“Yes, my lord and master,” she said, blinking at him.
He swore under his breath.
“Tarini, I’m damn serious. If I don’t find you here when I get back, I’m going to track you down and make your life miserable forever. If I find you here, on the other hand, there’s a chance—just a chance—I’ll be only mildly irritating for the rest of our lives.”
She went back to her letter writing.
“And which alternative is worse?”
He swore again. “Tarini, just promise me you’ll be here.”
She must have heard the naked concern. “All right,” she conceded. “Cross my heart and hope to die.”
He let out a deep breath. He decided he wouldn’t ask her if she was crossing her fingers under the desk.
“Good. I’ll be back by tomorrow. And if I fail…” He felt his dignity slipping away like sand through his fingers. “Tarini, please, do me one favor.”
She narrowed her eyes, and he guessed she was trying to figure out if he was laying a trap for her.
“What favor?”
“Please, raise him to know me,” Austin said, his voice cracking. “Tell him I would have loved him and that I wished with all my heart to be a real dad to him. Raise him as a Mets fan. Send him to my Sensei in Brooklyn two nights a week when he turns six. Don’t let him get any tattoos until he’s old enough not to regret it.”
“What if this baby is a girl?”
Austin hadn’t thought of that. “Do the same thing,” he said. “And, please, Tarini, don’t tell any child of mine that I was a complete jerk, all right?”
She startled at his request. But he had gotten through to her. It would have to be enough.
The thought of a child of his being raised never to know him was torture enough without thinking of Tarini bad-mouthing him every step of the way.
“So I’m going to explain to the baby that you’re not a complete jerk,” she said, the twinkle in her eyes leaving no doubt that she was teasing. “Wouldn’t that require me to lie?”
Austin looked her up and down. He was in no mood to be cheered up. “You’re good at lying,” he said curtly.
Without another word, he left, closing the sittingroom door quietly behind him.
He would have wanted to kiss her, to hold her, to breathe in her scent for possibly the last time— and he hated himself for wanting her even now.
He accepted a sandwich from his mother, who stared at him with a worried expression but didn’t ask any questions. His father promised they’d take care of Tarini and told him to be careful.
“Whose child is it?” the ambassador asked when his wife was out of earshot.
“She says me.”
“Not Karinolov?”
Austin regarded his father thoughtfully. “Is it possible?”
“I met him when I was posted in Moscow,” the ambassador recalled. “He’s from peasant stock, but he was acquainted with the Shaskylavitch family. Would have given anything to be part of their milieu. He’s about fifteen years older than she is.
She’s beautiful and charming and a member of nobility. Why wouldn’t he want her?”
“She says the baby’s mine,” Austin said abruptly. “I have to do what’s right. Protect her, protect that child and find my friend.”
“Are you sure it’s yours?”
“Not positive. But it’s possible.”
The ambassador shook his head. “She lied about Vlad.”
“She lied for a reason,” Austin said, uncomfortable with having to defend her to his father.
“Look,” the ambassador said, “I know you have to go and I know that you believe honor lies in following the law. But Karinolov doesn’t play by anybody’s rules. Even the rules of honorable men. He’s a peasant who’s fought against what he thinks of as the injustices of the upper class. He doesn’t care about honor and law and tradition.”
“Upholding the law of nations is what you’ve built your life on,” Austin said. “You can’t tell me now that you’d want me to break the law.”
“There have always been Karinolovs in the world,” the ambassador said sadly. “And the law sometimes can’t reach them—an honorable man does what is right, and sometimes right isn’t found in the strict letter of the law.”
“And?”
“You might have to choose between what is right and what is lawful—I want you to know I understand if you choose what is right instead of what is strictly legal.”
Austin was surprised by his father’s admission that he himself had reluctantly come to.
He promised his father that he’d be careful—and that he’d be back.
He patted the gun in his shoulder holster and wondered grimly if he’d have to use it.
AUSTIN WAS RIGHT, Tarini thought gloomily as she watched him drive his friend’s Chevy down the tree-lined driveway, she had screwed up big time.
She hadn’t counted on Austin finding out the truth. And the truth now made what was already a terrible situation—Vlad’s abduction—into a complete and utter disaster.
In the best of all possible outcomes, Austin would gain her safety and Vlad’s freedom. But she knew enough about Karinolov’s reputation—he’d exact a humiliating price from Austin. A price that Austin would turn around and extract from her. She’d be at odds with Austin for the rest of her life.
Austin would rule her and their child with an iron fist. And that was if things turned out really well.
She finished her letter to Toria—a letter that revealed nothing of her own situation but still communicated her warmth for the woman whose marriage and husband Tarini had saved. Nicky had been a captive of extremists and Tarini’s quick thinking and sureness with a gun had set him free. Later, she had worked to procure the green card that kept Nicky in America.
She only wished she could have what Toria had—for herself. A husband. A son soon to be born. A stepdaughter who idolized her. And, most of all, a home. Which was nothing more than all those singular elements swirled together and sprinkled with the magic dust of love.
Instead, she had Austin.
