Okay, so he’d hoped, in the tiniest corner of his heart, to be wrong. He edged near a building, folded his arms on his chest, and waited in the shadows, craning his ear.
“Miss Moore!”
Vadeem grimaced as the young lady actually looked happy to see the international thug.
Grazovich sat down. Miss Moore smiled, a pitiful one, but still, the smuggler was on the receiving end, and it seemed as if the world had tilted toward evil.
Vadeem clenched his jaw as she shook her head, those pretty, deceptive eyes tearing up. She pulled up something from under her shirt, a brass key on a shoelace. Grazovich touched her arm. She looked grateful. The smuggler ordered a Pepsi.
Vadeem fought a sneer, knowing the man had already consumed half a bottle of vodka.
Then she laughed, and the sound of it speared Vadeem’s bones. He felt sick and wanted to hit something, hard, when the grin that followed looked genuine. Vadeem considered his options. Could he arrest the team yet, or did he have to wait until they actually committed the crime?
They’d already amassed enough evidence to satisfy his suspicions.
The pair stood, and Grazovich picked up her bill. Vadeem followed them like a hungry dog as they strolled back to the hotel, she with an obviously lighter step.
They said good-bye for a long time, while Vadeem was stuck examining a display of Matroshka dolls in the lobby gift shop. Grazovich left first, taking the elevator.
Vadeem turned to follow.
Miss Moore walked into the bookstore, nearly smack into him.
“Excuse me!”
Vadeem blinked, suddenly at a loss for words. Those eyes were honey to his reflexes. He turned away, his head down, his adrenaline spiking. “No, excuse. . .me,” he stuttered. He picked up a porcelain Gel vase, examining it. Although he’d traded the militia jacket for his brown leather coat and wore a pair of sunglasses on his head, one lingering look and his surveillance gig would combust on the spot.
She said nothing and moved past him. The perfume stayed.
While she examined a scarf, he made a quick exit, scooting out into the lobby and hiding behind his favorite hibiscus. The desk clerk gave him a look. He frowned at her and shook his head. The last thing he needed was an untimely update from his cohort in crime.
He was back at the ATM machine when Miss Moore exited the shop and headed up the elevator.
He took the stairs.
She was collecting her key from the floor monitor when he reached the landing. He backed down a step and flattened himself against the wall. He just wanted to get a layout of where she was, what side of the hotel, what room. He’d find a perch in the grocery store across the street and make sure she was tucked in before he trained his binoculars on Grazovich’s room for the night.
He was on the landing when he heard a scream. Fifteen strides later, he stood in her doorway, his pulse roaring.
She was on her knees, holding a green sweatshirt in one hand, and a wool sock in the other. Her body shook.
He heard feet thumping down the hall behind him. She turned, looked at him, and went white.
“Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you.”
She put down the sock and held the sweatshirt to her chest, her eyes wide. Recognition washed over her face. “Get away!”
What game was she playing? She’d spoken perfect Russian before, had been rather stubborn about it, to boot. “Nyet. What happened here?” Either she was an extremely messy unpacker or someone had done the honors for her. He averted his eyes from a slip draped over the television set and a pair of pink silky pajamas that had landed on the desk lamp, and instead took a survey of the toiletries bag that had been emptied onto her bed. “Thorough, huh?” He picked up a gooey bottle of shampoo with two fingers, wondering what the thief was looking for inside the bottle.
She looked at him, half-horror, half-confusion, her knuckles white against her sweatshirt. “What are you doing here?” Her Russian, although stuttered, had returned.
He crouched before her, a little shocked at her fraying composure. “Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”
She opened her mouth, closed it. Clenched her jaw. He looked away when tears edged her eyes.
“Any idea who did this?” He tried to keep his tone dark, dangerous, refusing to allow her sobs past his disgust. The woman obviously wasn’t above playing games with a man’s emotions.
“No.” Her pitiful tone found soft soil and twisted. He had to admit, everything about her smacked of authenticity.
Except, of course, her rather telling relationship with an international smuggler.
