No. No! He stared at the woman as she printed out the ticket. Backed away from the counter. Perfect, just perfect.
He wrestled his way back out to the sidewalk. The bus driver had exited the bus, was taking tickets, stowing luggage.
David beelined to the bus, aiming for the stairs, and plowed aboard.
Yanna sat slouched in the back seat, looking out the window, her head down, hair over her face. Her blouse might be clean and new, but she looked wrung out. As if maybe she’d spent the last twenty-four hours lost in the ocean. Windburned. Hungry. Tired.
“Yanna!” he shouted down the length of the bus.
A hand grabbed his arm. He whirled, but the bus driver knew to duck. David stumbled, and the driver yanked him back down the aisle and gave him a heave-ho onto the sidewalk. David scrambled back to his feet, but the driver had already closed the door. As the bus coughed and ground into gear, he looked for Yanna.
He found her in the somber woman who gave a feeble wave as the bus pulled away from the curb.
8
Gracie decided she must have some sort of eerie Rod-Sterling kind of mystical bad omen powers because this was the second time she’d walked into a sirens and blood, CSI kind of scene. This time, at least, said victims weren’t her best friends, and weren’t going home in body bags.
Yet.
“What did I do?” Gracie stood, cradling a cup of coffee, blowing on the steam as she stared out at the blackness of the hospital parking lot, the bright lights glaring off the wet pavement. A car drove by, splashing water, turning the glare to pitch. The buzz of the fluorescent lights above her split her nerve endings—or perhaps because she’d downed enough coffee to fuel a small nation.
It gave her something to do.
“This is hardly your fault,” Mae said, leaning against the wall, one leg bracing her, arms folded.
Gracie gave her a look. “I went to the hotel. Ina must have seen me.”
“And then what—decided to assault her parents?” Mae leaned up from the wall. “I’m going to check on Luba.” Gracie shot a look at the two cops standing outside the ER. She had called Alex and left a message, but dread pooled inside her. The second Alex knew about her brush with nastiness, was the second Vicktor knew.
Although at the moment, she could use a little tough-guy, I-will-protect-you- posturing from him.
“I don’t like the way the tall cop talked to her, as if she might be the bad guy,” Mae said, shooting the cops a dark look.
“He was frustrated,” Gracie said, weariness in her voice.
“He should try talking another language when he’s under stress. Betcha he’d have a little more patience.”
Gracie watched her walk away, liking Mae even more. The woman had steel in her blood, the way she administered CPR while Gracie called for help. She didn’t care what Luba said—they could hardly walk away and let the man die.
She’d seen enough death, thank you.
Gracie sighed, sipped the watery, vending machine coffee.
You’re in over your head.
Yeah, well you’re not here, are you? You didn’t see Luba’s face, or hear Olga on the phone, did you Vicktor?
She made a face at her image in the window. Swell, they’d be admitting her, soon. The Loony Minnesotan who talked to the fiancé in her head.
Why hadn’t he called? She’d texted him hours ago? Gracie blew out a breath. Maybe she should stop depending on Vicktor to solve all her problems. Or, maybe she should stop creating problems. She should have let well enough alone, let the Ludukos sort out their domestic issues on their own.
Ina wouldn’t be the first daughter in history to run away from home to the arms of the man she “loved.”
Ew.
Wouldn’t it be nice if Gracie could go back in time, change a moment and have everything turn out happy? Although, what, exactly, would she change? Maybe her sleuthing at the hotel that perhaps triggered Ina’s anger? Or maybe, before that, when she saw Ina at the mall—maybe she would grab her in a headlock and cram some perspective into her pretty head while Mae sidelined Jorge.
Or maybe Gracie would go back further in time, to when she moved to Seattle a year ago, hoping to make a difference in the Russian community. Then she’d never even meet Ina, never have to watch her mother come unglued as EMTs loaded her unresponsive husband on a gurney and took him by ambulance to the county medical center. Never have to wonder what on earth the teenage girl had been thinking.
