Ultimate Kill (Book 1 Ultimate CORE Trilogy) (CORE Series) Read Online Free Page B

she’d keep running. Otherwise, Jake would end up like everyone else she’d loved.
    Dead.
     
    *
     
    Harrison Fairclough’s eyes burned and watered as he stared at the laptop screen. Thanks to the damned Russian’s chain smoking, a hazy fog hung in the small, shitty motel room and made the place smell like a dirty ashtray.  
    He rubbed his eyes and drew in a breath. Damn, even his mouth tasted like an ashtray and he didn’t smoke. “Vlad,” he said to the Russian. “Do you mind?”
    Vlad leveled his ice blue eyes on him, his dark blond brows forming a V as he took a long drag of his cigarette and blew smoke rings. “Do I mind what?” he asked, his thick accent reminding Harrison of Boris Badenov from the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons.  
    The Russian could probably rearrange Harrison’s face and cause his internal organs to bleed with one blow of his meaty fists. Growing up in the one of Norfolk’s most undesirable areas, he’d spent his entire life surrounded by men like Vlad. Between his mom’s numerous, abusive live-in boyfriends, the notorious cutthroat neighborhood street gangs, and his short stints in juvie and then later in prison, he knew Vlad’s type. Brawn with no brain. While Harrison would prefer to keep his nose, jaw and internal organs intact, he refused to allow Vlad to intimidate and bully him. Besides, the way he saw it, Vlad and his counterpart, Santiago, needed him.  
    For now.
    “Your smoking is hell on the laptop,” Harrison said, reaching across the table to snatch up Vlad’s vibrating cell phone.
    “Harry, you hurt Vlad’s feelings so,” the Russian replied and took another drag. “Here I thought you tell me it bad for my lungs.” He shook his blond head. “No concern for Vlad, only your machine.”  
    “How insensitive of me,” Harrison said and read the text from the Columbian, Santiago. On way. Prepare to go live. He set the phone on the table and shoved it toward the Russian. “They should be back soon.”
    Vlad snuffed his cigarette into the over flowing ashtray and grabbed his phone. After he viewed the message, he moved to the window. “Good.” He pushed the nicotine-stained curtain slightly and pocketed his phone. “Vlad hate it here. I hate all the places we go. Well, except Las Vegas. Vlad want to go back.” He let go of the curtain and turned. “Pretty women, booze, gambling,” he said, smiling. “Vlad loves tits and ass.”
    Vlad loved to refer to himself in third person. “You guys are the ones with the plan, not me.” A plan he no longer wanted to be part of if his suspicions were correct. And they usually were. Still, he couldn’t help agreeing with Vlad. Leavenworth, Kansas, was definitely a far cry from the Vegas strip.  
    “True.” The Russian nodded. “Vlad wonders…does Harry love tits and ass?”  
    Harrison ignored Vlad and pretended to review the program file on the laptop screen. A file he wished he could find the chance to mess with and add his own firewalls and viruses to. But Vlad and his partner, Santiago, never left him alone. Not once during the past week had he been able to go into the laptop they’d given him to use for this job and infiltrate the system files. He needed to before they reached the East Coast. For what he suspected Vlad and Santiago were up to, if he didn’t, the two years he’d spent in prison would be more like a walk in the park compared to Death Row.  
    “No answer?” Vlad drew another cigarette from the pack and shrugged. “A man’s sexual preference is own business. Know this, Harry, Vlad no care if you like men. Vlad’s very…” The Russian snapped his fingers several times and looked to the ceiling. “Progressive. Right word, no?”
    “Right word, wrong assumption,” Harrison said. While he enjoyed women, he didn’t enjoy paying for them. Vlad, Santiago and Mickey had hired prostitutes the night they were in Vegas. Not tempted to sink his body into a woman who had had countless dicks