Bone Rider (5 page)

It hit him right in the face.

Riley stumbled back a step, dropping the flashlight. He tried to grab the thing, pull it off him, but his fingers sank into smooth, silky matter without encountering resistance. It slipped through his hands like greasy ashes, flowed over his skin like solid smoke. It was everywhere, coating his throat, his shoulders, tracing his jaw, stroking his lips and forcing them apart relentlessly. Eyes wide, heart hammering frantically, awake now and all too aware, Riley clenched his teeth and shook his head wildly, trying to get it off, keep it out. Thin noises of protest rose from his chest, the sounds of an animal caught in a trap, but the creature didn’t care, didn’t stop. Cool and slippery, it edged in, opened him up, invaded his mouth and nose and poured itself down his throat while he jerked and clawed at it. He panicked, gagged, breath stuttering through airways that suddenly felt cramped and too narrow. Like drowning on dry land. Choking on wet cement. Blackness swirled at the edges of his vision and Riley fought that as well, scared to death of losing consciousness, of giving in, of not knowing what was happening to him.

His knees buckled. He fell down on all fours and yakked desperately, his body shuddering with the effort to expel the unwelcome intruder. He felt raw, violated, unable to bite down on the reedy whimper that escaped when the last bit of the thing glided into him with a little pat against the roof of his mouth. On his knees in front of the car, Riley coughed and retched and trembled, every sense focused on what was going on inside him. He could breathe easier now, but his belly felt full and heavy, icy cold radiating from his center. It was seeping into his muscles and sinews, made them feel sore and overstretched. There was a tickle along his spine, an itch so deep down it must’ve come from his bones. Riley groaned and panted as shock crept in, numbing his perception and fucking up his system even worse. He felt nauseous, frozen, vaguely aware of how thready and weak his pulse was getting. His teeth chattered; his whole body shook helplessly.

Then the creature did something to his head that felt like being sliced open and eaten alive, and Riley reared up and howled like a dog, hoarse with hurt. He felt it stab at him, into him, penetrate him even deeper, rooting around until it could infiltrate every inch of his body. Cold and hot at the base of his skull, a raspy lick against raw nerves. He tensed, tried to prepare himself for the pain, but there was no anticipating, no dealing with the kind of agony that followed.

This time, he didn’t fight the blackness.

He embraced it.

T
HE
desk in Misha’s office had once been pristine, tidy and organized. Lots of workspace, everything neatly arranged for maximum efficiency. He’d known where everything was at a glance, hadn’t had to think twice before reaching out to grab whatever it was he needed at the time. It was the way he’d been raised, though to be honest, the strict discipline of his professional training had only enhanced his natural neat-freak tendencies. It certainly had come in handy once or twice when Riley and he hadn’t made it back to the bedroom and ended up fucking right there on the sturdy table, drenching the antique wood with their sweat and come. Riley had looked gorgeous spread out on the dark mahogany in sweet exhaustion and smiling like the angel he most definitely wasn’t.

Apparently Riley had taken Misha’s sense of order with him when he’d left (among other things), because right now the desk was an unholy mess. The only thing not buried under maps and reports about Riley Cooper’s possible whereabouts was the phone. Nowadays, Misha got twitchy when he couldn’t see his phone. He was staring at it now, willing it to ring. Kolya was overdue, which wasn’t like him at all. It didn’t worry Misha so much as it made him restless, because if Kolya didn’t call it meant he was too busy, and “too busy” in this case likely translated to “following a lead.” One more dead end and Misha was going to do something rash and probably unnecessarily destructive. He couldn’t afford to lose his cool, so Kolya had better bring him good news when he finally deigned to report in.

None too happy about the forced inactivity, Misha paced around the phone, waiting, strung out on irritation and what he refused to call hope, the knot in his belly getting worse with each passing minute. He didn’t remember when he’d last eaten, though he vaguely recalled Andrej sitting him down with a bowl of oatmeal earlier. Long enough ago so it didn’t add to the churning in his stomach. At this rate, Riley was going to give him an ulcer in addition to a headache. Misha didn’t do well with passivity. He was a take-charge kind of guy, used to being out in the field, taking action, stirring up shit. That he couldn’t do this now, in this most personal, most important situation, was driving him stark raving mad. He knew he had to keep a low profile, avoid drawing attention, and in order to do that had to stay put and let others do the legwork, but it wasn’t easy for him.

