Chapter Thirty-Five
After two solid hours shopping in one of Dallas’s more elite malls, Darya could say with absolute certainty that Gia Sinclair kicked butt at her job. From the time they’d stepped outside Darya’s front door until now, Gia had somehow kept an easygoing conversation moving with Darya while simultaneously listening and responding to Beckett, Knox and Danny’s intermittent updates via headset. The constant chatter was enough to fry Darya’s mind. Not unlike trying to cram for an important test while someone blared Metallica in the background.
Gia wasn’t the least bit phased. Not by the fact that two of Ruslan’s goons had loosely trailed them for the last hour or that Knox had reported more men had left Ruslan’s suite and headed their way. On the surface, she was just a carefree woman out with her friend and hell-bent on some serious retail therapy. Only the most subtle cues showed how carefully she gauged their surroundings.
They ordered fountain drinks from one of the fast-food places and found a table nestled against a square pillar. Gia took the seat with her back to it, set her open purse on the table and motioned Darya into the seat across from her.
Murmurs sounded in the headset, the distinct rumble of Sergei’s accented voice carrying even though she couldn’t make out the words. A second later, Beckett was back. “Knox, any luck getting a look inside Ruslan’s suite, or is Sergei finding out how many we’re up against the old-fashioned bloody way?”
“Not yet.” From the grumble beneath Knox’s answer, her man was none-too-pleased their plan to get a camera inside via a room service or housekeeping cart was stuck on idle. “After callin’ up room service myself for lunch, I can’t blame him for having his meals brought in from somewhere else, but you’d think the son of a bitch would at least need some clean towels by now.”
Beckett chuckled. “Old-fashioned and bloody it is.”
A cold chill that had nothing to do with the mall’s supercharged air-conditioners snaked down her back. Ruslan might be unpredictable, but he was ruthless and the men who served him were no different. Getting any information out of them would take extreme measures.
“Think about something good,” Gia murmured from her place across the table. Her mic was still on, so it reverberated with a surround sound effect, but also held a sharp command. “Our guys are coming down the walkway behind us. They haven’t clocked us yet, but it’ll be better if you don’t look white as a sheet.”
Her phone rang in her purse, dragging her out of her bone rattling worry. She dug it out and found her first genuine smile of the afternoon at the sight of Knox’s name on the screen. “Hey,” she said, wishing she had the ability to toggle her mic on and off the way Gia could. Unfortunately, she’d be under far more scrutiny with Ruslan’s men than Gia would, which meant she’d been given a nearly undetectable headset with a wireless receiver only big enough to be cleverly hidden by her belt.
“You want out?” Knox said. “All you have to do is say the word and we’ll shut it down.” No preamble. No soft hi-how-are-ya-holding-up? Just straight to business. But then this was his future as much as it was hers. And if she’d learned anything about Knox in the two months since she’d known him, it was that he protected the people he loved with everything he had in him.
And Knox Torren definitely loved her.
“No, I want to finish it. Once and for all.” She glanced at Gia who put on a good show of impatiently waiting for her girlfriend to get off the damned phone.
At first, silence filled the line. She braced, fully expecting to hear his voice shift to the earpiece and to have him shut the whole operation down with one word.
Instead, he spoke only to her and gave her the exact anchor she needed. “We’re gonna kick this thing, sweetheart. You, me and our family. We’ll deal with the lot of them and all this shit will be behind us.”
You, me and our family.
So beautiful. No matter how many times he’d reiterated that very statement in the last few days, it still resonated deep.
“I love you.” It was quiet, but she offered the simple words with all the emotion inside her and prayed it didn’t hit him as a fearful goodbye—even if a part of her was terrified it was.
“Love you, too, sweetheart. You stay close to Gia, listen to what she says and hold the fuck on to her when shit gets real. Got it?”
“Got it.”
He paused and in that second, she could practically feel the hesitation thrumming through him.
“I’m fine, Knox. Hang up the phone and work your magic. I’ll see you at the hotel.”
“I’m right here. Every step.”
And he was. Flooding her spirit with his strength and confidence even from a distance. “I know you are.” She braced and straightened taller in her seat. “I’ll see you soon.” Before she could change her mind, she ended the call and forced a big gulp of Coke down her desert-dry throat.
Gia planted her elbow on the table and rested her chin on her upturned palm. “I’d have ordered food, too, but I figure you’d just pick at it and give your anxiety away.”
“No food,” Darya confirmed. “Even if I ate it, I’m not sure I’d keep it down.”
“Not me,” Gia said. “I’m a stress eater. The higher the anxiety, the bigger the caloric content.”
Knox’s voice cut through the headset. “Ruslan’s men just exited Park Lane and are circling back around to the mall.”
“Gia?” Beckett said.
“Right.” Gia stood, draped her purse over her shoulder and pointed down the mall’s long corridor behind them. “Time to wrap this up.”
Darya stood, though how she managed it with her legs shaking as much as they did was a miracle. Not even when she’d fled to the States with no idea if her false identification would work had she been this terrified.
Gia smoothed a comforting hand down Darya’s back and stayed close to her side, but her words were for the men watching their backs. “Headed to the parking garage.”
