One Wrong Move (30 page)

That was it for the upstairs. He crept back down. The professor had gotten up, put coffee on, made breakfast. He’d gone upstairs, prepared his suitcase, gotten into the shower . . .

And something very bad had happened. Miles went steadily toward the one door he had not yet tried.

Oh, man. Don’t. Not the basement. That never turns out well.
Going down into the basement was for blond actresses with bobbing tits, doomed to die screaming. He turned the knob, flipped on the hanging chain light. Dust and mold, bare wood steps, basement floor of oil and damp, stained, rough poured concrete.

He smelled it halfway down the stairs. He didn’t want to believe it, but his nose did not lie. His heart was stuck in his neck, choking the air out of him. The smell got stronger as he descended. He’d smelled it before. Wished that he hadn’t. Voided bowels. The fresh, meaty smell of blood. Like an anvil, careen-ing through space toward his head. He tried to prepare himself, but he still wasn’t ready when the sight hit his eyes.

The professor was naked, seated against a support column, his arms jerked back at an agonizing angle, hands cuffed behind it with plastic ratchet cuffs. Blood was everywhere. He was still, eyes staring. His fingers and his toes were gone. Something red and fleshy was stuffed in his open mouth, and his crotch . . . oh, sweet holy Jesus.

A whimper jerked out of his throat. He struggled not to retch.

Oh, God. How fucking horrible. The guy was surely dead, but Miles felt a ceremonial necessity to check his pulse. He owed a fellow human being that much, no matter what. He crept closer, trying not to look at those red stumps. Blood still oozed. The people who did this must have left moments before he arrived.

He pulled off a glove. Couldn’t feel for a pulse with leather on his hands.

He touched the guy’s carotid. Nothing. His fingers came back red.

He got up the stairs, tears streaming down his face. Rinsed
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blood off into the kitchen sink, hand shaking. Put the glove back on. He dialed nine one one. “I’m calling to report a murder,” he told the dispatcher, in a voice that was unrecognizable as his own.

He gave them the address, let the phone dangle as the woman exhorted him to stay at the scene.

Not.
He stumbled out the door and broke into a run. To get as far away from the house as possible before he lost his breakfast.

“Ah . . . Mr. Arbatov, would you sign the guest book before—”

“Shut up.” Oleg kept on down the hospice corridor, fingering the flash drive that contained the footage of Sasha and his woman friend.

He stared at his pitted, jowly face in the reflective metal surface of the elevator panel as he went up to the second floor. He looked old. Felt old, upon seeing Sasha in that video. So many lost years. It had an odd effect on him, to see his grown-up son.

Like seeing himself thirty years ago, though Sasha was unques-tionably better looking, having gotten his mother’s dramatic bone structure to mitigate the bull-like Arbatov genes. Oksana, his first wife, had been very beautiful. His throat still caught when he saw her in photos. A rare occurrence. His wife Rita made sure that pictures with Oksana were kept well out of sight.

But his son’s green eyes and severe mouth, that was pure Arbatov. Sasha looked good. He had not gone to fat, nor did he have the broken veins or pitted skin of an alcoholic and a junkie, as his cousin did. The two were profoundly different, in every way. Although when the boys had been children, many had taken them for twins.

Sasha looked strong, restless. Angry. Those were good things to be. Oleg loathed complacency, or anything that smacked of softness.

Sasha’s woman had not impressed him, at first glance. A mousy nonentity. Then he’d seen her smooth penetration of the hospice, her perfect timing. He’d barely seen her enter, though he had the video to study. Just a gray flutter, and
poof,
she was gone.

Of course, he would have wished Sasha a woman endowed with jaw-dropping beauty, not invisibility. But perhaps this girl had other gifts to bring to the table.

He pushed open the door to Tonya’s room. She appeared to be asleep, but he knew his sister’s tricks. Sneaky to her last breath.

He bore down on her with all the force of his will. “Open your eyes, Tonya. I wish to speak with you.”

Tonya’s eyes fluttered, though she stared defiantly at the ceiling. No one but Sasha had ever resisted his will as much as Tonya had. Both had suffered for it. But he could not allow insubordina-tion. Not then, certainly not now, not if he wished to maintain his power and status as Vor. Much as it pained him to be severe with his own family.

