In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(141)

Misha followed gamely behind him. The kid made a lot of noise, stumbling in the dark. The sky was lightening, and it was chilly and damp. Sweat had cooled on Sam’s back. The bandage was leaking. He felt wet warmth, on his chest, his groin. Waves of nausea. He was running a fever. The scarring in his lungs from his old bullet wound made him struggle not to cough.

He pressed on, stopping periodically to wait for the panting, stumbling Misha, until the house came into view again from above. There was an outbuilding up the hill for the landscaper. Gardening tools leaned against it. He almost knocked a shovel over in the darkness. Caught it, just in time, as the door of the house opened.

He sank down, silently waving for Misha to get behind the building. Josef came out, walked to a black SUV parked in the driveway beside a sleek silver Porsche. He opened the back, hefted a big box and hauled it into the house, leaving the hatchback open. Other equipment was visible inside. It looked like he intended to come right back out again.

Sam gestured to Misha, whose eyes were big and scared in the shadows. He pointed fiercely at the ground. Stay put, goddamnit. He grabbed the shovel, darted across the driveway. Crouched behind the Porsche. If he took Josef down silently, his odds would be better.

Light spilled out the front door. Heavy boots crunched the gravel as Josef went to the back of the SUV again. Sam moved as silently as he could in the f*cking noisy gravel alongside the SUV.

He leaped up, swung the shovel down.

Josef jerked up and to the side just in time, and grabbed the shovel, whip quick, wrenching Sam off balance. Sam stumbled back, gasping as white-hot pain stabbed through his groin.

Josef took in the fresh blood on Sam’s pants, the spreading splotch on his shirt under the jacket, his sweaty pallor. He grinned.

“Idiot goat-f*cker scum,” he hissed. “You look like shit. I’m going to break this handle to a knifepoint and f*ck you with it.”

He came on like a freight train, swinging the shovel. Sam jerked to the side. The shovel crunched against the frame of the car.

Sam darted in closer, jabbing an uppercut to the guy’s huge lantern jaw that rocked his head back, but Josef came roaring back unfazed, kicking and punching. Sam ducked, blocked, and spun. Got in a good one to the arm that he’d shot, back in Portland, but the guy was big and fast, with long arms like an ape, and he seemed to feel no pain at all. Sam skittered back to miss a kick to the ribs and found himself pinned against the Porsche.

He tried to hook his legs to take the guy down to the ground, but the weakened muscles in his injured groin wouldn’t respond. He parried a flurry of blows to the face, jerked up his knee to protect his groin—

Not fast enough. A punch to the balls, a sick wave of black—

He came to when the gravel smacked the air out of his lungs like a huge, pissed-off hand. That stinking behemoth landed on him, oof.

Smash sandwich. Should’ve shot the bastard. Brain-dead *, thinking he could take on a killer like that, as f*cked up as he was. He couldn’t see, or breathe. Josef’s body had blocked the light.

Then Josef jerked, in a strange, vibrating shudder—and sagged on top of him, inert. His dead weight was smothering. Hot blood flooded over Sam’s face, his neck, half-drowning him.

Sam tried to shove him off. Josef thudded limply onto his side.

Misha stood over him. The jeweled dagger he’d taken from his father’s desk protruded from beneath Josef’s ear, at the point of his jaw.

“I did not use the gun,” Misha whispered. “Like you said.”

“Stay out,” he muttered, as he staggered to his feet. Not that he had any hope the kid would do as he directed, but what the f*ck.

Showtime.



“Where the hell is Josef? Her people should arrive any minute!” Hazlett fussed. “Oh, look! A car’s pulling up, and... yes! It’s them!”

Sveti struggled onto her elbow, straining to see. She saw Val, stepping out of a big SUV, his long hair blowing loose in the breeze, his handsome face dark with beard shadow. Nick emerged from the other side, looking pissed off at Rome for harboring criminals that had threatened her. Tam was a ninja vision in tight-fitting black. Becca looked pale and worried. Four of the five people she loved most in the world, fifteen feet away from that lethal Telecom Italia van.

Then another dark, curly head bobbed at the vehicle door. Oh, no, no, no. Rachel. Her darling sister, her cellmate, her precious love.

She must have made a sound. Hazlett glanced at the screen and clucked his tongue. “That’s a shame. They should have known better than to bring the child, with the adventures you’ve been having. But they had no way to know how out of hand the situation has become.”

“Please, Michael,” she begged. “You don’t need this. Turn the bomb in, to the authorities. Be the hero. The world will love you for it.”

“I don’t need the world’s love, or to be a hero. That kind of reward gratifies a different kind of person. Well, Renato? Shall we?”

“I still think we should choose a different city,” Renato said sulkily.

“It’s too late to change our plans. Call Josef in. I don’t want him blundering in at the crucial moment. Did he set up the other TV?”

“I hate dealing with the technology,” Renato fretted. “Josef will handle that. Josef!” he bellowed. “Ah, here he comes.”

The door flew open.