* * *
Over steaming mugsof coffee and a plate of my homemade cookies, Khaz tells us all the things that Mila didn’t know and then some.
“I escaped Bulletproof’s men the same way I escaped after I took down the men who invaded my village in Chechnya in ’96. After driving my car through the barricade and shooting in the air to draw fire, my family fled into the woods. Do you think I’d go anywhere without the same type of armor that saved me the first time? I made myself a moving target at the Whitman compound long enough to escape down a tunnel at the bottom of an old cistern.”
Mila interrupts. “Tunnel? What tunnel?”
Khaz smiles for the first time since we’ve met. “When you’re a trusted handyman, you learn a few things when no one thinks you’re listening. There’s a network of bunkers down there in case there was ever a raid on the place. The tunnel leads to a secret airport hangar in the middle of an abandoned industrial complex. There’s also a secret storage facility with god knows what in it.”
Mila purses her lips. “If there is a secret tunnel, why didn’t I know? I could have used that instead of nearly breaking my ass trekking through the woods, Khaz.”
“Because you’re you, and they’re them. Those guys that work for Bulletproof aren’t outdoorsmen. How long do you think they searched the woods for you? How deep do you think they went? They would have surrounded you on both ends if you’d gone down in the tunnels.”
“What about you, Khaz. Didn’t they have you surrounded?”
“Everybody was at that party. And everybody was drunk as shit. Nobody could get to the hangar fast enough to cut me off. I sealed the entrance behind me, and it held long enough to put distance between them, long enough for someone to find Bulletproof dead and throw everything into chaos. Meanwhile, it gave me sufficient pleasure to steal one of their little planes and land it in the middle of 95 at rush hour.”
“How were you not immediately arrested?” Mila gapes.
I can’t fathom that Mila believes a word of this story.
“Oh. I was arrested.”
Khaz says this like it’s nothing, like getting arrested for him is a minor annoyance, like going to the DMV.
This might be the scariest fucking person I’ve ever met in my life.
And I can see why Mila loves him like a grandfather.
But I doubt this story, and we’re definitely not going anywhere with him.
A door opens, and a voice calls out. “Hey, everybody. Who’s the visitor with the Toyota? You’re gonna have to move your car, and I hope you brought cookies!”
Mila and I look at each other in panic. Leela.
Correction. Khaz is the second scariest person I’ve ever met because the truly most menacing one has now entered the building.