“You know you’re under arrest, right? It’ll only help your case to tell me everything.”
All bravado dropped from her expression and she looked like she might just wail, right there. “My case?” She backed away from him. “I don’t know what you think I did, but I did NOT run away today. Someone let me go. And,” her voice shook and she wrestled it back into submission, “I have no idea, none, nyeto, who did this. Panimaish?”
Her Russian vernacular, slightly sarcastic and sassy, seemed completely out of sync with the fierce tremble of her hands. Still, it chipped another crack into his suspicions.
“My name’s Vadeem. I’d like to help you.” Now why did he say that? He felt like an idiot, holding his hand out to her like he wanted to make friends. Still, the damage was done, and all he could do was muscle up a smile.
She looked from his hand to his eyes, studying his face with unmasked disbelief. She’d obviously had her share of scrapes for the day. Her eyes looked battered and fatigued. Still, if he’d learned one thing about her, she wasn’t going to shatter in front of him. “Kat Moore, and I still don’t know anything.” She slipped her hand into his. It felt warm, and just strong enough for him to know she fought her fears.
“Glad to meet—
The window behind her exploded.
A million spikes sprayed them as Vadeem threw himself forward. He caught Miss Moore in his embrace and landed on the palms of his hands. They fell back onto the rug. She screamed, her hands clawing into his chest as he held her down. His arms covered their heads, his face next to hers, as he listened to the gunfire of a semi-automatic Makarov chip cement from the wall above the bed.
Chapter 4
Kat leaned her head on the dirty glass pane in the interrogation room. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t shake off the tremor that buzzed like a low hum under her skin. Two stories below, moonlight strafed the street in a long pale strip, and the trees jutted spiny arms into the sky, black skeletons silhouetted in ghostly light. She heard the low murmur of voices outside the door. Hopefully one of them was the soldier who had pinned her to the ground and saved her life.
So, maybe he wasn’t the menacing thug she’d pegged him to be.
She put a hand to her face and remembered the rub of his whiskers, recalled his warm breath as he whispered comfort to a stranger and protected her with his own body. She blinked against the burning in her eyes. Nope, after the bullets stopped flying, she’d dubbed him a bona fide hero.
As if on cue, the man, Captain Vadeem something, stalked into the room. He still looked like a walking menace with his sculpted physique and battle-etched face. He traipsed into the room and tossed a file on the metal table, then turned his chair backwards and sat down, straddling it and leaning over the top.
She didn’t miss the way her heartbeat revved into NASCAR speed. Why, she wasn’t at all sure—whether because of his grim look, or the way his blue eyes seemed to peer through her, down to her soul.
“How are you doing, Miss Moore?” His voice didn’t sound at all like he’d nearly been shredded by a battery of gunfire.
She could only shrug. It seemed particularly ironic that she both began and ended this day in the custody of the Russian militia. She’d stopped asking God to rescue her and moved on to asking why she needed to be rescued so often.
The captain indicated for her to sit. “Can I ask you a few question
s?”
He deserved to ask her anything after his heroic stunt earlier in the evening. When he looked at her with worry in his brow she could hardly say no. Still, their relationship had her on edge—just what, exactly should she feel about someone who scared the breath out of her one second, and felt like an angel from heaven the next?
She sat down, feeling hollow, thankful that she’d pulled on the green sweatshirt before leaving the hotel. An igloo in Siberia was bound to be warmer than the barren cement interrogation room in the cop house. The smell of coffee drifted in from the dingy hallway and knotted her stomach.
The captain flicked open the brown file folder and flipped through it, as if searching for something. Kat pinned her hands together between her knees, hoping the file wasn’t about her. He stopped searching, and his fingers drummed on the sheaf of papers for a moment while his gaze swept over her. She swallowed a lump forming in her throat.
“Do you have any idea why someone would ransack your room or shoot at you?”
She gave a small shake of her head.
“Hmm.”