He glanced at the phone again. It sat on the desk like a sleek silver bug, taunting him with malicious silence. Misha took two steps toward it; stopped. He wasn’t going to call Kolya. You don’t whistle for your dog when it’s hot on a trail; that’d be counterproductive. Misha knew better. He was a professional. Or had been, before Riley had come into his life and fucked him up beyond recognition. Best thing that had ever happened to him. Most painful, too. Misha spun around and marched back to the window to stare out into the garden, angry with himself and his weakness. He knew he had to stop this obsession, stop thinking about Riley, about the look in Riley’s eyes when he’d come through that door and seen Misha for who he really was. They’d had a good time, all right, but they were over now. He had to get his shit together and—

The phone beeped.

Misha was back across the room, had snatched it up, and was answering before the machine had a chance to utter a second beep.

“Speak to me.”

Well aware of Misha’s current stress levels, Kolya betrayed no sign of surprise at either the promptness of his response or his tone. “I found him,” he reported. “You were right; he’s in Texas.”

No surprise there. Texas was Riley’s home ground. The trouble so far had been that it was a lot of home ground and Riley was much more familiar with it than Misha and his men. It was a needle in a haystack sort of problem.

“Where exactly is he?” Misha demanded, already on his way to the bedroom to collect his traveling bag.

The silence on the other end of the line was brief, but worrisome. “He was in San Antonio, working at a bar,” Kolya said.

Misha picked up on the careful phrasing immediately and stopped in the middle of the hallway to glare at the device in his hand. “
Was
?”

“He spotted me.”

Misha’s fingers tightened on the phone until the casing creaked ominously. “He spotted you.”

Riley had met Kolya only once or twice, but he was good at remembering people. Shitty when it came to names, but faces? Recognizing Misha’s left-hand man from just a glance in a crowd after having seen him a couple of times in passing was apparently no challenge. Misha hadn’t realized Riley was that observant. He should have. After all, he’d made it his personal mission to study the man, figure him out, discover all his little quirks and habits.

“So where is he now?”

“Gone.”

If Misha hadn’t known Kolya so well, he would’ve started yelling then. As it was, he took a deep breath and held it until he was calm enough to talk at a reasonable volume. Kolya was good at what he did, but debriefing him was like pulling teeth.

“Gone where?”

“West,” Kolya said, as though that had been obvious.

Misha gritted his teeth. “You sure?”

“I saw him take the ramp to the I-10, but I lost him in traffic—everybody and their
babushka
’s
{5}
driving a pickup here. Could be he’s going somewhere else, but I’m thinking he’s running west. Boy’s a desert rat.”

He had a point there. Misha smiled, throwing out his challenge, “Can you find him again?”

Kolya hocked and spit in reply, which transmitted just fine through the phone. “I’ll keep you posted,” he grunted when he was sure his displeasure at the implied insult had been received and understood.

“Do that,” Misha told him, and snapped the phone shut only to almost drop it in surprise when it started to vibrate in his hand. He glanced at the caller display and groaned. Fucking wonderful; as though he didn’t have enough problems already.

He flicked the phone open again reluctantly as he wandered back toward the office, knowing he was going to want to sit down for this conversation. Much as he loved his family, they tended to drive up his blood pressure.

“Papa,” he said in greeting, trying not to let the man hear how desperately he did not want to speak with him. Vasiliy Tokarev was a contrary old bastard. If he realized his son didn’t want to talk, he’d take great pains to draw out the conversation for as long as he possibly could.

Misha must’ve succeeded in masking his lack of enthusiasm, though, because his father seemed cheerful enough when he replied with a hearty, “Misha! How are you, son?”

“Good,” Misha lied, and plopped down on the desk chair. He had a feeling this was going to be a lengthy talk no matter what. “How are you? How’s the family?”

