn’t complain about their incompetence, since he’d specifically gone shopping for Triad-connected thugs who were expendable. Men whose former employers would be genuinely glad to see the last of them.

Neither man would live out the night, once he had spread prints and genetic materials all over Svetlana’s apartment, and inside her lovely body. He had paid a hefty fee for this arrangement, but the men would die happy, he thought, philosophically. Out on a high note.

And Svetlana had made it so easy, getting in everyone’s face, being a naughty, inconvenient girl who never knew when to shut her mouth. There would be so many fingers to point when she disappeared.

And not a one of them would point at Josef or his boss. Seamless.

He picked up a framed picture of her from the topmost box. Bikini-clad, on a beach, holding a laughing baby girl, her arm around a mop-haired child of ten or so. Beautiful smile. So like Sonia, but dewy and fresh. He indulged in a brief, vivid fantasy of sparing her life and running away with her. Of her, showing her gratitude for his mercy on her knees, with his cock in her mouth. Anxiously sucking. Mmmm.

He shut the fantasy regretfully down. There could be no turning back. Too much money at stake, and women more beautiful than Ardova could be bought by the truckload at a fraction of the cost.



The cab slowed at the renovated Victorian house where Sveti had rented an apartment for the past couple of years. A strange, clawing desperation rose up inside her as she fumbled for the fare. Something precious was coming to an end. Her Sam fantasies, entering a new phase. Shifting from glowing possibility to bittersweet memory.

She wasn’t ready for the shift. It pressed her chest, hurt her heart. The driver accepted his fare and tip. The cab pulled away.

“Stop!”

The car lurched to a startled halt.

Sveti reeled, swaying on the sidewalk. Shocked at the enormous sound that had just emerged from her body. Not a yell. Not a screech.

No, that had been a wake-the-dead bellow, like a maddened bull.

He shifted into reverse and backed to where she stood. She jolted into movement, wrenched open the car’s back door.

“Did you forget something, miss?” he asked.

“Yes.” She slid inside before she could chicken out. “I forgot where I was going. Will you take me to 233 Hauser Street?”

The driver looked perplexed. “It’ll have to be a new fare. I already zeroed out the meter.”

“That’s fine.” The vehicle surged forward. Her heart was bruising her ribs from the inside. Oh, God, oh God. She was about to smash herself full-on into a brick wall. Just to see how it felt. For the pure, bloody, messy, masochistic fun of it.

What the hell. She was no stranger to pain.



Amazingly, Kang dared to peer out the window again, tempting Josef to kill him now before he f*cked things up any further. “I told you, get down!”

“She won’t see me,” Kang said, his voice defensive. “She’s in the cab again, turning the corner. So’s the van. Chan Yun’s following.”

Josef bolted for the window. Fuck. He seized the walkie-talkie. “Chan Yun!” he barked. “You’re following her cab?”

“Yes,” Yun replied. “They’re a block ahead and heading north.”

“Keep on them,” he snarled. He’d been so primed to touch her.

His cell vibrated. His boss. Micromanaging, as always. “Yes?”

“Have you questioned her yet?” the vor demanded.

“Not yet. She arrived, but got back in her taxi and left again without coming upstairs.”

Cherchenko was silent for a beat. “So. You lost her. Again.”

“No, sir. I have never lost her. Chan Yun is following the—”

“And you trust that snakehead filth?”

Josef’s nostrils flared. “He’s competent enough to follow a cab.”

“Can it really be so difficult to subdue a little doe-eyed hundred-and-ten-pound cunt, Josef? Have you lost your touch?”

“She was up all last night with her upstairs neighbor, packing and trying on clothes,” Josef said through his teeth. “The night before, the landlord had a barbecue on his lawn and half the neighborhood was there until dawn. Before that, she was up at Steele and Janos’s residence on the Washington coast, and I could not risk—”

“There’s a great deal you do not risk, Josef. Because I am the one who carries the risk. I took a risk on you when you brokered that deal with the Georgians for the generators, remember? I risked twenty-eight million euros, and where is it? Have I seen it? I am the one fronting the fee for your snakehead patsies, too, so do not talk to me about risk.”