She watched his hands, strong and sleek, unearth a color photograph. She remembered those hands guiding her as she slithered across her hotel room floor to the hallway. Those hands took hers and helped her to her feet, even held her around the waist when she discovered her legs had turned to oatmeal.
“Have you ever seen this man?” He handed her a photo, and was polite enough not to comment when it shook in her grip.
She frowned. The man in the photograph looked Slavic by birth, with narrow panes to his face, and hard eyes. His tawny brown hair, pulled back, gave him a fierceness that was only accentuated by the thin scar along his right cheekbone. He looked vaguely familiar, but. . .“No.”
“His name is Ivan Grazovich. He’s Abkhazian, a military general and antiquities smuggler, among other things.”
She felt a tight burn, right in the center of her chest. “Do you think he was the one shooting at me?” She searched the captain’s face. He’d make a superb poker player, if he had ambitions in that realm. He merely drilled her with a blank look. Then, as if satisfied with her confusion, he leaned back and blew out a breath. She felt tension release its death-hold crunch.
“By the time we found the shooter’s perch, he was long gone. We’re combing it for evidence.”
“I don’t understand. You think this man has been following me?” She shook her head. “Why?”
The captain took the picture and stared at it for a long moment. She saw something dark flicker through his eyes and it sent a cold streak down her spine. “I’m not sure. Do you know anything about Bazooka rocket launchers or SAMs?”
Her eyes widened.
He smiled, and suddenly her stomach curled in delight. Was it her imagination, or had the midnight hours turned the Beast into someone kind and friendly? The shadows gentled his hard angles and, in the soft down of the night, he seemed even. . .attractive?
So, maybe there was more to the rumored jet-lag induced dementia than she gave credence.
He tucked the picture into the folder. “We’re not even sure you were the intended target tonight. Perhaps he was after me—”
“But what about my hotel room?”
He held up a hand. “We just need to consider all the possibilities if we’re going to unravel this mess.” He closed the file and folded his hands atop it. “Please, would you tell me why you are in Russia, and what you were doing today at the monastery?”
Her heart stopped hard, right against her ribs, and for the first time since her arrival, she wanted to chuck this entire adventure and race back to New York and the ho-hum safety of Matthew’s arms.
“Have you been following me?” Her voice sounded as pinched as her courage.
He nodded, his face turning hard. “And you better be thankful I did, or you’d be on your way to the morgue right now.”
That thought turned her cold. He’d been following her because he thought a killer was on her trail. Sixteen hours in Russia and already someone wanted her dead.
What was she doing here? Maybe all Matthew’s angry prophecies were accurate. Silence became her betrayer as her eyes filled, and she hiccupped a sob that echoed off the walls.
Her dementia had latched on with a vengeance. Through blurry eyes, she saw Captain I-Am-Your-Nightmare Vadeem grimace, as if he’d been walloped hard. He looked away, rubbed his whiskered face with one of those powerful hands. Swallowed.
The big bad bodyguard actually looked. . .afraid?
“I’m. . .ah, sorry, Miss Moore. I shouldn’t have been so. . .blunt.” There was that tenderness again, the one she’d heard in his voice seconds before she’d been tackled, and the kindness in it threatened to unravel her on the spot. She wrapped her arms around her waist and held in a vicious tremor as tears dropped off her chin.
She heard his chair scuff back, then felt his hand on her shoulder. Slowly, he knelt in front of her, then pulled her into his arms. She leaned awkwardly against him, the soft leather of his jacket cold against her cheek, her tears puddling on the smooth fabric. He said nothing, but rubbed a hand along her back. His five o’clock shadow rubbed against her forehead and he smelled of soap and leather, and most of all, safety. She closed her eyes and lost herself in the tender comfort of a stranger.
“Please, Miss Moore. Tell me what happened today at the monastery. Then I can get you on a plane for home and the nightmare can be over.”
-
“I was aiming for Spasonov.” Ilyitch didn’t have to be in the room with Grazovich to feel his gunmetal gray eyes boring into him. His icy silence over the phone was enough to raze every open nerve.
