Page 22 of Wyatt

“Who was that?” Kalen asked. He had just enough wild-eyed crazy in his goalie genes to go after him, maybe.

“Let me go, Jace,” Wyatt said, elbowing his coach.

Jace barely grunted, but let him go. “You’re not going over that balcony.”

Deke was staring at the room. “You did this?”

“No!” Wyatt let out a dark word and didn’t care. He stood at the edge of the balcony, searching.

Lights lit up the path, but the man had vanished.

“Did you see where he went?” He looked at Kalen.

“Yeah. Out into the parking lot.” Kalen pointed down the path into the darkened lot.

Wyatt hung onto the rail, breathing hard. Yeah, now he hurt. His back, his ribs, and he’d taken a shot in the jaw.

“What did he want? Money?” Kalen asked.

“No—it’s…nothing.”

“Paparazzi.” Jace growled. “What did he steal? Pictures?”

Wyatt looked at him, and he must have worn horror in his expression because Jace held up his hands. “I was just…it’s a guess.”

“Who do you think I am? What—nude photos? A sex tape?” He spit out a gathering of blood in his mouth. “Wow, I thought you knew me better than that.”

“I thought I did.” Jace’s mouth tightened into a grim line. “But you’ve been acting so off. What are you into, Wyatt?” He glanced at the destroyed room.

And that’s when the door banged open. In strode three black-uniformed guards, guns drawn. “Militia!”

“Great,” Jace said and put his hands up. Deke and Kalen did the same.

Wyatt too, only he stepped forward. “Vso. Okay.” The little Russian he knew.

But apparently it wasn’t all okay, because they came forward and ordered the four onto their knees.

Then he was zip-tied and hauled up beside Jace, Deke, and Kalen.

“I guess you’re going to give that interview after all,” Jace growled as they led them out of the hotel room.

Admittedly, this wasn’t exactly how York wanted to die. Hands behind his back, his neck cinched tight in a noose that hung from one of the grimy overhead pipes, his feet balancing on the rickety arms of an old office chair.

No, he had hoped—maybe it was a crazy thought, really—to die in his comfortable bed, maybe sixty or so years from now, surrounded by a family. That was the crazy part. Family. A home. Which included a wife.

So maybe it was just a crazy dream after all. Besides, a man who lived by the sword died by the sword according to his deceased preacher father, so maybe this was a fitting end.

“The Bratva doesn’t bluff,” said Slava. Yeah, York had managed a first-name basis with his torturers. Why not? Because they certainly knew him.

Of course they knew him—he’d been on the trail of assassin Damien Gustov for the better part of three years and had finally gotten close. Too close.

So close Gustov had sent in a few thugs to slow him down.

Which, at the moment, was working if York couldn’t get the last of the plastic severed from the zip tie holding fast his wrists. He’d been working on it with a piece of chipped cement for nearly an hour.

Quietly.

While Slava and his buddy Vasily hit him.