Keeping Thyme (Thyme Trilogy) (20 page)

Luka notices my arm around Tatiana and he comes over and kneels down. He rubs her chin between his thumb and index finger and sooths her with some words in Russia.

“You’re both safe here now.” He smiles at me.

I nod
. “Thank you, Luka.”

“There are four men right outside the door and Dima is staying he
re. You’re both completely safe, okay? Just stay away from the window in case of any snipers.” He smiles at Tatiana but she is having none of it.

I pray that she pulls herself together soon. Luka says something to her again in Russian and kisses the top of her head as he gets up. He’s so tender with her and seems completely oblivious to Dima’s true intentions. She looks across to me and I tap my
boot with the pistol inside it twice and wink at her. She nods and smiles and I feel her body relax a little.

As the men all leave the room
, I whisper to Tatiana, “Get it together, Tia. I’ve got this. Dima isn’t going to do anything to us, okay?” She nods again and wipes her tears with her finger.

Dima shuts the door behind the men as they leave and locks it. He pauses for a moment at the door before he turns. I feel my heart pick up pace.
My hand slithers down my leg and feels the firearm inside my boot. Once I have it in my grip, I command it to engage. The familiar high-pitched hum of the pistol signals that it’s ready, and so am I.

I watch Dima. He doesn’t turn to us as he walks towards the kitche
nette. I tug the gun out of my boot and stand up with it behind me. I motion for Tatiana to get up and stand behind me. I feel her hold onto my arm.

“I know my cousin is very fond of you
, Miranda. He’s what you would call a
fool for love
.” His thick accent makes his words sound even more menacing. He leans on the bench and opens up a drawer and takes out a shiny pistol. “So I did a bit of searching around. It seems you have a big secret, Miranda. Or should I call you by your real name: Mia?” He casually strolls over to the unglazed window, his gun gripped in his hand.

I push back from Tatiana and point
my gun towards her but Dima still remains facing away from us. “It was
you,
wasn’t it?” I sneer at Tatiana.

She shakes her head frantically
. “Mi, I wouldn’t do that. I don’t know how he knows this.”

Dima laughs from the
opening in the building. “Ah, how quickly you stupid women turn on each other.”

Tatiana hold her hands up to me
. “I promise you, Mia, you have it wrong. I don’t know what he’s talking about.” I narrow at her words.

Can I trust her?
I point to her to get down beside the couch and manoeuvre myself around with my gun pointed straight at him.
Two in the chest and one in the head in case he’s armoured,
I say to myself.

“Tell me where you keep the girls and I’ll spare your life
, Dmitri,” I say with a low voice.

He laughs again
. “You really think I would tell you that? My cousin may be stupid but I am not, Mia. I’ve thought about the things I want to do to you. Ask Tatiana how I like to treat my women.”

Tatiana trembles in the corner. She looks across to me before she gets up and stands beside me. She fires off Russian to him and it sounds nasty
, whatever she said.

“Kill him
, Mia. He is nothing but a filthy dog. I’ve seen what he does to women. He has slaves at his house. I can show you. He kept me there for months once. He threatened to break my legs so that I would never dance again if I didn’t do as he said.”
What if Tatiana’s telling the truth? Why should I ever trust Dima? If it wasn’t Tatiana, then who was it …
Mei-Mei! “Mia, please do it. I can’t sleep because of the things he’s done to me, and continues to do to other girls, too.”

He spits at the ground
. “Nothing but a bunch of filthy animals. They’re not even worth the money we paid for them. They’re just the whores not suitable for sale. I keep them for me and my men; that’s all.”

The hairs all over my body send a prickly heat out across my body. How dare he call them whores
? They’ve had no choice in this. They’re slaves.

“Drop your gun and turn around
, Dmitri … or I can just shoot you in the back. It’s your choice.”

His head turns to the side
. “The men outside will be in here the second you fire that gun,” he says as he holds his hands out. He’s still holding a gun in his right hand.

“Turn around now
, you piece of shit coward,” I yell.

Dima turns around slowly with his hands still in the air. I see the
evil in his eyes, begging to be drawn out of him. He will kill me within a second from this distance, facing each other. My ears ring with the coursing adrenaline running through my body.

“Keep your hands in the air. I will shoot you straight between the eyes the moment you move.”

His mouth contorts into a snarling smirk.

“You know your time’s up
, Dmitri. There are two things I’m good at … one of them you will never know, and the other you’re about to find out. Tatiana, scream!”

I hold my breath and slowly squeeze the trigger as I tell FLOS to fire. The first shot hits him straight in the left side of the chest. The impact of the bullet makes him stumble backwards. His eyes do not react. I fire two more rounds into his chest and he’s push
ed back to the edge of the open, unglazed window. His eyes now widen. I bring the firearm up and line up his forehead behind the two sights on top of the slide. I smirk and fire.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

As my senses
finally come back to me, I hear Tatiana piercing the air with a blood-curdling scream. I grab her and pull her over to the couch, throw my gun into my handbag and start screaming with her. Boris bowls through the door, followed by four other men, guns drawn as they scan the room. Tatiana and I hold onto each other and begin wailing. Luka comes through the door after running back to us. He looks straight down to Tatiana and I.

“What’s happened? Are you okay? Are you hurt? Where’s Dima?”

Tatiana sobs into me. I force the tears out and look to Luka. Is he part of Dima’s plan? Who else knows about me?

I force my voice to tremble
. “We were just talking to Dima and then he looked like he was exploding. I didn’t know what was happening, then Tatiana grabbed me and pulled me here. That’s what I realised he’d been shot. Then he … he …?” I don’t finish the sentence and cry back into Tatiana.