What kind of person let a couple of thugs beat up her father? The scenario didn’t make sense.
Let the cops handle it.
Again, Vicktor and she shook him away. “The cops don’t know her like I do.”
“What’s that?” The cop with the bad attitude walked up to her, raised an eyebrow. Tall and thick, with blonde hair, he reminded her, in a way, of Vicktor’s friend Roman. Only Roman was leaner. And had a devastating smile.
“I’m just saying that Ina wouldn’t do this.”
“You’d be surprised at how many times I see this.” He raised his eyebrows, like, tsk, tsk, you poor uninformed soul.
Gracie glanced at his badge. Williams. Nice, Norwegian name. “Officer Williams, don’t you think you should at least try and find her?”
“We will. But she’s just another run-away who had it out with her father. I doubt we’ll see her again.”
“I don’t think she did this—”
“I’m sure you don’t. But like I said, she isn’t the first. And definitely not the last.”
She narrowed her eyes at him as he walked away. She took it back—he reminded her of Vicktor, or at least the old Vicktor, the jaded, cynical Vicktor who had no hope for humanity, who’d seen so much crime, the wicked prosper and the innocent killed, it had turned him cold.
She lifted one edge of her mouth in a smile. Until he met her. And then she was back there, on that train to Vladivostok when he’d slammed his way into her compartment, only to be kicked—
“What are you grinning about?” Mae startled her out of the memory.
She looked down, into her coffee.
“Yeah, okay, I can figure that out. Let’s go home.”
“How’s Luba?”
“She’s staying here, with Yakov. He’s in ICU. I told her to call us if she needs us.”
If she needed them. Gracie dumped her coffee into the trash. “I won’t be holding my breath,” she said.
“We’re back to that?” Mae held open the doors. The cool early autumn air whisked into the entry way as they stepped out into the night. The splash of cars along the road accompanied them as they walked in and out of pools of streetlight on their way to the parking garage.
“I’m just saying, maybe I should keep my nose out of things. Maybe I jump too easily to conclusions, and then follow with an even worse assumption that I can help. Sometimes I feel like I’m just spitting into the wind.”
“Let me duck.”
“You know what I mean.”
Mae shoved her hands into her vest pockets. “Yeah, I know. For every rescue there is a stupid person who drowns.”
Gracie looked at her. The wind blew her hair back from her face.
“I flew a lot of search and rescue missions, lost climbers, kayakers lost as sea, sometimes even capsized fisherman. Seemed an endless supply of people willing to risk their lives so we’d have to risk ours.
“The thing is, when they hit trouble, everyone wanted to be rescued. They didn’t want to die. They just got in over their head.”
Gracie opened the heavy door to the parking garage. A dim light filtered down and lit the cement hallway. They climbed up the steps to the second tier. “What is my problem that I can’t seem to stop myself from reaching my hand to the waters, trying to pull them to safety?”
Mae opened up the next door, and they entered the ramp. “That, my friend, is exactly what Vicktor is asking.”
Gracie stopped, staring at her. Nodded. “You’re right. And exactly why I can’t marry
him.”
Mae stilled, and Gracie felt her words rush through her, like ice. She couldn’t marry him? But…her confusion must have shown on her face because Mae frowned, reached out to touch her arm. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know.” Tears whisked her eyes. “I didn’t mean to say that, I don’t think.”
Mae waited a beat, and then. “Okay, let’s forget you said it. You love Vicktor.”
“Yeah.” Gracie brushed away a stupid tear.
“And so what he’s a little protective.”
“Yeah.” She shoved her hands into her pockets, looking now around the garage, anywhere but at Mae.
“And yes, you have that missionary thing inside you that compels you to get involved in everybody’s lives—”
“Hey, don’t bite the hand that feeds you.” Gracie gave her a look but added a smile. Mae smiled back.
