“What about…Karinolov? Tanya, you must know that he’s—”
“I know,” Tanya interrupted. “He’s evil, absolutely evil. I’ve found it out for myself. I was wrong. Totally wrong. Forgive me, Tarini.”
“Oh, I do,” Tarini said, drawing her sister into her embrace.
Tanya was the first to pull away.
“We have to get back to New York. Tarini, he has Mama! At the mission. We must save her.”
As her sister burst into tears, Tarini felt a mixture of relief and despair. Relief that her sister had finally learned the truth about Karinolov, and despair at the confirmation that her mother was in danger. She comforted her sister and then realized that now was the time for action.
“I’ll drive,” she said. And, without complaint, Tanya slid into the passenger seat as Tarini limped around to the driver’s-side door.
THE MOMENT Austin awakened, he felt the chill at his back and knew she was gone. He reached to flip on the lamp.
His arm wouldn’t move.
The cold steel tightened every time he reflexively yanked at the headboard. She had cuffed him. He swore.
The phone rang. His eyes narrowed as he picked up. It was Karinolov. Somehow he wasn’t surprised.
“Congratulations, Austin,” Karinolov said.
Austin fought the urge to hang up. He twisted his body around so that he’d be more comfortable.
As comfortable as he could be in handcuffs.
“For what?”
“For becoming a father. I hadn’t known about Vlad. If this bizarre story about measles is true, your child could have been raised as a Romanov.”
“It’s true. Believe it,” Austin said grimly. “How’d you find out?”
“She called.”
“Where is she?”
“She’s on her way to New York,” Karinolov said breezily. “She thinks she’s saving your life and freeing you to work your mischief on behalf of that damnable Romanov. And I have her mother here. Tarini will do anything for the people she loves. Self-sacrificing heroine, wouldn’t you say? Too bad she’s not one of us. Of course, we need people who are a little more cold-blooded and a lot less…trouble.”
Austin studied the cuff and then glanced over at the nightstand. Where were the damn keys? His sheet fell away and he realized he was naked. It had felt good when her body was near to him, skin to skin. But now nakedness only made worse the terrible sensation of being exposed.
“What do you want from me?” Austin demanded, tugging at the cuffs and drawing a red, angry welt on his wrist as they tightened even more.
Karinolov laughed maliciously. “Just the satisfaction of knowing I’ve hurt you in a way even more enduring than killing you.”
“And how is that?”
“I’m taking your firstborn,” Karinolov taunted. “And your woman. Oh, sure, you can try again— another child, another woman. For the renowned playboy Austin Smith, there are plenty of other women. And many other opportunities to have a child, though you’ve never been regarded as particularly domestic. But whatever you do, wherever you go, if you die tomorrow trying to save Vlad or if you live to a hundred and ten, you’ll never have this child and this woman.”
“Don’t hurt her!” Austin pleaded. He scanned the room, looking for the keys. She couldn’t have been so cruel as to take those, too.
“It doesn’t matter, really, the part about the measles,” Karinolov continued. “She was his fiancée, she wears the Romanov ring. The rumors about her child would be even more damning than the ones in that regrettable Anastasia case.”
“She has nothing to do with any of this.”
“Not so,” Karinolov disagreed. “You know, when I thought she was carrying Vladimir’s child, I was almost inclined to offer her a deal.”
“A deal?”
“That I would marry her, shielding her from the extremists in my government who would want her dead, and I would raise Vlad’s child as my own. I thought it would have been a particular irony to take the last Romanov and turn him into a Karinolov peasant. But now, I don’t feel so inclined. An American whelp in her belly.” He snorted in disgust. “She’s as good as dead. Maybe I’ll take her sister as my own. She’s not quite as desirable as Tarini, but she’ll do.”
Austin reflexively jerked his fist, but was caught short by the cuffs. “Don’t do anything to Tanya!” Austin shouted, wondering how the honor of his woman’s family had become his own. “Don’t do anything to either of them. I’ll come down. We’ll fight this out. Man to man. You choose the terms.”
