Dangerous Games

9

The room is small, round, and furnished like a prison cell, with nothing more than a narrow bed covered in a rough gray blanket, a metal stand holding a porcelain bowl filled with water for a sink, and a black cast-iron pot on the floor that I assume is a toilet. Windowless stone walls stretch up into deepening gloom. There are no lighting fixtures, mirrors, or running water, and nowhere to sit except on the bed or the bare floor. The only light comes from a beeswax pillar set into a niche over the bed. Judging by its height and the way the flame is weakly wavering, it doesn’t have long left to shine.

I close my eyes, inhale a breath, and put everything I was behind me. Until I know for sure what happened to Naz, and if the speck of life in my belly even exists, the one thing—the only thing—I have to do is survive.

I open my eyes and look at Dimitri. “Are you planning on leaving me to rot here until I die?”

His answering smile would make the devil himself quake in fear.

He turns and makes his way back up the twisting stone stairs. The heavy wood door opens and closes. The key turns in the lock.

I sit on the bed and stare at the walls until the candle gutters and burns out, and I’m left alone in darkness as cold, black, and silent as outer space. Then the grief and hysteria I’ve been holding back crashes over me, and I throw back my head and scream Naz’s name.

From outside the locked door comes the sound of faint, satisfied laughter.

FOUR

NAZ

It’s a funny thing, being shot. It can really ruin an otherwise wonderful day.

I lift my head and look down at myself, then wish I hadn’t. I’m covered in blood. I can’t tell where the holes are, or how many there are, but the pain is a demonic entity that’s taken over my entire body. Searing agony pulses in waves from my toenails all the way to the top of my head. I feel like I was chewed up and s**t out by a velociraptor. Every breath is pure torture.

But the pain doesn’t matter. The only thing in the world that matters is Eva. I need to clear my head and move fast.

I’ll worry about how Dimitri found us later. If that bastard Killian had anything to do with this—

Stop! Focus! Get your ass in gear!

Pushing both the pain and the panic aside and forcing myself to concentrate, I sit up and take inventory.

My right calf has a ragged gash where a bullet nicked the flesh. It’s leaking blood like a sieve, but it’s not a serious wound. More problematic is the hole in the left lower quadrant of my abdomen. It’s leaking badly, too, but as I gingerly probe the area with my fingers, I discover an exit wound in the back, which is good.

I mean, “good,” all things considered. From the feel of it, the bullet missed my rib cage, and all the major organs of the region are higher up. I can tape up the hole and be functional.

At least until my colon leaks bacteria into my abdominal cavity and sepsis sets in.

The biggest problem is the wound in my chest.

It’s on the right side, beneath my clavicle. So at least my heart isn’t involved. But the degree of difficulty I’m having drawing a full breath suggests one of my lungs is probably f****d.

I hear the distant wails of sirens drawing nearer at the same time I realize I’ve got a pile of dead guys littering the landing and the foyer.

Then half a dozen Germans in black trench coats burst in, brandishing weapons.

“Good timing, assholes!” I rasp, infuriated. “Where were you five minutes ago?”

They ignore me, jumping over the bodies of Dimitri’s men and spreading out through the room in formation, sweeping the area for the danger they completely missed.

I’ve gotta talk to Connor about his European assets. They’re not exactly the sharpest tools in the shed.

One of the Germans—the tallest one, with a platinum crew cut and silver rings on both his thumbs—crouches down next to me. Gazing at my naked, bloody body, he shakes his head. In English, he says, “I’ve seen swiss cheese with fewer holes.”

His accent is heavy, and so is his sarcasm. I’d like to pop his eyeballs out with my index fingers, but the sirens are getting closer, and the panic I’m trying to fight back is having a field day with my nervous system.

“Help me up.”

He shoves his weapon into a pocket of his coat and hoists me up with his hands under my armpits, intelligently not making any comment at my groans of pain or my inability to support my own weight once I’m upright. I lean heavily against him, sucking air through my teeth.

He shouts something in German to his companions, who all come to stand in front of me and stare at me like I’m livestock in a farm auction.

I bare my teeth like an animal. “Yeah, soak it in, assholes. This mess you’re looking at is your fault. If you’d had my six like you were supposed to, I wouldn’t have so many f*****g holes!”

One of them shrugs. “I’m hypoglycemic. We stopped to eat.”

I send him a baleful glare. “If I don’t die, I’m gonna kill you.”

He has the balls to look offended. Then he says prissily, “Well, that would be very inconvenient for you, as I’m the one who got the license plate of the white cargo van with blacked-out windows that just went speeding down the street.” He purses his lips. “I wonder who could be in it.”