by Alexa Verde
“I’ll drive you there. Just give me directions,” James interrupted her as he drove off. “But stay close to me there. Please?”
“Okay.”
Once at the riverbank, she gestured at the bridge underpass. “My friends and I hang out there.” She breathed in the fresh air. Birds sang in the trees that grew close to the water.
“It’s gorgeous here.” He looked around, as if he always had to be aware of his surroundings.
Soledad said a prayer for her father, James, and Lydia. And of course, she prayed for Aidan’s recovery.
As a breeze from the river caressed her skin, the familiar sense of serenity replaced her anxiety.
“The name of the town, Rios Azules, means blue rivers in Spanish. Though we have only one river here… In the beginning of the third fairy tale, the tsar tells his three sons to shoot an arrow. So, arrows.” She slapped herself on the forehead. “It’s about a dog!”
“Excuse me? How did you get a dog from an arrow?”
“Arrow is translated into Russian as strela. Strela was also the name of one of the first dogs that flew to space. Maybe the person who’ll lead us to the treasure has a dog. You probably know my father’s friends and family. Do any of them have a dog?” she asked.
“Interesting deduction, but lots of people have dogs. Including a great number of Sergey’s friends and family.”
Deflated, she surrendered. “I understand. I need much more than that.”
“We have to get going. We can discuss ideas on the way to Austin. You’re more resilient than you know. We’re going to survive. And we’re going to find your father.” His gaze dropped to her lips and lingered.
Her breath went shallow. “We have to go.”
“Yes.” He leaned to her, his breath warm on her skin.
“No time to waste,” she heard herself saying. She. Had. To. Remember. About. Her. Search.
“Absolutely not,” he said, his lips close to hers.
Her heart was beating so loudly he could probably hear it. From the deepest corners of her mind, she managed to drag out what was left of her resolve. “We have to go.” She stepped back.
His eyes dimmed, and he turned toward the car. “You’re right.”
Immediately, she missed his proximity, the feeling of his breath on her skin. She followed him to the rental car. She did the right thing by pushing him away. But her hurting heart didn’t agree.
As he drove off, she stared out the window at the green forests passing on the side of the road, avoiding looking at him. It was so difficult to keep her distance from him, especially when they’d have to be in the same car for hours. She’d started to care about James. But did he care about her?
Her eyelids grew heavy, and she struggled to keep them open. She needed to concentrate on the third fairy tale.
“Take a nap,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. “We’ll be on the road for a long time.”
She surrendered to sleep…
She woke up from her phone ringing. Groggily, she pressed the button to answer. “Hello?”
“This is a wake-up call,” a mechanically distorted voice said. “And a reminder.”
“What reminder?”
“That you’re running out of time.” The line went dead.
Chapter Eight
It took Soledad a moment to recover from shock. Then she relayed the conversation to James.
His eyebrows furrowed. “Most likely, the call was made from a throwaway phone and is untraceable.”
Her phone played a song again, and she winced. Holding her breath, she glanced at the screen. Lydia. She breathed out.
“How are you?” Soledad asked as she picked up.
Muffled sobs were the answer. So her friend had obviously received the news about Aidan.
“He’s going to be okay. His life is not in danger,” Soledad hurried to say, her heart going out to Lydia. She should be there with her friend at this difficult time.
The sobs stopped. “I know.” Lydia sniffled. “Thank you for getting him out of the car. And please thank Mr. O’Hara for me.”
“I will. I’m on the way to Austin, but I’ll be at your place as soon as I’m back.”
“Have a safe trip. And don’t worry. Mari is by my side all the time. Luke and Mari cut their honeymoon short because of the news about Aidan,” Lydia sniffled again.
Soledad processed that new information. So instead of whisking her granddaughter away, Grandma Evelyn had called for reinforcement. And if somebody could handle Lydia’s challenges, Mari was it.
“Well, the reason I’m calling. I received the package from Liam Falcon today. And it’s weird.” Lydia paused. “It’s just flour. Granted, you can’t make a cake without flour. But I have plenty of it here. Why would anyone need to send me that?”
“Was there a return address?”
“Yes. A fake one. I already checked. Five Lemon Street, Rios Azules, TX. There is no such street in Rios Azules.”
“Was there anything else in the package? Maybe a name of the cake? How would you know what cake to bake?” Soledad asked.
“Oh, yeah. A small typed note with the words Ptichye Moloko.”
“Which is translated as bird’s milk from Russian. Thank you.”
“The guy isn’t going to pick up the cake, is he?” Lydia asked.
“I don’t think so. But if he does, please let me know.”
“What’s going on? I don’t want anything to happen to you. It’s bad enough that Aidan…” Her friend’s voice broke.
“I’ll tell you when I’m back. Are you… going to be okay?”
“I’ll never be completely okay. You know that. But I’ll manage.”
“You’re a survivor. Just like the rest of the Danger Girls.” They’d all had rough beginnings in life, but Lydia was the one who worried her the most.
She hung up and told James about flour and Ptichye Moloko.
“Does any of this cake stuff make sense to you?” James asked her.
“Part of it is easy.”
“I wonder which part?”
