Chapter 12
Alex held me up as I shuffled along on aching feet. The distance to reach the corner seemed fairly short, and somehow long minutes ticked by before we reached the juncture. Before we turned the corner.
The room before us had detectives and technicians. Ukrainians and forensic specialists.
All motion stopped. All eyes turned to me.
At the center of the space, a body lay splayed on his back. His open eyes stared up at the ceiling.
The two holes in his chest had long since congealed.
Alex said, “I had them leave him as he lay. I knew you would want to see him, just as he fell.”
The rest of the room was a tableau.
I stared at Mikhaylo’s body. Surely he was a vampire. Surely he was some form of undead. And the moment I approached him, chest wounds or no, he would leap to his feet. He would grab a hold of my arms and he would rip out my heart. He would flay me. He would … he would …
Mikhaylo’s body lay still.
I took one step toward it. Then another. Alex was there, resolutely by my side, supporting me. There was not another sound in the room. Just my slow footsteps and the rasp of my own breathing.
At last we reached him.
His corpse did not move.
His head did not turn. His sightless eyes did not narrow.
I tentatively reached out a foot toward his arm.
I nudged my toes into his arm.
Fear coursed through me, panicked, unreasonable, irrational –
The corpse lay cold.
I stared at those wounds in his chest. Wounds made by Alex. He had returned fire.
I said, hoarsely, “He tried to kill you.”
Alex gave a wry smile. His free hand went again to his wound. “Takes a lot more than a hit in the shoulder to kill me.”
I looked at the corpse. Mikhaylo had been taken down by two bullets. Two bullets from the hand of the man I had sworn my life to. If Alex hadn’t fired, Mikhaylo could very easily have killed him. Mikhaylo could have taken away from me the one person most important in the entire world.
My foot’s nudge at Mikhaylo’s arm was harder now. “I’m glad you shot him, Alex. Maybe my dream of Mikhaylo rotting in prison for decades was naïve. Maybe he would have found lawyers to sow doubt about his involvement in the companies. Maybe, once convicted, he would have bought or threatened his way out and had escaped. And then he would have made it his mission to make every person here pay. Ever man, every woman, even remotely involved ...”
The thought sent cold fear through me.
Alex said, “But now he’s dead.”
I stared at the corpse. At what remained of Mikhaylo. His decomposing skin. His stilled blood. Nothing remained any longer of what made Mikhaylo so evil.
That evil was wholly gone from our Earth.
Relief coursed through me.
We had done it.
I glanced at the computers. “And the data? We have it?”
Laryssa stepped into the room. Her face was bruised and her hair was pulled back. Her clothes were torn and askew. She nodded. “We have everything, liebchen. We have the locations and the names. We will get them free.”
She stepped forward and tenderly pulled me into a hug. Every tendon in my body ached, but I returned the embrace.
Then Sasha was there, limping. I looked into those eyes I knew so well before bringing him, too, into a painful but soothing hug.
Laryssa looked up. “Enough. We’ll have a proper round of thank-yous in a few days. But right now, this woman needs about two days straight of sleep.” She looked to me. “Unless you’ll be smart and go to a hospital first?”
I resolutely shook my head.
Laryssa looked to Alex.
He came to me and gently took me up into his arms.
He looked down into my eyes.
“Let’s get you home.”