Infernal: Bite The Bullet (8 page)

I had to go to the police.

But first I had to get out of here.

How had I thought for one moment that this man
could help me?

His back was to me, his hand braced on the balcony
as he argued with whoever was on the other end of the phone. An accomplice?
More than likely. No one did this on their own, to this scale.

I’d found my brother’s murderer, for all the good
it would do me dead. I’d walked into his trap.

I leapt for the front door. Mercifully, it was
still wide open, as I’d left it. I took my close call, snatched up my shoes and
bolted for my life down the stairwell.

I couldn’t risk the glass-box elevator. The ride
would feel like eternity, and what if he was waiting for me at the bottom? I’d
be a fish in a barrel.

I broke through a fire-exit, expecting to set off
the building’s alarm, but nothing happened, and I emerged in a service alley
lined with giant wheeled dumpsters.

Pausing to catch my breath, I whipped out my
phone, scrolling to Detective Dalton’s Number. It rang and rang, then abruptly
cut off and went to voicemail. I pictured him, rolling his eyes at my caller ID
as he sat down to a very middle-class dinner with his prissy wife and kids.

Fucking great
. I was the girl who cried
wolf. When I really needed him, he was cutting me off.

I rattled off a breathless message, giving
Konstantyn’s name and pseudonym, and my suspicions that he was responsible for
Daniel’s abduction and torture.

If I could just get to civilisation I should be
okay. Safer in plain sight.

North looked promising, and if I stuck to the
riverbank I figured I couldn’t get too lost.

When I heard the footfalls pounding the street, my
legs struck into a full-out run. That was no stranger running up behind me, no
jogger. Konstantyn was chasing me, like he was hell bent on steam rolling right
over me. I was in danger, and I wasn’t going to be able to outrun him. As a
dancer, I had stamina, but not for the long haul, adrenaline-pumping,
speed-racing my desperate terror was pushing my body into. I’d crash and then
I’d be screwed.

Frantic, my head whipped around as I sought an
escape route, but there was none, just an unending stretch along the River Thames,
and if the sound of his curses were as close as they seemed, I wasn’t covering
it fast enough,

He caught up and I yelped, raising my arms as I
spun to face him.

Konstantyn stopped about twenty feet away, his
palms outstretched and his chest heaving.

“You stay the hell away from me,” I warned, trying
to inject some threat into my breathless words, when my heart felt like it was
going to explode.

“Do not run,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Yeah, right. Ted Bundy probably said the same to
all of his victims. Who the hell are you?”

“That’s complicated,” he said with unnerving
calmness. “But I am not the one who killed your brother.”

“I saw the photographs of Daniel in your
apartment. And all those others. I saw the gun.” I scanned his body for any sign
he’d brought it with him, but he was still in his dance clothes from earlier,
and those left little to the imagination, and even less room for concealment.
“Ivan Zelenko. That’s your real name?”

He didn’t answer me, yet he didn’t make a move to
step closer. That was the only thing that stopped me from screaming ‘til my
lungs bled in the hope somebody in the dark-windowed offices overhead might
take notice.

“If you didn’t kill him, then where did you get
those photographs? What is your part in all this?” I was desperate. I sounded
desperate, and I hated myself, even as I praised myself for not falling apart.
He could kill me in a heartbeat, but here we were, engaged in a civilised,
terrifying chat.

“I am with Ukrainian Secret Service. I investigate
missing Ukrainian nationals in London.”

He was some kind of Eastern European
double-o-seven? Right, like I was going to buy that.

“So you’re working with the police?” I said,
taking a wary step backwards. He didn’t try to gain the upper hand, didn’t
move, except to lower his arms and widen his stance.

He shook his head. “Illegal aliens from my country
will not cooperate with your police.”

“But you think there’s a connection between my
brother’s murder and these missing persons?” Let’s just say I was humouring
him. I wasn’t going to trust him so easily, not after the photos.
God, those
photos ...

“I didn’t know he was your brother before tonight,
but now, I think yes.”

