Soldier's Redemption Page 15

  “I think I can guess who’s been talking to you,” he said, his voice crisp with disapproval. “Cole Bennett.”

  “Cole Bennett is no longer in the picture,” she said.

  He narrowed his eyes as he studied her. “What happened to your face? Did that man strike you?”

  “No, nothing like that.” She paused before adding, “Uncle, what can you tell me about your old friend, Ambassador Oates, and his family?”

  Irritation curled his upper lip. “No, Skylar, I am not going to discuss the past with you. It’s water under the bridge, best left alone.”

  “But please. There was another family, too, right? I mean, the murdered girl’s family. They were hell-bent on revenge. Isn’t that what you said? They sent a bomb—”

  “I am not—repeat, not—going to talk about the Roman clan. They’re all dead and gone. Good riddance to them.”

  Roman. That’s the name Cole had mentioned then asked her not to repeat. “What if it isn’t? What if the girls I keep telling you are missing—”

  “Girls? There is more than that one unfortunate waif?”

  “I found out Aneta’s sister is missing under similar circumstances and that Ian Banderas was known to her family.”

  He shook his head. “I asked you to let the police take care of this. I told you I would talk to Ian.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Just what I suspected. Malina Dacho was an opportunistic cheat. Plain and simple. They come and go, these girls. They run off. They put themselves in harm’s way. In this case, the mother is trying to extort money from anyone who will listen to her story and fall for her lies.”

  Skylar stared at her uncle and tried to connect the girl Svetlana believed her daughter to be with the girl her uncle just described. And this glib response didn’t explain the money she’d left behind, either.

  At least Ian had confirmed he knew of Malina Dacho, which meant Cole hadn’t created that situation to advance his plan. So why wasn’t Svetlana answering her phone?

  “Again,” her uncle said, “I’m asking you what happened to your face? There are scratches on your arms, as well.”

  “I was attacked by a woman,” she said.

  He stood abruptly. “What?”

  “A woman threw a blanket over me and kicked me. I fell, but I’m okay—just a little sore and battered. Someone doesn’t want me asking questions.”

  “That does it,” he said. She’d never witnessed his eyes so narrow or his nostrils as flared. “Your aunt has an offer from an old friend willing to take care of the gallery. I’m seeing to it that you go home as early as next week, and until then, please confine yourself to this house. I have calls to make now. You may go.”

  * * *

  SKYLAR GRABBED HER red coat from the downstairs closet and left the house before her uncle could bar her way. More than ever, she wished she could talk to Cole. The conversation with her uncle had left her confused and nervous. Ian Banderas, who days before hadn’t been welcome in her aunt and uncle’s home, was now there frequently. Why?

  Could Cole be right?

  It took her a few tries with a patient cab driver to find the neighborhood she’d gone to just once—and then in the dead of night with Svetlana giving directions. The house itself turned out to be easy to identify as there were two ambulances and several police cars pulled up outside and what appeared to be a television news crew unloading their gear.

  Skylar paid the driver and hurried toward the gathering crowd. She caught a glimpse of Detective Kilo at the door and ducked behind a tall man carrying a tiny camera, stepping on his foot in the process. He looked down at her in surprise. “Sorry,” she said.

  “No problem,” he replied. With a sweeping gesture that took in the house, he added, “This is all so sad.”

  “What happened?” she asked, dreading the answer.

  “Two women died,” he said.

  “What!”

  “All I know is what the woman who found the bodies told me,” the man said. “She’s right over there.” He pointed at an elderly woman in a very large black coat and scarf who stood off by herself next to a police car. “She went there today like she does every morning to have coffee with Rita Guro. That’s whose house this is. Was. Poor Mrs. Kintz is really shaken.”

  “I think I’ll go console her,” Skylar said. “Thanks.”

  She made her way to the woman who watched her approach with solemn eyes. “I’m sorry about your friend,” Skylar said by way of greeting.

