Bargains and Betrayals

  “Jessie?”

  “Grab the lawyer and be prepared. I’m out, but … it’s gonna take some damage control, Dad,” I said as Pietr slipped back into his pants. “Pietr stopped the guy from killing me, but…”

  Pietr’s gaze flicked to me, cool as steel.

  “… the guy wasn’t so lucky. And there are additional bodies. But—they’ve been dead awhile. No. Think zombies.”

  Pietr turned away, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “Oh,” Dad mumbled.

  “I’m calling Max to get us,” I said, as much to Dad as to Pietr. “Can you handle this, Dad?”

  “I’ll have to.”

  Pietr looked at me. “We’re going. Now.” He swung his head back toward the front doors of Pecan Place.

  An alarm blared and nurses and guards, human-seeming guards, flowed out of the building.

  Pietr put his arms out for me. To carry me.

  Spotlighted by the glowing light of morning something dark stained his outstretched hand.

  Blood.

  Nearly dry. Nearly just a memory. Nearly. I stepped back. Unwilling to let him carry me, I wondered how long I could run on a knee that was still occasionally weak from Derek’s previous assault.

  I called Max.

  Pietr reached for me and I stepped back, eyes still locked on the blood on his hand.

  I shook my head at Pietr.

  His gaze dropped away from my face, realizing why I hesitated. Staring at his bloody hand, he crouched, rubbing it clean in the frost that sparkled on the browning blades of grass.

  Pietr stood, reaching for me again, and I flinched away. His expression darkened, eyes stormy, lips thin and tight.

  I shook my head, no.

  Pietr slid something from his pocket and held it over his head, glowering at me. He pressed a button.

  “Allo?”

  “Max. I need you to pick us up.”

  “In the car,” Max rumbled. “Pecan Place?”

  A vein rose by Pietr’s hairline as I opened my mouth to say yes to Max. He turned his back to me and watched the milling of the staff back by the building’s opening.

  Kicking at the grass lining the parking lot, every muscle in his back and arms went tight. He dropped into a crouch, scrubbing his hands across his face and head.

  He wanted to shout—maybe curse—but didn’t dare because it’d draw unwanted attention. So Pietr worked out his aggression silently for our safety—my safety—while I watched.

  I heard the squeal of tires and a small dark car pulled up beside us, the passenger door flinging open. Pietr rose and in one fluid move threw me in, pushing in beside me and yanking the door shut.

  We sped away.

  “Jessie?” Max’s growl reverberated in the receiver.

  I looked at the driver. Short hair, sharp features, slightly graying around the temples. Strong, tough and sure.

  Ex-military?

  His posture spoke of authority—leadership material of some sort.

  He and Pietr were engaged in a heated conversation. In Russian.

  “Jessie!”

  “A ride’s already here, Max.” I snapped the cell shut and wondered what I’d fallen into this time.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jessie

  Cat and Amy grabbed me the moment Pietr shoved me through the door at the Rusakovas’ house. They murmured and stroked my hair and hugged me again and again, but I couldn’t focus on them at all. No matter where he paced, the older man behind him, railing on in Russian, my eyes focused only on Pietr.

  “What’s really going on here, Cat?” I whispered. “Who’s that guy?”

  “Uncle Dmitri.” Her eyes tugged free of mine to follow him. Her words stiff, she said, “He’s come to help.”

  Amy shrugged. “Glad you’re back.”

  Cat took my hand and led me to the kitchen. “You need to make a phone call,” she said. “To your father.”

  Instantly I knew what she meant. As hard as it was going to be for him to accept, the Rusakovas would be better able to protect me than Dad could. Besides, any attempt he made to protect me would simply place him in the line of fire.

  “Give me that first,” Pietr said, his hand out for my cell.

  “What?”

  “Consider it insurance,” he muttered, heading for the computer. I followed him.

  He connected the cell phone to the computer and downloaded a brief video file.

