Page 60 of Devil's Retribution
“Mom?” Nick called out fearfully.
“Stay in your room, honey, shut the door!” I tried to keep my voice calm but then started coughing on gunpowder fumes. The smell of blood was heavy in the air now too. But whose?
“Emma?” I heard Viktor’s strained shout, I quickly stood up and came out of the doorway at once.
“I’m here. He didn’t get me.” I struggled to catch my breath. “I’m so glad you got home just now.”
“What happened?”
“He’s the last employee I had to interview. My uncle’s bodyguard. But he’s been in contact with Uncle Charles. He was taking orders from him.” Now the shakes were starting to set in. “I- he- my uncle sent him to kill me. Me and Nick. Oh God.”
He finished checking the body and came over to me. “He’s dead. I’ll call in a cleaner to handle the body. I need you to try to stay calm.”
I nodded, breathing through my mouth and praying I could keep up doing so when I felt like I was going to crack. There was only so much a person could take, and in the past two weeks I think I had reached my limit.
I peeked into the living room and swallowed hard. The body had fallen off the couch when hit, but there were spatters of blood all over, and a pool rapidly spreading across the Chinese silk carpet. “Oh God,” I murmured.
“I know, sweetheart. I’ll get someone to take care of this mess. Meanwhile you need to go get Nick and get his shoes on him. We’re taking him to lunch. Just try to act like nothing’s wrong.”
I nodded, numb, with shock. I hastily threw a throw blanket over the leaking body and went to knock on Nick’s door. “You okay in there, sweetheart?”
He hesitated. “What happened?”
“I’m okay. Everything’s fine. I need you to put your shoes on. Viktor’s here to take us to lunch.”
“Okay!” He sounded cheerful, but then paused. “What’s that smell?”
“Um, it’s okay, I just burned some toast. Everything’s fine.”
I wished it was. But when I managed to get Nick sorted and bundled out the door, I breathed a little easier anyway.
A few minutes later, Viktor came out. “All right then. Time to go get you a good meal. I have news for you, and you’re not gonna believe it.” He smiled down at Nick, who grinned.
“You got the test stuff?” Nick asked.
“We did! And I was amazed by what it said. Let’s go someplace to celebrate.”
I forced a smile, but inside, I felt dizzy and still a little sick. Now there was a contract out on me, thanks to my uncle. And I had no idea why he’d chosen to go that far.
***
We were on the road in Viktor’s black coupe, when he looked over at me in the passenger seat and asked, “Are you okay?”
I wanted to cry to him of course not, but I refused to crack with Nick there watching. “I will be.” I took a deep breath. “I’ll need to talk to you about everything later.”
By which I meant, away from Nick and his big ears. Viktor nodded. “Of course.”
“Just tell me that you’ve got some kind of good news I can distract myself with, and I think I’ll be okay.” I couldn’t let on around Nick how close I’d come to being killed. How close he had come to being killed. And all because Uncle Charles had given the order.
Why? Did he know I was allied with Viktor now? And how did he find out?
I frowned. “Look, the important part I can talk about right now is I found out where my uncle is hiding. Unless his bodyguard fed me a lie, which he had no reason to do when he was about to—well, you know.”
“I do. So where is he?” He kept his voice calm and conversational, but when I saw his hands on the wheel, I noticed his knuckles were white.
“Haiti. He’s in Haiti, in the hills northeast of Port-Au-Prince. He didn’t get more specific than it being above the tent city.” My mouth felt dry now that the nausea and fear was gone. I hoped his cleaner did a thorough job.
“Above the tent city—oh. Right.”