“I’m so pleased.” Karinolov smirked. “I’ve finally figured out that you’re just the kind of misguidedly honorable man who would feel the pain of this loss more deeply than any other injury I could inflict. Such a pity I have to send Tarini back to the homeland.”
“Don’t!”
Karinolov’s laughter was sharp and without humor. “When you beg for her life, it fills me with pleasure. I’ve got you, Austin, I’ve really got you now.”
Austin felt the tightness in his chest swell and then release as he came to a decision. He was a man of honor, respectful of the rule of law. But he was also a father.
The law had no punch. But that wouldn’t stop Austin. He had made his choice between what was right and what was legal.
“I’m coming down,” he said.
“I’ll be waiting,” Karinolov said cheerfully before hanging up.
Austin threw down the phone and then tugged at his cuffs. The metal jangled against the brass headboard. Think clearly, he cautioned himself. His eyes scanned the room and rested on his jeans. He’d find a way to get out.
TEN MINUTES LATER, he was standing at the door of Bob’s car. Something bothered him, some feeling he couldn’t shake. He had missed something, some intuition he had ignored.
He remembered the moments before his car had blown up in the Manhattan parking lot, the feeling of being watched.
He closed the driver’s-side door and crouched beside the car, running his hand along the grillwork. Finding nothing, he checked the front of the car, opening the hood to caress every available surface area.
And then, underneath the passenger-side door, he found it. A tiny sensor, no bigger than a dime, attached to the inside of the hood with a piece of black electrical tape.
He yanked hard and dislodged it.
He would have missed it, but his father had shown him so many similar transmitters and sensors over the years.
Austin threw the sensor deep into the woods and tried not to think too much about the implications. He had to stay focused—
Find Tarini and beg, kill or be killed for her life.
Chapter Fifteen
“We’re here,” Tarini said, pulling into a parking space a block from the mission. Her grim-faced sister nodded and unbuckled her seat belt.
Chaos ruled the square in front of the U.N. mission’s gates. Several hundred Byleukrainians carried posters and banners demanding an end to the military rule of their country. They screamed antimilitary slogans. When television cameras approached, some who had relatives back home hid their faces, while others more brazenly told reporters of the horrors of the new regime. So many of them had relatives whose deaths were at the hands of the new military government.
Tarini kept her head down, averting her eyes and praying no one would recognize her or her sister. She didn’t want to be delayed on her mission to find her mother. She led Tanya around to the alley.
She knocked twice, shivered and pulled Austin’s ripped, bloodstained quilted jacket around herself. She gave her sister’s arm a reassuring squeeze.
“I’m sorry,” Tanya said, her eyes downcast.
“It’s all right.”
“No, it’s not…”
The door opened and the yeasty, oddly comforting smell of the kitchen drew the two women in. Karinolov stood alone in the shadows by the door to the dining room.
“Where’s my mother?” Tarini demanded.
“I’m
so glad you could come,” he said with the ease of a dinner-party host.
Tarini let the heavy steel door fall shut behind her. Tanya slipped out from around her and stood near the table. Karinolov stepped forward and touched Tarini’s cheek.
“Such smooth skin. Flawless, really. And your eyes, the color of emeralds. No wonder a Romanov would put his ring on your finger,” Karinolov said and then his voice turned ugly. “Too bad you have soiled yourself with an American.”
Tarini willed herself not to flinch, not to give him the satisfaction of seeing her fear.
From the alcove, she saw a shadow and then her mother appeared. A tall, proud woman—she had a bruise on her cheek and she flashed Karinolov a look of revulsion.
“Mama!” Tanya cried out, rushing to her mother’s embrace.
“Such a touching scene,” Karinolov muttered.
Tanya turned from her mother’s arms to look at Karinolov, her eyes glittering with tears. “You never said you were really going to involve Mama!”