I cry for all the girls he’s hurt in his evil existence. I cry for what he may have done to Tatiana
, and I cry the hardest because I could’ve killed my old friend thinking she was a traitor. Luka rushes over to the open window and looks down at the ground below. He stomps his foot and curses some harsh Russian words. I can still smell the distinct residue of gunpowder in the air. I pray on our lives that they don’t smell it too. Luka yells something out to all the men in Russian and they all leave out the door with their guns still drawn.

“I’ll be right back. Stay clear of that window.” Luka rushes out of the door too.

I turn to Tatiana the moment they leave, “Are you okay?”

She wipes her face and nods. I quickly go over and lock the door. Grabbing my firearm from my handbag again, I throw it in the freezer
in the kitchenette.

“You can’t hide it in there
,” Tatiana finally speaks.

“I’m not
,” I whisper. “I need to cool the barrel down so they don’t know it’s been fired if they search us.”

“How are you going to explain even having a gun
, Mi?” Tatiana looks more composed, but I can tell she still has so much doubt about how to trust me. She looks every part the scared little girl that hides inside her tough exterior as she shakes in a ball on the couch.

“Haven’t I told you that you need to trust me enough times already?”

She slowly smiles. “I can’t believe we got him, Mi!” She whispers. Her green eyes broaden as her body allows her to bask in the victory.

I take the firearm out of the freezer and throw it back into my handbag
, and then sit on the couch next to Tatiana. I take a deep breath and go over the next plan of attack. I need to warn my brother and Liz that there is a rat in the agency who also worked for Dima. There’s only one other person that it can be.

“You need to show me to these girls at Dima’s house. We need to get them out. Then we need to stop the shipment of girls leaving for Australia. They’ll be at the port. That’s where Tench was going.”

Tatiana nods at me. “Okay,” she whispers.

I smile and we hug again
. “I’m so sorry I doubted you,” I whisper.

I hear the lock being twisted on the door just before Luka bursts through
. “Are you girls okay?” He sounds genuinely concerned. “Joe is on his way, Miranda.” He nods.

Luka gives his attention to Tatiana over his dead cousin.
Boris comes rumbling in and bellows out some angry Russian. Misha, Dima’s brother, comes into the room looking pale.

“Was it one of you?” Misha yells.

Luka gets up and towers over Misha and yells something back to him in Russian. Misha continues to yell and points to us.
Here we go.
I look to Tatiana and put my arm around her again. I can pretty much predict what they’re saying to each other.

“Check our bags if you think we did it
,” I say.

I feel Tatiana stiffen under my arm. Misha stalks over to us and holds his hands out.

“Give me your bags, now,” He demands.

We hand out our handbags and Micha snatches them and throws them on the table. He tips them up and empt
ies them both out, snatching up the gun like a prize the moment he sees it. He points it straight at Tatiana and I. She cries out and grips onto me, burying her face into me.

“Misha
, it’s not a real gun. I got it from the street vendor down near the Bronze Horseman. I thought it might come in handy if someone tried to mug us when we were out.”

He stares me dead in the eye. Knowing that the same gun just killed Dima half an hour ago, Tatiana continues to quiver next to me.

“Pull the trigger if you don’t believe me,” I say already knowing that nothing will happen. Luka’s eyes search between Tatiana, Misha and I.

“Misha
, no,” Luka says and stands in front of us.

I hear Misha try and pull the trigger
, but it doesn’t work.

“Now I see whose side you’re really on
, cousin,” Misha spits out at Luka and throws my gun to the ground, then storms back out the door again.

Tatiana look
s to me. I give her a fraction of a smile to tell her she’s okay now. Luka rushes over and Tatiana says something to him and wraps her arms around his neck.

After an hour,
Tench runs through the door with Toni behind him. The moment I see him, I spring to my feet and throw my arms around him.

“Thank
God you’re alright. I panicked at the thought of losing you,” he says as he grips around me.

I feel safe the moment I’m in his arms. That thought alone has so many levels of fucked up going on inside my head, but I hold onto him just as tightly as he does me. I don’t want to let him go.

“Come on. Let’s get back home,” Tench says, and I nod. “No I mean let’s go home, home. We’re leaving for Australia in two hours.”

I look at him and smile on the outside
, but on this inside my head runs through a checklist of the things I need to do before we leave. How am I going to rescue all the girls they’re selling before then?

“What about your business?” I ask Tench.

“I wanted out of this business a long time ago, and this is the exact excuse I need to get out of it now. I’ve cancelled all business from Russia.” He runs his hand through my hair. “Plus, we’ve got the future to think about now. I want to leave all of this for a chance at happiness.”

I stare at him. That’s it? He’s not going to ship those girls?
And I’m supposed to believe that?

Tench loosens out of our embrace and turns Luka and puts his arm around him
. “I’m sorry I’ve listened to Dima and not to you all along. I see you’re a good kid.” Tench smiles at Tatiana. “And I see that you can have a good future ahead of you. I want you to run everything within Russia for me from now on, but we are revoking all of Dima’s operations. I want nothing to do with that shipment he was sending to Australia. Make sure all the property goes back to where it belongs. If Misha wants it, he can do it himself. Let’s see how far he gets.” He slaps Luka on the shoulder and holds his hand out for me.

“Tatiana, please come and see us in Sydney. I know my future wife would love it.” Tench smiles.

I look to Tatiana and feel my heart sink. This is too soon. She’s leaving my life as quick as she came into it. I don’t want to say goodbye right now. I feel the tears welling in my eyes.