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  Interrupting my train of thought, my beeper vibrated like a cheap motel bed, skittering across the surface of my coffee table. “Shit,” I said, exhaling. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor snow . . . The expression was coined for a mailman, but it covered the slightly shadier of us as well. Turning off the computer, I made a call, changed, and hit the street just as the sun started to go down.

  Koschecka, the Pussycat, was a club located downtown. With twisted pink and green neon lighting, concrete walls, and a doorman straight out of the gorilla cage at the zoo, it wasn’t a place for tourists or timid locals. “Vas,” I drawled, lightly slapping the hulking shoulder, “how’s it hanging, cherepaxa?”

  Sevastian ignored the greeting and opened the door for me. I wasn’t too hurt. Once I’d thought the man had the walking-talking-gum syndrome. With his lowered furry brows, shaved bullet head, and a neck that was long missing in action, it would be easy to peg Sevastian as one neuron-challenged son of a bitch, incapable of wrapping his tiny mind around more than one task at a time. But as I came to know him, I’d realized pretty quickly that wasn’t the case. Sevastian wasn’t stupid; he was a snob. Born and raised in the old country, he had little use for those of us born in the United States. And he had even less love for me and my winning personality. Hard to imagine, but there you have it. The fact I called him turtle didn’t seem to help matters much. But with that round, shiny head and bulked-up body as impervious as any shell, who could blame me? Apparently, a grudge-hungry poster boy for steroid rage, that’s who.

  Inside, the bar was wall-to-wall sour sweat and horny, potbellied men. Colored lights blossomed, swam in circles, then slammed into the walls like suicidal fireflies. The stripper on stage, a gorgeous girl named Cleo, seemed to suddenly come down with a bad case of the measles as the cherry red disco ball on the ceiling spun into action. Slightly stomach churning, it didn’t appear to bother the guys next to the stage, who were rubbing greasy dollar bills between their fingers.

  At the bar I stopped and caught the attention of the guy pouring the vodka. “The boss here yet?”

  Dmitri nodded a hello at me and jerked his chin toward the back. “Yeah, the whole crew’s there. You’re the last.”

  Great. That was bound to go over like a Gay Pride parade at the Vatican. Sevastian had been the one to call me, and you could bet your ass he’d put me at the bottom of his to-do list. Swearing under my breath, I motioned to the bottle in his hand. “Have a peace offering I could take back? Something a little better than that piss you’re pouring? What is that anyway, a specimen for your doctor? Damn, Dmitri.”

  Dmitri had known me long enough to let that roll off his back, water to a soused duck. “It’s good enough for these jack-offs,” he grumbled, waving a hand at the Thursday-night crowd. It wasn’t a designation he gave frivolously either. There was many a customer who had one hand hidden from sight. Pity the waitress who had to take the tip from that hand later on. “Here.” From beneath the bar, he hoisted up two bottles of Mosko Crystall, one of the best Russian vodkas on the market. “A friend of mine smuggled them from his last trip to Moscow.”

  That was the good stuff all right, almost impossible to come by here, and I was going to have to pay through the nose if I wanted it. Pulling out my wallet, I dropped a hundred on the bar’s scarred and sticky surface. Dmitri pursed his lips and looked over my shoulder, bored. Hissing in annoyance, I deposited another hundred on top of the first.

  That got his attention, just barely. “I don’t know, Stef,” he said dubiously. “Do you know how hard it is to get this? The bribes, the risk . . . The backache alone is hell. Dragging a suitcase full of bottles can give you a hernia the size of a grapefruit—I shit you not. Not to mention—”

  Reaching across the bar, I took the bottles from his hands and fixed him with an unblinkingly patient stare as his mouth finally flapped to a halt. “Dmitri,” I offered amiably, “I’m not in the mood to play bargaining babushka, got it?”

  Perhaps not the brightest bulb on Broadway, he still knew enough not to press his luck. “Okay, okay.” Scooping up the money uneasily, he folded it and jammed it into his pocket. “Zhatky.”

  Cranky. Shit. Maybe Dmitri hadn’t known me as long as all that then if that was the worst label he could put on me. Carrying one bottle in each hand, I headed toward the back without much enthusiasm. Konstantin Gurov, my boss, wasn’t the most forgiving of men. As the immortal Ricky Ricardo had once said, I was going to have some ’splainin’ to do. It was safe to say, however, that Ricky had probably never rammed a screwdriver in Lucy’s ear for any of her escapades, much less just for being late.

