Page 69 of The Primary Pest
Which one of them would Peter rather have at his back? Dmytro knew the answer. He’d proven himself a thousand times over with the toughest men in the field.
“What do you think, Dmytro?” Peter took him out of his thoughts. “We have five minutes before we rendezvous.”
“The drop’s at sea?” Dmytro frowned. “You’re telling me the Fairchilds actually got the ransom togetherwithoutcalling Iphicles or getting an immediate second proof of life? That’s insane.”
“We sowed enough trust issues. They’re desperate enough to do whatever it takes.”
“Or they’ll cause a thousand problems you cannot afford to have. FBI. Interpol.”
“Well, hell.” Chet’s voice dripped with sarcasm. “We sure didn’t think of that, did we?”
Peter glared at him.
Dmytro returned his gaze to the map. “How do you know Iphicles won’t have a crew on that boat? Air support? If they called in the feds, there will be Coast Guard vessels. Who the hell knows? His mother would call in JSOC if she could.”
Peter shook his head. “Fairchild’s parents already made the drop on a junker. They know if there’s no money, the boy is dead. If my radar detects hostiles before the drop, the boy is dead. Anyone follows the drop, the boy is dead.”
“We both know Ajax is dead anyway.” Despair filled Dmytro’s heart. “What about the crew on the junker?”
“There’s only the pilot, and he’s one of mine.”
Dead, then.The body count just kept getting higher and higher. The trick was to act as if he didn’t know he was dead too. “You believe Ajax’s parents have accepted your terms?”
“If they want their little faggot back, they will.” There went Chet again, the belligerent asshole. Did he think the more oftenhe said the hateful word, the more likely Peter would absolve him of the lust in his heart?
Dmytro wanted to stomp his boot over Chet’s smug face. Peter wasn’t likely to forget he’d had rape on his mind only moments before. Dmytro certainly wouldn’t.
Goddamn. Peter had contingency plans for every single thing. Thinking fast, Dmytro raised the one question still bothering him. “Did you plan all this from the start? Make those original threats in order to set it in motion? Or was Ajax simply an opportunity you couldn’t pass up?”
“No, God. He dropped right into our lap.” Peter laughed. “Zhenya sent him to the safe house with you and Bartosz, but he put me in charge of logistics. It was the easiest thing in the world to reel you off in a different direction.”
“Youtampered with the safe house alarms.” Dmytro didn’t need an answer.
Peter nodded. “And Chet booby-trapped the SUV.”
“What about the girl?” he asked.
“At the motel? Oh, she caught me spying on Bartosz,” Chet said. “I gave her a good bang on the head. She probably don’t remember much, huh?”
“The first of your many mistakes,” Peter said. “God, you’re an ass. What part of ‘don’t be seen’ did you have a hard time with?”
Chet thudded his chest. “The kid didn’t think any of the threats were real untilIshot up the restaurant. Christ, I had his fluffy little head—I had all of you—right in the crosshairs. But I fired into the ceiling.Pew, pew, pew.Imade sure y’all got on this boat.”
“He’s right, you know.” Dmytro threw him a bone. “I only started to worry when the messages changed from that biblical bullshit to the really nasty stuff—”
“That was me.” Chet chortled happily. “I did that.”
Dmytro concealed his revulsion. “Ajax didn’t believe any threat existed until the gunfire at the restaurant.”
He hadn’t necessarily believed it after, either. He’d known they’d be dead if the shooter had wanted them dead. He’d seen the trajectory of the bullets and pointed it out. God, they’d walked right into a trap. Oh, Bartosz…
Dmytro’s heart hurt.
Peter might be a professional, but Dmytro doubted he’d ever done anything like this. In spite of his careful planning, his level of self-confidence and overbright eyes suggested this was an endgame of sorts for him. He was going all in for the ransom drop, and if things went south there, he didn’t have a backup plan. They were all hanging by the spiderweb of Peter’s sanity.
Chet was simply, as Ajax would say, an asshat.
“What do we do now?” Dmytro asked.
