The Survivor Read online

  Misha looked bored. “You did not.”

  “Right before you grabbed me. Check the phone.” None of the men moved. “Check the phone.”

  Pausing, Yuri reached into his pocket and raised Nate’s phone, clicking through. “Two-second-duration call. A hang-up. So what.”

  He started for the door again, but Nate noticed a flicker of concern on Pavlo’s face and pressed the advantage, hard. “My cell-phone number is red-flagged with the authorities. They’ve been waiting to track me down. Now they get a 911 hang-up that traces to a cell tower near Agent Abara’s house? The same agent you just had call in to say he was concerned I was unstable?”

  “They won’t come,” Misha said.

  “Maybe not.” Nate stared at Pavlo.

  Yuri crushed the phone in his hand. Literally crushed it in one hand. It gave off a crackle, pieces of the tough plastic case sticking out of his fist at all angles. The remains hit the concrete floor with a thud.

  Yuri took a heated step toward Nate, that key fob flapping in his breast pocket, but Pavlo held up a hand. “Pull car around. Quietly. We move him. Do this at warehouse, where we take our time.” The last three words he spit into Nate’s face.

  Yuri glared at Nate, then hurried out. They waited in the chill, the ice blocks crackling now and again as they melted, Nate keeping his eyes from the red smear below the bare bulb. After a time an engine pierced the silence, growing louder, a car drifting up in front of the barn and then turning off. A key scratched in a lock, and then came the distinctive sound of a trunk yawning open.

  A few seconds later, the immense front barn door shuddered back, Yuri’s massive form framed against the opening. Behind him the dark Town Car waited. With no ceremony he crossed and seized Nate by the throat and shirt, hauling him through the space like a rolled carpet. Nate wheezed, air cinched off, legs dragging behind him. The capacious trunk awaited, a duffel bag taking up barely a third of the space. As they neared, Yuri hoisted Nate up and hurled him inside. His head struck something hard inside the duffel, and then the trunk slammed, leaving him in pitch-black.

  Frantically, he twisted the key fob he’d managed to lift from Yuri’s pocket. He fumbled it, heard it tap somewhere by his neck. Contorting, he searched desperately with his fingertips, finally nudging something. Seizing the key, he felt for the tiny buttons and hit the one with the raised bump. The car chirped twice, locking.

  From outside came noise and confusion.

  “—how did he…?”

  “—other keys?”

  “—now you tell me he is inside the fucking—”

  Nate rolled over, kicking at the front wall of the trunk, hoping to knock the rear seat backs down so he could squirm into the main cabin. His quick breaths bounced off the roof; his shoulder blades banged back against metal. Again and again he hammered his feet forward.

  Zero give. Clearly, the Town Car didn’t have the fold-down feature he was praying for; there’d be no getting through.

  The duffel was lodged beneath him, something jamming his kidney, and he remembered that clank when whatever was inside had struck his head. Something hard enough to hammer through the division? As the voices outside grew angrier, he swung the bag around, fought the zipper open, and groped at the contents, trying to guess at what the hell he had.

  His hands closed on a curved metal handle, and for the first time tonight he felt the advantage tilt in his direction. He ripped the cord, and the backup rescue saw roared deafeningly to life. The blade seethed in the contained space, all heat and teeth. One slip and he’d lose a limb. Bracing himself, he raked the blade against the trunk wall, sparks and shrapnel flying back into his eyes, his mouth. The smell of burned upholstery and greased metal clogged his throat. Under the strain he felt the weakness of his muscles; given his condition, he wouldn’t be able to keep the pressure on for long. He stopped, the blade quieting, and kicked at the spot he’d carved out. His foot blew through, but the hole wasn’t big enough.

  From outside: “—locked in there with the—”

  As he revved the blade inches from his cheek, he heard a percussion, and then a straw of light impaled the darkness.

  A bullet hole.

  Wrenching with all his might, he slashed at the dividing wall, then dropped the saw and smashed through the rear seat backs, a series of bullets skewering the cargo space behind him. Panting, he scrambled over the console into the driver’s seat.