The most horrible, wrenching part of this future was that she loved him.
She had thought that a couple of months apart from him would have worked. She had thought that she was cured. But she wasn’t cured.
If anything, the time apart had only increased her appreciation of him. Those eyes were even deeper and clearer than she remembered. His hair more golden than she recalled. The kisses more brutal, but as dazzlingly potent as ever.
And his abrasiveness?—well, she understood him, understood that he was a strong man with strong appetites, strong opinions and a history of others relying on his strength.
And, worst of all, she wanted him to take her into his arms, into his bed. But that didn’t mean that she had to be happy about it. She wasn’t going to let him take over her life. She hadn’t lived through the turbulence of Byleukrainia’s civil war to be some man’s slave.
Even if that man was Austin Smith.
She slipped on the jacket he had given her and pulled everything together in her purse. Then she took a deep breath, wondering how she was going to explain to the Smiths that she was leaving against their son’s express orders. She wondered if she should have them call a cab or ask for directions to the nearest bus stop.
She knew she had promised to stay, but she had to leave to get her sister out of Karinolov’s grasp.
She had a brief, repulsive memory of Karinolov’s obvious sexual interest in her. She thought of Tanya, young and impressionable, who would take his snakelike manipulation for charm and his lies for sincere feeling. It would disgust Tarini to even speak to him again. But she’d do it.
She put her hand on the doorknob.
It didn’t give.
Oh, this was too much, she thought, fighting the tremor of panic. She never liked to be trapped. It made her crazy.
She put a hand to her throat, feeling the choking sensation.
She t
ested the knob again. She dug a bobby pin out of her bag and tried to jimmy the lock.
She swore quietly, using a few choice words from her native language that her mother wouldn’t know she even understood. And every one of those words were directed at Austin.
“So this is how it’s going to be,” she said. “A lifetime of imprisonment for the crime of having fallen in love with you.”
She tested the doorknob one last fruitless time.
Now she knew there was nothing left of love in Austin’s heart. Because love would have told him what he now had ignored.
She couldn’t be trapped.
Chapter Ten
Swallowing her panic and her anger at Austin, she broke open the window lock, sliding the sash up just enough for her to squeeze through. She crawled onto the roof of the back porch, dragging her purse behind her.
And then carefully—very carefully—Tarini eased the window shut.
Fighting the slide of her sneakers’ slippery bottoms, she rolled over the roof’s edge. For several moments, she hung from the gutters over the grass and hosta border. When she dropped to the ground, she splattered mud all over herself and her feet tingled with pain, but otherwise her escape was without incident.
Then she looked out across the Connecticut woods and wondered which way was New York City.
In all the time she had spent in America, she had only seen its cities. New York had been her home. Washington a place for occasional meetings with high-level government officials. Chicago a mass of skyscrapers and brownstones where she had been posted for two years working on immigration cases until her mother decided that Tarini was taking a chance with her reputation by living alone and far from home.
Then Tarini had taken the “safe” job at the mission, where she had met Austin—a definite minus in the reputation-building department had anyone known of their illicit relationship.
She stood in the Smiths’ apple orchard and tried to get her bearings. The forest looked so forbidding. But then the skills so long forgotten, the ones that had helped her and her family while they were on the run in her native land, came back to her.
She sniffed the air, and decided there was water to the north. She noticed a bird flying to its nest with a prize piece of litter and figured that to the east was the town she and Austin had passed on the way up from New York. She slung her purse over her shoulder, tested her feet for pain from the fall from the roof and measured the hours until sunset by the angle of the shadows from the trees.
Tarini figured she had only an hour before the Smiths discovered she wasn’t there for dinner. They’d come looking for her and she was sure that if Austin had been careful enough to lock the door, he had been careful enough to leave strict instructions that they should prevent her from leaving. He probably told them she’d try to run and trusted them to find her and bring her back.
Tarini didn’t underestimate Ambassador Smith’s tracking abilities. When she’d passed his first-floor study, its door ajar, she had noticed a sophisticated map spread across one wall, world-class radio equipment and a glass-enclosed arsenal of antique weapons. She wondered if he was one of the many CIA operatives who work their entire lives cloaked in the anonymity and respect of a diplomatic career.
In any event, while he was a very nice man and considered a hero to many for his selfless work evacuating refugees from certain Eastern European countries, Tarini didn’t want to be at odds with him for disobeying his son’s instructions.
She walked into the protection of the trees and thought carefully. Austin’s father would figure she’d head for the village—that was, after all, the easiest way to get back to civilization.
But there was no way she’d reach the village before sunset. So if she headed east, Ambassador Smith would discover her absence before she had made it to relative safety.
She’d head west, for the river.
The going was rough but exhilarating. Tarini was flexing muscles and stretching her endurance in ways that she hadn’t for so long. Her senses sharpened as she climbed the rocks to the river’s embankment and then followed the river. She’d soon be off the Smith property altogether.
But going beyond their property line wouldn’t give her the option of slacking off. She pushed herself to make good time, promising herself that she would use the first pay phone she saw to call her sister.