“You nearly killed her.” Grazovich’s voice seemed strained, probably from choking up lies for the Americanka while he let him do his dirty work. Dirty Abkhazian. The former military general in the former Soviet republic of Georgia had turned thief and was bent on financing his country’s revolution by unearthing Mother Russia’s secrets. The Georgians probably lost the war on purpose, hoping to rid themselves of this wart to the north. Ilyitch had been out of his brain ten years ago to hook up with the Abkhazian terror forces. Brainless and desperate for cash.
Circumstances hadn’t changed much over the course of the past decade.
“Did you at least take the key?” Grazovich had the consonant slur of a man who’d spent the better part of the evening investigating the inside of his Absolut bottle. The drinking had gotten worse since the Georgians had nabbed the general’s brother. Torture must be knowing your flesh and blood sat in a rat-infested hole in Georgia, waiting for execution.
“I thought you wanted her to keep it,” Ilyitch ground out. “You said, ‘let her lead us to the map first’.” He added just enough lilt to betray his lightly veiled disgust. It’s a fable, he wanted to scream. But he kept that editorial to himself, remembering the icy clamp of leg irons against his flesh.
“Things have changed,” Grazovich growled, affected by Ilyitch’s mocking. “She didn’t get the book. We’ll have to find it ourselves. Get the key. She’s wearing it around her neck.”
Ilyitch let out a curse. “I could have snatched it this morn--”
“Get the key.” Grazovich bit out, “My boy will do the rest.”
Your boy’s done enough all ready.
“What if ‘your boy’ is wrong?” Ilyitch kept his voice low, despite the fact no one would dare sneak up on him. He kept a safe distance from—and one eye—on a convention of FSB agents amassing in the hotel lobby. One turned and glanced in his direction. He turned away and leaned against the building, awash in shadow. “Let me grab her. She’ll tell us what we want to know.” The fact that Grazovich had her close enough to snatch—twice—and hadn’t, made Ilyitch want to put his fist through the cement wall. What games was the general playing? Miss Ekaterina Moore held the key to their plans—in more ways than one.
The thief on the other end remained silent. Frustration pushed into Ilyitch’s tone. “You could
have ended this in her hotel room, instead of playing noble.” He couldn’t help but dig in the knife after seeing the way Grazovich let her waltz up to her room—alone. “Were you thinking you’d romance it out of her?”
“You nearly killed her.” the Abkhazian retorted. “We need her alive, and full of answers.”
“Ah, a romantic. Perhaps that’s why you love digging up Russia’s soul.”
“Russia has no soul. She sold it to the highest bidder years ago.”
“Now you’re a philosopher.”
Grazovich lowered his voice, added a growl. “Get the key. Call me when you have it.”
“It won’t do us any good without the map.”
“Just get the key, or you’ll be wishing we had left you to rot.”
-
Kat pulled the woolen hotel blanket over her shoulder and tried, again, to curve her body around three very pronounced peas in the mattress of her century-old hotel bed. The springs squealed when she moved, splicing her thoughts with the effectiveness of a blade. It had to be some further cruel jet lag trickery that kept her mind from collapsing into sleep when her body felt as if she’d run a marathon. Her brain kept circling around two thoughts: she wasn’t leaving, despite Captain Vadeem’s posted guard and assertions to the contrary, and God had somehow vanished over the past twenty-four hours. Where was the Almighty when she needed Him? Certainly, throughout her life, she’d never needed Him more than now.
She tugged on her blanket. It slid up over her toes where cool air nipped at them. She couldn’t continue to stare at the pale walls. Sitting up, she clicked on the bedside lamp. A dusty glow fanned out over the red blanket. Kat reached for her backpack, hauling up dust balls from the floor under her bed as she plopped it on her lap. She found her pocket Bible inside and flipped to the bookmark. It opened to Psalms, and the words made her cringe.
“The Lord is a refuge for the oppressed, a stronghold in times of trouble. Those who know your name will trust in you, for you LORD have never forsaken those who seek you.”
Ekaterina (Heirs of Anton) Page 4