Authors: Shannon McKenna
And the thought of facing his family of origin ratcheted his stress level up to the stratosphere.
Fielding Bruno and Lily’s batshit request was the final ass-kick.
“Aaro, it’s not that big of a deal.” Bruno’s voice came back into focus. He’d stopped bellowing, was trying sweet reason again.
The guy was like a pit bull.
“There are tens of thousands of people in New York City who could translate that recording for her,” Aaro said. “Find one.”
“They’re not six foot four and armed to the teeth and meaner than a rattlesnake with PMS. Yeah, Lil, that’s right. He’s too busy.” Bruno’s voice was muffled now, directed toward his soon-to-be wife, Lily, who was evidently in the room with him. There was a shrill response. “Lily wants to talk to you now.” Bruno’s voice took on a sly edge. “Soon as she’s off the phone with Nina.
Brace yourself, man.”
“Do
not
put me on the phone with her,” Aaro said curtly.
“I swear, I will,” Bruno threatened. “Nina needs somebody there. She hasn’t got family, and there’s no husband or boyfriend to—”
“Are you trying to fix me up?” The irritated nerve from Aaro’s teeth-grinding problem throbbed, nastily. “Don’t even think about it, man.”
“No way,” Bruno assured him hastily. “We wouldn’t wish you on our worst enemy. Just translate the recording, then stand around with her looking intimidating until somebody spells you.
You’re good at that.”
Aaro yanked his bag off the carousel. He couldn’t even count all the things there were to hate about this scenario. A terrified woman on the streets of Brooklyn, babbling Ukrainian, torn blouse, bleeding face, needle full of junk. Why even ask? Another hard-luck story. Violence, rape, betrayal. It drove the woman to drugs, insanity, and finally into a fucking coma. And they wanted him to translate all the gory details for them. Great.
Just great.
He did his Red Sea routine again, in the direction of the rental car counters. He didn’t want to translate this pathetic tale of woe.
It was going to suck ass, and there was nothing he could do to help. He needed to stay far away from women like Lily’s unlucky pal Nina. Bleeding heart do-gooder at her battered women’s shelter. She tried to help the huddled masses and the wretched refuse, and this was the thanks she got. What a total clusterfuck.
No, he would drive hundreds of miles out of his way to avoid Lily’s friend, and her big-ass problems. Let someone else hoist up that cross.
“Lily’s giving Nina your cell, right now,” Bruno informed him.
“I’m sending you the audio file. Be looking for it.”
Aaro’s breath hissed through his teeth. “Goddamnit, Bruno—”
“Then Nina will call you. Tell her to her face you don’t give a shit. That you just can’t be bothered. Go ahead, say that to the scared, traumatized, crying girl. I wish I could be there to watch the show.”
Aaro hung up on him, and got in line at the rental car counter, rubbing his thumb over the hot, sickening red throb in his forehead.
He would be worse than useless to this woman, standing around in a hospital room with his guns, taking up air and space.
Helpless and stupid, like a big dumb rock. What good would that do her? He’d just make her uncomfortable. Like she didn’t have enough problems.
God, he hated flying. His guts hurt like fingernails were poking into them. And he hadn’t slept since he’d heard about Aunt Tonya.
Weird, this reaction. Hadn’t seen his aunt in decades. Hadn’t spoken to her since he broke contact with his family. There was no way to maintain contact with Tonya and stay clear of the rest of them, so he’d cut ties.
Snip, snip.
Ruthless bastard with the bolt cutters, that was him. He hadn’t thought of Tonya in so long.
He’d put an insulating mental fuzz between him and his past, disturbed only by the biannual reports he got from the P.I. who kept the Arbatov clan under surveillance. He paid the guy well for that service. Watching Arbatovs was dangerous work.
It was from the latest report, received three days ago, that he’d heard about Tonya being in the hospice. He’d hacked into the hospice computer for details. Feeding tube. Respirator. Dialysis.
Morphine.
Tonya was dying. And with that realization, the memories amassed behind the retaining wall burst through.
It had wiped him out. Oh, man.
Tonya.
Tonya was the youngest sister of Aaro’s father, Oleg Arbatov.
Like Aaro himself, she did not belong in the Arbatov family.