I met his eyes and folded my arms across my chest,
trying to look confident, when he made me feel so small, and fear still had me
gripped and shaking. “Why?”

“The studio. The club, Infernal. You think it is
coincidence we both turn up looking in the same places? I think maybe you can
help me.”

“So, what, you’re working undercover at the studio
and the club?”

He inclined his head.

“But you… I mean, in that club. You were…” He’d
been prostituting himself. What government worker would go to such lengths for
a bunch of missing illegal immigrants who probably didn’t even want to be
found?

“I was gathering intelligence.”

I couldn’t help my eyeroll. “Is that what you call
it?"

He fixed me in a glare that sparked with those
stupid-pretty, angry green flecks. “I danced. What? You think I fucked the
clients? I asked for your help, not your judgement.”

“Why would I help you?”

“Your brother is dead, Neva. For Mariya, there may
still be a chance.”

“Mariya?” I didn’t know anyone called Mariya.

“My sister.”

Realisation dawned and with it, a sick shame at
how I’d judged him. This was as personal for him as it was for me. An apology
hovered on my lips, but was promptly drowned out by the shrieking approach of sirens.

“You called the police?”

Man, he sounded angry, and I held up my hands,
warding him off.

“No, I-”
Shit.
My hands dropped and my
shoulders curled in. I couldn’t look at him as I admitted it. “I left a message
on Detective Dalton’s voicemail.”

“Oliver Dalton?” His expression turned murderous.

“Yes, he’s the detective on Daniel’s murder case.”

Disgust growled in his throat. “You told this man
you were with me?” His fists clenched and unclenched, his strong jaw tight and
twitching.

“No, I just gave him your name as a suspect. What
is the problem here? If you are who you say you are, you have no need to hide
from the authorities.”

He scrubbed a palm over his tight-cropped skull.
“Dalton is, how you say? A dirty cop. In the pocket of Gilles.”

“Who the hell is Gilles?"

“There is no time now,” he said brusquely. The
sirens were getting closer and it added a powerful edge to his movements.
Footsteps pounded down the pavement in the distance.

“Are you going to run?” I asked, straining to see
how many were coming.

He shook his head. “It is you who must run, Neva.
You have uncovered too much. They will kill you.”

I blinked. “Me? What about you?”

“I will let them take me in, eventually. It will
buy you time. Give me your phone, quickly.”

His tone commanded complete obedience, and I
handed it over numbly. He worked the SIM out and destroyed the phone beneath
his boot, tossing the shattered components into the Thames.

Shock put me a few seconds behind, like a program
on time-lapse. When I caught up with what he’d done, I gaped. “Why did you do
that?”

“Because they are tracking your movements. How do
you think he found you so quickly?”

“Oh no. No. No. This is all too paranoid. You’re
some psycho escaped from an asylum, aren’t you? Forget to take your meds
today?” I was losing it.

He crowded in close. “Listen to me,” he said, his
expression grave as he gripped my upper arms. “Your life, my sister’s life may
depend on this.”

He pressed a set of keys into my hand and folded
my fingers around them. His skin was warm and I could feel the pulse in his
thumb as it brushed over my knuckles. It was hammering.

“You cannot be found here with me. I will keep
them occupied. Go back to my apartment. Remove the evidence you found, the
laptop too. When they come to search, there must be nothing to link you to any
of this. If they believe I told you anything, the moment they think you’re a
threat to Gilles, they won’t hesitate to cut you down.”

“But I called him. I gave him your name –”

“Go. Now!”

I obeyed. God help me, but I believed what he was
saying.

I was out of sight but not earshot when I heard
the shouts of the police officers demanding he come forward with his hands
visible. It sounded more like an invitation to fight than to surrender, and when
the first sickening thud impacted against flesh, I fled.