“Fine, fine,” Vasiliy said, and Misha didn’t like how that sounded, because he knew his father and he could tell something was up from the way he was trying to be so goddamn casual. “Your sister, she finished checking the books,” Vasiliy told him, still too damn genial for Misha’s peace of mind. His heavy Russian accent was lulling in its familiarity; it conjured the ghost of bloodstained fairy tales riding through the dark on vodka-scented breath. “She’s good, she really is. Surprises me every time, our little Mari. She is smart, for a woman. Very, very smart.”

She was, though Misha would never understand why she bothered using those smarts to support their father. It didn’t matter how intelligent Mariya was, how dedicated, or how efficient. She was a woman; worse, she was their father’s daughter, and that fact alone forced her to the sidelines despite being much more invested in syndicate matters than Misha. Other women might be taught to fight, to shoot, and yes, to kill, but they were a different breed in Vasiliy’s eyes. They were
boy-babas
{6}
, soldiers, lower-class fighters who had nothing in common with his little princess. Mariya was lucky to be allowed access to the paperwork part of the business.

Misha, on the other hand, had never had a choice in the matter, though luckily he had the right temperament for this kind of work. He was fast, strong, and ruthless, passed every test with flying colors, but he didn’t feel particularly passionate about what he did. If he hadn’t been his father’s son—the only son, the firstborn—he’d have done something else and never worried about it. Mariya though…. Mariya was a leader. She had the brains for it and the determination to get shit done. The only thing she was lacking was one measly Y chromosome.

Had Misha not been so distracted by his own problems, he might’ve called his father on his unthinking sexism for the nth time, knowing it’d lead nowhere, but unwilling to ignore the man’s archaic attitude. As it was, he merely grunted an affirmative and reached out to snag the edge of the Texas road map half-buried under a heap of printouts. I-10. I-10 West….

“Your mother, she sends her regards,” Vasiliy continued, oblivious to his son’s preoccupation. “She is working very hard right now.” He paused for effect, which was lost on Misha, who was busy scanning the map. Then Vasiliy dropped his bomb. “She is preparing your engagement party. It’s on Friday.”

Waitafuckingminute
. Misha straightened in his chair, finger still on the blue line of the interstate. “You’re not funny,” he told his father.

“Good,” Vasiliy shot back, “because I’m not joking.”

Misha’s unoccupied hand tightened around the phone once again. “I told her to cancel the damn party. I’m not coming.”

“Your mother wants you to meet your fiancée. I want you to meet your fiancée. Your fiancée wants to meet you. So we are having a party and you will be there, Mikhail.” Vasiliy’s tone brooked no argument, which might’ve cowed most of his underlings, but sure as hell didn’t impress Misha.

“No, I fucking won’t. I didn’t
want
a fucking fiancée,” Misha snapped, finally giving up on the map to focus all of his attention on his father. “I didn’t
choose
my fucking fiancée. That was all Mama’s idea. She did the same shit to Mari and don’t think I forgot how that worked!” To call it tag teaming was sugarcoating it; Anna Tokarev and her husband had emotional blackmail down to an art form. “I’m not gonna marry her. No way, no how. You want more heirs, feel free to tell Mari two perfectly fine daughters aren’t enough.”

“You are the firstborn,” Vasiliy reminded him, predictably. “It is your duty to marry and keep the bloodline going.”

“You do realize I’m gay, right?” Misha countered, discarding his usual line of argument in favor of the big guns. He was not going to New York to make nice with Aneka Romasko when Riley was almost within reach. The girl wanted to marry syndicate? Fine, but she was not going to marry Misha. Misha had other plans. They involved a specific person, even if that person might need a bit of persuading—once he’d stopped running. There really was no time to lose, and Misha was willing to use whatever methods necessary to get out of his parents’ most recent honey trap.

Vasiliy, far from being shocked, only snorted disdainfully. “No, you’re not. I’ve seen you with plenty of girls.”

“You hiring hookers for my birthdays doesn’t change the facts. Face it, I’m queer.”

Also, kind of taken. Provided he could corner Riley long enough to talk or fuck some sense into him.

Of course, facts had never stopped Vasiliy Tokarev from forming his own opinions. “You fucked at least one of those girls,” he reminded Misha, a note of triumph in his voice. “What was her name again? Darla? Bambi? The brunette. Legs up to here. Not much of a rack, though.”