Page 186 of Nothing More

“We’re here!” Misha called, voice rippling back and back and back again off the acres of steel. He maneuvered them into the shaft of light from a skylight, and turned a slow circle, keeping Toly in front of him. “I’ve brought him! I brought the dog that killed your father!” He kicked Toly in the ankle, then, hard.

Toly’s leg gave, and he nearly fell, Misha’s grip all that kept him upright. He fumbled to keep hold of the cuffs and not let them fall, teeth gritted against the sharp stab of pain that shot from ankle to groin.What the fuck, Misha?As soon as he’d thought it, Misha shook him, rough back and forth shoves that left his teeth snapping. His tongue bloomed with pain, and he tasted blood. Convincing, huh? He’d forgotten, somehow, just how strong Misha was.

“Hello?” Misha called.

A sound came, then, the gritty scrape of shoes on the silt-covered floor. A crack that made Toly think of knuckles popping, fists clenching.

He forced his weight onto his throbbing ankle, kept his head down, and gazed up through a screen of swept-forward hair as the man they were meeting approached, his steps slow and deliberate.

Boots appeared, first, at the edges of the light puddle. Thick canvas work pants, the hems dirty. Matching, heavy jacket, hands shoved in the pockets, and, finally – lit strangely from above, shadows pooling in its eye sockets so it resembled a skull – a face.

The sight of which caused Toly’s brain to flicker, stutter, fail for a moment, as he struggled to rectify it in this context.

“I’m here,” the man said softly, his accent faint, but clearly Russian. An accent not in evidence the last time Toly heard him speak.

“That’s close enough,” Misha said, barrel of his gun digging cruelly into the side of Toly’s head.

The man halted, tilted his head so the light washed over it at a new angle, chasing away the shadows, and chasing away all doubt as to his identity.

They’d agreed that Toly wouldn’t speak, but that whine in his ears was deafening, now, and his tongue tasted metallic with blood, and this was wrong. He shouldn’t have been surprised. Should have anticipated this, somehow. Maybe he would have, if he hadn’t gotten all tangled up in thoughts of Raven; if he’d been looking for threats on her life, rather than threats to her affection for him.

“Ingles,” he choked out.

Greg Ingles bared his teeth in an awful mockery of a smile. Laughed. Spoke with the voice Toly knew, wholly American, all boisterous and cheerful Business School Good Boy, without a trace of Russia. “Hey there. Tom, right? Raven’s assistant? Man, you look like you’ve gotten yourself in a pickle, huh? How is Raven, by the way?” The smile fell away, eyes glittering predator-sharp in the dimness. “Besides warming your bed, you nasty fucking rat.” The last was said in his true voice, accent thickening as his anger mounted.

Toly had dozens of questions, all of them competing and crowding at the forefront of his mind, making him dizzy. Dizzier – that blow to his head in the trunk had been worse than he first suspected. The whole warehouse seemed to be tilting.

“How?” he managed.

“Toly,” Misha said. “This is Grigory Rosovsky.”

“You killed my father,” Rosovsky, thefucking Butcher’s son, added.

Misha said, “I’m sorry about this.”

“Wha–”

Pain ignited on the side of his head, bright and terrible and earth-shattering.

And then nothing.

Thirty-One

Raven leaned against a metal railing. Somewhere, she didn’t know where. She’d checked out mentally a good half-hour ago. She leaned, and the metallic tang of the river was in her nose. The parking lot had been rough. She was dimly aware of a sprawling industrial building in the background. Water moved sluggishly past her, foul-smelling and brown.

She missed London, for all its filth. A different sort of nasty.

That was an emotion easier to tolerate than wondering where the hell Toly had gone.

“Here,” Tenny called, somewhere behind her, and she turned to look. If she leaned back against the rail for balance, that was her business.

He approached with something small held in one hand. “This is the tracker I put in his jacket.”

Raven wanted to be sick. She wanted to have been wrong, this whole time. To have found Toly in a bodega buying snacks.

She swallowed and said, “Where’d you find it?”

Tenny made a face that was nearly sympathetic. “In the warehouse. On the floor.”

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