  Sevastian hadn’t explained the reason for the unscheduled meet, and as I passed into a dingy hallway, the only thing I could immediately bring to mind was the trouble back in New York. Operations had spread from there to Miami many years ago, but as time went on, relations had begun to fray between the old school and those who’d once been seen as pioneers in a sunnier clime. Since I did mostly bodyguard work for Gurov, it was hard to reason why my cheerful self would be needed. Whatever the reason, I’d find out soon enough. At the end of the hall I nudged the door silently open with my foot and walked in, bearing gifts.

  It would’ve been better if I’d been bearing a gun.

  The room was where Gurov conducted most of his business and was soundproofed for all the obvious reasons. That was how three of our own could be lying on the floor with no one out in the bar any the wiser—lying there, motionless and bloody. Copper was thick in the air, saturating every molecule with slippery, gleeful fingers. It would’ve been easy to choke on the metallic taint and even easier to freeze at the sight before me. Luckily, my sense of self-preservation was stronger than that.

  With my hands full, the gun resting in my shoulder holster may as well have been at home in my underwear drawer for all the good it did me. With the killer’s back to me, I had a split second to make my move. And I made it before I even consciously realized the identity of the one who propelled the motion. The vodka bottle in my right hand swung to a high arc, then plummeted down just as Gregori started to turn. It hit him at the base of his skull and dropped him instantly. The Glock in his hand was released by nerveless fingers and skittered across the tile floor.

  Gregori . . . I’d like to say I didn’t believe it, but hell, I’d learned to believe anything. That loyalty could be bought and sold was a given on these streets—on any street for that matter. I recognized the killer just as I recognized everyone in the room. The three dead or injured on the floor were men I worked with almost every day. The one I’d laid out with the bottle, Gregori Gurov, was Konstantin’s cousin. Family. Konstantin himself didn’t look any more surprised by that than I did.

  “You’re late,” came his gravelly voice. As I bent over to retrieve Gregori’s gun, the icy gray eyes fixed on me. Without a blink he’d stood facing certain death from his cousin. As Gregori had aimed his gun at him, Konstantin had calmly met his fate without emotion. When I’d walked through the door, there hadn’t been a twitch to betray my presence. Konstantin didn’t have ice water in his veins; he had Freon. Coolant for blood and a vacuum for a soul; that was the man who signed my paycheck—so to speak.

  “Sevastian seems to have a problem remembering my number,” I said, kneeling to feel for a pulse on the guy nearest to me. “I guess we both owe the shithead, huh, boss?”

  The skin beneath my fingers was cool to the touch and unruffled by a beating artery. I gnawed at my lower lip and shook my head. Paulie, goddamnit. This had never been the life for you. You should’ve taken that pretty girlfriend of yours to Vegas, married her, and made lots of fat babies. He’d been a happy-go-lucky son of a bitch who’d been born into the business, same as I. Always one to go with the flow, he’d drifted here, drifted there, and now had ended up facedown on a sticky bar floor. When you drifted, you risked getting caught in a rip-tide. Paulie had been sucked down and gobbled up by a merciless sea. If it hadn’t been for that pain-in-the-ass Sev
astian, I’d have probably gone down with him.

  The other two were just as lifeless, and I rubbed a hand hard across my face. For all my big talk, I hadn’t seen much death before, not like this. Before becoming a byk, a bodyguard, for Gurov, I’d gone to college for a few years and done some drifting of my own. In the end I hadn’t fought the recruiting of “Uncle” Konstantin. A friend of my father’s, he hadn’t cut me any slack. Clever and with an iron fist of control, he was a potent mix, and it tended to ensure that wholesale slaughter didn’t often happen. That sort of thing, he’d said on more than one occasion, wasn’t good for business—entertaining, but not profitable. The man had a style of management; there was no denying it.

  “Go. Tell Sevastian to bring a cleanup crew.” Those transparent eyes moved from me to the stirring form of Gregori. “I wish to speak with my cousin.” The ice abruptly was stained the color of shadows. “Apparently he is unhappy with his current position.”