TARINI HAD WALKED into his trap. And there was no way out. She looked at the purse that he had taken from her as he’d slipped off her jacket in an act of seeming gentlemanliness. Her mother held her youngest daughter close, as Tanya sobbed uncontrollably.
Though Tanya had gotten her into this mess, Tarini’s heart went out to her sister. Tanya had been betrayed by the man she idolized, whom she had loved from a distance for so long and from up close for a whirlwind few days.
But Tarini couldn’t think about that now. She had to focus on saving her family.
The purse was too far away on the kitchen counter, the gun hopelessly crammed at the bottom of the bag. Besides, a brawny security guard lurked in the shadows near the butler’s pantry. If she tried anything at all, she would be cut down.
And her mother and sister…? She didn’t trust herself to be faster than the guard and Karinolov.
She kept her face impassive and stepped into the light of the kitchen. Struggling to keep her knees from buckling, she followed Karinolov through the regal dining room.
Empty now, stripped of its treasured tiger-maple furniture, wondrous paintings, and collection of crystal plates.
Empty Plexiglas cabinets and empty walls with solitary hooks made clear Karinolov had taken the best of the mission’s Byleukrainian national treasures.
She didn’t flinch as she was led to the foyer, but her stomach turned and her throat dried up. The crate. It was there, waiting for her.
She would be transported to whatever hell they planned for her in a space so tight, so cramped and black, that Tarini was sure she would go crazy. Even looking at it made her tethered nerves nearly snap.
She glanced back to her mother and sister who had been menaced into the dining room by a guard with an AK-47. Her sister’s sobs had turned to hysterics as Tanya seemed to begin to understand that the betrayal at Karinolov’s hands had implications far more devastating than the damage to her heart.
Tarini looked into her mother’s eyes. To an outsider, her mother might appear to be unnaturally calm. But Tarini knew the fear and heartache— when Tarini was just a child and her mother pregnant with Tanya, they had fled the fighting in the capital of Byleukrainia. It had taken four long years to find safety in America.
Tanya didn’t remember, but Tarini did.
And now in her mother’s eyes, she saw that the responsibility for the family had passed from mother to eldest daughter.
Tarini only hoped she could bargain for safety for her family.
“Tarini, a pregnant woman must keep up her strength,” Karinolov said soothingly, offering her a plate of traditional sweetmeats. “As you can see, your accommodations have no dining amenities and it’s a long journey to the capital. Besides, the food back home is not going to be of this quality. You’re not being returned to the palace, you know.”
Tarini hadn’t eaten since chugging an orange soda and munching a few chips at the roadhouse vending machine. But the sight of the delicacies made her sick.
She glared at him. But she knew there wasn’t much she could do. Even kneeing him in the groin would probably cost her her life—she counted ten bodyguards who had taken up positions in the shadows of the staircase and the hallways leading away from the foyer.
Tarini wondered how they could spare this much security just for her—the crowds outside were getting more noisy and urgent. Someone had lobbed eggs at the stained-glass window over the front doorway, the gooey whites and yolks sliding down the outside of the panes.
Tarini wondered how Karinolov expected to get her out of here, and then remembered that the law required the police to offer safe passage to an ambassador traveling with a courier package.
She would be the courier package.
Not that they really posed any threat to Karinolov. A few hundred protesters didn’t even know she existed. And to think she had never wanted her mother to know—to find out that she was pregnant. What a silly worry that seemed now, and as she glanced at her mother, she noted there was no censure in those eyes.
Her mother would have welcomed Austin into her home, even if he was an American. And she would have thrilled to hold a grandchild in her arms.
She held up her head defiantly. Might as well be like Vlad and go out with some dignity, she thought.
“So that’s how you’re going to be,” he said coolly, passing the tray into the hands of a servant. “We could have been good together.”
“No, we couldn’t I’m a human being. And you’re not.”
“You sound so incredibly bitter.” Karinolov tilted his head back and stared at her. “I could kill you now, but my government is very adamant that you come back alive.”
