Page 62 of Volatile Waters

After entering, I tossed a burner phone at him. “Call your brother.”

Crash, filthy from being chained in the garage, sneered, “Why?” but quickly picked it up, knowing this was his last chance to speak to a family member.

“I need inside the Summers’ home. Tell him to let me in with no interruptions.”

“Fuck you, dude.”

I knew Mr. Jones would behave, but my suspicions told me this Reether character would not be so obliging. So, I pulled out my gun and aimed it at his head. “You have two minutes.”

“To say what?”

“The Jones family is not to interfere with my plan to get back documents.”

“But—”

I held up my hand to silence him. “I will not be leaving this horrid country empty-handed. Do you wish I take your brother and girlfriend, or two pieces of paper?”

Crash panted as he started to tap a number he clearly knew by memory. His voice violently trembled, but he tried to disguise it when he spoke into the receiver. “Link.” He listened then gave a shaky smile that spoke volumes, such as: this may be the last time we ever speak to one another. “Where’ve I been?” Crash eyed me and replied to Link, “Oh, you know. Catching sun rays in Hawaii.”

After the phone call to his brother, begging Link to allow us into Whitney’s home for a thorough search, all chess pieces were back on the board. I needed one more thing. “Whitney’s cell number.”

“Bite me.”

“Do you not think she would prefer a call versus me barging into her home?”

To my pleasure, he eventually agreed.

Now, it was time to address another issue. “What did you say to Valerie?”

Crash pretended to be more like me. “How do you know I didn’t hurt her?”

Suddenly drained again, for reasons I was yet to realize, I sunk into a folding chair. “As absurd as it sounds, because you are surrendering your life to save another’s.” Before I could say anything else, Kirill stormed in and set his fists free. I yelled, “No!” while pulling him off of Crash.

Kirill was seething mad. “Now, she doesn’t want to go to Russia!”

While I shoved Kirill back into the house, I told him, “It is probably for the best. Have her killed if you can’t stomach doing it yourself, weakling.”I shut the door. If she was already backing out of the arrangement, there was no point in taking her.

Sitting on the floor, Crash leaned against a concrete wall, wiping blood from his bottom lip. “Someone had to warn her.” He had old and now new bruises all over.

Hiking up my slacks for comfort, I sat back down. “And you assumed it should be you?”

He dabbed his swelling cheek. “Who else? One of your rapists that’s getting to sleep in beds, not this luscious concrete?”

“Let go of this crusade, and I will take Whitney back where she belongs.”

“With you, to Russia? Oh, sure! Good times, Yury. Maybe she can share a room with Valerie, and they can have gang rape parties!” He clapped his bloody hands in fake glee. Then he slumped back to the wall. “No, thank you, deranged foreigner.”

Against my will, his sarcasm and insults still entertained me. I found myself fighting a grin. “So, you still choose death?”

He smeared blood from his hands to his grungy jeans. “I’m not sure you have the capacity to understand, so why bother explaining?”

“What if I promise to give you my best effort to ‘keep up’?” I did quotations in the air as if an American, causing us both to chuckle. Then, I propped my body up by my elbows against my thighs, ignorantly unaware that Crash was about to speak words that would punch me in the gut.

He gazed at me as if we were once friends, then he swallowed and spoke from his heart. “I’m sorry your life ended up shittier than mine, Yury.”

There was no pity present, only a regret that was losing the strings that once held me together. That, too, was pissing me off, so I pulled out my cellphone. “Let’s film which of us has the shitty life.”

“Then you need to point that camera at yourself.”