Dreamy, absent, never learned English worth a damn. Never married, despite being beautiful in her youth and having many suitors. Aaro’s mother had died of cancer when Aaro was five and his sister, Julie, only two. Tonya had come to live with them to take care of the children. That arrangement had lasted five years, until Oleg got married to the poisonous hell-bitch Rita, who was barely nine years older than Alex himself.
Rita had run Tonya out. Things had gone pretty much to hell, from then on.
Tonya was . . . well, different. She’d spent more than half of her adult life in the nuthouse. She saw things no one else saw, talked to people no one could see. She made people nervous. It had comforted them to label her crazy. But she’d never seemed crazy to Aaro. He’d loved hearing her dreams, her stories, her visions. Aunt Tonya had read his palm, his face, his eyes. Said he was destined for great things. Fame, fortune, travel, true love.
Huh. So much for her precognitive abilities, but he appreciated the thought. Julie had loved her, too.
When Aaro was thirteen, Oleg had gotten violently frustrated with his son, as had often happened. He’d broken Aaro’s arm, ribs. Bruises, contusions, ripped cartilage. Tonya had rebelled, surprising everyone. She stole Rita’s jewelry to pawn, snatched Alex and Julie, and ran with them. That took guts. He hadn’t appreciated how much at the time.
They’d taken a bus to the Jersey Shore, and spent almost a month there before they’d been dragged back. His arm and ribs healed slowly and itchily, while he and Tonya and Julie took long, shivering walks on the beach, picnicked on sodden sand under the deserted boardwalk as if it were high summer, watching seagulls squawk over garbage washed up by the surf. They giggled over dumb TV programs on the grainy old set in their motel room, ate greasy food in the diner, went to the movies, played cards. Tonya had told them stories. Fables, from the Ukraine.
None of them had ever been so happy.
It couldn’t last. All of them had known that. The pawned jewelry had eventually betrayed them. Tonya had been sent back to the nuthouse, and he and Julie—well. No point even thinking about that.
That brief taste of freedom had stuck in his mind ever since. It hung there in his head. Like a star. Always out of reach.
He batted the unhelpful thought away. It pissed him off, this nagging, sucking feeling, of something slipping away from him.
Like he’d ever really had Tonya, after not seeing her for almost twenty years. What was he losing that he hadn’t already lost, decades ago?
And why did he feel guilty? Like he could have helped her.
She’d helped him. She’d been there for him. It cost her big.
He flinched away from that. He couldn’t help Tonya. He’d failed utterly at helping Julie. He’d run away. Saved his own skin.
His life would be worth nothing if the remaining members of his family ever came to know his whereabouts. He did not appreciate being held hostage by guilt, from a past he’d done everything to bury. God, when was it enough? His heart had been thudding double time for days. He could not even fucking breathe.
Voilà, enter Bruno and Lily with their sobbing social worker.
Fresh guilt, poured over old guilt. Like fudge sauce on a sundae.
He reached the head of the line at the car rental counter. A perky, snub-nosed girl directed a flirtatious smile into his bloodshot eyes—and it stuck there a moment, a frozen grimace, before fading. Like a rabbit hypnotized by a snake. Chick was smarter than she looked.
They got through the paperwork with gratifying swiftness, and he headed out to the lot. The headache sucked rocks. A hard, rhythmic
thwack
with each beat of his heart. He wanted to punish the headache for existing. To kick the shit out of it. But, whoops, it was inside his own brain tissue. Bummer, that. Yeah, he was Oleg Arbatov’s son. A real chip off the old block. For Oleg, it was all about punishment. Since he was on the theme of punishment, his phone beeped. A multimedia message. The 911call. The hard luck suck-ass story, for his enjoyment.
Aaro got into the 2011 Lincoln Navigator. Dug into his duffel.
The knives, first. Kershaw in his left jacket pocket, Gerber in his right, the all-purpose onto the belt sheath. He groped around in his clothes for the holsters, the gun cases. FNP-45 in the waistband side holster, the .357 snubbie S&W tucked into the boot grip. Yeah. That let a little more air into his lungs. He pulled out the Saiga shotgun case, laid it on the seat, and just sat there, sucking in more badly needed oxygen.
When the woman called, he’d tell her no. Let them all hate his guts if that’s what they needed to do. Then off to Tonya, for his next dose of guilt. He’d call Nina back after, if he was still functioning. Ask her if she still needed help. Best he could do. Hell, it was all he could do. With any luck at all, she’d tell him to fuck off, and he’d be free.
