A Man Overboard (21 page)

Jack didn’t know what she was saying, but it seemed to be making some kind of impression on Vadim. He looked at Jack and sneered again. Then he nodded, and Stacey hopped up, wrapping her legs around him. She kissed him hard on the mouth while struggling to unbuckle his belt.

What the hell is happening?

Jack took a step back. He knew that if he were to charge, the SVR agent would no doubt have him disarmed in less than a second, putting his own bullet in his head. But he couldn’t watch this.

Stacey started moaning, and Vadim just stared at him, taunting, daring him to try something.

And then there was a
thhooot! thhooot!
and a wet smack as something struck Vadim’s side. He grunted and bent forward, clutching his abdomen and sending Stacey falling off him. She landed on her back with a gasp as the air left her lungs.

Looking up, Vadim swept his burning eyes over to Viktoriya, who was lying on her stomach beside the island, both arms outstretched and holding her smoking pistol. She got off another shot, but it missed his head, crashing into the cabinets instead. He spun, reaching onto the counter and pulling a steak knife from a wooden block resting nearby. He threw it the same time she got off her next shot.

Viktoriya’s bullet found his shoulder, but his knife found her right eye. She reached for her face, her fingers dancing over the blade for a moment, but she fell still before she could get a grasp on it.

Stacey let loose a gut-wrenching wail and stumbled to her feet, running to her mother’s side.

Vadim reached for another knife.

And all Jack could do was stand there and watch, the pistol aimed but not shooting, everything happening too fast. Vadim selected another long knife from the block and turned with it in hand.

Come on, damn it! Shoot him!

The CIA-employed Russian spy took a step toward him, blood seeping from three separate holes, his shorts half undone.

Suddenly, Jack realized why he wasn’t shooting at the beast (he’d already shot someone in the head, and considering these circumstances, he figured it should be a much easier chore to put Vadim down now). If his bullet, from his registered gun, killed this CIA black operative, then… Well, he wasn’t sure what the ramifications would be, but he was relatively certain they wouldn’t be good. He’d paid careful attention to cover his tracks up to this point, and he had no intention of signing his name on this guy’s corpse now.

He turned and ran from the kitchen.

But Vadim didn’t follow. Instead, he went stumbling through another room.

Was he going for the front door? Was he going to try to make a run for it through the woods?

Jack put it together just as Vadim’s foot touched down on the first step to the second story.

No.

Jack sprinted through the house, searching for the foyer and the staircase, but a few wrong turns through more rooms had him completely spun around. By the time he found the stairs, Vadim was at the top of them, a trail of blood marking his way.

Jack took the stairs as fast as he could and saw the door to Joseph’s room close just as he reached the hallway.

No!

He ran to the door, reaching out for the doorknob. When his fingers fell on it, a train slammed against him, plowing him in the side and putting him halfway through the wall and into the adjoining room. The gun fell from his hand, and all he could see were shining stars, everything spinning out of control. It actually took him a few seconds of dizzy flying before he realized he was being struck in the face, that Vadim was on him and throwing Russian fist after Russian fist into his salesman face. He could taste the blood trickling down the back of his throat, and he tried raising his hands to slow the attack. It was useless, and Vadim’s demonic face began fading to black.

The bear had won.

* * * *

When Jack opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the door to Joseph’s room standing open. Summoning the willpower to move, he struggled to his knees and crawled to the threshold, the earthquake in his head making the short journey almost unbearable. His eyes were swollen shut, and he could taste the metallic flavor of blood as it poured from his face, staining the carpet below him. Once his hand crossed the border that separated Joseph’ room from the hallway, Vadim’s voice sounded out, startling him.

“I didn’t kill you because I wanted you to see this first.”

Jack lifted his head and found the man standing in the middle of the room. He was standing behind Joseph, one arm wrapped around his frail waist, the other pressing the knife against his throat.

Vadim’s eyes flickered with hatred. “He’s yours, isn’t he?”

“No,” Jack answered, reaching out a hand, pleading. “He’s
your
son.”

Joseph was crying, and a puddle spread out from around one of his bare feet.