“I’ll tell the world about your hideous crimes.”
“No, you won’t. You’re going to die before you get to tell anyone else,” Karinolov said, recovering his sangfroid. “It’ll be our secret that you will take to…the Romanov grave.”
“Am I going where Vlad is?” she asked, wondering if at least she’d have a chance to see him before she died.
“Yes, as a matter of fact, you are going back there—to him. The Romanov family will be reunited in their deaths.”
“What about my mother and sister?”
“Ah, the Schaskylavitch women,” Karinolov mused aloud. “Last of the line of a respected, noble family.”
He sauntered over to Tanya, who cowered in her mother’s embrace. He touched her cheek and ran his fingers through her tousled hair. Tanya lashed out and raked him with her nails, drawing a pinprick of blood and an angry line of welts.
Tarini admired her sister’s courage. Karinolov touched the drop of blood, tasted it and shrugged.
Then he looked at Tarini.
“Because I once loved you when I was young and you were the spoiled child of a wealthy aristocrat,” Karinolov said, “for you, Tarini, in memory of that childish love, I shall give you my word. They will live. Always with the knowledge that they owe their lives to you. And to the mercy I bestow on your behalf.”
“You loved my daughter?” Mrs. Schaskylavitch asked.
“Only from a distance,” Karinolov said. “I was a young soldier posted in the capital. Not good enough to be invited to the Schaskylavitch home.”
“We never judged people on the basis of their wealth,” Mrs. Schaskylavitch protested.
“I would watch her as she played, and once…”
“Once you gave me candy and touched me on the cheek,” Tarini cried out, the revolting memory bubbling to the surface of her consciousness, the makings of every nightmare. “You told me one day you would own me and my family, as well.”
“And I was right.”
“You’ll never get away with this,” Tarini said, trying to hold on to her composure.
Karinolov grunted. “You and Austin keep saying I won’t get away with this or that” He shrugged. “But I have no worries. Justice is made by the conquerors. When you and Vlad are punished for your crimes against the people—�
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“Vlad is poised to take back the country,” Tarini said quietly. “There is rioting in the streets of the capital.”
“Vlad is a wimp and a child. He is also, my dear, in prison. And if he got out, he would head straight for the cushy safety of America.”
“No, he wouldn’t. He would lead his country in a revolt”
“He would protect himself.”
“You’re crazy and you’re evil.”
“I might be crazy and I might be evil,” Karinolov admitted, “but I’m the one in charge. Now get in the box.”
Tarini began to shake—not a ladylike tremble but wiggly, legs-turn-to-jelly shakes.
She couldn’t do it. But there wasn’t any other choice.
She could make a break for it, but the guards around the foyer made it clear what her fate would be—instant death. For her and her baby.
She could try to hurt Karinolov. But she couldn’t put her sister and mother in danger.
How she had been wrong, about so many things! She needed Austin so badly now, she knew she loved him, and she had never told him. Always waiting for him to say something—she should have told him she loved him and if he didn’t return her feelings, so what? At least her heart would be truthful.
As for surrendering herself to his rule? Maybe it hadn’t been quite so black-and-white. Maybe both of them had been scared to bend even a little bit, for fear of losing all that they had.
Her only comfort was that, with handcuffs tying him to a bed in a Connecticut fishing cabin, Austin wasn’t in danger.
“He’s not coming,” Karinolov said, seemingly reading her thoughts. “You wouldn’t think that we’d lay a trap for you and not for him?”
“Where is he?” Tarini begged.
“Taken care of. After all, you led us to him.”
She felt her stomach turn. “How…?”
He shook his head. “My secret, Tarini.”
“Oh, Austin, all I’ve ever brought you is trouble,” she moaned, thinking of him lying naked, defenseless, cuffed to a bed. She was sure he woke when they’d come in on him, and if he had thought about her in his final moments, he would have known that she had brought him nothing…nothing but trouble.
His Kind Of Trouble Page 14