Last Snow by Eric Van Lustbader Read Free Book Online

clattered into the alley. Annika made a grab for the Sig, but with a herculean effort, Ivan kicked it away from her. The 9mm lay somewhere, hidden in shadow.
    Jack drove his fist into Ivan’s midsection, but the big man seemed to scarcely feel it. Instead, he grabbed hold of Jack’s chin, pushed it upward, exposing his neck. Jack twisted away, and Ivan’s fist struck him on the side of his neck. A split instant later and Ivan would have punctured his throat. The man was even bigger at close range, and his rage was palpable. Jack ducked and weaved, got in a punch here and there, but was being methodically beaten to a pulp. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Annika make a run at Ivan. She hit him without visible effect. He lashed out at her with one massive arm, and she careened backward, crashed to the ground, and Jack knew there would be no more help from her.
    In the moment after the swipe when Jack’s attention was momentarily diverted, Ivan turned him, had him in a choke hold. Now he was trying to bend him backward. Jack put all his energy to moving forward, crawling with agonized slowness across the width of the alleyway to the shadowed spot where he surmised the Sig had fallen. Hand-to-hand, he was no match for the huge Russian. The handgun was his only hope now.
    His breath came in shallow pants, his eyes felt as if they were bulging out of their sockets as Ivan increased the pressure on his windpipe. His mind was whirling, blinding flashes of light interspersed with vast reaches of blackness that threatened to pull him down into their unimaginable depths. The alley canted over, as if about to spill him out onto his ear. He could no longer distinguish up from down, right from left, and so was nearing the end of his ability to keep going. He was drifting, as if leaving one world on his way to another, and he heard her voice, Emma’s voice, as he’d heard it several times after her death. Once, he had even seen her glimmering between the trees behind his house, the house at the end of Westmoreland Avenue, his sanctuary, where he’d once lived with Gus, the big, black pawn shop owner, after he’d run away from his abusive father.
    “
Dad
,” his daughter called. “
Dad, where are you?
”
    “Emma . . . ?”
    “
Dad, I’m looking for you and I can’t see you. Where are you?
”
    “I’m here, Emma. . . . Follow my voice. I feel like I’m very close to you.”
    “
I see you now, Dad.
”
    He heard her gasp of dismay.
    “
You have to go back . . .
”
    “Go back where?”
    “
You have to go back, Dad. . . . You’re right near the gun. . . .
”
    That was when he felt something metallic strike his knee. Scrabbling around with his right hand, he found not the Sig, but Ivan’s9mm. He gripped it, his finger on the trigger. He was right up against the alley wall, and he bent over as hard as he could. Ivan’s forehead struck the wall, his grip on Jack’s windpipe loosened enough for Jack to turn the 9mm around.
    He fired two shots into Ivan’s stomach.
     
    T HE NEXT thing he knew Annika was dragging him up out from under Ivan’s inert bulk.
    “Come on!” she said breathlessly, “we’ve got to get out of here!”
    “What?”
    “You shot a member of the Izmaylovskaya
grupperovka
.”
    “Only a minor member, you said.” Gasping to fill his burning lungs, half dead, part of him still in that gossamer nowhere he’d drifted to, he was still only half aware of what had happened.
    “You think that’ll matter to Kaolin Arsov?” Annika’s expression was grim. “He can’t allow one of his men—any one—to be shot dead without immediate retribution. Like the heads of all the families, his reputation rises and falls on two things: discipline and revenge.”
    He took her proffered hand, began to stumble down the alley away from the body.
    “Drop the gun!” she said. “For God’s sake, drop the gun and let’s get as far away from here as fast as we can!”
    Jack, in awkward turns