  I left without a backward glance. One killer, two killers . . . and a bloodstained bottle of expensive vodka. It was like a very nasty version of a nursery rhyme, and I wasn’t particularly wild about catching the live show. It only struck me halfway to Sevastian and the door that I was still carrying one bottle of Mosko. Cracking it open, I took a swallow as I kept walking. It was going to be a long night.

  Chapter 2

  Watching the sunrise was a tradition for lovers, nature enthusiasts, or poets. It wasn’t for the likes of me. But I sat there anyway, on the beach with sand gritty between my toes. Rays the color of a beautiful woman’s hair spilled across the horizon, strawberry blond silk gleaming bright. Crimson and gold, it reflected onto the ocean, transforming it into a fractured kaleidoscope. The colors of the peacock and phoenix mingled into an incomparable whole. I laughed without humor. Maybe I was a poet after all.

  I’d discarded my shoes, worn black loafers, at the water’s edge. They were probably halfway to Cuba by now. I had spent nearly a half hour standing in the water, the salt scouring the skin of my ankles and feet cleaner than they cared to be. If it would’ve helped, I would’ve dunked my head and let the salt scrub my brain. Last night was a memory I wouldn’t have minded having wiped clean—four bodies wrapped in plastic tablecloths and duct tape. I hadn’t been in the room when Gregori was “promoted,” but I’d felt the heavy weight of an erased life in my hands when I helped load his still body into a car trunk and watched as he and the others were carried away. Death no longer rode astride a pale horse. He’d traded up . . . Mercedes, Jags. The Grim Reaper had expensive taste.

  Now I sat, my legs unwilling to carry me back home. Drifting, I’d gotten carried into some damn black water, and I wasn’t sure I cared enough to try to swim out. Almost half my life had revolved around finding my brother. I hadn’t paid attention to much else, and this was where it had landed me.

  And I wasn’t sure there was anything I could do about it.

  Lukas wouldn’t have gone this way—never; not even if things had been reversed and something had happened to me. If I’d been stolen away and he’d blamed himself, he still wouldn’t have fallen into a violence of convenience. Lukas had been made for better things. He’d been made a better person. He was only seven, but you could still see that difference in the tranquillity of the eyes, a quality that seemed to belong to someone much older.

  Ignoring my stubborn legs, I stood as sand cascaded off me. Soon it would be time to meet Saul for lunch. It could be he had information pointing to Lukas. And if not? Head down, I trudged on, long strands of hair hanging in my eyes. If not, maybe I would go back to the bar and kick the dermo out of Sevastian . . . just for the hell of it.

  By the time lunch rolled around, it felt as if the sand I’d showered off had ended up beneath my eyelids. I hadn’t slept and I was sure it showed in the lines bracketing my mouth and the annoyed twist of my lips. I was old at the age of twenty-four. Saul didn’t comment on my rough look; he just raised his ginger eyebrows and returned to checking out his menu. Feeding the man could be a chore. He was a vegan—meat or any animal products whatsoever were verboten. Breaking a finger or two for information, that was no problem. Scrambled eggs with cheese? That was a blasphemy against God and nature. Yeah, you had to respect a man with morals.

  Not that I was in any position to judge. “Jesus,” I snapped as he lingered over the choices. “Go with the fungus of the day and let’s get this show on the road, Saul.”

  “Temper. Temper.” He snapped the menu shut and motioned for our server. “Does baby need a nap?”

  Our server arrived just in time to receive the full force of my scowl. Understandably, she turned to take Saul’s order first. Skoczinsky had no problem with that. Running a hand across his highlighted auburn hair, he flashed a blinding smile framed by a prematurely white-streaked goatee. I waited impatiently as he and the equally interested blond waitress flirted endlessly. Finally, I rapped my order, cutting off the mutual drooling. Offended, improbably aquarmarine eyes narrowed at me as she scribbled on a pad, and, pushing out her equally improbable breasts, stalked off on heels high enough to give that stalk a helluva bob and sway for Saul to watch. Watch, he did, too . . . on my time and my dime.

  “You need to get married,” I grumbled. “It’d keep these meetings shorter if you got your rocks off at home.”