  Misha stood five feet back from the driver’s window, aiming for Nate’s head. So it would end here in the front seat of a Town Car. Nate had only an instant to wonder why Misha was standing so far back when he pulled the trigger.

  Flinching away, Nate heard himself bellow.

  Inches from his temple, the driver’s window wobbled and spit out a chip.

  Bullet-resistant.

  Of course the boss’s car would be bullet-resistant.

  Misha fired again and again, aiming at the same spot.

  Nate rammed the keys into the ignition and floored it, the Town Car leaping forward, fishtailing around, clipping the rolled-open barn door. As the ass end of the vehicle swept past the men, they all leaped back except Pavlo. The rear bumper swung within inches of his knees, but he held his ground, unimpressed, glaring through the rear windshield, his craggy face and dead eyes promising, as the car accelerated away, that Nate’s safety was only temporary.

  Nate hurtled up the long driveway and careened onto the main road, spilling into the empty oncoming lane, wrestling the car back under control just in time to skid to a stop parallel to his parked Jeep. He stumbled out, across, in, his own set of keys at the ready.

  The engine roared to life. Wiping sweat from his brow, his blood-sticky hands firm around the wheel, he aimed the hood at the glowing dotted line and clamped the pedal to the floor. Hurtling through darkness, he felt a sensation overtake him—that he was flying out of his own grave.

  Chapter 55

  Three in the morning and Nate had just finished scrubbing Abara’s blood from his hands. He’d sneaked back into the Bouquet Canyon house, careful not to awaken his father or the kids. Janie had stirred as he’d slipped past into the bathroom, but he couldn’t bring himself to wake her yet to tell her what they had done to Abara.

  Beneath the punishing heat of the nozzle, Nate felt the reality of his situation settle in, and he emerged from the shower cloaked in a mood of black finality. Charles waited, holding his towel out for him and dripping blood on the clean tiles. Nate took the towel, his left arm quaking slightly. He refused to acknowledge the ache emanating from deep inside the muscle.

  “I’m running out of options, Charles,” he said. “And time. I gotta make a move. But I don’t want to.”

  Charles took this in solemnly, chewing a cheek. “You were the guy on the beach,” he said, “who dove into the waves and saved the girl.”

  “I was.”

  “But when we went over, you lost something.”

  Nate was almost afraid to say it out loud. “You mean the helicopter. When I didn’t jump.”

  “And with my mom,” Charles said. “You could’ve told her I was dead. You were right there, parked at the curb. But she had to hear it from a stranger.”

  Nate nodded. He was afraid to blink, to speak. When he did, his voice scratched his throat. “That’s why you’ve been here all this time,” he said. “You’ve never forgiven me.”

  “Of course I have,” Charles said. “You’ve never forgiven you.”

  “I don’t understand,” Nate said. “What’s that have to do with this? This decision, now?”

  Charles’s face was speckled with dried blood, his lashes heavy with sand. “You gotta decide for once and for all,” he said. “Which guy are you? The guy on the beach or the guy outside my mother’s house?”

  Nate dried himself, taking a moment to flex his left hand. Charles’s breath leaked through the blown-open lungs in his chest cavity. Nate dressed and hung the towel neatly over the rack. Placing his hand on the doorknob,
he paused.

  “The guy on the beach,” he said.

  * * *

  He and Janie sat the way they used to as college kids, Indian style on the bed, facing each other. The mood tonight, however, was anything but hopeful.

  Nate couldn’t get the image of Abara out of his mind. He thought of that lonely house, the single plate resting on the kitchen counter.

  “Good people keep getting killed because of me,” he said.

  “No,” Janie said, her face still ashen from Nate’s report. “People are getting killed because of Pavlo Shevchenko. Don’t let guilt confuse the issue.”

  “It can’t keep going this way. I won’t let it. And at any minute the choice is gonna be taken away from me. As soon as my fingerprints are discovered on that saw, I’m done. I will have killed a federal agent—”

  “You can go in, explain—”

  “And they’ll believe me? Even if it’s true, I can’t explain everything away. There’s too much against me now, Janie. You know that. Abara was my best—my only—advocate. And before they killed him, they forced him to call in and say he was wrong about me. Then his body? My prints? Along with everything else? It’s done.”