She’d laugh at the puzzled expression on his face if the situation wasn’t so serious. “The flour. It’s easy to figure out why he sent that.”
“Really? Or does it mean something in Russian that gives you the next clue?” He sped up and passed a car.
“Flour is muka in Russian, stress on the second syllable. Muka with the stress on the first syllable means torture. Might be a friendly reminder, but not very helpful. Flour sounds like flower. It’s Flor in Spanish, a female name.”
“A woman by the name of Flor who has a dog and lives in Austin? That doesn’t narrow it down much. And why bird’s milk?” His voice was coated with skepticism.
“Hmmm, bird. Well, Sokol, part of my last name, means falcon in Russian. Flor will probably have a last name that’s some type of a bird. Swan, for example.”
“I don’t remember anyone with such a name from my search. But I’ll send this information to several contacts in Austin.”
“Thanks.” She checked an online people directory for Austin on the Internet on her phone. The capital of Texas was a huge city, so she had many names to sift through. She sighed.
She was engrossed in her search when her phone rang again. The chief’s name appeared on the screen.
“Hello, Chief Dawson.”
“I have some bad news. We identified the man you called Diamond Guy.” Dawson’s voice was gruff.
“That should be good news, shouldn’t it?”
“We found him in the ditch on the outskirts of Rios Azules, several yards away from your place. With a bullet in his head. Be careful. I don’t want your body to be the next one we pull out of the ditch.” The chief disconnected.
For several moments, she sat speechless and wasn’t even able to form a cohesive thought.
Then she said a silent prayer for the man’s soul.
When she finally found her voice, she relayed the conversation to James.
&n
bsp; His eyes narrowed. “You won’t be the next. I’ll do everything for that not to happen.”
“It’s all in God’s hands.”
Needing a distraction, she grasped at the urgency to figure out the clues. “Let’s discuss the third fairy tale again. The tsar tells his three sons to shoot an arrow. Where the arrow falls, there the prince will find his bride. The first arrow falls in an aristocrat’s yard, so the eldest son marries the aristocrat’s daughter. The second arrow falls in a wealthy merchant’s yard, so the middle son marries the merchant’s daughter. The third arrow ends up in a swamp. When the youngest son, Ivan Tsarevich, grudgingly makes it to the swamp, he finds a frog holding his arrow.”
“So the youngest son has to marry a frog?” He looked at her, an unmistakable twinkle in his eyes. Then he turned his attention back to the road.
“What?” She had difficulty recollecting the rest of the story while being distracted by his eyes. “Yes. Of course, he isn’t too excited about it. But she’s got the arrow, so he doesn’t have a choice. After the weddings, the tsar gives his daughters-in-law different tasks, like spin fabric or bake bread. The frog always does better than the other daughters-in-law.”
“Really?” There was a slight teasing in his voice.
Just his voice made tingles run over her skin. So not fair. “Really. That was because she was a frog by day. At night, she’d lose her frog skin and become a beautiful, skillful princess. When the youngest tsarevich discovers that, he wants his wife to be a beautiful princess full time. So he burns the frog skin.”
“I don’t blame him,” James said. “It must’ve been hard to be married to a frog.”
She scoffed. Of course. Typical man. “Remember, beauty is only skin deep. In this case, frog’s skin. Turns out, she was punished for disobeying her father, and was turned into a frog for three years. Those three years were almost up. Had the tsarevich waited, she would’ve become the princess forever. But he didn’t, and she was whisked away. So Ivan Tsarevich has to find her and free her from Koshchey the Immortal. It wasn’t easy as there was a reason he was called Immortal.”
He chuckled as he navigated a sharp curve in the road. “Let me guess. He couldn’t be killed?”
“Exactly.”
“So how did Ivan Tsare— Tsari—”
“Tsarevich.” She smiled.
“That one.” He passed several cars. “How did he battle Koshi— Koche— How do you pronounce those words? Well, the immortal one.”
“The only way to harm Koshchey the Immortal was to break off the end of the needle that contained his life. So the actual challenge was to get to that needle. It was inside an egg, and the egg was inside of a goose, and the goose was inside another animal, et cetera, et cetera. You get the idea”
“Reminds me of matryoshkas.” He glanced in the rearview with a concerned expression on his face.
Alarmed, she looked back but didn’t notice anything suspicious. “Ah, matryohskas, nest dolls that fit one inside the other. I have a set at home. In a way, we also need to get to the smallest one, the solid one. The last clue. I feel like we’re looking for a needle in a stack of hay, too. We probably have the first name and location. Flor and Austin. Maybe now we can get the age or profession.”
“A seamstress?” His gaze darted to the rearview mirror again.
“James, what’s going on?”
“There’s a dark blue car three vehicles behind us. It’s been there for a while.”
Fear grasped her spine with cold fingers. “Do you think they’re following us?”
“It’s a possibility. This rental car might be compromised.” His forehead wrinkled. “There’s a small roadside restaurant about ten miles ahead of us. His owner sort of owes me a favor. Do you mind if we stop and swap cars with him?”
“It must be a very big favor.” She checked the clock, and her stomach chose that moment to growl. “We’ve been on the road for three hours already. It’s time to get a bite anyway.”
