Spirit Bound Read Free Page B

understand.”
    Stefan didn’t want to understand. He wanted out of this stinking cell, away from the man whose soul was rotten. There was no mercy in his world. No soft skin. No dark eyes a man could get lost in. He wasn’t even real, no more than a dark shadow sliding in and out of places others called home and leaving behind death and chaos. He didn’t know what a home was and he no longer cared. He had lost his humanity long ago in places like this, surrounded by corrupt men who traded in human flesh and wreaked havoc on the world for money.
    He’d been in the business too long when he started to fixate on a woman just because she was the only thing that remotely resembled innocence in a stinking prison cell.
    “You know, Bastille,” Jean-Claude began.
    Stefan went on alert. For the first time Jean-Claude sounded different. They were getting to the business of why the crime lord had deigned to speak to him about his woman. Jean-Claude had been steadfastly silent and it just wasn’t in him to have a friendly conversation, no matter how much he might want to talk to someone about Judith and the photographs. He’d given to get something.
    Stefan turned around, leaned one hip lazily against the cot and raised an eyebrow.
    “Why didn’t you kill me? You knew I ordered the beatings and the hits.”
    Stefan kept his expression carefully blank. He shrugged. “No money in it. I want out of here. I came to do a job, and once it’s done I’ll get out.”
    Jean-Claude’s eyebrow shot up. “A job?” he echoed.
    “Relax, Rolex, you aren’t the mark.” Stefan allowed a small smile to creep into his eyes. “I won’t say it didn’t cross my mind a time or two, but there’s no percentage in it.”
    “But you would kill me if someone paid you to do it.”
    “We’re not exactly friends.” This time amusement reached his voice.
    “I underestimated you,” Jean-Claude admitted.
    Stefan noted with satisfaction that the crime lord realized just how close he had been to death. All those nights with Stefan lurking like a lethal viper just feet from him. “Everyone does.” Again, Stefan showed no malice.
    Jean-Claude studied the scarred face. “I could use a man like you.”
    “I’m not sticking around. I’ll be out of here by tomorrow.” Stefan spoke with supreme confidence.
    “How?”
    Stefan shrugged again and stayed mysteriously silent.
    “You have a way to escape?”
    Oh yeah, there was interest in La Roux’s voice. He wanted out. Once out, he’d have the money to buy a new identity and face. Stefan did it all the time.
    Stefan turned away from the man and sank down onto his cot, silently declaring the conversation was over. When they went to dinner, a man would be found dead in his cell. As the prison locked down, John Bastille would be absent and Jean-Claude La Roux would know there was a way out. When he was approached by a guard to help him escape in a couple of weeks, he would jump at the chance.
    The prisoner, already dead in his cell, was a Russian traitor, one in for arms’ dealing, but he was guilty of so much more than that. He worked for Jean-Claude and was responsible for giving the crime lord the location of one of their top engineers, Theodotus Solovyov, who had designed their current defense system. The attack on Solovyov had left Stefan’s brother, Gavriil, with a permanent injury, placing his life in danger.
    Gavriil, undoubtedly one of the government’s top agents, had been appointed bodyguard to Solovyov. He had managed, in spite of superior forces and being outgunned, in spite of being stabbed seven times, to keep Solovyov from being kidnapped and to drive off the kidnappers, but the microchip Solovyov had sewn into his coat had been taken. Only Solovyov and his wife had known the microchip had been placed there. Solovyov had been sold out by his own wife, and Gavriil’s mission had been considered a failure.
    A man like Gavriil Prakenskii was not forgiven failures, nor was he