The trek was a short one that felt like a lifetime. They crossed out of the store into the mall’s main corridor and a rush of chilled air slicked beneath her loose hair to kiss her sweat-slicked nape. A few stores ahead of them, Axel meandered across one of the wide bridges that connected the two walkways, his focus seemingly centered on his phone instead of where he was going.
From the murmured updates in her headset, she knew better. Knew that everyone else was in place ready to do their part as well. Every scrap of information registered clearly in her ear, but not a bit of it made a difference. Her brain couldn’t process it. Couldn’t do anything better than stay on damage control with her over-stimulated senses and ensure she kept pace with Gia.
The parking garage doors whooshed open and the oppressive August heat slammed against her with twice as much weight as before. This was it. No more running. No more hiding. Not from Ruslan or anyone else.
Ever.
Five cars into their row, the sound of low masculine voices drew closer, their Russian accents unmistakable but the words not quite carrying enough clarity to give her direction.
Up ahead a black SUV with blacked out windows neared their row.
“Black SUV dead ahead,” Gia whispered.
Beckett’s voice was crisp and loaded with purpose. “We have visual. Plans are a go.”
Gia wrapped her arm around Darya’s waist and gave a friendly squeeze. To anyone else, they’d look like two women drunk on overcharged credit cards with an evening of shopping afterglow to indulge in, but the sharpness in Gia’s tone as she leaned in was total focus. “Remember the plan. Grab on to me like you’re terrified. They won’t have a choice but to take us both without causing a scene.”
Darya managed a jerky nod and kept walking.
The SUV made its turn headed directly toward them.
Behind them the men grew closer, their quick footsteps ricocheting off the low ceiling and cement pillars around them.
Gia glanced back and a mask of fear that in no way matched the confident grip she kept around Darya’s waist slipped across her face just as the SUV screeched to a halt in front of them. Three men jumped from the car’s interior, leaving them sandwiched.
“Five,” Gia muttered so low Darya barely caught it even through her headpiece, but it was enough to let the team know what they were dealing with.
From there the scrambling came natural, fear and a very real need to escape pummeling Darya at all sides. With one arm she fought, slinging her bags with all she had in her and keeping her other banded tight to Gia. One man barked out a command in Russian, directing the others to take them both. The next thing she knew she was part dragged, part carried to the SUV’s hatchback and tossed alongside Gia onto the cargo area.
Gia rolled, taking Darya with her so Darya’s back was plastered against the rear seat and covered her with her body, but one of the men crawled in the cargo area, slammed the hatchback shut behind him and whipped a zip tie from his pocket.
The car doors upfront slammed shut and a voice yelled back, “Blondinka yego. Ushibla, i on budet imet’ golovu.” The blonde is his. Hurt her and he’ll have your head.
Meaning, for now, she was safe, but Gia wasn’t. Not until their own men made a move and she could engage with her gun.
Zip tie clenched between his teeth, the man with them in the back jerked Gia away and tried to roll her to her belly.
The car moved into motion, the smooth glide completely belying the struggle going on between Gia and their captor. She elbowed him in the jaw hard enough to earn a backhand across her cheek. It stunned her long enough the man flipped her to her stomach and wrenched both hands to her back.
Oh, hell no. No way was Darya letting that happen. Not when they were this close. She launched forward with everything she had, knocking the man off balance and filling the car’s interior with an infuriated roar.
Unlike his brutal attack on Gia, he merely banded his arms around Darya’s, holding her in an unforgiving grip as he tried to wrestle her to the floorboard. No easy task, considering Gia had teamed up and wrapped her arm around the guy’s throat.
“In place.” Sergei’s voice sounded in her headset, thick with his accent and loaded with grim determination. A quick glance out the back window confirmed not only the black Mercedes that had followed them to the mall behind their SUV, but an industrial air-conditioning service van pulling out of a reserved spot.
Done with playing nice, their captor released Darya and threw Gia across the cargo space so hard her head snapped against the glass. She slumped, and for a second, Darya thought he’d knocked her new friend unconscious.
Just as Darya was about to crawl across the space to protect her, the car turned hard into the narrowed stall where the self-pay gate was lowered and jerked to a stop. The sudden stop threw her and the man beside her off balance.
The driver’s window hummed as they lowered it and Darya scrambled to her knees, but her guard whipped out a knife and moved in between them. “Peremeshcheniye i ona umirayet.” Move and she dies.
Darya froze, gaze sliding to Gia’s slumped body. “Ty yey bol’no. Vse, chto ya khochu sdelat’, eto ubedit’sya, chto ona v poryadke.” You hurt her. All I want to do is make sure she’s okay.
Through the front windshield, she spied the tip of the white gate raising up. Just a few more seconds. Enough to get both the SUV and the trail car wedged in the narrow aisle and they’d have help.
The SUV inched forward just as a white Cadillac Escalade sped forward and screeched to a halt in front of them.
Beckett’s voice shot through the earpiece. “Gia go.”
One second.
One freeze-frame moment, then Gia launched for the man beside her and all hell broke loose.