Especially when tears glazed her eyes. Oh, Yanna. His horror nearly choked him.
“She’s not for sale.”
Yanna closed her eyes. David felt as if he’d been belly punched.
Kwan came around the desk and leaned against it.
“Why not?” David kept his voice detached and should have won an Oscar for his prize-winning, nearly wolfish, “I want her.”
But oh, how it hurt to see Yanna close her eyes in a slow flinch.
“She’s not who you think. She’s a Russian agent.” Kwan nodded to his man, who grabbed Yanna around the back of the neck and forced her gaze up. David’s breathing quickened and he fought it. Look at me, Yanna. But she didn’t. She kept her beautiful eyes averted, as if ashamed.
What was she doing here?
“An agent?” David somehow said. “Then why do you want her?”
Kwan was silent. He drummed his fingers on his arms as he stared at her. Out of his periphery, David saw her wince. He glared at the man holding her neck. Keep it up, pal, and you’ll find out just how that feels. David flexed his fingers at his sides.
“I don’t,” Kwan finally said. He looked at David, a smirk on his stupid, pierced face. “We’re done with her.”
David felt a whoosh of relief so strong, it nearly took him down at the knees. “Then let me—”
“No.” Kwan reach behind him and pulled out a tube. Of lipstick?
David glanced at Yanna, saw her go nearly white as Kwan uncapped it and twisted the base.
A tiny knife appeared.
Oh, this was bad, very bad. Kwan glanced at his man, as if giving a signal, and he released Yanna. She shook out of his grasp, swallowed, lifted her chin.
Now there was the Yanna he’d met ten plus years ago. The one with composure and courage. The one who had swiped his breath clean out of his chest.
Oh God, help! Not only was he sorely outnumbered and outgunned, but if he did what his gut screamed for him to do, he’d dismantle months, even years of hard work, of lives sacrificed. Chet’s suffering would be in vain.
And Kwan would go deeper underground.
What was Yanna doing here?
That things were going to get worse seemed apparent when Yanna’s attacker pulled out his pistol.
Then Kwan stepped up to Yanna. Grabbed her hair, tilting back her head.
“I’m going to kill her,” Kwan said softly. “And then maybe we’ll do business.”
4
Think, Yanna, think! Yanna stared up at David, at the horror on his face as he watched Kwan clutch her stupid little knife, and her brain went blank. Aside from being exactly the last scenario she would have conjured up for meeting David again, she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that right now his brain was checking out every possible egress route, every possible angle where he wouldn’t have to blow his cover to save her life.
And probably coming up empty.
Contrary to current appearances, Yanna made her living using her brain and solving problems. And from her viewpoint, David had two options.
Watch her be killed or be killed himself.
And neither of those seemed acceptable. At least not to her.
Yanna caught David’s eye, and then with everything inside her, she slammed her stiletto into Kwan’s ankle.
She connected in a bone-jarring crunch. Behind her, a gun fired, missing David’s head, or where his head had been, because the moment she acted, he turned and slammed his fist into the face of Fu, or maybe Wang. The Chinese thug went down, bleeding from the mouth.
Yanna followed with an inside kick to Kwan’s knee. Her cute knife went spinning across the floor. Kwan collapsed, but not before he grabbed her arm, pulling her with him.
She landed on top of him, pinning him with her chair. Kwan grabbed her hair.
She looked up just in time to see David scoop up her knife and turn it on Wang. In a second, he appropriated Wang’s gun.
For one endless moment, all Yanna heard was panting.
“Let her go,” David said, pointing the gun at Kwan. “I won’t ask twice.”
Outside were shouts, feet thundering across the deck.
“You’ll be dead long before they get here,” David added.
Kwan released her hair. “You’re the dead man,” he said. David pulled Yanna to her feet, helped her wiggle from the chair. Before he could force the handcuff key from Kwan, the door burst open.
“Run!” David pushed Yanna ahead of him, toward another door. Yanna stumbled through it to a narrow hallway.
