Page 5 of Waiting for Him
Sighing, Ian rolled his chair back a few feet to a small refrigerator in the corner, grabbed three water bottles, and put them on the table. They were going to be here for a while. “Boom? Why don’t you tell me how you two know each other, and we’ll go from there.”
Benny waited a moment before his harsh words came out, his eyes never leaving hers as if she would disappear again if they did. “Boss, this is Katerina Maier. She was my best friend’s sister. She’s also supposed to be six feet under, along with her parents and brother, in a cemetery in Norfolk, so I don’t have the slightest fucking idea what she’s doing here. A week before I left for basic training, they were allegedly killed in a car accident. Tell me, Kat—are all four caskets empty or just yours?”
She winced at his accusatory tone. It also hadn’t escaped her notice when he referred to her only as his best friend’s sister and not his friend as well. She heard the pain under the anger in his voice but knew he’d never admit to it.
Her own voice came out a little louder than a whisper as she stared at the tabletop in front of her. “Mom and Alex are there. The car crash was real, but it wasn’t an accident. We were forced off the road and rolled down a hill. My dad and I barely managed to get Alex out before the car exploded, but my mom had been killed on impact. Alex died in my arms a few minutes later. Dad and I went into hiding afterward.”
She hadn’t realized she was crying until Ian put a box of Kleenex in front of her, and she grabbed two tissues. When a sympathetic, warm nose poked her arm, she gave Beau a scratch behind his ear as his master spoke. “I get the feeling this is leading to Witness Protection.”
Kate nodded at the man’s gentle and understanding statement. “Yes. It’s exactly where it leads to.” Not being able to look at Benny, she turned to the man who didn’t currently hate her. “My dad is . . . was a CPA with some questionable clients at the time. Mom, Alex, and I had no idea some of the people he dealt with weren’t on the up-and-up, but he drew the line at certain . . . crimes, I guess you can say. He said the money was too good to pass up, especially when he’d been starting his own accounting business, but his conscience wouldn’t allow him to let some things slide by. He tried to know as little as possible about who he worked for because he figured the less he knew, the better off he would be. It worked for him for over ten years.”
“What happened?”
She drew in a trembling breath, reached for one of the water bottles, and took a few sips to quench her sudden thirst. “He found out he was doing the books for a Russian organized crime family member. Dad wasn’t the only one. They used several accountants and gave each the books to only a few businesses, so if one turned on them, he didn’t have access to all the accounts. There was one man, in particular, Dad was dealing with. He owned a few bars in Norfolk, Newport News, and Virginia Beach, among other legal and illegal businesses.”
Ian raised an eyebrow. “Do you know the man’s name?”
Nervously nibbling on her bottom lip, she nodded. “Mm-hm. Sergei Volkov.
“Are you fucking kidding me! Sergei ‘The Wolf’ Volkov?” Kate flinched at Benny’s sudden outburst as he jumped up and sent his chair flying back into the wall. He started pacing the room, ignoring Ian’s angry glare. “Even I knew that bastard should be avoided at all fucking costs, and I was a fucking teenager!”
She looked at him with eyes that begged him to understand something she had never been able to. When her father tried to explain it to her in the days after the crash, she’d been in shock, and nothing would sink into her brain and stay there.
After the U.S. Marshals gave them new identities, and they began their new lives in hiding, her father never wanted to talk about it again. He didn’t want to be reminded how his stupidity and greed had cost him his wife and son and the life he and his daughter had known.
“Dad swore he didn’t know who Volkov was until it was too late, and he was in too deep. So, he did what he was paid to do and tried to stay out of trouble. But then he discovered they were selling teenage girls into white slavery. The summer and spring breaks in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Florida were the perfect times for them to kidnap a girl and make her disappear.
“Dad got a bunch of receipts and stuff he was supposed to add to the books, and he found an envelope with a list of . . . God . . . he said it was like a shopping list with the type of girls they were looking for. Specific hair color and eyes, fair skin, a certain build, that sort of stuff.”
She shook her head at the thought of any girl being taken because of their appearance. “There were also a couple of photos of girls tied up. Dad recognized one of them from the newspaper. Her parents were rich and were making a lot of noise about her disappearance. He found out later most of the girls who’d been taken were the type no one would be surprised about if they took off on their own. Mostly they were teenage hookers or runaways. He said when he realized what he had in his hand, he thought about how he would feel if one of those girls had been me.