“There is an answer here, Gracie. A balance. I know you don’t think Vicktor trust you—or maybe knows the real you, but I think he does. And I’m sure you’ll see that, in time. You just have to wait for it.”
Gracie’s grin vanished.
“Maybe God gave Vicktor to you to watch your back, not slow you down.”
“It’s not like I’m a spy or some—”
The screech of tires, and a motor revving made her stop. Lights flicked on, right behind Mae, blinding her.
“Run!” Mae screamed and grabbed Gracie by the arm. She yanked her hard toward the stairwell. Gracie stumbled, dove after her.
The car slammed into the door. Glass and metal showered into the cement stairwell as Gracie careened head first down the stairs.
Yanna’s tough inner superspy must be malfunctioning because she sat on the bus to Taipei crying as if she’d just lost her best friend.
Which, for all practical purposes, she had.
The look on his face when David had boarded the bus—panic and even desperation—had made her feel like a water slug.
He’d only been trying to help.
Yeah, sure he had. Help her all the way back to Russia, leaving her sister to who-knew-what fate.
Yanna leaned her head back against the tall red cloth seats. Overhead on a television no larger than her toaster back in Khabarovsk, a ninja movie played, complete with subtitles in Mandarin.
All of Taiwan seemed like one big sprawling city, separated not by rolling countryside but smaller buildings, two and three stories high. Instead of vacant lots, rice paddies filled every spare inch of land between apartment buildings. The green rows in glistening brown water reminded her of dacha country—every hectare of earth used to mound potatoes. Storefronts advertised in glowing neon and brightly colored Chinese characters, and commuters filled the streets, wearing the ever-present patterned face masks.
Right before every stop, the driver would call out its name. She’d let Kaohsiung pass by, her destination Taipei and the international airport. She’d gotten a good look at the two thugs who’d brought her into the country and guessed that she wasn’t the only woman who they’d trafficked through Taiwanese passport control. Meanwhile, Taipei just might have what she needed to fix her GPS earrings. And she could start nosing around brothels.
Elena, where are you? The thought of her sister, who didn’t have a David or even the few kung fu abilities Yanna possessed, captured by Kwan and his men… Yanna put a hand over her mouth in case the rice packet decided to make its way back up.
So she’d been right about Kwan. In fact, she probably had tidbits of information that might help David and his undercover adventure. But no, David wouldn’t allow her to be an equal partner. She had to be the damsel in distress, he the dashing hero. What was it about him that he always had to save the day?
So what she’d been handcuffed, helpless, and had a knife to her throat. She would have figured out something.
Really.
Yanna wiped away another tear.
But she didn’t need him and already regretted the briefest of moments she’d depended on him. This leaking was precisely why.
She had to face it—he wasn’t going to help her find Elena—not if he thought her own life was in danger. He’d promised to help. But she’d experienced his promises before.
Men were all the same—disappointing.
She could find Elena on her own, as she planned to do.
She didn’t really have to track down Kwan. She just had to let him know she was still alive. He’d do all the work.
And next time, she wouldn’t be the one who ended up with a blade to her neck.
The bus stopped again, and she looked up, checking out the embarking passengers. She didn’t really think Kwan could have tracked her down already, but…
A man climbed the stairs, holding a little black-haired, maybe four-year-old girl, bows in her hair holding up two wispy pigtails. He appeared about forty, with a leather bag slung over his shoulder and strong arms around the girl. She looked around the bus, then back at him with adoring eyes as he found their seats.
Yanna swallowed, her throat suddenly thick. Apparently fatigue also made her susceptible to painful longings buried deep inside, because she was right there with that little girl, adoring the man who held her in his arms.
She hadn’t been sure if he was boyfriend number two or three, but Boris had been the man she’d wanted to be her real father. Older than her mother, he seemed to love both Yanna and her mom. He worked at the local bread factory, and perhaps her mother had seen in him someone stable, even kind, when she brought him home to live in their two-room house. He didn’t drink—well, not much at least—and loved Yanna like she might be his own. Yanna remembered his smile, the long walks in the park, the stuffed monkey he’d given her one year for New Year’s Eve.
