Page 125 of The Payback

“She was!” I whisper-shout. “Come on.” I grab him by the arm and lead the three of us along the table. As I look out into the crowd, I lock eyes with Oksana. She raises her glass and tips it in my direction.

CHAPTERFORTY-FIVE

Eleanor

“Fucking bitch,”I seethe as we approach the swinging doors of the kitchen. “Dimitri, you’re okay?”

“Yes, but I was prepared for this.”

Before I can ask him about that, the server closest to the door catches my eye, and I stop in front of him. Agent Carey is the lead on this operation and Agent Kim’s boss. “She struck. Shut it down. We’re taking the bus.”

He nods, murmurs something into the mic on his sleeve, and we rush through the kitchen and out the back door.

The specialised ambulance the FBI was kind enough to loan us sits in the alleyway. Zach emerges from the door behind us, his lip bloodied and his jacket torn on the lapel.

“Get in,” he says, yanking open the back door to the ambulance. “Eleanor, you’re driving,” he barks. I pass through the narrow channel between the work area and the front seats.

“Hey! You can’t just take it! My boss is going to kill me!” the driver shouts. I don’t have time for this shit, so I let a punch fly, disorienting him and allowing me to reach past him and open the door. I feel bad for the punch, but there’s no other way to do this. Nik needs help, and I’m not risking it by putting his life into another agent’s hands.

“Sorry. Life or death.” I shove him out the side and clamber into the seat. The driver lands with a thud on the asphalt, and Zach gets the doors shut at the back.

“Hit it!” he yells. Zach starts rummaging through the supplies in the back as Dimitri groans. He doesn’t find much because this was never meant to be a working ambulance—just a getaway car.

“Not you too!” I cry, speeding out of the alley and heading towards the nearest hospital.

“It’s fine. I’ll be fine.” He grunts, but his eyes are still alert, and he’s only mildly sweating as opposed to Nik, who’s clutching his stomach and groaning.

“What did you mean you’ve been preparing for this?” I ask, desperately looking for the switch to start the sirens so we can cut through some of this traffic.

Dimitri chuckles. “I’m the leader of this chapter. You think I haven’t been ingesting small doses of the most common poisons for years? Please, Eleanor. Haven’t you ever wondered why I’m never tipsy after the scotch every evening? It’s half poison.”

“That’s reckless,” Zach comments. “You never know how those things are going to interact together.”

“Better than dying like these guys,” Dimitri says, pointing at the body bags stacked in the back of the ambulance. Nik was kind enough to get “the bags packed” before we entered the party.

These are three Irish mob members who tried to grab me over the last two days. Playing bait was not my idea of a good time, but we needed bodies to prove Dimitri and I had died. We grabbed a third to get Nik out, but Interpol isn’t interested in him for anything other than a trial for his theft, so we took matters into our own hands.

With Zach joining us, he will have to be the one to get Nik to safety while Interpol and the affiliated agencies debrief Dimitri and me. We have a plan in place to reconnect, but that may need shifting under the current circumstances.

“We’ve got a tail. The asshole didn’t stay down when I grabbed him upstairs,” Zach mutters as he thinks aloud. I smash my hand into the buttons and knobs near the wheel, the sirens still not cooperating.

Then, the sound of a call ringing out on speakerphone sounds from the back, and Rory’s voice comes through the phone. “I see you. Keep going straight. There’s about to be a clusterfuck of New York traffic.”

“Hey, Rory!” I call in greeting.

“Hey, Ellie! Long time no talk. How you doing?”

“Focus,” Nik grits out. “My insides feel like they’re trying to climb out.”

“Right, sorry, man. I’m Roark,” the man says in his Irish brogue. “Hold tight and hang a right onto Park Ave. It’ll take you towards Mount Sinai.”

I do as he instructs, flipping on the sirens when I finally find the fucking button hiding in plain sight.

“The asshole behind you in the black Escalade? Can you see him, Ellie?” Roark asks over the phone.

I check the side mirrors, and sure enough, the man is tailing us, a second bodyguard in the passenger seat loading a gun. They easily follow behind us as our ambulance wee-woos down the street.

“Unfortunately,” I say. “Who is that?”

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