  “Hey,” I said, seeing Christian unfurl the makeshift rope in my room back at Pecan Place. The perspective was strange.… I looked at Pietr. He’d shot the clip from under the bed. While I thought I could still handle things, he was handling them in a different way.

  Pietr tapped a few keys. “The audio’s not crisp, but it’s understandable.”

  I clutched the back of his chair, the memory doubling in intensity as the video rolled.

  “Now…” He pulled up the website for Pecan Place and hit the staff button. It took a moment, but he opened an e-mail account I didn’t recognize, typed in Dr. Jones’s address, and attached the file, his message only reading:

  You’ve been named in this video. Keep your distance or everyone will see it.

  He tapped send and, disconnecting the phone, handed it back to me. “Call your dad.”

  Mute, I nodded, watching as Pietr strode from the room, Uncle Dmitri close behind.

  Dad picked up on the first ring and I wandered into the kitchen.

  “Dad,” I said before he even finished his hello, “I’m not coming home. It’s safer this way. The Rusakovas can protect me. Alexi’s coming over now to draw some of Annabelle Lee’s blood. This’ll all be over soon.”

  He was very quiet and I imagined him working it all out in his head. “Okay, Jessie. You be careful.”

  “Don’t worry, Dad. I will. About everything.”

  “Good girl. I love you.”

  “I love you, too, Dad.” I set the cell phone down, my hand trembling.

  Alexi leaned into the kitchen. “I’m going now.”

  Cat nodded and pulled out a pot.

  “Er—can I help with anything, Cat?”

  She looked at me, lips twitching into a smile. “I have it, Jessie,” she said. “You have been gone quite a while, really. My cooking has improved. Alexi and Max are coping.…” She paused and her eyebrows drew together. She shot a worried look at Amy.

  Amy shrugged.

  “And Pietr?” I prodded.

  Amy glanced over her shoulder toward the window that looked out over the backyard. I pushed past her to see Pietr and Dmitri circling each other. My heart settled back into its normal pace realizing they were sparring, not fighting. “Rukopashka,” I realized aloud.

  “Da,” Cat answered as if I’d asked a question.

  “Uncle Dmitri’s wicked fast for an old guy,” Amy commented, watching Dmitri dodge Pietr, block an attack, and land a kick in his gut.

  I winced, but Pietr took it in stride, falling back a half pace and watching for an opening, an advantage before he lunged in and connected with Dmitri. A hit that should have knocked Dmitri on his ass only pushed him back a few paces. “Strong, too,” I muttered, turning back to Cat.

  She continued mixing and stirring.

  I continued wondering just who Dmitri was. Uncle? I doubted the title was accurate.

  Watching fearfully as Cat stirred the now bubbling something on the stovetop, I said, “Hey, your clock…”

  Cat shook her head.

  “What?” I asked, looking at Amy.

  “Beats me. Max says it’s bad luck to mention anything about it. Must be a Russian thing.”

  “Huh.” It wasn’t a Russian thing last time I’d been here.… I took a moment and looked back into the sitting room. The clock there was wrong, too. “Seriously?” The dining room … No downstairs clock held the actual time, and all were different. I stepped back into the kitchen, confusion clear on my face.

  Cat shut me down. “Nyet, Jessie. Do not mention it.”
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  They were all set at least two hours ahead of time. I paused by the calendar. There were no marks, no notes, no dates after the day I’d been forced to enter the hospital. It was like time—the very thing the Rusakovas were most closely attuned to—was being ignored.

  There was no timing instrument more accurate than an oborot’s internal clock, so maybe to them the rest meant nothing. But to a simple human like Amy or me or—I glanced out the window and saw Dmitri deliver a startling blow—okay, not Dmitri, then, but to simple humans, it would …

  I blinked, thinking back to Pietr’s words. “They have Derek and he’s watching.…” To a remote viewer like Derek, it might be enough to confuse what he was seeing with real time.… Was Derek arrogant enough to think that given his amazing set of abilities he might also occasionally get a glimpse of the future?

  Yes.

