Her head swam.
She stopped fighting. She needed to think. Needed time.
Xavier would be here soon.
She cleared her throat and said, “Mikhail, I presume.” She tried to sound confident, but her voice came out shaky.
“Good. You know who I am.” He stood and yanked her to her feet, twisting her around to face him. “But do you know why I plan to kill you?”
Her head swam again at being forced to her feet so quickly. Her knees wobbled. “Because you’re a mercenary and are being paid?”
“Oh no. I kill you for free.”
“Oh goody. I’m flattered. Usually, mercenaries are so discriminating.”
He slapped her, but she didn’t care. Slapping wasn’t shooting. Slapping her face didn’t hurt the baby.
“At the start of the siege, I told my men to let you live. Women weren’t to be part of our conflict. We never kill women or children.”
“How moral of you.” Her voice dripped with sarcasm.
“But then I read your letter and realized you were the answer to my prayers. I was hired by Katerina’s father to exact revenge on the SEALs who botched her rescue. Your letter told me I could exact revenge of my own. You see, Katerina was pregnant with my child when your lover killed her. Shot her in the belly.”
Another wave of dizziness hit her, and this time, she wasn’t even sure why.
She gathered her wits and asked the crucial question. “How could you even know that?”
Behind her, she heard Xavier say, “Because he was there.”
Mikhail yanked her to his chest, turning her so she was a shield in front of him. He placed his hand at her throat and squeezed lightly.
“That’s why you wore a mask. You knew Flyte and I saw your face in Belarus.”
The hand at her throat tightened, and she struggled to breathe, clawing at his hand.
After a long moment, his grip relaxed, and he said. “I was hoping you would come. I was hoping you would watch as I do to your lover and child what you did to mine.”
She studied Xavier’s face as he inched closer through the forest, his gun drawn but not pointed at Mikhail, as that would mean pointing it at her.
He avoided looking at her. His face was stone-cold operator. Deadly intent on the man who threatened to crush her windpipe.
“You hurt her and there is nothing stopping me from tearing you apart.”
“So be it. I’ve already died once. Hanged myself.”
“You shot your minion with a nail gun days before you hung him, so it would have time to heal, as your wound did. How did you get him to agree to that?”
“I paid him for the initial wound. Told him I wanted him to be photographed with the wound visible after taking the ferry to Victoria. Once he was in Canada, I promised to get him on a private boat and smuggle him out of the country.”
“Then, after the puncture wound healed enough, you killed him and the other mercenaries in the RV,” Xavier said.
“I still don’t understand,” Audrey said. “Why were you in Belarus? Were you trying to rescue Katerina too?”
“No,” Xavier answered. “He was her captor. The one who abducted her.”
“Her father hired his daughter’s abductor to get his revenge against the SEALs who tried to rescue her?”
“I was an employee of Grigory Laskin already,” Mikhail said.