Vadim smiled wickedly. “Lies.”

“No!” Jack stammered though Stacey’s two days with him in 2007. “He’s yours. Don’t do this! He’s
your
son!” He was sobbing, completely helpless to stop what he knew was coming.

Vadim grabbed a tuft of the boy’s hair and yanked his head to the side so that he could get a better look at him. Seemingly unconvinced, he said, “Well, then you won’t really mind, will you?” He ran the knife across Joseph’s throat, a thin red line following after it.

Even as Jack’s scream filled the house, a door on the other side of the room burst open. Stacey stepped in, coming up behind Vadim and firing Viki’s silenced pistol into the back of his head.

Joseph dropped onto his side—his young, innocent eyes full of shock and incomprehension—as Vadim’s head blew apart. Bone sprayed like shrapnel throughout the room, and blood and pink tissue splattered stuffed animals and Disney posters. The Russian collapsed to the floor, the soup bowl that was his head staring up at the ceiling.

Stacey dropped the gun and collapsed beside Joseph, pulling her dress off up and over her head.

Jack crawled to them, tears blinding his eyes, reaching for Joseph’s hands. Finding one, he squeezed. Joseph’s eyes found his, and they seemed to beg for some kind of understanding, for help. Stacey was wrapping her dress around his neck and pulling it tight, the thin fabric turning red instantly.

The knife gliding across Joseph’s neck replayed in Jack’s mind, and he thought it was a miracle his head hadn’t come off. Or maybe Vadim had held up at the last possible moment, second-guessing himself.

“Call an ambulance!” Stacey was screaming.

The total desperation in her voice snapped Jack out of his stupor. He rushed crazily to his feet and clambered out of the room, blood streaking the walls wherever he touched them for support. “Where is it?” he cried back over his shoulder, a red mist spraying from his mouth as he shouted.

“Kitchen!”

He ran down half the stairs and vaulted himself over the banister, landing sprawled out on the carpet below. He scrambled back to his feet, the pain in his body completely lost to the fear of losing his son.
No
, he told himself. Not after everything he’d been through. Not like this! He found the phone on the wall in the kitchen and dialed 911 so fast that he was afraid he might have hit one of the numbers too many times. But an operator answered, and Jack blurted out the address and what had happened. Without waiting to hear a response, he dropped the phone and rushed back to his son, ignoring his mother-in-law sprawled out on the floor in a puddle of blood, the knife like some horror-movie prop still sticking out of her face.

When he entered the room, panting and struggling for breath, Stacey was sitting on the floor with Joseph’s head in her lap. She was staring down at him, humming and running her fingers through his hair. Joseph’s eyes were closed.

Jack dropped to his knees beside them, and Stacey moved her eyes to his. Tears were spilling down her cheeks, but she didn’t stop humming. Jack grabbed Joseph’s hand and held it tight, kissing it and bringing it against his cheek. “Hang in there, buddy. The ambulance is on its way. Just hold on, okay? Everything’s gonna be all right.” But that’s what he’d said before, wasn’t it?

Five minutes later, when the sound of sirens came storming the estate, Joseph was still alive. Every drop of blood that fell, however, was a drop closer to the unthinkable. Stacey leaned down and kissed his forehead. “Hold on, baby…hold on.” Tears landed on his eyelids.

When banging sounded on the door downstairs, Jack stood, Joseph’s hand sliding out of his own, and ran to open it.

Just before opening the door, he had an involuntary thought streak through his brain, one that involved making a run for it. But that was no longer possible with Joseph bleeding out on the floor. It was time to face the music—no matter what song it would be. Maybe, depending on how Joseph was making out, he’d think of something at the hospital, a story that might discourage further attention from the CIA. But then, wouldn’t they be listening to Vadim’s house calls and already know about the 911 call? It didn’t matter. With her son moments away from death, shooting her first husband, seeing her mother killed, and witnessing her second husband come back from the dead all within a five-minute span of time, Jack was sure that Stacey was far from being up to playing make-believe, anyway.

He opened the door, pointed up the stairs, and watched the men race to save his son’s life. However this was all going to turn out, he only wanted Joseph to live.

