Page 94 of Frozen Heart

Then she moved and my heart started beating again. She lifted her head and looked at me, her eyes red from crying, and struggled to get to her feet. I started forward but Spartak’s men blocked me. “Are you okay?” I asked Bronwyn.

She nodded bravely.

“She’s fiiine,” Spartak drawled. “A cryer, though.” He scowled. “I don’t know how you have the patience.”

I turned and fixed him with a glare but said nothing. There were four of his men in front of me plus the two who’d walked me up here, plus Spartak himself. Seven against one and they were all armed, and I wasn’t.

I’d decided how I was going to handle this. If it looked like Spartak would keep his word and let Bronwyn go, I’d go through with the trade: my life for hers. It was the best way of keeping her safe. I’d made Gennadiy promise that he’d look after her, afterwards. He, Valentin and Mikhail had tried to talk me out of coming alone, but I’d been firm.If all of us show up, guns blazing, Spartak will kill her.

Besides, I wasn’t alone. I had my backup plan, waiting in the darkness. I hoped.

“I’m here,” I told Spartak. “Let her go.”

Spartak grinned and walked over to me. He nodded to the two guys behind me, and they grabbed me, wrenching my arms back behind me. Spartak put down the drink he was holding, stretched his shoulders, limbering up...and then he drove his fist into my stomach with every ounce of his strength.

I doubled over, pain radiating out in shuddering waves. It was a strange, silent kind of agony: all the air had been forced out of my lungs and they hurt too much to draw a breath. As I choked and wheezed, Spartak grabbed Bronwyn’s hand andpulled her over to us. “I’m a man of my word,” he told me. “Iwilllet her go...once every one of my men has had a turn at her.”

The rage exploded in my chest.You’re not fit to touch her.So, it was the backup plan, then.

“It was him,” Bronwyn said quickly. “Hefaked the phone call.”

I stared at her, still struggling to breathe. Suddenly, it all made sense. And now I knew there was no way Spartak would let her go. He’d kill her...or keep her forever.

The two men behind me forced me to my knees. Spartak took out his gun, then checked around. We were in the center of the room, which meant even with the glass walls, we were hidden from everyone below. He pressed the muzzle to my forehead.

I imagined Alexei, lying full length on a gantry somewhere, up in the lighting rig above us, watching for my signal through his sniper scope.

I imagined Gabriella, sitting in a car out in the alley, her face lit by the glow of her laptop screen, waiting for the radio message from Alexei. Her finger hovering over the key that would change one digit in one database and make the power company think the club hadn’t paid its power bill in over a decade.

I nodded twice.

And every light in the club went out.

68

BRONWYN

Somethingyou never really think about: there are no windows in a nightclub.

When the lights went out, it didn’t go dark, it wentblack.And for a second, it went silent: everyone in the glass-walled room froze in shock. The music had stopped, too, and my ears throbbed from the sudden quiet. Then the crowd downstairs began to scream and panic.

And then the shooting started.

It didn’tsoundlike shooting. More like a hard thud, and the sound of glass breaking, and a man crying out, all at the same time. I heard a body slump to the floor, somewhere behind Radimir. Then it happened again. And again. And again.

Spartak still had hold of me. He gripped my wrist so hard, I thought the bones were going to snap. I could hear him fumbling frantically with something and then suddenly there was light: he’d turned on the flashlight on his phone and was shining it around?—

The light found a body lying on the floor. One of Spartak’s men, his chest ruined and bloody. A second body. A third. And then Radimir, rising from his knees, his face like thunder.

Spartak went sheet white. He hooked an arm around my neck and pulled me back against him, using me as a shield. There was another shot and another of Spartak’s men fell. This one toppled forward and fell through the glass wall, smashing a huge hole and then tumbling into the darkness. A few seconds later, the screams from the people three floors below turned full-on hysterical as he landed in the crowd.

I saw Spartak look around in terror: he only had one man left, now, and Radimir was marching towards him. He put his gun to my head, and I froze as the cold metal kissed my temple. Radimir froze, too.

Spartak looked around, then began dragging me backwards, towards the wall.Where’s he taking me? There’s nothing there!The only door was on the far side of the room.

But then Spartak pushed on one of the wall panels and it swung aside: a secret door. He pulled me into a cramped, dark stairwell leading down. He snapped his fingers at Liliya, ordering her the way you would an animal, and she hurried in after us.

“Kill him!” Spartak yelled at his last surviving bodyguard. Then he pulled the door shut and shot a heavy metal bolt across, locking Radimir out.