  “The things I’m thinking about her aren’t legal, even if I were married. There are still a few states lagging behind the times,” he said, putting the leer away as he turned his attention back to me. “No leash for me. A stallion’s gotta run, baby.”

  That line, so old and hackneyed, had me snorting into my ice water. “Yeah, you’re a real beast, Skoczinsky. A walking cologne commercial, tackled by women wherever your ass goes.”

  “The day I see you wearing something you didn’t buy at Wal-Mart . . . then you can mock me. You couldn’t pay a woman to screw you, much less get her to give it up for free,” he shot back the barb with the good-naturedness I’d gotten used to from him. Switching to a much soberer mode, he massaged the back of his neck and straightened in his chair. “We’d better get down to business, Stefan.” That was my cue. I slid an envelope plump with cash across the table and watched it disappear like a rabbit in a hat. But while the payment-up-front process was familiar, Saul calling me by my real name was not. As his work was only slightly more legal than mine, he gave his clients nicknames. That meant if he was in public with them or someone of a federal nature was listening in, the client’s identity was protected.

  He usually called me Smirnoff. Russian vodka. Big leap, but I didn’t care. With Saul’s lethal verbal jabs, I was only grateful he hadn’t gone with Rasputin. The most infamous death in history: poisoned, shot, beaten, stabbed, his dick cut off, and then what was left of him heaved into an icy Russian river. Good luck couldn’t go with a nickname like that, and I needed all the luck I could get.

  “Give,” I said impassively.

  Saul and I weren’t friends. I wasn’t sure either of us was equipped emotionally in that department, but we did have a mutual respect for each other. It tended to be oiled by my money and his skill, but it was there regardless. In the past it had him making a gruff attempt to ease the blow when he came up empty. This time he didn’t make an effort. This time, for the very first time, he didn’t have to.

  “Don’t get your hopes up.” The hazel eyes were grim, but the finger he tapped repeatedly against the table gave away his excitement. “But I think I might have found something.”

  Under the right circumstances a moment can last forever. This was that moment. There was an eternity of clinking glasses, midday chatter, and the soft strumming of a sidewalk musician lounging against the patio rail. I was a fly stuck in an empanada-and-paella-scented amber. Not twelve hours ago I’d seen death come and go, barely missing me in the process. It had been more than a hiccup in my routine; I had the bloodshot eyes to prove it. But this . . . This staggered me. This rocked me at every level in a way nothing else could.

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nbsp; “What?” The word fell between us, hoarse and choked. Clearing my throat, I went on flatly. “What did you find?”

  Did you ever hope for something so fiercely, with such devotion, that when you closed your eyes you could all but feel it in the palm of your hand? I never had. That was the kind of faith usually only children possessed. I’d lost my childhood the second I’d lost Lukas. And it had been me—only me. Losing my brother had been a responsibility I’d never shirked, not even to myself. So, as a sinner did penance, I looked for him; I always would.

  But not for one moment did I imagine I would find him.

  Searching for Lukas had kept my mind occupied. It kept me from thinking of things that couldn’t be changed, past and present. Now my excuse might disappear. It had my fingers tightening on the water glass, the rough cut-diamond pattern pressing into my flesh. Hope was a four-letter word all right; the most profane I’d ever heard.

  I’m not sure what it was that Saul caught a glimpse of in my eyes, but he seemed relieved that our food arrived so promptly. Sizzling portobello mushroom fajitas were slid in front of him, and I didn’t have a clue as to what I was given. I didn’t remember what I’d ordered, and I didn’t bother to look. “Tell me. What did you find?” I repeated.

  Saul picked up a fork and speared a mushroom. “Fungus o’ the day as ordered,” he said with a faint grin as he began to assemble his fajita. Taking a bite, he chewed, then swallowed before exhaling. “Okay, this is the drill. Since you hired me three years ago, I’ve done a bit of subcontracting in addition to my own investigating. It wasn’t much, but I paid some people to keep an eye out for a teenager who matches your brother’s description. I plugged his picture into my own age progression program. It beats the feds’ any day of the week. Pumped out some prints and gave the info to the guys. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered going that route on a case as old as this one. Spotting a kid after ten years, it just ain’t gonna happen. But Lukas with his different-colored eyes could be the exception to that rule. So I said what the hell.”