Shots fired behind them, then David burst through the door, slammed it behind him. “Run!”
Yanna fought for balance with her hands cuffed behind her. She reached the stairs and stumbled up them.
Twilight, the sun setting on the far horizon and turning the ocean to fire, beckoned from the bow of the yacht.
David had her by the arm, running, pulling her, then flinging her right over the edge into the frothy depths.
The cold ocean gulped her whole, sucking her under, stinging as she went down. She kicked and kicked, surfaced with a greedy gulp of air.
And David was right there, arm around her waist, pulling her against him. “Kick!”
Yeah, okay. She coughed but kicked hard, letting David drag her against the hull of the yacht. Above, voices yelled, clearly searching for them.
“Shh.” David’s cheek rested against hers, his voice calm, as if they might be out for a leisurely swim. “Stay calm.”
Calm? Yanna shivered, and she fought to keep her breath steady, light, undetectable. But inside, her pulse raced at full tilt in her throat, and David’s heart hammered against her as he pulled her tight to his chest. Clearly, neither of them were in any state of calm. She kicked, willing herself to trust him, to trust his arm around her waist as he treaded water, pulling them into hiding. The voices came toward them.
“Deep breath,” he said a second before he pulled them under. She closed her eyes. Don’t. Panic. But David had a death grip on her, and the breath in her lungs leaked out too quickly. Her lungs began to burn. She fought the urge to struggle but couldn’t stop herself as fear spewed into her arms, her legs.
She opened her eyes and saw the yacht hazy above them, David swimming hard toward another boat. Oh, please, oh, please. With everything inside her, she kicked too. Just as she knew she would have to breathe, even if it were water, they broke the surface.
Shouting came from the front of the yacht. David pulled out her knife—where’d he get that?—and lunged at the rope tying the boat to the platform of the yacht. The boat began to float away, and David grabbed it with one hand, keeping a hold of her with the other.
“I gotta get aboard. Then I’ll pull you up.”
Shots zinged the water next to her. He was leaving her here? “Wait!”
“I’m not going to leave you, Yanna. Just tread water.”
His voice, so calm, so David, went straight to her thundering heart. For a second he turned her, holding her arm and looked her in the eyes.
He seemed to promise without words that he wouldn’t leave her.
“Don’t die,” she rasped.
“Right.” With a nod, he let her go and she sank into the water. In a second he’d pulled himself over, into the belly of the boat.
More shooting, and she hugged the boat, like he had, kicking hard, her chin lifted to stay above the surface. Hurry, David! But he didn’t lean over for her. Instead, she heard the engines fight for life, and the boat began to move. “David!”
And then, just as the boat began to pull away, the last protection between her and a very angry Kwan, David grabbed her arms.
He dragged her over the edge, unceremoniously dropping her in a seat as he dove for the controls and hit it.
The boat surged to life, and Yanna landed face-first against the back of the seat, ground into submission by the gravity of however much horsepower Kwan’s machismo demanded.
“Stay down!” David shouted as a shot whistled ov
er his shoulder and chipped out a portion of the windshield. He ran the boat in tight zags, making it jump and churn, and Yanna fell into the seat and huddled, praying she wouldn’t be sick.
“They can’t catch us, not in the yacht.”
Yanna stared up at David, breathing freely for the first time. He braced one knee on the seat, both hands on the wheel, glancing over his shoulder now and again. The wind parted his long dark hair, which sailed out behind him, and in his silk shirt and wet jeans—which had torn somehow in their great escape—he looked uncannily like some modern-day pirate.
All he needed was a tattoo.
And as his shirt flapped open in the breeze, she saw the etchings of a design. An eagle.
David Curtiss had turned into a high seas buccaneer.
She looked up at him and for a split second couldn’t help but smile.
Apparently, however, he had the demeanor of a pirate, too, because he frowned back. “We’re not outta trouble yet, Yanna.” Then his eyes softened, and something so much like relief filled them that she was completely wordless.
