Not blood. Aspirin. Regurgitated aspirin leaking down her throat.
Nadia bounced off the man’s body with each step. When the lantern swung forward, it illuminated the path in front of them. When it swung backward, however, it lit up the area directly beneath her.
Ferns, leaves, a dead branch.
The woman’s orange high-top Converse All Star sneakers.
Nadia had already replayed Mrs. Chimchak’s lessons in hand-to-hand combat ten times in her mind. She knew what she had to do. What was the problem?
It was so gross, that was the problem.
She had to reach around with her hand and yank the man’s eyeball out. He’d fall to the ground. The woman would freak. Nadia would kick the lantern with her boot and kill the lights. She’d do it all so fast these assholes wouldn’t know what hit them.
So why wasn’t she doing it?
Mrs. Chimchak had taught her that the person willing to do anything was the one who had the advantage in a fight. The one who would survive.
Nadia repeated the mantra Mrs. Chimchak had taught her for such a situation:
There are no rules in a real fight.
There are no rules in a real fight.
There are no rules in a real fight…
CHAPTER 33
The man who emerged from the bathroom was all too familiar to me. The only shocking thing about him was his sudden mobility. He was Danilo Rus, Roxy’s father, and my former father-in-law. The man who’d hit me in his home, the one who’d hated me from the moment his son had started dating me. Now he was going to get his ultimate revenge for his son’s death. After all, if his son hadn’t been married to me, he would have never received a distress call from my mother, and he wouldn’t have driven headfirst into a tree.
“You’re looking well, father-in-law,” I said, in Ukrainian. “What happened to the Parkinson’s?”
“It’s like my recollection that you were once my daughter-in-law. An affliction that will eventually kill me. When my brother came to me for help, I decided to accelerate my decline. To take any suspicion off me. No one ever worries about the gimp.”
I turned to Donnie Angel. “How did you know?”
“Know what?” Donnie said.
“At the house. You told your man my brother would be coming. And asked him where the shovels were. That was for my benefit.”
“You think?”
“But how did you know I was there?”
“Memo to Nadia. If you see a house with an infinity pool, a tennis court, and a vineyard — a fucking vineyard — assume security cameras are watching you.”
“You saw me—”
“From the minute you stepped foot on the property.”
“But the grave. It’s dug out already. All prepared. As though you knew that I wasn’t going to New York. As though you knew I was going to find you at the warehouse.”
“The gravedigger is on my payroll. It’s the type of connection that comes in handy in my line of work. The hole in Mrs. Zen’s resting place was dug a few days ago on account of my knowing that you’d eventually show up again. And by the way, Mrs. Zen has no living family so no one’s going to show up and ask questions why the dirt on her grave’s been messed up. I knew you wouldn’t let it go, especially since you were worried your brother was involved. Didn’t know it would be tonight. Real sorry it worked out this way. I gave you every chance, Nadia. I gave you every chance to walk away.”
My head spun. My body temperature soared as though the invisible jaws of death had grasped my body and squeezed. But of course they had. The grave really was for me. I’d mentioned it nonchalantly, ever the cool and calculating analyst, subconsciously hoping Donnie would laugh and tell me I was out of my mind, that he wasn’t going to snuff out my final breath and toss my body into a casket containing another woman’s bones…
Unless he was planning to bury me alive.
The jaws of death squeezed tighter. All the moisture in my mouth evaporated. I felt like a useless ball of cotton candy.
He wouldn’t do that, would he?
Donnie was so insane I couldn’t rule out the prospect. I imagined him tossing a shovel full of dirt onto my mobile body, covering my head and filling my nostrils as I struggled to breathe…
I took a deep breath as though I was lying in that crypt. The focus on my lungs snapped me out of my spell. A voice sounded in my head.
There is always a way out of trouble.
When in doubt, I reminded myself, ask questions.
I took another breath and turned back to Rus. “Were you involved in this from the beginning? Because I don’t get it. If you were, why was my brother hired to provide protection for your brother?” I glanced at the three thugs. “Looks to me that, between Donnie and his guys, there’s plenty of muscle here.”
Rus was busy trying to remove his belt from around his waist. “When the call came from Crimea, my brother was too scared to see the opportunity. He came to me for advice and I became his silent partner. I was the one who suggested he use your brother as protection for his first big delivery.”
“Silent partner,” I said. “I get it.” I looked at Donnie. “You’re the connection to Crimea, but you kept your distance to minimize your legal risk. But when my godfather died, you had no idea where the inventory was. You had to get involved. And when you couldn’t find out on your own, you let me ask the questions and followed where I went.”
“You were always a smart cookie,” Donnie said. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down.”
“How did I lead you to the warehouse?”
“You didn’t,” Donnie said. “You led me to him.” He nodded at Rus. “You searched your godfather’s house with Roxy, then went straight to his house. Alone. Everyone knows the two of you hate each other, so you weren’t going there to say hi to the old father-in-law. I figured you must have found something that made you wonder. So after you left, I went in and asked a few questions of my own and found my silent partner. Once he understood that the inventory wasn’t going to be his for the keeping, that he had partners here and in Ukraine whether he knew them or not, we got along just fine. Didn’t we, Danilo?”
Rus cringed at the sound of Donnie using his first name. There was no love lost between the partners that I could see. I wondered how I could use that to my advantage. Rus slipped his belt from around the last loop in his pants.
“What was Roxy’s role in this?” I said.
Rus’s head snapped in my direction. “She had no role in this. My daughter is a good girl. She understands her place is by her husband. He’s useless but that’s not her fault. And now her inheritance will provide for the rest of her life.”
“My godfather’s cash,” I said. “You took it from his house before Roxy and I ever searched.”
He confirmed my suspicion with a stoic glance. I was momentarily pleased to hear that Roxy wasn’t involved. My circumstances, however, prevented anything more than a fleeting thought in that direction.
“The letters DP in his calendar,” I said. “They were your initials after all. Danilo Rus. Except the “R” is a “P” in Ukrainian.”
Rus stared at me stone-faced. He kept one end of the belt in his right hand and grabbed the other end with his left.
“You killed him,” I said. “You killed your own brother.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.” Rus rolled his eyes. “The smartest people understand themselves the least. My brother fell down the stairs. You made up some theory about him being murdered to come back here. To make amends with me, your family, your community. Everybody can see that. It’s a small community. We all know each other. I played with you when you came to visit me that night for sheer entertainment purposes. Just to watch your massive, overgrown ego get even bigger. The police said it was an accident, but you, the great intellect among us, you, Nadia Tesla, knew better. What a farce. Nobody thinks he was murdered. Nobody but you.”