Greg Rucka - Walking dead

"I'm sure," he said, and he kissed her cheek for good measure. "Won't be long," he promised.

We watched as she worked her way back to the house, saw her silhouette pass through the doorway. She looked back at us once more before going inside, and Iashvili gave her a reassuring wave.

Only when she was out of sight did he turn his attention back to me.

"You going to kill me now?" Mgelika Iashvili asked me.

"You going to give me a reason to?"

He considered, then shook his head. After a half second, he gestured along the edge of the water, and I nodded, and we began walking, side by side.

"Before you went down to Batumi, I never had reason to fear you," the chief said.

"And now you do?"

"I know what you did there. I know it was you. I can't prove it, I wouldn't even if I could. But I know you killed that fuck Karataev."

"It was Karataev who bought you off?" I asked. "Paid you to say that Bakhar had killed himself and his family?"

"He gave me a choice." Iashvili stooped, scooping up one of the wave-worn rocks from the beach without breaking stride. He threw it overhand out at the water. "I could take their money. Or they could kill me and make it look like I did it."

"You're the police."

"And who the fuck are you?" He glared at me. "Who the fuck are you telling me that? You killed four men in Batumi and fuck knows how many more wherever you've been. And you killed that other one, too, right? That one of Karataev's we found at Bakhar Lagidze's home when we found his family."

I shrugged.

"So don't fucking condescend to me, David-Mercer-whoever-the-fuck-you-really-are. You're not from this place; you think you know, but you don't. People who do the right thing, you've seen what happens to them. People like Bakhar."

The logic seemed circular to me, but I kept myself from saying so. We resumed walking.

"I did you a favor," Iashvili told me. "They showed up, fucking put a gun in my mouth, asked where the fuck you lived, where David Mercer fucking lived. You don't lie to people like that. You lie to people like that, they come back and make sure you take a long time dying."

"I know."

"As soon as they left me, I called your wife, I called Yeva, to warn her. You know why I did that?"

"So you could sleep at night?"

"So this wouldn't happen, this thing right here, right now! You understand what I'm telling you? I did you a fucking favor!"

"For all the wrong reasons."

"Jesus on the cross, you judge me? She's still alive, right? Yeva's still alive!"

"Who were they?"

"The ones your wife fucking killed?" He shook his head, morbidly amused. "Is that what you two do? Between teaching ballet and jogging through town, I mean, is that it? You go around killing people?"

"Sometimes I try to get in a little light reading. I like the works of Stephen Crane and Tim O'Brien."

He didn't laugh.

"Were they friends of his?" I asked. "Of Karataev's?"

"Man like that didn't have friends. He had partners, he had colleagues, people he made business with. That's who they were. I told you when you left for Batumi that day, I told you that you had no idea who Lagidze was, what he was into. Now you know, but I think you still don't, not at all."

"Which is it?"

He stopped again, turned to face me. We'd covered a fair stretch of the beach, his house lost behind us. The clouds had blown through enough to allow pieces of the night sky to sneak through. There was no moon.

"This isn't some American gangster movie bullshit," Iashvili said. "There isn't some Don Corleone like that, someone sitting at the top, someone giving the orders. This is only about money, about business, that's all it ever is about. Nothing else matters. Russian mob works with Albanians, Italian Mafia works with the fucking Roma. South Ossetians work with Georgians like Bakhar Lagidze, and Georgians like Bakhar work with Russians like Karataev. Doesn't matter who hates who, who wants to kill who, Muslims, Christians, new capitalists or old communists, doesn't matter. Everyone's involved if there's money, and the money is the thing keeping them together.

"You want me to give you a name or several names, it doesn't matter. You fucked their business, you've cost them their money. They don't allow that. So they come looking for you, to kill you, and while they're at it, they'll kill your wife and your dog and anyone you talked to if they can, they don't care. You cost them money, and now you're marked, David fucking Mercer. It doesn't matter how long it takes, how many times it takes, they will remember. And eventually, they will find you, and they will kill your Yeva, and they will kill you, too. You're walking dead."

He went silent, shaking his head and turning away, as if I was incapable of grasping the concepts he'd just laid out. Everything he'd just said, the prophecy he'd issued of my and Alena's eventual fate, had been delivered without rancor. It was the world the way he saw it, and, unfortunately, the way he saw it was a lot like the way I was beginning to see it, too.

"They will do to you what they did to Bakhar and his family," Mgelika Iashvili told me.

"Not if I do it to them first," I said.

Nineteen She had been sleeping, Alena told me, when Mgelika Iashvili called to warn her that there were three men driving out to the house. It had been poor slumber, the way she described it, the kind where you're aware that you're sleeping badly, but not awake enough to do anything about it. It had taken four rings before she'd managed to pull herself to the phone, groggy and cotton-mouthed. The clock on my nightstand said it was seven minutes past six in the morning. "I was certain it was you," Alena told me as we sat together on the bed in her room at the Londonskaya. She was leaning back against my chest, warm and strong, my arms around her. I was having trouble letting her go. "Calling early again."

"Good that it wasn't," I said, thinking that a busy signal then would have cost her her life. She'd been surprised to hear the chief's voice, enough so that it took her precious seconds to realize who was speaking.

"Do you hear me, Yeva?" Iashvili was telling her. "They're on their way to your home now, they will kill you if they find you there. You have to get out. You have to get out now."

Groggy or not, that had been all it took.

Alena dropped the phone, not bothering to hang up, and rolled out of bed, reaching for the nightstand and the Walther P99 she kept there. It was her favorite pistol, at least for the time being, and the one she felt most innately comfortable with, and that was why she kept it close. She was on her feet and readying a round when Miata and the security system both went off at the same time. For Miata, that meant a frantic scrabbling at the bedroom door. For the security system, that meant a smoke detector-like shrieking that filled the house.

With the gun in her hand, she moved into the hall, stopping long enough at the linen cabinet to yank the power cords from each laptop and silence the alarm. The sound of it was loud enough to be heard outside, and now, working only from Iashvili's warning, she was desperate to maintain some element of surprise. "They'd come early in the morning," Alena said. "I had thought that meant they would try to breach, to take me in the house. If that was the case, I thought it best to remain inside and let them come to me. I thought my knowing the floor plan and them not knowing it, that would be an advantage." With the silence restored, she'd held in the hallway, putting one hand on Miata's back, to keep him beside her. She could feel the Doberman trembling anxiously, eager to move forward, but heard nothing from outside. She spared a moment to curse herself for disconnecting both computers from power, because in doing so, she'd cut off her own access to the external cameras, and had no way to visualize what was happening.