He was right. At least one of them was in serious trouble, indeed.
Gracie had always vowed she would never be a tattletale. Even as a youngster, she refused to be the gal who got others into trouble. In fact, this propensity for keeping quiet was probably what caused her to bury her secrets so deep only Vicktor could find them.
But this was different. Vastly different. Ina could be in serious trouble. At least that’s what Gracie told herself as she pulled up outside Ina’s parent’s townhouse.
At the very least, Ina hadn’t shown up for Bible study—something that normally wouldn’t even register on Gracie’s radar.
Except Ina had been ring shopping.
At seventeen.
And Jorge wore that, “see what I got?” smile that had all of Gracie’s instincts buzzing.
She wasn’t tattling. Just…concerned.
And she wasn’t treating Ina the way Vicktor treated her, like a child. Because Ina was a child.
Gracie’s chest spasmed, just a little, at the comparison, however. And the fact that she hadn’t talked to Vicktor since she had, well, hung up, sorta, on him Friday night. Two days of silence. It felt like eternity.
Maybe she didn’t so well without him as she thought.
She closed her eyes. “Lord, I want to do the right thing here. Please, make this turn out for good.”
The entire complex had seen better days—a row of fourteen town-homes built in the eighties. Wrought-iron railings bracketed concrete steps, and wooden siding with lime-green paint flicked off below the windows. A blanket hung over the front window, and on the steps a broken clay pot imprisoned a sopping wet tomato plant, wilted from the generous rains. The front yard had been dug up and furrowed, but the potato plants growing in the patch of earth sprouted green and healthy on their mounds.
Stepping over a rusty Tonka truck on the broken sidewalk, she walked up the steps and rapped on the door. Venturing into this section of town urged memories of Khabarovsk, with the Russian storefront signs, and the yards dug up and turned into kitchen gardens. While America had the perks of indoor plumbing and electricity most of the time, it couldn’t be easy to leave behind jobs, family and your native culture to come to a place where a person always felt like an outsider.
Gracie knocked again. The house looked vacant, but then again, with the blanket over the window—
The door cracked open.
The woman, maybe in her early forties, with the age of a much older woman on her face, around her eyes, barely opened the door. “Privyetvooyou,” said the woman in typical Christian greeting.
Thankfully, part of Gracie’s training here in Seattle had been language based. While trying to figure out her future, she’d joined up with a program helping Russian immigrants transition to their new land, find jobs, learn English and eventually meld into society. But with the little Russian village set up inside Seattle proper, with radio and television stations broadcasting in their native language, with the newspapers and schools catering to Russian-only speakers, she had to ask why would anyone make the effort to change languages if their world adapted to them?
Not that she didn’t like Russia. In fact, Gracie was one of the few program managers who longed for Russian food, Russian songs, Russian people. She even attended a Russian church, hence the Bible study with a group of Russian young ladies.
Sadly, the influx of Russian culture didn’t omit the occasional Russian gangster. Vicktor’s friend, Alex, told her that he worked exclusively Russian crimes, those perpetrated by Russians, or on Russians.
Maybe Vicktor could get a job in America, just like he said.
“Privyet,” Gracie responded, reverting to Russian. “Luba? Remember me, I’m Gracie Benson, from the church? I lead your daughter’s bible study group.”
Luba gave her a look of suspicion.
“I’m looking for Ina.”
Luba looked away, behind the door, then turned back and lowered her voice. “Ina isn’t here.” But something on Luba’s face said more.
Gracie heard shuffling. Footsteps.
“Where is she?” Gracie asked, feeling Luba’s panic. Something wasn’t right—
“She’s gone. Left with….that man.”
“Jorge?”
Luba nodded. “I have to go—”
“Where might they go, Luba, do you know?”
The door closed with a slam.
Gracie stood there, swallowing her heart back down where it had perched, right in the back of her throat. Yelling came from inside. She stood there, listening, but the words came too fast, too muffled.
Then, everything went silent.