  “But the case they’re building against Shevchenko—”

  “They’re not gonna be able to tie him to those murders. He covers his tracks too well. And we can’t keep hiding forever. You know that too. It’s only a matter of time before his men track down you and Cielle here. Or anywhere else. You can’t live like this. Our daughter can’t.”

  Janie’s breathing quickened. “So what’s that leave us?”

  The starlight softened the room’s edges, and he thought about the previous night here in this bed, how everything had been safe and promising then. A fantasy, sure, but one well worth having.

  He touched her cheek gently. “No way out but through.”

  “What are you gonna do?” She pulled away. “Go to war?”

  He said nothing.

  She coughed out a one-note laugh and looked to the ceiling. “With what? Yourself? No weapons? You had one gun, and they took that.”

  “I’m going now to figure that out.”

  She covered her mouth, a gesture that might have looked prudish if not for her anguish.

  “I’ve made so many mistakes,” Nate said. “But the ones I regret the most are the things I didn’t do. The things I let fear keep me from doing. But now, with this”—he lifted his left arm, rotated the weakened wrist—“and everything else. There’s none of that. No more not doing.” He moved her hand down away from her face and held it in her lap. “I will not go to my grave knowing that these guys are after you and my daughter.”

  She squeezed his hand, hard, holding on. “What are you gonna do?”

  “Anything I have to.”

  His knuckles ached, but she didn’t relent.

  “You come back.” She bit her lower lip hard enough that the color left beneath her teeth. “You come back and say good-bye first.”

  It took some effort for him to let go of her hand.

  * * *

  Casper followed him down the hall, his nails making too much noise on the floorboards. Nate tapped a knuckle against his father’s door and heard a muffled answer: “Come in.”

  He stood in the doorway as his father rustled up against the headboard, pulling on a pair of spectacles. Early morning leaked around the curtains, a pale shade of gray.

  “Dad,” he said. “It’s gonna get bad.”

  “Hardly call it a picnic now.”

  “Worse. Soon enough I’ll be framed as a cop killer. The whole law-enforcement community is gonna come after me, on top of those men. I gotta leave and take care of some stuff. It’s dangerous for you to stay around Janie and Cielle—”

  “I got them.”

  “It’s much safer for you to go back—”

  “I’m not asking, Nate.” The hard words rang around the room. He cleared his throat apologetically. “I can help protect them from those men. And anyone else.”

  “I don’t want you to be at risk, Dad.”

  Nate’s father pulled off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes. When he looked up, his weathered face was as vulnerable as Nate had ever seen it. “I haven’t done anything worth anything in a long time. Don’t take this away from me, son.”

  They regarded each other in the semidarkness.

  Nate nodded once and withdrew.

  * * *

  Beneath the fan that had been half torn from the ceiling by the weight of his daughter’s body, Pavlo spread Nastya’s clothes across her luxurious duvet. With a razor blade—her razor blade—he visited a great, calm violence on her shirts and skirts, her bras and panties. He wore bifocals, his sole concession to his age, which lent him greater gravity and a dignified elegance he did not often display. He required them; it was meticulous and vital work. Firming the razor between thumb and fist, he dragged a dress across his arm, the blade’s corner rising through the silk like a shark’s fin.

  Beyond the picture window, the lights of the Strip were on a low simmer, daybreak still barely a notion at the horizon. The spectacular city view had been freed once and for all, the curtains torn from the rod and shredded at Pavlo’s hand. Traces of Nastya’s lipsticked message remained, red smudges on the pane.

  Yuri and Misha entered and stood like waiters waiting to be acknowledged. Plucking a red bra from the mound, Pavlo sliced through one cup, then the other. “What?”

  “The police responded to Abara’s barn,” Misha said, “off our tip. They are processing the evidence now.”

  “Good.” Pavlo cut the buttons from a sheer blouse, one by one. “And Overbay?”

