Page 23 of Wyatt
While York slowly fed out the information they thought he was so keen to hold on to.
Yeah, he knew that the Bratva was behind the assassination attempt on Russian General Boris Stanislov, one of the troika who had his finger on the Russian nuclear missile system. Thankfully, Stanislov was a moderate, more interested in American capitalism than conquering the world.
It wasn’t that hard to figure out the grand plan—take out Boris. Into his government cutout would step Arkady Petrov, hardliner, comrade, believer in the Communist way.
Aka, today’s mafia boss. One with long political strings and a taste for global expansion.
York let all that information trickle out in grunts and pieces as he concocted his escape plan. Because while he always knew he’d die like this, frankly, he had things to do.
Like find Ruby Jane Marshall and tell her that she’d changed him.
Or at least gotten far enough inside that he’d started to wonder if he could, possibly, change.
She’d opened up a tiny fissure of hope within him, one that had released some pretty long tamped-down desires. Home. Love. A fresh start that didn’t include lies, living with one eye over his shoulder, and the perpetual screaming in his head that he’d long learned how to hide.
She made him feel free, and shoot, after a decade in his own cruel prison, he needed that like a man needed air.
Um, and literally, heneeded air, because the noose had this inconvenient way of landing on his windpipe and shunting off his breath.
Too bad they’d gotten tired of hitting him and had shortcut to the finale because he had plenty more in him. But no, they’d thrown a rope over the four-inch pipe above him, forced him onto the chair, and issued their final questions.
York kept his voice easy. “I’m not lying to you, Slava. I’m telling you, we have proof that Gustov tried to kill the general. Not just emails from him to the American woman he set up, but I saw him myself.”
Only a little white lie. He hadn’t actually seen the shooter the night of the assassination attempt. Mostly he’d been looking at naive RJ standing in the spotlight for the world to blame as the shots rang out.
He’d had to do something. Which ended up being a rescue from the FSB and an epic escape from Russia.
There. He’d gotten one wrist free. And that was all he needed. But he didn’t move, just held the cement piece in his fist.
“Where is the woman?” Slava was leaning against an ancient desk, his foot precariously placed on the chair, ready to kick it out.
York tasted the blood pooling on the side of his mouth. His bruises had calmed to a dull ache rather than the sharp pain from movement. That would all change as soon as he figured out just exactly how he was going to wrangle himself out of this moment, incapacitate Slava and Vasi, escape the abandoned office building probably located on the outskirts of Moscow, and hightail it to the airport in time to intercept Kat in Khabarovsk.
Tell her to leave the country.
And stop the very bad person who’d been sent to kill her.
That thought alone could cause a prayer, albeit thin and desperate, to the Almighty to watch over her. Not that York really had any pull with God anymore, but Kat was a good person. And she deserved protection.
Which meant he needed to keep it cool with Slava. “What woman?”
“The one on the train.”
Yeah, Slava needed to be more specific because technically, there’d been two women on the train with him from Moscow to Siberia last month. Kat, and the other, Ruby Jane, the woman they were most likely talking about.
Since RJ was safe in America, maybe that was a truth that wouldn’t cost him. “She’s back in America. Safe. Where you can’t touch her.”
It was the way that Slava smiled, the way he looked at Vasily, who was leaning one shoulder against the grimy wall, that raised the little hairs on the back of York’s neck.
But no, there wasn’t a chance that Gustov could track RJ to the remote Montana ranch where she was hiding.
No. Way.
“Listen, we know it all, and you’re not going to get away with any of it. We know that the BratvahiredGustov to kill General Boris Stanislov last month. That after it failed, you pinned the attempt on an American tourist, RJ Marshall.”
Well, not exactly a tourist, because she technically worked for the CIA as an analyst, but she’d been here on a tourist visa. Okay, procured illegally, thanks to a contact she found through the agency, a contact who had given her York’s name.
He owed Roy for that. At the moment, he didn’t know if that was a good or bad thing. “We know that you chased us through Moscow and tried to kill us on a train to Yekaterinburg. Alas, she got out of the country.”