Gracie heard only the beating of her heart, banging like a fist against her chest.
She backed away from the house, nearly tripping over the Tonka truck, wishing Vicktor were here, hating the fact that her brain always ran to him for comfort.
Probably the events of the last year had turned her paranoid. Ina had simply run away with her new boyfriend. She’d be back—
Behind her, the door to the townhouse opened and with a shout, Luba ran out. “Devochka!”
Gracie turned. Luba grabbed her arms, her face streaked with fresh tears. “He worked with her at the hotel. Hotel Ryss.” Luba’s voice broke and she covered her mouth, eyes wide. Her voice dropped to a whisper. “Please, can you find her?”
David could hardly keep up with what had just happened. Without hesitation, almost on instinct, he’d reacted to Yanna’s bravado, and suddenly, here they were, he and Yanna parting the ocean in Kwan’s cigarette boat, doing maybe eighty or more. And to his even greater shock, the woman he so wanted to love huddled in the seat, staring up at him like he might be some sort of South Seas swashbuckler.
His head had most definitely checked out of the game. He exhaled, stifling back a word his persona might use. Instead he slammed his hand down on the steering wheel.
At his feet, Yanna made a wry face. “That bad, huh?”
He looked at her, then sat on the driver’s seat and pulled her up to hers. The wind buffeted her eyes, and she looked down, blinking. Then she turned sideways, searching the sea behind her. “I can’t even see them.”
“Trust me, they’re behind us. Maybe even tracking us with some onboard GPS. We gotta ditch this boat as soon as we can find another ride.”
Yanna hunched her shoulders and brought her legs through her handcuffed arms one at a time, until her hands were in front. David glanced down at the jewelry. “I’ll get you out of those as soon as I can.”
“I know you have your hands full,” she said without looking at him. “I’m sorry I got you into this.”
“I think it might be the other way around,” he said, frowning. “What were you doing there?”
Yanna glanced at him, a pained look crossing her face. Then she shook her head and looked back toward their pursuers.
Okay, don’t tell me why I just blew a multi-mil
lion dollar operation. David concentrated on driving. Just. Drive. Get to shore and then, maybe, he’d confront the feelings roiling through him, the ones he couldn’t get a fix on. Relief? Fear? Anger? Frustration?
Why was it every time he got near her, really near her, he couldn’t seem to get ahold of his emotions?
Staring at the shivering mermaid next to him, he could see her as she’d been, a beautiful coed, with a brain that could run circles around him, tying his heart into a messy knot of confusion as they sat in the kitchen of his Moscow flat, trying to unlock advanced calculus.
“It’s not so hard, David.” Her laughter had always made him feel the wind under him.
“It would a thousand times easier if it weren’t in Russian.” It was times like that, with the night pressing against the windows, the cool spring air carrying in the scent of the late night, of rain, and the occasional bark of a dog that he wondered how he would have made it through those two years at Moscow University without her.
“If you want to graduate, you have to nail this final,” she said, pushing the book toward him. “I’ll translate if you can’t get it.”
He looked up at her. It wasn’t the words that confused him. It was how he was supposed to pack up his bags and climb on an airplane and live the next decade without Yanna in his life.
His face must have showed it because her smile dimmed. “Are you still hoping to go to grad school?” Those brown eyes roved over him, her long elegant fingers tapping her pencil on the linoleum tabletop.
At that moment, he didn’t know what he wanted. Well, besides Yanna. Because it wasn’t just her exotic beauty—those dark mysterious eyes, the silky dark hair, the strong frame honed by championship volleyball. But the way she kept up with him, outthought him, even challenged him.
They said that opposites attract, but sometimes Yanna felt like the other half of himself, even in the way she could read his thoughts. “I don’t know. How about you?”
She leaned back, rolled her pencil between her fingers. “I’m…being recruited for the military. Or something like it.”
It was the way she said it that made his eyebrow quirk up, made his plans unravel. “What kind of military?”
Run to You Page 6