With all his freakish intelligence, Sasha had never seemed to understand how much he stood to gain by giving up on his compulsive resistance. He’d never cared about the power he would inherit if he would just listen and obey. He’d fought Oleg with every breath. He had resisted in his fucking sleep. It had made Oleg angry enough to kill, and even so, he’d been perversely proud of the boy for being so indomitable. Only that kind of steel could possibly hope to run the vast and complex underground business empire that Oleg had created.

It was a riddle that had no answer, and then Sasha had fled anyway, making the answer irrelevant. His only surviving child, gone. The self-absorbed Rita had given him her perfect body, but it had born no fruit, and Oleg suspected that Rita was quite satisfied with that state of affairs. She did not want to distort her figure with pregnancy, nor did she want to make any effort on anyone’s behalf but her own. Being Rita Arbatov was a full-time job, in and of itself.

“Look at me, Tonya.” He let steel show through his voice.

She turned her head. Her dark eyes in her emaciated face were more intense and haunting than ever. And full of relentless hatred.

“Sasha came to you, Tonya. I have video footage, of him, and his woman. You do not protect them with your silence. You only anger me.”

She licked her lips. “The closer to death I get, the less power you have over me. You will not catch them, Oleg. Together they are strong.”

“Are they lovers? Married? Where? Are there children?”

Her lips stretched in a deathly smile, showing flakes of peeling skin, discolored fever blisters. “You will not put your hands upon their children,” she said. “I have seen it. Dreamed it.”

Oleg waved that impatiently away. “What name is he using?”

he demanded. “Who is the woman?”

“Her name was not important. She is strong enough for Sasha.

That was what is important.”

“I do not wish to hurt Sasha,” Oleg snapped.

Tonya made a wheezing sound, lips drawn back. “No? You never meant to hurt Julie, either, ey?”

Rage surged inside him. “I never hurt Julie,” he said harshly.

“You did not protect her,” Tonya forced out, breathless.

“From what?” he said harshly. “Herself?”

“You never asked yourself why she was so sad? Why she got so thin, why she ate her fingernails and cut her arms with a knife?

You never noticed the light in her eyes going out? No, it was enough for you that she obey you. That was all you ever wanted from any of us.”

“Be silent,” he snarled. “I did not come here to be scolded.”

She laughed again, harshly. “Then you should have stayed home.”

He leaned over her, letting his will batter her. Her lips drew back from her teeth as she withstood the gale. When a thread of blood began leaking from her nose, he leaned back in the chair, and waited.

Tonya could not speak for ten minutes. She dragged air stubbornly into her lungs. Gasp after gasp, rattling, whooping. So painful, so useless. Life, maintaining itself when all pretexts for living were gone. Were it he in that bed, he would have put a bullet in his head long before. When it came to that, he’d made arrangements. His body had declined as far as his dignity would allow. One more sacrifice, one more compromise, and he would be running to meet the reaper, arms outstretched. But first, he wanted his son. Just that.

“You know where Sasha is,” he said. “You’ve always known.”

Tonya shook her head. “I never saw much with those drugs pumped into me,” she said. “And you gave the orders for that, brother.”

“If you had helped, instead of spitting in my face.” His voice shook with anger. “If you had done as I asked, and used your gift to help me find him, I would not have been forced to punish you!

Stubborn cow!”

“Why not leave him in peace?” Tonya shook her head. “You and Dmitri, both of you. Obsessed with him. After twenty years.”

Oleg frowned. “Dmitri doesn’t give a shit about finding Sasha.

He’s out chasing some new drug. I hope it kills him. Worthless turd.”

Tonya shook her head. “Dmitri is hunting them. They have something he wants more than life. I’ve dreamed it. He will kill for it.”

Tonya’s predictions, when her eyes had that unfocused glow, were to be heeded. Tonya had dreamed Oksana’s breast cancer long before the doctors had diagnosed it. “What did you see?” he asked.

“I saw Dmitri creeping into Sasha’s dream,” she rasped.

Tonya’s sepulchral whisper had begun to annoy him. “Don’t play oracle with me. I’m not in any mood to interpret fucking metaphors.”

“Last night, he sneaked into Sasha’s dream,” Tonya insisted.

“And he will attack again. Sasha is my heart’s treasure. You expect me to give him to you? When you have never done anything but punish him?”

Oleg coughed. “I do not wish to hurt him.”

“Then stop Dmitri,” she said. “That is all you can do.”