Maybe she’d be a step or two behind Austin in reaching Karinolov, maybe he’d already be in New York. But she also figured him to be such a control freak that when his parents alerted him that she had escaped, he’d backtrack to Connecticut She’d beat him to Karinolov—of that she was certain.
A twig snapped behind her. Startled, she turned her head toward the embankment, but could make nothing out. The sun was dipping lower and lower over the water—nightfall would come soon and with it chilly temperatures. Tarini was glad she had brought Austin’s quilted jacket but wished she had scavenged some warmer clothes from his parents’ guest closet. She could see the lights ahead—perhaps a private home, a hotel or maybe even a town.
Whatever it was, it was a welcome sight, and only a few miles more.
A rain of pebbles from the top of the embankment splashed into the water next to her feet.
Tarini stopped, feeling fear slither up her spine. She swallowed and forced herself to take three deep, relaxing breaths while she concentrated on the sounds, the sights and the smells.
Someone was near, within a few yards of her. Whatever it was, it wasn’t animal. The forest animals had gone quiet. The ducks had swum far from the shore. The scent of human sweat drifted to her.
She could run for it, but she knew she didn’t have the stamina to reach the lights ahead. She mentally counted the rounds in the gun that she slid from her purse.
Seven loaded in the clip, and an extra one in the gun’s chamber. She reached into her purse and flicked the safety.
“Ambassador Smith?” she gulped and asked hopefully. If it was Austin’s father, she’d give up gracefully.
She stood closer to the embankment.
She fingered the handgun cautiously. Knowing she’d feel like a fool if it was Ambassador Smith standing above her.
Then she saw a red dot at her feet, on the new grass, brilliantly contrasted to the dark. She swallowed hard. Whoever it was had a LaserClip on his weapon, casting a beam of light in search of his target. Once that laser locked on to her body, she was as good as dead.
The red dot moved on, casting an unnatural glow on the damp, dark grass. Searching for its target. Circling back toward her. She held absolutely still.
Silence.
She thought she saw a shadow waver near a clump of pine trees. The sun was gone and it was nearly impossible to tell.
Her stomach tightened. She tried one last time. Praying that her judgment was wrong.
“Ambassador, I’m sorry. I was very angry that Austin locked me in the room and I wanted to leave, but I’m sure we can come to an understanding…”
The blow to her head was sharp and hard and totally unexpected. But the assault didn’t end there. Flinging her to the ground, her attacker rammed her head against the gravel at the river’s edge. Again and again, until the gritty rocks were dark with her blood.
He grunted and grabbed a handful of her hair, struggling to drag her farther into the water. Lurching forward, he held her head down. She willed herself not to breathe, and then, powerful instinct revolted and she sucked mud and water back into her lungs.
She squandered her strength on ineffective kicks, flinging up sludge until her legs felt like concrete. Coughing and throwing up water, mud, soaked grasses and bile. She rolled the battle back to the rocks, lurching away from the deadly water.
She screamed once when her attacker lost his grip on her. Uttering a harsh Byleukrainian oath, he grabbed and threw her down, his boot crunching her neck. He brought the nub of a silencer against her head, and Tarini squeezed her eyes shut.
Flailing her arms helplessly at the gun she’d dr
opped, she gasped out a final, impotent scream for help.
The bullet would come.
And then she felt it.
A tiny flutter in her stomach. Whisper-soft and barely there. But it was her baby. Her little baby. The pregnancy she had wanted to ignore for so long had chosen just this moment to announce, “I am here.” A moment of miracle and wonder that any other mother would have had the luxury to appreciate.
With a superhuman strength she didn’t know she possessed and an animal growl that came from deep within her, Tarini rolled backward. She shoved her assailant into the gravel, lunged for the gun, fumbled and was tackled to the ground.
He slurred her and ran the silencer’s edge up to her forehead.
Tarini thought of her child within her.
“Austin, forgive me,” she whispered. “I loved you.”
There was the roar of gunfire and then blood everywhere—wet, hot and sticky.
AUSTIN HEARD the news on the car radio and though the report was vague and lacking in every detail that he would have wanted to know, Austin could fit the pieces together as easily as a child’s jigsaw puzzle.
The liaison officer for the Byleukrainian United Mission, on a nature hike, had been shot to death on the Smith farm by Tarini Schaskylavitch. The reporter said a search for Tarini was under way.
“Damn it, Tarini!” he shouted and pounded the dashboard of Bob’s Chevy. Concern for her warred with fury that she had willfully disobeyed him. “How do you always manage to get yourself into trouble!”
He searched for an exit ramp, in seconds pulling to a stop on the frontage road. He used the cellular phone to punch in the number to the private line in his father’s office, knowing it would be the only “safe” line available.
“The authorities are all over the place,” the ambassador confirmed. “They sent down some guys from the State Department. The Byleukrainians are up in arms. They brought in a chargé d’affaires from their D.C. embassy. But, hand it to your mother, she’s got everybody drinking tea in the sitting room. She runs a tight ship, er, parlor.”
“What was that guy doing on our property anyhow?”
His Kind Of Trouble Page 10