Page 59 of How Much For a Life of Lies?

“What the fuck?—”

He shoved me at the helo and yanked open the door. “Get in. Start engine.”

I hurried inside; he was right behind me, closing and locking the main door, his gun out and on his lap.

“What the fuck?” I repeated.

I took out my weapon, had it to hand, but had already started the engines and was running through the procedure to get the X tons of ’korsky away in a hurry.

“Yuri?” I asked, or warned, fuck knows, as he stared out of the side window at that same white-haired man standing below with his arms over his chest. “Who is that?”

“Chechen. Thug. Mobster. Gang.”

“He’s Chechen, and you’re just throwing a load of words after helps this how?”

“Cargo done, go.” He made a circular motion with his finger, and fuck pre-flight, engines on, and warm, we were heading back to base. I waited for bullet tracers, for surface-to-air missiles, anything, but by the time we were two clicks from the drop-off and nothing was after us, with one eye on flying and the other on Yuri, I rounded on him with extreme prejudice, his silhouette illuminated by the soft glow of the instrument panel. His expression was unreadable.

“Talk!” I demanded, breaking the silence hanging between us.

He glanced at me, his eyes betraying a hint of tension. Why was the nephew of a Russian oligarch dealing with Chechen gangs?

“Kozlov,” he spat, his focus on me. “Deal with Chechens, break promises.” He frowned, frustrated that he couldn’t get me to understand.

I pointed at the nav because whatever this was; it would be suicide to return to the base where Kozlov was, not to mention Indigo and her freaking knives. “And what happens when we return and they realize what happened?”

He shrugged, and for a moment, he looked stern. Was he expecting us to go back to base, and what? Die? “Fuck, you hadn’t thought that far?”

“End story.”

Fuck. Fuck! That wasn’t the end of this story at all. I wasn’t taking this baby back only to die with a knife in my throat.

“We’re not going back,” I snapped.

“Henderson—”

“Get me comm back,” I ordered, pointing at the system he’d done something to. I was good with electronics, but the round disc he’d placed on there wasn’t anything I’d seen before. Did it have to be unhooked, or?—

He reached over and lifted it off, the comm crackling, Indigo talking about the change in location and warnings of something lost in hissing and sputtering. She sounded angry, furious, no, incandescent with rage about comm being off-line, and I listened for long enough to know we were in the shit.

I switched to the secure channel. Zach was going to lose his shit, given we were supposed to be comm silent until after this was over.

“Sierra Two, this is Sierra Three, fuck.”

“Sierra Three?” Just hearing Zach’s voice stopped the flare of panic curling in my chest. I’d evaded surface-to-air missiles before, and if I was fighting those, then I needed to stay low, off the radar. This was different—they tracked this helo, and it was rigged to blow, and that was enough to know I had to get this bird down as far away from Kozlov as possible.

“Find me somewhere to land,” I snapped.

Zach went silent. I could imagine him running scenarios in his head. “Engine failure?”

He asked what he needed to know to get the best outcome but didn’t stop to ask why we were contacting him.

“Evasion.”

He threw coordinates at me, didn’t elaborate, didn’t tell me to be careful, didn’t throw me off my game. He separated us from the situation, and I needed that.

As we skimmed the treetops in darkness, Yuri was deadly quiet, and maybe he was counting down the moments until Kozlov took him out. Who knew?

“Why are you doing this?” I asked.

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