He pushed the button on his steering wheel and made a quick call on his hands-free phone.
She sucked in her stomach while he talked, remembering Ron’s scathing remarks. But James didn’t seem to care about how much she weighed. And she wanted to find joy in every moment of the “thousand-minutes gift.”
Once in the dining room, he pushed the chair out for her, and they ordered drinks. Again, he’d obviously chosen the table from where he could see both exits, and the seat so that he could have his back to the wall. It wasn’t a date, no matter how much she wanted it to be one.
The waitress dropped off menus, large mugs of coffee, and glasses of water with ice, sending appreciative glances in James’s direction.
“I’ll take a plate of chorizo and tacos with barbacoa.” He smiled at Soledad. “Those are the only Spanish words I know. What would you like?”
“Same for me.”
“We’ll take pies, too.” He returned the menu, and the waitress left.
“This restaurant has a dessert bar,” he said. “What pie or cake would you like? I recommend peach cobbler and pecan pie.”
“Both.”
“Good choice.” He grinned at her, and by now she wasn’t surprised by the butterflies in her stomach.
While waiting for him, she looked through female last names. Then she looked up. He carried plates with pie slices while accompanied by three little children, two boys and a girl, and a thirty-something woman. After putting plates on the table, he talked quickly to each child, which resulted in big grins on their faces. Sending him a grateful smile, the woman plopped on the chair and had several quiet minutes to herself.
Soledad felt ashamed for her earlier jealous thoughts in regards to The Café’s waitress. James obviously didn’t try to charm the tired mother of three. He simply brightened the room wherever he went and put smiles on people’s faces.
“Thank you,” she said when he placed dessert in front of her.
The waitress brought their food, an enticing aroma coming from the plates.
Soledad said grace.
They gave the food its due. They had started on dessert when his phone rang. He glanced on the screen and frowned. “I don’t recognize this phone number. Excuse me, but I’d like to take this call.”
“Of course.” She tried the peach cobbler, and it was delicious.
“O’Hara speaking.” There was a pause, and then his eyes widened. “Melissa?”
* * *
James pressed the phone to his ear, unable to believe his former girlfriend had the audacity to call him. But he had to control his emotions. If Melissa had been involved in Sergey’s kidnapping in any shape or form, now was the chance to catch her. He’d need to trace her call somehow.
“I’ll be brief. I know you’ll try to trace me.” Melissa’s voice came in short rasps, as if she was out of breath. “I heard you were making inquiries about me in regards to Eliseev’s case. I know you figured out I’m Lola Rogers.”
“Melissa…” he started.
“Don’t talk. I don’t have much time. Yes, I was interested in the Fabergé egg. But I have nothing to do with what happened to your friend. I stepped aside because I couldn’t compete with a gang. Nor would I want to.”
“Let’s meet in a safe location. You owe me that much.” Always on guard, he paid attention to his surroundings and the patrons entering and leaving the restaurant.
Her voice lowered. “I’m sorry you almost lost your agency because of me. So this is my way to pay you back. Step away from this assignment. Those people are ruthless. Don’t try to track me down. You won’t be able to. And for the record, I didn’t break your heart. You broke mine.” The line went dead.
He fought the urge to throw the phone against the wall. Had he been wrong about Melissa all this time? About her involvement in Eliseev’s case? About her using him?
He told Soledad the content of the conversation.
“Maybe she’s right. You should step away. You shouldn’t risk your life,” Soled
ad said quietly as she took a sip of her coffee.
He studied her, amazed how different she was from Melissa. Granted, they both were beautiful and smart, but Melissa was selfish and overconfident while Soledad possessed incredible kindness and humility. It was impossible not to be drawn to Soledad.
Melissa might’ve been right. She’d hurt him, but quite possibly, she’d never broken his heart. But Soledad could.
“Don’t forget your antibiotics please,” she said softly.
“Thanks.” He popped pills in his mouth and flushed them down with water. Strangely enough, the shoulder didn’t bother him nearly as much as the day before.
He checked the time on his phone. His friend was running late, so he might as well tell her about Melissa. Soledad deserved to know about his past. Then she’d understand why he wasn’t the right man for her, no matter how much he liked her.
“Melissa was the victim in an art theft I was hired to investigate. In reality, she was the one who stole the paintings to commit insurance fraud. She said she loved me, and I fell for her in return. Then she tried to pin the crime on me and disappeared. I almost lost my private investigation agency. My reputation was tarnished, but I managed to prove I was innocent. End of story.”
“So you were in love with her?” She traced her finger along the table’s surface.
“I thought so at the time. Not anymore.” Because what he’d felt for Melissa couldn’t be compared to what he’d started feeling for Soledad.
“I’m sorry this happened to you.” She reached out to him across the table and stroked his hand.
He loved the feeling of her fingertips on his skin and missed them when there were gone. “I’m not marriage material. I haven’t dated anyone seriously since Melissa. Besides, I didn’t have any examples of good marriages while growing up. My parents didn’t care about each other and stayed together only for the sake of appearance. Their friends all got divorced years ago. And considering I’m my father’s son, I’m not father material, either.”