Bruno would be disgusted with him. Lily, too. But he’d withstood massive, prolonged doses of toxic disgust before.
Come to think of it, he was uniquely trained to tolerate it.
“So, Ben? Can I count on your support for my campaign?”
Harold Rudd sipped his coffee while exerting a precise, delicate pressure on the stress points in Benjamin Stillman’s decision-making process.
He did not enjoy the surgical approach to compulsion nearly as much as his usual style, which was somewhat rougher. It was more satisfying to clobber the bastards with his psi talent. Watch them crawl and gibber, pleading for mercy. He liked that. It gave him a buzz that lasted hours. Sometimes even outlasting the effects of the psi-max.
But reducing Senator Stillman to crawling and gibbering on the floor of the exclusive dining club would not advance Rudd’s cause, however enjoyable it might be in the short term. He needed the man fit and forceful and articulate on Rudd’s behalf, throwing all his political muscle behind Rudd’s upcoming campaign for governor. Not drugged up in a private clinic, being treated for a nervous breakdown.
Self-control. Rudd was a practical man.
Smile at the bastard.
“I don’t know, Harold.” Stillman shoveled a chunk of brunch omelet into his mouth, shoved a triangle of toast after it. The man’s flabby cheeks distended as he chewed. “You don’t really have the kind of experience that I think is necessary for the . . .
for the . . .” Stillman stopped, choking and coughing.
His face reddened. His eyes darted, confused. He’d lost his train of thought. People in Rudd’s vicinity tended to lose trains of thought that did not further Rudd’s own ends. That trick gave Rudd no end of entertainent. Rudd pushed. Hard enough to confuse the man. Then a little more, hard enough to hurt.
He released Stillman. The man coughed into his napkin.
Rudd patted his back. “Ben? Are you all right? Should I call someone? Do you need medication?”
Stillman shrugged him off. “No,” he gasped. “I’m not taking any goddamn medication. I just . . . ah . . . had a moment there.”
“We all do, now and then.” Rudd poured the man a glass of water. Yes, one did. Particularly when one had brunch with Harold Rudd. But Stillman would never make that connection.
He could count on the man’s antiquated worldview the way he could count on the sun rising. Rudd’s secret talent would never show up on Stillman’s radar.
He recommenced delicate pressure as Stillman gulped water.
Being taken down a peg had softened him slightly, but there was still a wall. Shoveling horseshit back in his youth had been easier than this. He pitied the senator’s wife. The guy must be a dominating asshole at home. Perhaps the senator had a bit of latent psi power of his own.
Or perhaps Rudd himself was the problem. He was due for another hit of the precious psi-max to bring his talent of compulsion back up to full strength, but he’d been making a painful effort to pace himself. He had a supply, but it was not bottomless.
And that business with the Kasyanov bitch making a run for it made him frantic. He needed her to produce more. Develop the perfect formula. He was so close to the big time. So much power to be grasped, if he did it all just right. Everyone had to be on board. Everyone had to be
good.
When he got his hands on Kasyanov, she would pay for defying him. Without incapacitating her, of course. Kasyanov was the only one who could cook up a stable dose of psi-max. Rudd had funded labs full of useless eggheads who had been trying to duplicate her formula for eighteen months, but their efforts had all fallen short. Yes, Kasyanov had been holding out on them for a while. Lying hag.
He tried again, harder. Ben Stillman shoved a wad of egg and smoked salmon into his mouth and frowned out as he chewed, at the dark wood paneling, white tablecloths, white china.
Come on,
bastard. Give it up.
Rudd bore down. A little bit more . . . almost there . . .
“Sir?”
Rudd whipped his head around, concentration broken, and Stillman grunted, shaking his head like a dog shaking off water.
The moment was lost.
Shit.
Rudd glared at his aide, who blinked apologetically with his big puppy dog eyes. Fucking
idiot,
interrupting him at the worst possible moment. He smiled benignly.
“Yes, John?”
“Sir, Roy is here to see you,” John murmured, eyes darting nervously toward the door. “He said it was urgent. I just thought I’d, ah, to be on the safe side—”
“I understand.” Rudd’s hound, Roy, had intimidated John into soiling himself.
Rudd glanced at the door. Yes, there was his problematic henchman, Roy Lester, slouching in the dining room where anyone could see him. Idiot.