Secret Contract. Dana Marton

even sure if it was possible. If it was, he was the man to make it happen, and they knew it.

      The money they offered was substantial, but he wasn’t prepared to deal with them until he was one hundred percent sure that this wasn’t some kind of a trap. “The School Board” was the code name of a zealous new terrorist organization that specialized in training camps. They had ambitious intentions but barely a record. “Sugar” was code name for anything Tsernyakov sold these days, a necessary precaution in a world where surveillance had become an art form. No one had ever got anything on him, and he was determined to keep things that way.

      “They’ll get my answer when I’m ready.”

      A car pulled up outside and he looked at the familiar white SUV, then at Peter as the man got out. The passenger side door opened and his wife Sonya stepped to the gravel.

      “Thank you, sir.” Ivan left and closed the door behind him.

      His cell phone rang, and Tsernyakov picked it up as he watched Alexandra jump from the back. Peter’s daughter was a beauty at twenty. How fast time flew. He could remember her as a little girl, riding on his knee.

      “He’s here, sir.”

      “I can see,” he snapped into the phone. Peter had brought his family with him. Perhaps he’d thought he would not be punished then, that he could use them as a shield. He’d thought wrong. “Take them to the factory.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      He watched as his men pointed toward the back building and Peter balked, the women going forward without a second thought. Thousands of tons of sugar beets stood stacked by the conveyer belt that took them up to be cleaned then chopped to a juicy mush. Right now, they looked like small muddy balls. When he’d been a kid, he and his friends had sometimes played soccer with them in the back.

      Once he had found two human heads as he’d picked through the piles to find a beet that was rounder than the rest. The heads hadn’t looked much different from the beets, all caked with mud as they’d come up the conveyor belt eventually. His father had been an enforcer for the man who’d owned the factory at the time. Tsernyakov had grown up understanding the business.

      A good education was paramount to a man’s success. He believed in that. That was why his children, when they were grown, would attend the best universities of the west.

      He glanced at his calendar and considered his schedule, the machines’ incessant rumble providing a soothing background noise. The chopper was a fearsome piece of equipment that could grind anything to pulp in minutes.

      Peter shouldn’t have done business with Yokoff.

      Tsernyakov rubbed the bridge of his nose. He believed in Old Testament-style revenge. When someone betrayed you, you didn’t just kill him, you killed his family, his animals then burned his fields.

      He wanted his enemies to be crystal clear on this—nobody went against him and lived.

      Chapter Two

      Her mother was there, visiting.

      “I’m sorry, honey.” She wore her Easter hat. Seemed odd for September. Must have cut her hair short again—she did that from time to time on a whim—not a single chestnut curl showed.

      She was as slim as ever but her face had aged. Too much so, Carly thought. How long had it been since they’d seen each other?

      “It’s okay,” she told her. “I’m sorry, too.” I missed you. She didn’t say that or, Where have you been?

      “Visitation over. All inmates, please line up for exit inspection,” the overhead loudspeaker demanded.

      No. Not yet. She grabbed the edge of the table. She still had so much to say and no words to say it. She wasn’t good with words. Did her mother understand that?

      “Bomb in building! Sixty seconds to explosion!” A real person yelled that, not the loudspeaker this time.

      She turned back to the guards who watched over the visiting room, but they were disappearing into the darkness.

      The next second she was pulled awake, in the middle of the night, in her cell, alone. Her mother had been gone for years, lost to cancer, was the realization the first split second brought. But the emotions that came with the thought were abruptly interrupted when the door slammed open and banged against the wall.

      Her brain, heavy with sleep, struggled to catch up, her muscles tense from the unholy noise. She could barely make out the silhouette of the man advancing on her. She pulled her neck in on reflex, brought her hands up.

      “Get out! Get out! Sixty seconds to explosion!”

      This time, she finally comprehended the words and lunged away from the bed, heart racing, blood rushing. Get out! Get out! The order screamed in her brain now, her body propelled forward by stark terror.

      The man stepped in front of her before she could reach the door. He shoved her back.

      “Let me go!” She pushed forward and thrust her arm out to slap him aside.

      He didn’t budge.

      “Why are you doing this?” Who was it? Burge? He had hated her from the get-go. Didn’t he realize that if they didn’t get moving they were both going to die?

      She kicked and went for his face with a fist at the same time. To hell with him. To hell with what she was going to get for attacking a guard. Somehow she squeezed past him and ran down the hall, realized a few steps out that it wasn’t the hall outside her cell. Where was she? Why weren’t the emergency lights on?

      She could still be dreaming, she thought and slowed, then the man gripped her shoulder to pull her back—definitely real. She turned back to fight.

      “Stop it, Burge! What are you doing?”

      He said nothing, but slammed her against the wall and blocked her way. He was holding something in his left hand, his fist closed around a small object she couldn’t make out. A hand grenade? Was he crazy?

      She ducked under his arm, kicked sideways at his knee then ran for all she was worth, fully awake now, the memory of where she was coming back to her. She turned right at the end of the hall, boots falling heavily on the tile floor somewhere close.

      She slammed through the door to the staircase and leaped her way down. Then she was at the exit, throwing her body against the metal door, tumbling out into the wet night and away from the building. The man was right behind her.

      She could see his face now in the light of the lamp-posts and stopped running, braced her hands on her knees as she gasped for air. She cursed the man who stood before her wearing a black T-shirt with black cargo pants, and an even blacker scowl on his face.

      “Sixty-one seconds.” Stopwatch in hand, Nick Tarasov stepped forward until his combat boots were toe-to-toe with her bare feet. “You’re dead.” His voice dripped with contempt, his gaze as hard as the steel door she’d slammed her shoulder into moments ago.

      Screw you. Her heart still beat like crazy. She was shaking inside, but she straightened and looked him in the eyes without reaching up to massage her aching shoulder. She didn’t want him to know how badly he’d messed her up.

      A slow rain drizzled on her head, her body wishing for the warmth of her blankets. “If you’ve had your fun, can I go back to bed?”

      He leaned forward, until he was in her face, his expression hard. “Night training,” he said, then shouted at the top of his lungs, “Obstacle course. Get moving, soldier!”

      Now? The course was nothing but a mud hole. “I don’t have my shoes on.”

      He nodded toward the sidewalk by the building. Her boots and socks lay scattered on the concrete. He must have tossed them out the window after he’d chased her from her room. “Move! Move! Move!”

      She collected and yanked on her footwear