“Papichka, will you be my daddy and stay with me forever and ever?” she’d asked him once, right before first grade, as he’d picked her up from kindergarten. Even at six, she knew enough to know that not all daddies stayed. Boris had knelt on the sidewalk and tugged her long dark braid wrapped with a brilliant red ribbon. “Ya obeshaio.”
I promise.
She knew all about men and promises. Perhaps not all men broke promises, but the ones she loved did. Over and over and over. Like Boris, when he left them only three months later, simply disappearing into the night after a ferocious fight with her mother. Yevgeny, then Slava had promised, and left. Some of her “daddies” she’d silently begged to leave, especially when they promised to make her life very, very difficult if she told her mother what they did to her when she wasn’t home.
After a while, she didn’t care who promised what.
Until, of course, she’d met David.
Why was it that every time she let a man into her heart, he tore it to smithereens? Especially David. Because once she let him close she’d never really gotten him out of her system, as evidenced by her gigantic lapse in judgment on the boat. She could hardly believe she’d nearly kissed him.
She closed her eyes, willing herself not to sleep, but feeling tired. So very tired.
This time, you’re going down, Yanna! David’s voice found her, and she frowned, knowing that if she followed the memory long enough it could only churn up hurt. Yet, as if pulled by some ethereal force, she lost herself in the briny smell of the sea, the feel of hot sand beneath her bare feet, the warmth of the sunshine, the shouts and laughter of children running into the surf.
“Bring it on, Yankee,” she retorted, dusting her knees off and glancing at Roman behind her, ready to take their friend Mae’s serve. The sun overhead left its mark on blond David’s fair complexion, turning his nose red, his shoulders a deep russet brown, and lifting from his skin a field of freckles. He’d taken his shirt off, and she’d refrained from telling him that he was only asking for trouble. Because, though she was his friend, she also had plenty of appreciation for his physique, toned from hours at the gym and playing street hockey.
Behind her, Roman taunted David in Russian. “It’s the 1980 Olympics and finally you�
�re going down, Yankee!”
“Game point,” Mae said, twirling the volleyball in her hand. She’d pulled her curly red hair back into a ponytail and wore a pair of beach shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Yanna had preferred wearing her bikini, and even David had given her a long once-over, trying to hide it of course, when she emerged from her room at the Black Sea Sanatorium—or resort, as Mae and David called it. It wasn’t hard to figure out that calling them “just friends” hadn’t made him immune to her.
Perfect.
Because with David leaving in about five short weeks to head back to America and possibly out of her life for good, she wanted him to remember her for a long, long time.
She flicked her hair back, shiny and dark in the sun. David’s gaze squared in on her. Mae tossed the ball and served it over the net.
Roman met it with a bump, setting it up. Yanna sent it over. David scooped it up, Mae set it, and David jumped high to spike it. Yanna saved it low with a bump, and Roman got under the ball, setting it high.
“Drill it!” Roman said. Yanna jumped high, spiked it hard.
David dove and bumped it right before it hit the sand. Mae set it up high for him again. This time, Yanna paralleled him to block it. But David was going for broke, and he jumped, drew back, and arrowed the ball over the net.
It slammed Yanna in the face. Blood spurted as she crumpled into the sand. She cupped her nose, eyes watering, face aching.
“Yanna!” David ducked under the net and skidded in the sand to her feet, horror replacing the triumph in his voice. “Yanna, I’m sorry!”
Roman had torn off his sweaty shirt. He thrust it at David, who tried to get Yanna to move her hands. She pinched her nose, tipping her head back. She took the shirt, bunched it under her nose.
“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, but tears ran down her face, her nose burning, the pain making her dizzy. She even put a hand out as she fell back onto the sand.
“I’m taking you back to the hotel,” David said, and before she could protest, he scooped her up into his arms.
Run to You Page 11