Chapter 34: Devil’s Lair: Chapter 34

I react in a split second, but Pavel is even faster. He shoves me just as I dive to the side, and we both hit the ground hard as the bike roars past us, so close I feel a whoosh of hot air on my face.

Adrenaline propels me to my feet straight away, but the biker is already halfway down the block, weaving through the traffic with race car speed. All I can tell from this distance is that it’s a man wearing a black leather jacket and a helmet.

Pavel is already on his feet as well, jaw taut with fury. “Did you see his face?”

“No.” I straighten my jacket and tie and brush the dirt and gravel off my scraped palms. My shoulder throbs from landing on it, and cold rage burns inside me, but my voice is calm. “His helmet had a mirrored visor. Maybe one of Valery’s guys caught his license plate.” I take in the gathering crowd of eyewitnesses, some of whom are pulling out their phones, presumably to call the police. “We better get out of here.”

Pavel nods grimly, and we swiftly make our way to the hotel.

Levan Abkhazi, Valery’s local security chief, meets us in my room an hour later. A burly Georgian about Pavel’s age, he’s completely bald but sports a thick black unibrow and a matching beard.

Pulling out a folder, he lays out a series of grainy photos on the desk. “This is all we were able to pull from the nearby store and traffic cameras,” he reports in heavily accented Russian. “The team stationed on the rooftops didn’t have a good angle on the license plate at any point, and there were too many civilians to risk taking a shot at him.”

Pavel and I examine the photos. On one of them, it’s possible to make out a portion of a digit, but the other pictures show a corner of the license plate at best. The biker is either the luckiest son of a bitch to ever walk the earth, or he knew where Valery’s team was stationed.

I look at Pavel. “Thoughts?”

“A pro, definitely.” His face is set in harsh lines. “He didn’t slow down, didn’t react in any way to almost running you over. And he knew how to handle that bike—and how to avoid the cameras.”

Abkhazi’s unibrow bunches in a frown. “You don’t think it could’ve been an accident? If the guy’s a pro, he should know that running someone down in the street is not the most efficient way to carry out a hit.”

“That depends on whether you want to make it look like an accident or not,” Pavel says. “Besides, it wasn’t a hit.”

The Georgian gives him a confused look. “What was it then?”

“A message,” I say, placing the photos back in the folder. “From our friends, the Leonovs. They wanted me to know that they know. The question is: know what?”