Full Black - Brad Thor [112]
The Russian cried out once more and tears again poured out of his eyes and streamed down his face.
“How about the other knee? Should I hit that one again, too?”
“Behind the wardrobe,” the man stammered.
“What’s that?”
“The wardrobe,” he repeated, his voice quavering. “The safe is behind it.”
Ralston pushed the chest out of the way. All that was behind it was one of the ugly fabric panels. Gently, he pushed on it and it popped open upon a set of hidden hinges.
“What’s the combination?”
Yatsko gave it to him.
Inside, Ralston found multiple stacks of currency, passports, a portable computer drive, and some jewelry. Pulling a pillowcase off one of the pillows on the bed, he crossed back over to the safe and took everything but the jewelry.
Grabbing Yatsko by the collar again, he dragged him out of the bedroom.
“But I don’t have anything else worth stealing!” he implored.
“Shut up.”
Ralston dragged the Russian back across the house and into the hallway near the kitchen. He dropped him near the door to the garage.
“Do you want my car?” the mobster asked. “Take it. The keys are in it.”
He was trying to negotiate, to offer the intruder something, anything. He had to have sensed that the man had not come just for a robbery.
“Is there fuel in the car?” Ralston asked.
“Yes,” Yatsko replied, hopeful.
“Good,” replied Ralston as he pulled a roll of duct tape from his backpack, tore off a piece, and placed it over the Russian’s mouth. “Because we’re going to take a little ride.”
Ralston kicked open the garage door and dragged Yatsko over to the rear of the BMW. Popping the trunk, he noticed the mobster’s eyes widen. Then he figured out why. Inside was something wrapped in several garbage bags and taped up in the shape of a mummy.
Ralston looked at the Russian lying on the garage floor. “Yaroslav, you piece of shit. What did you do?”
Pulling a knife from his pocket, Ralston sliced through the tape and garbage bags. What he found was what appeared to be a homeless man around Yatsko’s height and age. Upon closer inspection, he saw that all of the man’s teeth had recently been pulled out and his fingertips had been cut off.
There were several gas cans in the trunk as well. Ralston lifted one and sloshed it around. Full.
“Yaroslav,” he said, “were you going to set your house or your car on fire with this poor guy’s body in it? With no teeth and no fingertips, no one could ever say it wasn’t you. In fact, it’d probably look like you got whacked by some competing faction, eh? You are one slippery motherfucker, aren’t you?”
Ralston bent over and wrapped the Russian’s ankles with duct tape. Pulling him to his feet, he pushed the mobster backward into the trunk, where Yatsko whacked his head against the lid and landed atop the corpse.
Ralston looked down at him and smiled. “At least you’ll have company for our ride out to the desert.”
After wiping the house clean of his fingerprints, Ralston returned to the garage, climbed into the BMW, and turned the key in the ignition. He’d have to work fast. He had only so many hours of darkness.
CHAPTER 48
The Pearblossom Highway was an old, undivided two-lane blacktop interspersed with remote homesteads and dirt roads that led out into the Mojave Desert toward Las Vegas. Ralston had worked on a small, independent film in the Mojave years ago and almost missed the turnoff.
The dusty road wasn’t marked by anything more than a twisted Joshua tree and a large rock formation that looked like the side of an Indian’s face.
The heavy BMW sedan bumped and jolted as it hit numerous potholes and washouts along the way.
Finally, Ralston pulled off the access road into a small clearing ringed by sagebrush and turned off the ignition. Stepping out of the vehicle, he stretched his arms overhead and then leaned from side to side in order to stretch out his sore back.
When he was done, he grabbed his backpack from the backseat, fished out a flashlight, and walked around to the trunk. It was a clear night and the stars in the desert sky were fairly bright, but there were several different