  The woman shook her head. “It was terrible. Why would Svetlana do such a thing?”

  No, no, no.

  “They were both seated at the table, just as I left them yesterday afternoon,” Mrs. Kintz continued, “with their mending supplies all set out in front of them, normal as can be. In fact, Rita still held a needle in her hand. But half her head was gone, blown away.” Mrs. Kintz paused to chew on a knuckle and choke back fresh tears. “Svetlana must have shot her from behind. At least Rita didn’t know it was happening.”

  “But how do you know it was Svetlana who murdered her?”

  “The gun was in her hand,” Mrs. Kintz said. “It looked like she shot Rita, then calmly sat down across the table from her and shot herself. There was blood everywhere. I just met her yesterday. She did not seem the kind of person to do something so evil.”

  Skylar fought to make sense of this, but she couldn’t. “Look, they’re coming out,” the older woman added.

  Skylar turned as two gurneys, each carrying a body bag, appeared in the doorway. Attendants rolled them to separate ambulances.

  “The police say they’ve been dead since yesterday, but I don’t understand,” the woman said. “When I left them, they were telling stories as they did the mending. In fact, Rita was still holding the blue dress she was working on when I left. Svetlana got a phone call that seemed to upset her and said she would be leaving soon. What could have gone so terribly wrong in such a short time? Svetlana must have been crazy.”

  “Where did she get the gun?” Skylar asked. “Did Rita have one?”

  “Oh, no, she lost two sons in wars. She wouldn’t have a gun anywhere near her. Svetlana must have brought it.”

  But Skylar knew Svetlana didn’t have a gun, or if she did, she’d certainly not had the opportunity to pack it before she and Skylar left her apartment in such a hurry. It didn’t add up. Surely the police would figure this out.

  Or would they? Cole said they were corrupt.

  Skylar squeezed the woman’s arm gently. “I really am sorry for your loss,” she said. A couple of policemen were looking her way, so she hurried off down the sidewalk, heedless of direction, desperate to get away.

  She knew three things. One was that she was responsible for both these deaths. By telling her uncle who then told Banderas, she’d as good as pulled the trigger.

  She also knew Svetlana hadn’t killed her friend. It made no sense. If the police announced they believed this story, then Cole was right: they were involved in a cover-up.

  The other thing she knew was that Cole was in danger. Ian Banderas had either killed Svetlana or had her killed just hours after her uncle talked to him. Now her uncle would talk about Cole. Cole would be next.

  She had to warn him. She pulled out her phone and called the hotel, asking for his room.

  “I’m very sorry,” the desk clerk said, “but Mr. Bennett checked out an hour ago.”

  Skylar clicked off the phone and kept walking.

  Now what?

  Chapter Fifteen

  Cole felt eyes trained on the back of his head.

  He turned quickly, glancing behind him. and found a man gazing placidly back, thick lips slack, totally disinterested.

  Cole had just dropped his rental off at the airport and was now on the transport bus to the terminal. He knew Traterg had added additional flights to America recently, and there was one leaving around 1:00 a.m. He’d be lying if he didn’t admit how much he wanted to be on it. For the firs
t time in his life, he had family he wanted to spend time with, yet he had a profound premonition in his gut that would never happen. Just as a future with Skylar was now out of the question.

  Her last words to him played through his mind and the thing was, she was right. He’d been willing to take Roman and Irina at face value. He needed proof of some kind before mounting any campaign; that need was what had brought him here, and he mustn’t lose sight of it. But his time in Kanistan was running out.

  By now, Skylar must have told her uncle everything Cole had told her, and he was a sitting duck. Even the United States might not be far enough away. And without Skylar by his side, without the promise of the days and weeks and years of growing old with her, what did any of it matter, anyway?

