“Take it.”
Angie snatched it and stared. A young woman looked back at her. Barely sixteen. A heavily rounded belly. She was a mirror of Angie when she’d been a teen herself—apart from the long, dark, wavy hair and a more olive-toned complexion. Tears pooled in Angie’s eyes. She began to shake.
“I thought you also might like to go and see the old fish pens and crab pots again, before we say goodbye.” He paused. “Roksi.”
Her gaze shot back to him. “Goodbye?” she whispered, tears blurring her vision and obscuring his big face.
“A full family reunion of sorts. It will be fitting, I think, for you to end your life there, where your mother and sister died. Because you see, my Roksana, everything always comes back to the beginning.” He drew a gentle circle in the air with his meaty hand. “As it should. But this time”—he grinned—“no shoes that can float.”
Angie gagged. She tried to get up, but her world spun again and she slumped back hard against the wall, breathing heavily. “What . . . what did you do to them? How did you kill them?”
“Come, I’ll show you.” He held out his hand to her. “It’s time.”
She couldn’t move. She’d vomit, pass out—she couldn’t afford to black out again. She had to stay present, fight this.
His grin vanished. His eyes turned hard. He took the framed photo out of her lap and returned it to the bedside table. Surging to his feet, he reached around to his back and brought out a pistol. He pointed the muzzle at her, then waved it toward the door. He was tall—well over six feet. Built like a lumberjack. Massive thighs. Abs that looked rock hard. Pecs bulging beneath his shirt and biceps that strained against his sleeves. Olyeg Kaganov might be in his sixties, but her father was still a Goliath.
“Go on. Get up. Move. We’re going to take a little walk through the forest where you liked to play with Mila.”
The sound of her sister’s name speared a jolt of electricity through her. Angie locked her gaze on his as she slowly inched her left hand around her hip to feel the back pocket of her jeans.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “I took the phone. And the small knife.”
As he turned sideways, she caught sight of his knife—a massive hunting blade sheathed on his belt.
He reached down, grabbed her upper arm, and yanked her to her feet. She gasped, eyes watering in pain. But she refused to cry out. Up close she could really smell him—and she remembered his scent in the way that a prey animal recalls the smell of the predator that hunts it. A smell she’d learned to fear as a child. He pushed her, and she stumbled toward the door—the same door she’d opened with Alex’s magic key. Except now she had no key, no special word she could utter to return “home,” back to the safety of Alex’s living room.
Zagorsky reached for the handle and flung the door open wide. Angie blinked blindly into the brightness, trying to orient herself.
“Walk.” He rammed the muzzle of his pistol into her lower back. “That way, along the dirt path and down into the forest.”
She tried to put one foot in front of the other as she exited through the door, but she staggered forward, almost falling to her knees. Angie stopped. Breathing hard, she righted herself, then attempted once more to negotiate the uneven and twisting path that lay in front of her. As they moved into the trees, the ground underfoot grew springy with moss. She heard a plane engine up high, and she squinted into the sky. A small craft with floats and props flew overhead in the white-gray heavens, then disappeared beyond the tops of trees, oblivious to what was occurring in the forest below.
The path led into a grove of old-growth cedars that towered overhead, branches drooping low, bark hanging in shredded red strips from trunks that spanned wider than the arms of two men joined. Moss and colored lichens grew over rocks. Angie stopped as the sound of a woman singing reached her through the forest.
Little berries, black berries, two gray kittens . . .
The trees above her swirled. Branches rustled. This was it. This was the place. Her and Mila’s place.
A child laughed. Angie spun to the source of the sound. In the shadows beneath the cedars, she glimpsed a wash of pink. The little girl was there, peeping around a fat trunk, her long red hair swaying toward the ground. The girl smiled.
“Mila?” Angie whispered, holding her hand out toward the child. But the girl ducked back behind the trunk and vanished into the forest.
Kaganov laughed. “Yes, this is where Semy brought you two to play.”
Buy time. I can’t match him physically. I have no weapons. I need my wits—that’s all I have now. Play him. Buy time to come up with a plan.
She turned to face him. He towered above her, and she tried not to look at the weapon aimed at her chest or the knife at his hip. Instead she focused her eyes on his.
“Who is Semy to you?” she said. My father’s got ego. He brought me here because he wanted me to see him, for me to be impressed by and in awe of and afraid of him. He’s a narcissist who wants to show off. Appeal to his ego.
“My cousin from the Little Odessa side of the family,” he said. “By going to visit him at Kelvin, you signed his death warrant. Same with Milo Belkin.”
“What do you mean?”
He gave a half-assed shrug with his big shoulder. “Had to have them killed. Loose ends. Need to tie them all up now that you started messing in things.”
“They’re dead?”
A slow smile crossed his face. Bastard was enjoying this. Play it, Angie, play him.
“How . . . how did you do it?”
“I have contacts. On the inside.”
“Is that how you know that I visited Semy and Milo?”
“No. Semy phoned to tell me. He did it to buy continued protection for his own family, even though he knew his phone call would kill him. And you. That’s how much the asshole cared about his family.”
It struck Angie. “So it was you—you who ordered the deaths of Stirling Harrison and his wife. I thought they were killed to help Semy attain parole. But I get it now—you wanted that parole board to see him as a continued threat with gang links on the outside. You wanted to keep him locked up for as long as you could.”
He snorted softly. “Him and Milo. Those two just made trouble for me at a time I was trying to grow the business. I put them inside as a warning to the others.”
“How did they make trouble?” Keep him talking. He’s buying into this.
“Milo was just too stupid—a liability. Semy, he was too soft.” Zagorsky’s features darkened. “He grew too fond of Ana and you two. Gave you both those pairs of shoes—the one that washed up. Before the opportunity presented to set Semy up in the drug bust, I made him watch what I did to little Mila and your mother. Because it was his fault. It was because of him that I was forced to kill Ana and Mila. He lost me good money there.”
Hatred threatened Angie’s clarity. With it came the familiar heat of rage.