  His arrogance might even be enough to make him believe there was more time to react to a Rusakova attack on the CIA bunker. Lull him and the agents into a false sense of security so their reaction came too late.

  It was a strange idea—a long shot, but who knew? “One of Pietr’s new philosophies?” I finally asked Cat.

  “Da,” she said softly, realizing I’d caught up.

  She set a bowl before me and I ate a delicious concoction I would have never imagined Cat being able to put together. And I realized, glancing out the window again at Pietr and Dmitri circling each other, a lot had changed while I was gone.

  Jessie

  Amy dragged me down to the street corner to buy a newspaper out of the metal-and-glass dispenser. Sitting together on the curb, the first headline we spotted announced another Teen Train Track Suicide. “So how many is that now?” I asked her. “Five?”

  “I think it’s six. Garr. It’s all grim news. Students getting sick. Those visiting professional wrestlers who disappeared right around the time you headed—away.”

  Fred and Jeremy? They were big. Wrestler big.

  “And the moratorium on burials—”

  “Moratorium?” I said.

  Amy was breaking out some big words.

  “Yep. A special environmental police rep put an end to burying people because of some issues with shifting waterways. Can you believe it? Jack Jacobsen was cremated.”

  “No.” I thought back to Jack’s body in the refrigerator, in line to be used for zombie parts. “I can’t believe it.” Holy crap. Environmental police covering up disappearing bodies? How deep did this weirdness run? Was everyone in Junction in on this?

  I looked at the photo and caption partway down the page. “Hey. Mark Millford?” I tapped it. “Wasn’t he second string on the football team? One of Derek’s cronies?”

  She nodded and leaned her head on my shoulder.

  Derek. Feeding. Murdering to get one last good jolt out of his prey.

  “Oh, please, Jessie. Forget all the wacky crap going on around here for a minute or five. Pass me the comics.”

  “I don’t think there are—”

  “Of course there are comics. They’re the only redeeming feature to the newspaper. Without comics, newspapers would just be crap, crap, and more crap.”

  “And sports,” I said.

  She rolled her eyes and said, “See above. Crap.”

  “You’re in a precious mood.”

  “Sorry. I missed you gobs. You’re my best friend.”

  I wrapped an arm around her. “You’re my best friend, too.”

  “They told us you were away at some writers’ camp,” she said. “I didn’t believe it. You would have totally blabbed if you’d been selected for something that cool.”

  I smiled. “True.”

  “Max finally broke and took me to see you, but they wouldn’t let us in,” she said. “But I knew you hadn’t gone off to some camp. Pietr’s here. You wouldn’t ditch him to learn some new writing technique.”

  I shifted on the curb, uncomfortable with her assessment. I would have skipped off to anywhere to learn something new about writing. Before Pietr. “A new writing technique?”

  “Yeah. What’d they call it? Oh. The fast-draft technique.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “I looked into it,” she said.

  “What? You did research while I was gone? That’s very…”

  “Unlike me? Yeah. Pietr and I have become nerds in your absence. Maintaining the brainy quota around here without you.”

  “What’d you learn?”

  “Some people can write a whole frikkin’ book in two weeks.”

  My jaw dropped. “No.”

  “Yes. They use this fast-draft method to crank it out. Some pretty darn good books have come out of it, too.”

  “Well, look at you, saying frikkin’ and darn,” I marveled. “Cat’s really been cleaning up your language.”

  She stuck up a single finger.

  “But not your attitude. Niiice.” I leaned back and let the wind tease my hair out from under my knit hat. “A book in two weeks. I’d like to try that. After all this craziness is over. If it’s ever over.”

  “Maybe I’ll write a book, too,” Amy suggested.

  I rolled my head to look at her, awed. “You could totally do it. You have a very creative mind.”

  She snorted. “We should both have pen names. But we have time. Like you said: after this craziness is over.”

  “Yeah. What do you know about this craziness?”

  “Enough to know when to walk out of the room.”

  “And you don’t want to know any more?”

  “Not unless I have to. Look. I’m going back to the trailer tomorrow night.”