  Well, he hadn’t been a soldier for years for nothing. This was the time to draw on cunning and guile, to trust in the purpose of his mission and rededicate himself to its conclusion. He knew in his heart that Futura was behind the deaths of his parents, the deaths of John’s guardians and, undoubtedly, the deaths of many others. Enough was enough. Without Skylar as a distraction, he could get back on track, figure out the next step. She, at least, would be safe with her uncle, and that was really all that mattered.

  The bus stopped and he got off. The man who had been sitting behind him got off as well. Cole retrieved his luggage from the back of the van and tucked his briefcase under his arm as he made his way inside the terminal. He lost the man from the bus in a crush of people and breathed a little easier.

  It took no time at all to check in for the flight thanks to purchasing a first-class ticket. Now he just had to wait several hours for the plane to take off and he would be free.

  He had just entered the bathroom to splash cold water on his face when he spotted the reflection of the man from the bus in the mirror. The dispassionate look on his face was nowhere to be seen; now there was an expression of intense concentration. Cole took a hasty look around. The bathroom was depressingly empty, and the only way out was through the man.

  Holding his briefcase in front of him, Cole turned abruptly. The guy jammed his big body against Cole just as another man came into the room. A moment’s relief was followed by the realization that the new man was working with the first guy. He came up behind Cole, who caught the glimmer of steel in the reflection. He pushed forward as hard as could while spinning his body out of the way right as the second man lunged with a knife.

  The blade missed Cole but entered the first man’s throat. Blood immediately spurted like a geyser as the victim fell heavily to the tiled floor. The second guy immediately set upon ripping his knife from the neck of the dead man, but Cole didn’t wait around. He took off at a brisk walk that quickly grew faster, shrugging himself out of his overcoat and tossing it onto a row of empty chairs. The briefcase miraculously remained in his hands. Behind him, he could hear the pounding of footsteps....

  * * *

  EVENTUALLY SKYLAR STOPPED to look around to see where her feet had carried her. She found she’d entered a neighborhood that appeared to be transforming itself from squalid to quaint. What looked like new shops appeared more and more frequently. Small restaurants and bakeries occupied almost every corner.

  She saw the sign for Pushki’s café from across the street and paused. What was the name of the girl who had been Malina’s friend? Skylar couldn’t remember but never mind: fate had brought her to the place Malina supposedly met Ian Banderas; Skylar might as well find out what she could.

  She entered the café slowly, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dim light. It was a moody-looking place with cigarette smoke heavy in the air giving the impression the real action started after the sun went down. What was a fifteen-year-old doing working in a place like this?

  Probably trying to help her mother keep a roof over her head...

  And now her mother was dead....

  A girl approached with a menu, but Skylar wasn’t interested in eating and declined being seated. She remembered Svetlana had mentioned a friend of hers who was a dishwasher here, but for the life of her, she couldn’t think of a way to ask after the kitchen help. Back on the street, she got the idea of finding the alley behind the restaurant. Once she’d located that, she made her way to what appeared to be the kitchen door.

  Two men were in the process of unloading cases of liquor from a van while another man marked the items off on a checklist. Skylar asked the man with the list if she could speak with the dishwasher. He waved her inside without even looking at her.

  The kitchen was very small and cramped. A thin man poaching fish glanced at Skylar without interest. She smiled and sidled past him to approach a back room from which steam billowed forth.

  The dishwasher turned out to be a round-bellied guy of about fifty with curly gray hair and large bags beneath his eyes. Skylar asked him if he knew Svetlana Dacho, and he stared at her as though trying to figure out her angle.

  He must have decided she looked harmless because he told her to come with him. They walked back through the kitchen and out the door, past the liquor transaction and stopped near a stack of crates. The dishwasher took out a pack of cigarettes and perched himself on a box. He offered Skylar a smoke and shrugged when she declined.

  “No names,” he said flatly as he struck a match against a cinder-block wall.

  “Okay. I just want to know if you know that Svetlana is dead.”

  He exhaled a lungful of smoke that the wind snatched away at once and swore. “The bastard Banderas killed her,” he said.

