In For the Kill (McClouds & Friends #11)(37)

He poised his fingers over the keyboard. Selected Sasha’s text, deleted it, and typed in an alternate message.



Please come as soon as you can. You are the only one I can trust. When is your plane arriving? Send flight information.





Josef’s phone buzzed angrily, vibrating on the desk. Two rings. Three. He coughed. It felt like chunks of burnt lung were coming up.

The smoke had almost overcome him. He’d crawled on boxes, smashed through a window. A long fall, but his cuts and bruises were the least of his problems. As was the bullet that had gone through his bicep.

These things were as nothing, compared to that ringing phone.

He picked it up, hit ‘talk.’ “Vor,” he rasped.

The vor waited. There was little point pleading for mercy. It only made things worse. “She got away,” he said thickly. “There was a man she was f*cking. He followed us. The snakeheads are both dead.”

“Ah,” Cherchenko said. “So you did not question her after all.”

“I had just begun,” he admitted. “But I am sure she knows everything. She’s coming to Italy. She left Sasha a message last night that she’s flying into Rome. I just checked the account, and Sasha warned her not to come. I deleted his message and wrote another, begging her to come as soon as possible. I will take her in Italy.”

“You will do as I tell you, idiot. Who knows if she will come, after your hack job? Get on a plane. I will decide an appropriate punishment as you travel. Aleksei and the others have not found Sasha, who is out there writing messages to God knows who. He is our top concern now.”

“Yes, Vor,” he said dully. The connection broke.

Josef stared into the mirror at his broken nose, his bloodied chin. His blood-crusted, half-detached earlobe. He pulled out his knife. Splashed it with rubbing alcohol. He stretched the torn earlobe out and cut.

The chunk of flesh thudded onto his boot and rolled to the floor.

The phone burped. He glanced at it. An airplane ticket. The flight left in only a few hours. It would be a challenge, making himself presentable enough to be allowed on an airplane. A medical facility was out of the question. There were people he could call, but no one he trusted enough to let himself be seen in such a weakened state.

No one had gotten the better of him like this since he was a boy.

The microwave dinged. He pulled out the cup of boiling water. Fished out the dental floss with the point of his knife. Threaded the needle. He palpated the wet hole in his bicep, wiping it clean with gauze. His eyes stung with smoke-tainted sweat. Fresh rivulets of blood ran down his arm as he began to stitch up the torn flesh. The needle pierced his own raw meat. Again. Two stitches. Three.

Enough. He doubled over, and vomit splattered the mirror.

He was disgusted with himself. This was nothing. He’d had his legs shattered with a hammer. His pimp had branded his ass with a hot iron when he was a boy. Now that was pain.

A hot iron. Yes, that would be entertaining, to use upon Svetlana and her lover. White hot, shoved deep into their tenderest places. Like the needle that he’d stabbed into his own raw, ruined flesh.

The sounds they would make would be soothing to his soul.



Sam stared at the cadaver on the morgue table, confused.

The stiff was Chinese. The corpse looked greenish in the blazing light. Sam shoved a hand through sweat-and blood-stiffened hair. “It doesn’t make sense,” he repeated. “The guy who questioned Sveti spoke Ukrainian. He asked about a picture her mother took six years ago, in Italy. Why would snakeheads give a shit about that? It’s old, it’s half a world away, and it’s not their stuff.”

His friend Trish’s face was calm, but he knew her well enough to read her body language. Her arms folded across her chest, mouth tight.

“He’s been positively ID’d,” she said. “Jason Kang. Born in Hong Kong. His wife was in earlier. She said he was a vicious, evil-hearted son of a bitch, and she’s glad he’s dead. He got out of the pen three months ago. He worked with Helen Wong before his stint in prison.”

“Yeah, I know. Sveti sneaked into one of their sweatshops with a live camera last year,” Sam said. “They sent her death threats.”

Trish’s shrug told him to do the math. “The wife said he didn’t speak great English. Enough for his dirty deeds, but no more.”

The implication pissed him off, but Trish was doing him a favor, letting him see the body. She’d been his friend for years. They’d been rookies together, he a patrol officer, she a criminologist. She was great; down to earth, funny, smart. She did not deserve to be snarled at.

“They all finished with you, down in headquarters?” Trish asked.

He kept staring at Kang’s greenish face. “They Mirandized me, I gave my statement. We went through it, blow by blow. Many times.”

“Who took your statement?”

“Tenly and Horvath,” he said.

“Ah, okay.” She nodded. “They’re good. What did they think about you burning down the crime scene with two of the perps inside?”

He made an irritated sound. “I was focused on saving Sveti’s life.”

“Of course you were,” Trish murmured. “At least you saved one of them for us. Good of you, to throw us a chunk of meat.”