Chapter Twenty-Six
Josepha is a master at reading the power, or ashe, stoking any situation, and immediately sees what Yulyia Kolyadenko has in mind: a fire that will consume Little Havana, and—whether the Russian knows it or not—half the neighborhood with it.
Normally Josepha wouldn’t object to a little flame. Fire is her greatest natural ally in her work as a priestess. She is adept at reading the light in candles, and using that power for spiritual cleansing and magical spells. She is a master at mixing incense and salts and herbs and oils to magnify the ability to control human behavior, but most of all, she enjoys the sizzle of freshly spilled blood fueling a leaping flame. It is a powerful way to transfer magic from the divine orishas to herself, and a purifying tool as well.
But Josepha knows she is not in control of this potential fire—not yet—and she has to tread softly in this situation. Her dear Marco is somewhere inside Little Havana.
“Come to see our little kitchen, Kolyadenko?” Josepha says.
Yulyia takes a long drag, then leans against the doorframe, cigarette dangling low. “Nyet. I thought I’d do the cooking today.”
Josepha has to give it to her. Outnumbered ten to one, and she still acts as though the saints favor her. If only all of Josepha’s men had such balls. “But you’re burning everything, you stupid bitch.”
“I didn’t say I was good cook.” Yulyia shrugs, then purses her lips like she’s just had an idea. “But we could ask Marco to teach me. He’s just inside, you know.”
Josepha’s gaze drops to the ash lengthening on Yulyia’s cigarette. Damn Marco for being so lazy, cooking the shit every Monday afternoon. It makes him predictable. But the pendejo can’t get up in the middle of the night to work. Has to drink his cerveza and grab his crotch and watch those reality shows where nothing is real. How many times has she told him, habit is what defines a person. His reply? Stop reading all those self-help books.
But who will help you, Josepha thinks, if you don’t help yourself?
She should just leave him to his predictable death. Should . . . but won’t.
“And you are one tiny step away from the same fate, Kolyadenko. Drop that cigarette, and you burn, too.”
“But then your secret is out,” Yulyia says, taking another drag. “Everyone will know you’ve been cooking up krokodil on the same shiny stainless steel stove as your frijoles. Will your patrons like sipping propane along with their postres?”
“They will like the new kitchen it has paid for.” Josepha smiles a grotesque smile.
“You are counting chickens before they hatch.” Yulyia brings a lighter from behind her back, and flicks the flame. “One more step, and there goes the neighborhood.”
The two women stare at each other, taking measure, their hatred and admiration mingling in equal degree. Question is, which of them is willing to set the world to burn?
Grif left the lights off in the restaurant’s dining room, not that he could find them in the construction anyway. But even with his enhanced eyesight, his need for stealth had him sticking to the shadows. His gun was drawn, the same .38 that’d been strapped to his ankle when he died, but there were only four chambered bullets. Using them didn’t concern him. Come four-ten in the morning, all four bullets would be back in place, just as they’d been when he died. What concerned him was staying alive until then.
Keeping to the walls, Grif came upon a hallway with two bathrooms, which he checked, but they yielded nothing. He moved quicker after that, back into the restaurant and to a side door. Locked. Cute, Grif thought, waving it open. Less amusing was what he found inside.
“So this is where death is cooked,” Grif muttered, surveying the storage area. Oil solvent and lighter fluid were neatly stacked in combustible piles while gasoline and paint thinner littered the room, a chem lab gone bad. In the center was a folding table, stacked high with packages and jars and envelopes. Grif picked one up and stared at the white pills. A citywide supply of codeine. He canvassed the room again. A citywide supply of krokodil.
But no Dennis Carlisle, Grif thought, tossing the package down, and closing the door behind him as he left.
Instinct told him to find the kitchen, so he loped across the dining room’s middle to the swinging door on the other side. It was metal, with a viewing glass, and Grif had to decide: push or pull. He pushed, and immediately cursed as a white blur tripped him up, then whisked past, whimpering and, if Grif wasn’t mistaken, trailing urine behind it. He righted himself as he watched the thing disappear. Was that a dog?
The blow came from the side, so fast his snub-nose went flying. His hands shorted out in uncontrolled spasms—the same pins-and-needles shot through his legs—and his last thought as he fell was: I’ve died like this before.
“You think we wouldn’t find out, Shaw?” A kick to the gut, already bloody and split wide. “You think you could screw this family—screw my little sister, you bastard—and that we wouldn’t find out?”
Another kick, another deadly slash . . . but then the knife was suddenly in Grif’s hand, and the blade sang again.
Then the crack of a pistol sounded, fifty years in the distance . . .
And suddenly Grif was back in the present, looking up at another man, who also held hatred in his eyes. This time there was no knife at hand, just indecipherable syllables raining down like shards around Grif’s head. He well understood the fist that flew at him next, though. He knew the sound of bells ringing. That, at least, was the same in any language, and this man was nothing if not succinct. One shot, and then his footsteps, and Grif’s vision, both receded.
Kit inched backward in a slow crab crawl. Palm, heel; palm, heel. She didn’t want to draw attention—and the sights of all those guns—back to her. Twenty more feet and she could run into the place she’d fought to avoid minutes earlier. Find Grif and Dennis and the front entrance, she thought. And hope the Cubans hadn’t blocked off that exit as well.
Palm, heel.
Only Sergei, body splayed just inside the threshold, had his gaze turned her way. Careful, he seemed to say—or the Russian equivalent. One quick move and Josepha might shoot. Yulyia might scatter ash. Because neither of them was the type to wait to burn.
Proof? Yulyia’s next words: “We should team up, Josepha. Kill the P.I., Shaw, the woman.” Kit froze. “The cop inside, too. When they’re gone, we go back to our lives.”
“And my Marco?” Josepha replied stonily.
Yulyia hesitated to admit the fate she’d had planned for Baptista. “He’s in the freezer.”
I want them to long for the flame even as it burns around their ears.
Kit increased her pace. Palm, heel. The freezer would be locked, Kit knew. Dennis’s captor was seeing to that. But Grif could open it, if he knew Dennis was there. If she could get to him. Palm, heel . . .
But the slapshot vibration of running feet sounded suddenly, and Kit cringed, ducking aside just in time. Yulyia’s driver made his grand entrance then, gun drawn, clearly reacting to the gunshot that’d killed Sergei. He was already growling as he turned the corner, and as he passed, Kit’s palm-heel retreat shifted into a full-reversal sprint. She saw his gun arm lift to sight on the open entrance. It coincided with Yulyia half-turn—she, too, had heard his feet.
Everything blurred after that. Time tangled. Even fleeing, Kit could hear the bullets drubbing flesh, the clatter of steel and gold, the roar of instant flame and heat.
And the cries of two women caught in a web of their own making.
Grif and Dennis, Kit thought, running blindly. Grif and Dennis. It was all that kept her mind from sliding out of control as gunfire and flame overtook the world behind her.