Page 79 of It's Always Been You

“Those transactions are supposed to be secure,” Olga said, spirit returning to her voice.

His smile turned shark-like. “Nothing escapes our eyes, Ms. Milekhin. Twenty-five grand is not going to get the job done. What kind of professional do you think you’re going to get? You’ll only interest the bottom feeders who have no idea how to do the job cleanly.”

Olga considered this for a minute before saying, “What are you proposing?”

“Do not deploy the kill code to create the contract yet. We need something from Ms. Kincaid—”

“Other than the hundred million she owed my brother?” Yerzov just stared at her so she continued, “And you’re paying me just to delay the kill code? That’s all? Because no amount of money will be enough to dissuade me from killing her.”

Dmitry stared at her. “Not even twenty five million?”

Olga’s eyes widened; her jaw dropped open. “How much exactly is stored in that woman’s head?”

“I’m not at liberty to say. So what’s it going to be?”

“Fifty million,” Olga said with a surge of bravado. “But she’s still dead.”

Yerzov took off his glasses to reveal whiskey-colored eyes that had flecks of gold. They were narrowed at her, pinning her with a piercing stare. “Greed will get you killed. Didn’t you know that?”

Fear clawed up her throat; she wanted to flee. She could almost feel the garrote, the rumored weapon of choice of the Angel of Death, tightening around her neck. “You kill me, that kill code deploys and you can’t stop it. I’ll have to disable it every twelve hours.”

She was smart enough to put a retaliation clause that would guard against her own assassination.

“Thirty-five million and you leave Ms. Kincaid alone.”

Olga started shaking her head. “It’s not the money, don’t you get it? I don’t care if I don’t get a dime. But I’ll agree to thirty-five million so I can buy the services of the best assassin out there.”And disappear.

“Very well.” Dmitry put his shades back on. “My comrade will get in touch with you to transfer the money. We will keep you apprised of when to expect the transfer.”

“How long?”

“Three weeks.”

Olga nodded.

“We will not meet again, Olga Milekhin.”

Olga watched Dmitry Yerzov, the Angel of Death of the Zorin Bratva, rise from the bench and walk away.

Dmitry gotinto his late model Mercedes convertible and pulled away from Kienberg park. He punched a number on his cell phone.

“Belov,” Leonid Belov, his computer-hacker expert, answered the phone. He was also holding Pavlo Milekhin in custody.

“Any updates on the Hephaestus-Carpathian files?”

“No. Blake took Caitlin out of town yesterday.”

Dmitry cursed. Blake was becoming a big problem.

“Did they take the laptop with them?”

Good thing they had a locator backup plan. Their tracking device had been fried when BSI ran a threat scan on the laptop.

“Yes, but so far I’m not showing any activity,” Belov replied. “I’ve tracked down their location using the coordinates returned by the geo-positioning software that self-installed from the USB drive. They’re in the Southwest Virginia town of Iron Ridge.”

“On a fucking vacation,” Dmitry muttered. “We need to flush them out of that town. I doubt Olga Milekhin will wait more than three weeks and Grigori grows impatient. Buyers are lined up.”

Grigori was the Pakhan of the Zorin Bratva.

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