Oleg took out the cell phone he had taken from Dmitri the night before. He held it up where Tonya could see it. “Dmitri is hunting the woman who owns this phone. Her name is Nina Christie. Have you ever heard of her? Have you seen her in your dreams?”

Tonya shook her head. “I do not know the name.”

“There is a great deal of senseless babbling on this phone that I wish to have explained,” he said. “Some of it in Ukrainian, of all things. But this speaker, I believe, is the woman herself.” He punched the audio file, set it to play on the speaker.

“. . . Helga. Oh, God. Helga?” The female voice was low, quavering with shock. “What was . . . wha—why did you do that?

Wha—what the fuck was in that needle?”.

Startlement flashed in Tonya’s eyes. Oleg clicked the file off.

“Who is she?” he demanded. “Do you know anything about this needle attack? Who did it, when it took place?”

Tonya shook her head.

His teeth ground in rage. “You will tell me.
Now.
”

“Or what?” That silent, wheezy laugh again. “Or you will kill me? Do it, Oleg. You’ve kept me locked in a cage for long enough.”

“Is this what you want?” He lifted his hand to the knob that regulated the morphine drip. A little turn to up the dose would depress her respiration, and she would be dead in hours.

Her eyes fixed on his hand, her mouth a martyr’s clenched grimace. “I would not sell my darling to you, even for that.” Her mouth worked. Spat at him, with surprising energy.

He wiped the spray of spittle that had stained his snowy shirt cuffs, and reached up to the knob. He turned it, but not to increase the drip. The other way. The drip slowed, stalled, and stopped. Oleg grasped the call button that dangled from the head of the bed, and looped it over the IV rack. Out of her reach, unless she stood, and Tonya could not stand. The tumors had metastasized to her spine, fracturing it. She did not have the strength to scream. She could barely croak.

Tonya’s eyes filled with dread. “That will kill me, too.”

“Of course.” He gave her a wide smile. “But the death will not be gentle. But why should death be gentle, when life never is?”

“Fuck you, Oleg,” she whispered.

He leaned over her, staring into her eyes. “That woman. How do you know her?” He let his will bear down, and this time, she cracked.

“Came . . . came in, with Sasha,” she gasped out.

He was jolted by the unexpected implications. “This is Sasha’s woman? This is she?” He shook the phone. “Dmitri is hunting her?”

“Both . . . both.” Tears streamed down her cheeks. “Both of them.”

The door burst open. Fay Siebring bustled in, a bright, nervous smile on her face, prattling about a call from the scholarship board, but Oleg’s attention was elsewhere. His sister tried in vain to get Fay Siebring’s attention, plucking the woman’s jacket, begging in her broken English for help, but Fay ignored her, and focused only on him.

Oleg held up his hand to forestall the spew of words. Leaned to kiss Tonya on her clammy forehead. “Good-bye, little sister,”

he whispered. He took Siebring by the arm, and led her toward the door. “Excuse me, but I must be on my way,” he said. “Will you see me out?”

The door swung closed on Tonya’s breathless sobs.

He escorted Siebring down the hall, pretending to listen to the nonsense the woman was spouting. It occurred to him that Tonya might well die, if he did not say something to a staff member before he left. He did not know how dependent upon morphine she was.

But the equation was so simple, he could not understand why Tonya never seemed to learn it. No opposition meant no pain, no punishment. Plus everything her heart desired, or at least everything that money or fear could buy. Which was quite a bit, in the end.

So simple. So fair. It was not his fault if the woman was too stupid to make the connection. To protect her own best interests.

He left Fay Siebring in mid-sentence, and walked away, saying nothing about Tonya at all.

With all Rudd had to worry about, he had to clean up for his cleaning crew, too. That idiot Roy, the only one who could have followed the two fugitives, had gotten his head smashed, and the resulting trauma had put him out of commission for hours, at which point the runaways were hundreds of miles out of range. Anabel had barely had the presence of mind to get her colleague loaded up and away before the cops showed. A bloody corpse. Hysterical witnesses. God, what a mess.

Back to doing things the old-fashioned way. Using his naked and unassisted intelligence. Fortunately, he still remembered how, unlike his assistants. He gazed up from his car at Nina Christie’s house, still festooned with crime scene tape. A cop stood sentinal, looking bored and hot. He dragged a pack of cigarettes out, tried to shake one out. It was empty. The guy tossed the pack to the porch floor in disgust.