Please, God…

27

They were at a hospital in Hartford. Police kept stopping by, trying to figure out what the hell had happened, asking them questions. But neither of them were capable of answering anything even if they wanted to. Not until the doctor came out and gave them the news that Joseph was going to be okay, at which point they both started the slow shift back to the world around them. Stitches and a couple days in the hospital, the doctor had reported. Apparently, he said, the man who did this either hesitated at the last second or never intended to kill their son.

Jack took her hand in his, and a small smile broke through the weight of all she’d endured. “I guess I have some explaining to do,” she said.

“When you’re ready. You’ve been through a lot.” When she didn’t say anything, he said, “I’m sorry about your mother.”

A tear rolled off her chin, but she didn’t engage the statement. Instead, she grabbed the back of his neck with her free hand and looked for the first time into his eyes with the wonder of his being there. “You’re
alive
.”

“Turns out, I’m a pretty decent swimmer. Took me a few days and a generous jelly fish, but I made it.”

Her eyes broke away from his and dropped to her feet. “I guess you know that I was married before.”

“Vadim.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Shhhh… We don’t have to talk about this now.” He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her close, unable to believe that he was actually holding her again. Tears accompanied his words when he spoke them. “I thought they threw you over, too. I spent three days in the Bahamas wasted out of my mind.” He felt her squeeze him tighter.

“I need to tell you now,” she sighed, “before the FBI gets here. You deserve to know. God, after all these years, you deserve to know.”

He looked around the waiting room and was satisfied that no one was listening. “Okay.”

Not letting go of him, she spoke softly into his ear. “I was married to Vadim before I met you. It was a mistake. I was young, and I found out too late who he really was.”

“SVR.”

She seemed surprised that he knew this. “How—”

“Finish your story, and then I’ll tell you mine.”

She leaned back, settling into her own seat, and brushed a strand of hair away from her eyes. “It was more than that, though. He had a dark side to him.”

Really?
he almost asked, but he bit his tongue. The way Viktoriya died was nothing to joke about. Neither was his son’s throat being slashed.

“I was scared,” she continued. “When the CIA turned him…” She stopped herself when Jack didn’t even flinch at that. “How much of this do you know?” she asked.

“Keep going. I’ll stop you when I hear something that bears repeating.”

“Okay,” she said, and suspicion pinched her brow. “When the CIA made him a double agent, I knew it might be my only chance to get away, so I convinced him that I should lay low somewhere, made him think I was afraid of the SVR finding out he’d been compromised. I acted paranoid enough to sow some fear in his own mind, and he finally agreed that I should disappear for a while. So I took my mother to Philadelphia. And then I met you.”

Jack wished he could shake Donny’s hand and tell him with all the pride of a happy husband that he’d been right in his counsel to trust her. Of all the possible theories trying to explain Stacey’s involvement in all this nonsense, the truth had turned out to be as good as it could’ve been.

Donny…
That storm was still brewing.

“I didn’t tell you because…it didn’t seem fair. To make you worry. And the way you are,
Jerry
, you would’ve never gotten past it. You’d be looking over your shoulder forever.” She fell silent for a moment. “I should’ve told you before we got married. Given you a choice…but I was afraid I’d lose you…”

Jack ran his hands through her hair, brushing tears off her face with his thumb. He stared at her for a whole minute, regretting every vengeful thought he’d had against her over the last few days.
Love believes all things, hopes all things…
Amen.

But there was still that one thing that needed knowing. As much as he didn’t want to ask, he understood that the road to full recovery had to start now, whatever the answer was.

“Stacey,” he began. She looked up into his eyes. “I know about what happened with Vadim in 2007.”

New tears dropped from her eyes, and shame forced her to divert her gaze once more.

“Is Joseph my son?” The words came half choked by the long cave they seemed to have traveled from.

“It was only one time, Jack. I was away for work, and he just showed up at the hotel.” She took her time, still not looking at him. “My mother thought we needed to ‘catch up.’ She took the liberty of telling him where I was. I always thought that she secretly wanted me to leave you and go back to Vadim.”