Spirit Bound - Christine Feehan [140]
“I see you’re prepared,” Lev observed.
“Is there any other way to live?” Stefan asked. He checked the door. “Stay back just in case Ivanov’s been here. I don’t think so, and nothing appears to have been tampered with, but I’d rather you stay out here while I take a look around.”
“You don’t need to protect me, Stefan.”
Stefan shot his younger brother his shut-up-and-back-off look. Lev shrugged and stepped behind the Jeep while Stefan went into the house. Every sense on high alert, Stefan moved through the small house. Only seven hundred square feet, it wasn’t difficult to check every room for signs Ivanov had found his bolt hole. He examined the windows and even the kitchen sink and small refrigerator before he waved Lev inside.
“I put the weapons behind the wall by the bed over there. Get what we need and I’ll check my laptop. When I’m working under deep cover I only check a couple of times a week, but I’m expecting the news that La Roux’s been taken by our agents.”
He powered up his laptop and waited a few heartbeats before typing in his code. At once a single message came across the screen:
Entire team killed. La Roux escaped us. Recover microchip and terminate immediately.
Stefan sat very still, staring at the screen. Sorbacov had sent a team to break La Roux out of prison and yet the criminal had somehow gotten the drop on them? Sorbacov was going to have to provide more information, especially with Ivanov lurking around. The entire thing stank. He wished he hadn’t found Lev.
He sent his demand, insisting on a full explanation.
La Roux agitated and anxious to break out several days ago. His men were waiting and they massacred our agents. La Roux in the wind. Find him. Get the microchip and terminate.
Several days ago. What had changed? La Roux had seemed ambivalent about trying to escape. He had his organization running strong, a cushy sentence that would be over with good behavior in two more years. He was hooked up with corrupt guards. Stefan could understand why the man might hesitate. He’d been interested when he looked at the photographs of Judith, but if nothing else, La Roux had patience. He seemed willing to wait.
“Something changed,” Stefan murmured aloud. He turned the screen to show his brother.
Lev whistled. “You believe it?”
“Yes. More than anything, Sorbacov wants that microchip. There’s too much damning evidence on it. He’ll come at the two of us later, but I don’t think he’ll be able to pull his dog off. Ivanov is locked on us and I wounded him. That’ll hurt his pride. He won’t acknowledge any of Sorbacov’s transmissions and he’ll keep coming at us.”
“You know him well.”
“I learned a lot about him when we were in training together. I let him think he was better than I was. I’ve never had a big ego, so for a while he didn’t catch on. Whatever it took to get the job done was all that mattered to me. Sliding from one skin to another was easy enough, but through the years, I couldn’t stay under the radar. Ivanov noticed when I kept defeating the enemy. He’s going to keep coming.”
Lev rubbed the bridge of his nose. “You two have a run-in before this?”
Stefan shrugged. What could he say? Everyone had run-ins with Petr Ivanov growing up. Ivanov had held him underwater, thinking he would kill him that way. As a teen, he’d been sick and sadistic, torturing animals and graduating to his classmates. He would often loop a rope around a sleeping child and drag him or her to the window, throwing them out, and watching them dance on the end of the rope. Most of the time, other children overpowered Ivanov and rescued the victim, but sometimes, they didn’t get the child up in time.
“Time and again the instructors had warned Sorbacov about him, but Sorbacov cultivated him, giving him freer and freer rein until one of the instructors who had angered Ivanov turned up dead, cut into small pieces and arranged in a hallway, sightless eyes staring in horror at the children as they came out of the dormitories for classes. After that, Sorbacov kept Ivanov away from the rest