  I realized she hadn’t called it home. From what I’d seen the morning after my birthday party—her dad hung over so bad, he didn’t even know she was gone—it probably hadn’t felt like a home for a while.

  “Max insisted,” she explained. “I’ll stay a couple nights, clean the place up, and check on Dad. When you guys say I can come back, I will.”

  “I’ve heard worse ideas.”

  “Max says whatever you guys are doing will work out.”

  I nodded, watching the way she crushed the newspaper, wrapping her arms around herself. “But Max is ballsy. I don’t think he really plans stuff out.…”

  I chuckled. So some things hadn’t changed since I’d left. “It’ll work out. I’m sure Pietr’s been rolling ideas around in his mind a lot.”

  Amy relaxed, smoothing the newspaper out on the curb between us.

  The autumn wind tried to snatch it away but only managed to flip a few pages. “Hey!” I exclaimed. “You’re right. There are comics.”

  “You can learn two lessons from that,” Amy sniped. “A: I’m always right, and B: Things are looking up already.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Jessie

  Alexi returned with a sample of Annabelle Lee’s blood, and a belated—very belated, considering we were almost entering Christmas vacation—birthday present for me. He looked at me carefully as he handed it over, setting it in my arms so I felt the weight and recognized the size of it.

  Amy leaped up, looking at the package expectantly. “Well, aren’t you going to open it?” she said, shifting her weight from side to side. “Who’s it from?”

  Without even glancing at the poorly affixed tag, I guessed,

  “Wanda and Dad?”

  Alexi nodded.

  “I’ll open it later,” I assured Amy (who immediately looked disappointed). “Now’s not the right time.”

  Alexi nodded again and took the present back. “I’ll put it with the others.”

  Others. Other weapons. There were only so many guns one girl could carry.… Just how many beyond us was Uncle Dmitri including?

  “Your father says he’s worried, he loves you, and he knows you’re in a bigger mess than you’re saying,” Alexi continued his message. “He also said something about an old song, about wanting to send lawyers, guns, and money, but there’s little of the latter and the former’s sca
red to death now, so the other will have to be enough.”

  I smiled. Dmitri looked from Pietr to myself and muttered something. In Russian.

  “Stop,” I said. “You want to say something? Say it in English. If it’s something that shouldn’t be said, don’t frikkin’ say it at all.”

  His eyes narrowed, “Little girl,” he began, his voice heavily accented, “this is no game we are playing. You are a liability. How can Pietr focus when he worries about you?”

  Amy stood, placed her hands firmly over her ears, and began singing “Happy Birthday” as she exited the room. She didn’t want to know.

  “I’m doing my best to make sure he has nothing to worry about.” My gaze flicked to where the package from my father and Wanda rested. Guns. My guns.

  “You must be one hundred percent when we go in, Pietr,” Dmitri said. “You cannot worry about her.”

  Pietr weighed Dmitri’s words.

  “Send her home,” Dmitri insisted.

  “Pietr,” I growled his name out.

  He raised an eyebrow, but his eyes stayed on Dmitri.

  “You are the alpha,” Dmitri said.

  “Pietr.”

  Max began a slow yawn—

  Dmitri snapped, “You let your bitch speak to you that way—?”

  Which was cut short when Pietr sprang to his feet, knocking down the chair he’d just been sitting in.

  “She is no bitch!” he roared, so close the ends of Dmitri’s short hair quivered in the wake of Pietr’s rage.

  Dmitri was unmoved. “We see things differently.” He shrugged. “Send her home. Watching out for her was not part of our deal.”

  “Our deal,” Piter snarled, “includes everything involved in freeing my mother.” He hissed. “She”—he stabbed a finger in my direction—“is involved!”

  Dmitri looked at me.

  “I’ve done my part in this bargain,” Pietr said, his volume growing soft and even more dangerous. “Do yours.”

  Dmitri rubbed his chin. “Da. You have. Mostly.” Dmitri shrugged. “Fine. I will arrange for her to go with some of my men for her part in this.”