  Yuri said, “We are watching the airports and—”

  “Find him.” Pavlo’s hands stopped, then resumed, making an incision down the length of the blouse, splitting it between the shoulders. “Don’t watch. Do.”

  “We have been spending money to gather addresses,” Yuri said. “Overbay’s buddy pals from the war. His friends. Guesthouses or second homes. The wife’s parents have condo in Arrowhead. His father has cabin in Bouquet Canyon. A doctor friend of wife has Malibu beach house. Those kinds of places. It is how they track criminals.”

  Pavlo said, “What of the wife’s old boyfriend?”

  “He drove east after crossing us. As of last night, he checked in to a motel in Ohio. No phone calls to or from him. He is useless to them.”

  Pavlo snatched the sheaf of papers from Yuri’s hand and flipped through them.

  “How much did this cost me?”

  “Fifteen thousand dollars.”

  Pavlo handed the papers back and turned his attention to a pair of panties on the bed. “There are four of you. Split the list in half and go. Start with nearest places first.” He pushed a strip of black lace across the blade until it frayed, then gave way. Misha had exited, but Yuri remained, his big swollen face the picture of concern. “Go!” Pavlo yelled. “Leave me!”

  The door clicked quietly closed. Pavlo cut through more black lace, then shoved the razor savagely through the crotch, tearing, ripping. He was sweating, his arms straining against the fabric, and he realized he was burying a roar in his throat. A spasm of fury seized him. He raked the mound of sliced fabric off the duvet and watched the strips and ribbons scatter across the floor, the remnants of his broken daughter. But it wasn’t until he turned the razor on himself, carving a furrow up his ink-sheathed forearm and releasing the pain that had been scouring his insides, that he finally understood the sweet agony Nastya had found in the blade.

  Chapter 56

  The 6:00 A.M. cold whipped through the imprecise seal of the not-so-weatherproof Wrangler’s soft top, the stream blowing across Nate’s forehead as steady and loud as cranked-on air-conditioning. Praying that Eddie Yeap would be as usual the first coroner at the morgue, Nate input the number into the cell phone he’d borrowed from Janie and stepped on the gas. Before he risked his next move, he had to know if he was wanted yet for the murde
r of Agent Abara, and Eddie was, he hoped, the guy with his hands inside the guts of the case. As the line rang, Nate ran through the reasoning he’d constructed as he’d flown down the freeway.

  A murder in Chatsworth would fall under the jurisdiction of the Devonshire station, which meant the body and the crime scene should be processed by LAPD. Because Abara was an FBI agent, the case would go federal, but Nate was banking on the fact that no one would want to transport evidence across the country to the lab at Quantico, because of both the delay and the risk of deterioration of the chillingly fresh evidence. Which meant that his best bet for getting information on the case’s status was from—

  Eddie Yeap picked up. “Yullo?”

  “Hey, Eddie. It’s Nate.”

  “Nate Bank-Hero Nate?”

  The greeting boded well—not a salutation offered to a cop killer.

  “Listen,” Nate said, “I caught a death notification for that agent killed out in Chatsworth. Abara. I have to go tell his mother.”

  “I thought FBI handled their own.”

  “I guess they’re as short-staffed with this stuff as we are. Anyway, Brown asked me to handle it.”

  “You coming in?”

  “Later. But I was wondering if you could give me a preview.”

  “Well, Jonesy’s in bad shape. Heh. They used an honest-to-God rescue saw. You believe that?”

  Nate parked at a meter a few blocks away from the Police Administration Building. If things went bad and he had to bolt, he didn’t want to get stuck in a parking garage. “Any physical evidence?”

  “I got bupkis off what was left of Jonesy, but scuttlebutt is the latent-print unit pulled something off the rescue saw.”

  Climbing out, Nate paused. Then slammed the door, a little harder than necessary, and started briskly toward the building. “Where are they with that?”

  “Prints are at the lab now.”

  “Already?”

  “Fast-tracked. Killed an agent, ya know. Heh.”

  “When do you think they’ll have results?”

  “I’d say any minute.”