  “I think so, but that’s not how it was made to look. It was made to look as though Svetlana murdered a friend and committed suicide.”

  He narrowed his eyes. “Why do you come here to tell me this?”

  “Because Svetlana mentioned you were friends. She asked me to help her find Malina. I’ve hit a brick wall, but Svetlana told me Malina has a friend who works here. I can’t remember her name.”

  “You mean Katerina,” he said.

  “That’s right. Do you know when she’ll be working? I’d like to ask her a few questions.”

  “She has a short shift from six to ten tonight.” He stared at her a second from beneath heavy lids before adding, “If you want to speak with her you should do it somewhere else besides here.”

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  “I gave her a ride once during a big snowstorm. She lives behind an old house about three blocks down.”

  “Did you ever talk to her about Malina and the man who befriended her?”

  “You are talking about Ian Banderas again,” he said, his voice growing very soft. “Lately, Katerina has caught his attention.” He tossed the cigarette on the ground and stepped on it, twisting his shoe as he stood. “Listen. I need this job. I have children to support. I will not get in the middle of anything. You understand?”

  “Yes,” she told him, but he was already walking away.

  Skylar took off again, this time down the street where the rejuvenation efforts quickly petered out to be replaced by rows of cookie-cutter houses. It seemed impossible she would be able to pick the right house out of so many, but there was one larger place that still claimed a yard of its own; the rest of the lots looked subdivided. And sure enough, when she looked, she could see a small detached building at the end of a narrow path through an untended garden.

  Once again, she missed Cole’s presence with an intensity that scorched her, but she pushed it aside and made her way down the path, anxious to speak with Katerina and learn something concrete that had nothing to do with Cole and that she could present to her uncle.

  No one answered the door at the small cottage, although calling it a cottage was something of a stretch. Skylar tried looking in the window to the left of the door, but the drapes were pulled. Still, she had the feeling it was occupied, and she stepped off the tiny porch with the weird feeling someone was watching her.

  She turned around and scanned the garden and saw nothing except dormant plants and dead weeds.
To the side, she spied a spur of the path that led around to the back of the cottage, and she decided to follow that.

  The back door was closed, but the window was undraped and Skylar looked inside. Her gaze traveled past the tiny kitchen and through the door that led to a bedroom. She could see the edge of a bed that caught afternoon shadows. One of them suddenly moved....

  “Katerina?” she called, rapping on the door. “Please, I need to talk to you.”

  The shadow grew very still.

  “I’m a friend of Svetlana’s,” she said, knocking again. “I know you’re here. Please let me in.”

  It occurred to her that perhaps the shadow didn’t belong to Katerina, and adrenaline surged through her body at the thought someone might be in there with the girl. Someone like Ian Banderas, perhaps. She tried the knob and the door opened. Swallowing what felt like a brick, she stepped inside.

  “Stop right there,” a voice said, and a frightened-looking young girl appeared in the doorway. About the same size as Skylar, she sported shaggy black hair, pale skin and dark-rimmed blue eyes.

  There was nothing threatening about her except for the butcher knife clutched in one white-knuckled hand. “Who are you?” she snapped. “How did you get in here?”

  “The door wasn’t locked,” Skylar said. She held her hands slightly aloft and did her best not to look confrontational. The girl’s demeanor reminded her of Svetlana the night she’d clobbered Cole. Even mild-mannered people, when frightened enough, were capable of random acts of violence.

  “Not locked?” She moved quickly toward Skylar who stepped out of her way. “The damn thing is broken again,” she said as she twisted the brass knob and slammed the door. “Who are you? What do you know about Svetlana?”

  “Are you Katerina, Malina’s friend?” Looking slightly less terrified, the girl nodded and Skylar continued. “Her mother asked me to help her find out what happened to Malina.” Skylar took a deep breath and imparted the news of Svetlana’s death.