“So, he called the phone number in the paper, and the FBI came to talk to him. They wanted him to wear a wire and get them more information, but Dad refused. He was too scared for our safety. He told them that if he started asking questions, Volkov would immediately know something was wrong because my dad only talked about the accounting when he met with him or his right-hand man.”
“But they found out about the information he gave the feds, didn’t they?” Boomer gritted his teeth as he sat down again and grabbed one of the bottled waters.
She nodded. “Yes, right before the accident. Apparently, the FBI thought my dad knew more than he told them, or he might lead them to Volkov. They were following us to my grandmother’s that day. It was her sixty-fifth birthday, and we were going to take her and my aunt out to dinner to celebrate. The agents were using a tracking device so they could stay further back and weren’t close enough to stop a car that came out of nowhere and forced us off the road.”
A shudder went through her at the memory. “All I remember is everyone yelling and screaming as the car rolled over and over down the embankment, and then silence. Dad and I got our seatbelts off and crawled out of the car. It was upside down. We managed to get Alex out through the window with the help of the two agents who’d been following us. They saw the dust and smoke and realized what happened. After we got him out and far enough away from the car, they went to get my mom. I remember wondering why they returned without her, shaking their heads, and then the car exploded. I tried to run back to get my mom, but they stopped me. I screamed and hit them, but they wouldn’t let me near it. I found out later she’d died instantly from a broken neck.
“A few minutes before the ambulance and police arrived, Alex took his last breath.” She swallowed hard, trying to clear the thick lump in her throat while wiping away the flood of tears rolling down her face. “I-I don’t remember much of what happened over the next few days. I guess I was numb. Dad and I ended up being moved from one safe house to another until the FBI decided we could never return to Norfolk and put us in the Marshals’ Witness Protection Program. We changed identities and locations three times before we settled in Portland, Oregon. We’ve been Joe and Kate Zimmerman for the past eight years.”
At some point toward the end of telling her tragic story, Kate closed her eyes, but her tears were still falling. Her voice had become little more than a hoarse whisper, and she swallowed again, trying to regain her composure.
Slowly, she raised her lids and was relieved to see some sympathy in Ben’s hardened gaze. At least he knew she was telling the truth. “I wanted so badly to talk to you, to explain what happened, but they wouldn’t let me. When they came to give us new identities, I told them the only way I would agree to go was if our handler kept tabs on you and let me know how you were doing. He followed your career for me as best he could since much of it was classified. When I heard you were in the Naval Medical Center in Maryland with a bad leg injury, the only thing that kept me from flying to see you was my father had just been diagnosed with liver cancer. It wasn’t long before it spread and . . .”
Her words trailed off, and it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what had gone unspoken. She was surprised when Benny spoke in a gentle, sympathetic tone. “He’s gone, isn’t he?”
“Almost two months ago. The chemo and radiation did a number on him, but he lasted longer than the doctors expected.”
There was silence in the room for a few moments as what she’d been through over the past twelve years hung in the air. Finally, Ian cleared his throat and spoke. “You told our secretary you needed to hire us. Was it just a ruse to see Boomer, or do you need our help? There’s obviously a lot more to your story we’re not aware of, but I would hope it would be safe for you to come out of hiding with your father's death.”
“I thought it would all be over after my father passed away,” she told them with a shake of her head. “But then I noticed I was being followed, and my condo was broken into and trashed.”
Benny had been looking down, but his head jerked back up at her words. “What? When the hell was this?”
Looking back and forth between the two men, she told them the details. “All last week, I felt like I was being watched. Then, Friday afternoon, I got home from work and found my condo in shambles. The police said whoever it was had picked the lock. A few things, like my laptop, camera, and jewelry, were missing, so they assumed it was just a random burglary, but I didn’t think it was. Saturday, I tried to contact my handler at the Marshals but was told he was killed in a car accident two days earlier. A new handler had taken over and wanted to meet with me, but I wasn’t sure I could trust anyone there with everything that happened. So, I grabbed some clothes and money and came to the one person I knew I could trust to help me.”
Anger returned to Benny’s face as his gaze flickered toward his boss. “Someone was looking for something.”