With my body running on the fumes of adrenaline, I
backtracked shakily to Konstantyn’s apartment. Having taken a roundabout route
to avoid the police, I couldn’t even be sure I had the right building; they all
looked the same to my panic-hazed mind. Only that the security guard was
familiar, I’d have walked right past. Once I spotted him sitting behind his
desk, I ducked out of sight and rounded the corner to find the fire exit still
open. Remembering the CCTV in the elevator, I took the back stairs just in
case. Counting floors as I went, I couldn’t believe I was doing this. For all I
knew, I was making myself an accessory to a serial killer. Huffing the hair
from my eyes and shoving the mass of it back up from where it had fallen out of
its ponytail, I found the front door to his apartment and unlocked it.

The Ukrainian military sure paid their spies well.
Assuming he was who he said he was. The inside was just as I’d left it, though
the door to the balcony was ajar, just the hint of a river-scented breeze
drifting in to chill my skin. I shut it and grabbed up a pillow from the large
bed, shucking off the case and carrying my makeshift bag to the drawer.

I stared at it for a few seconds.

Knowing what was inside, the photographs, the
passport, the gun, I was reluctant to see it all again. But I had to, just in
case he was telling the truth. Even if he wasn’t, I’d have this as evidence
against him.

Bracing myself, I yanked the drawer open and
shoved the entire contents into the pillow-case. My fingerprints would already
be all over them. Leaving them would be stupid at this point.

My hand hovered over the handgun I’d left at the
bottom of the drawer. I’d never handled one. Gingerly, I plucked it up between
my fingertips, dropping it hastily, but carefully in with everything else. The
last thing I needed was a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I snatched up his
laptop and added that too.

Hastening back out the way I’d come in, I turned
off the main street and wandered in the direction of home, clutching my bag of
stolen evidence and trying not to look guilty of anything.

Were the police already looking for me? Did they
think I was involved? I’d called the detective, after all, and he knew where I
lived.

That gave me pause, and I slumped against a wall
halfway to my place, torn.

What had Konstantyn said?
A dirty cop.

I tried to imagine the mild-mannered Oliver Dalton
being a criminal. The brown-suit wearing guy with the frumpy wife and
buck-toothed kids was more like the victim on Midsummer Murders than the
culprit.

It all seemed ridiculous.

But it would explain so much: the dead-end leads,
the mute witnesses, the police’s seeming disinterest in pursuing Daniel’s
killers. Had my suspicions been right all along?

Konstantyn seemed so sure. He said if they got a
whiff of my knowing anything, they’d kill me. But where could I go?

I had no place to go but the one I rented. My life
was in that apartment, and in my job at the gym. We were estranged from my
mother’s family, and I didn’t even know who my father was. Nobody I wanted to
know, if what my mother said about running to protect me from him was true.
Even if I had family, I wouldn’t want them tangled up in this. Without
Konstantyn, I was completely alone in this. He was the secret agent guy. I
didn’t know the first thing about changing my identity and going into hiding.

Besides, I’d done nothing wrong.

Running would only draw more suspicion. With that
in mind, I set myself back on the route to my apartment, passing into the low
rent section of town I was currently inhabiting. Here, my pillow-case bag
wouldn’t be so strange.

If ignorance made me safe, I could play up the
naivety. I’d do what Konstantyn said and hide the evidence.

Konstantyn. Ivan. Lazarus. Whatever his name was.
Sighing, I pushed into my apartment with my stolen goods, and wondered what the
police were doing to him now.

Being out in the open, even in the relative safety
of my apartment, proved too much for my frazzled nerves. I locked myself in my
bedroom and climbed up onto the bed with the pillow-case. First, I removed the
gun, and set it aside, far aside. Then I reached for something that didn’t have
the potential to blast my head off: his passport. Well, Ivan Zelenko’s
passport. I flipped to the photo page and stared at his face. Fiercely
handsome, angled, those full lips retained an edge of savagery even in his
photo. His hair was slightly longer, not so cropped, and fairer, but there was
no mistaking him.

I skimmed the name again, the date of birth,
nothing that told me the truth of who he was. If he had one false identity, he
could have countless others.

“Who are you?” I murmured, looking down at the
sadness I had to be imagining in the picture’s face. Photographs could lie, but
the desperation in his eyes when he’d spoken about his sister was something you
couldn’t fake, not with someone who knew.