by Misty Evans
She was not okay. Not when Ivanov, the bastard, was jamming a gun into the back of her head. Not when they were so close to finally finding Grams and escaping.
And not when she felt a small trickle of warm blood under her shirt.
I’m fine, she conveyed to Ryan with her eyes, swallowing past the tightness in her throat. Whatever she did, she had to make him believe she was not freaking out like a girl.
Which was exactly what she was doing.
Ryan’s gaze was as steady as always. A glint of anger, but no fear. No hesitation. Not even the slightest flicker of anxiety. Mr. Calm, Cool, and Drop Dead Dangerous was still in control.
He won’t let Ivanov hurt me.
The last few days had been the worst of her life. Almost paralyzing fear, vexing guilt, harrowing revelations. Never had she imagined how bad things could get, and it was an experience she never wanted to repeat. For years, she’d wished she could erase the genes in her blood that made her an heir to Russian royalty. The genes that made her blood not clot properly. All of it. The genes, the name, and all her imperfections. If she could just erase them all, life would never have taken this horrendous turn of events.
But she couldn’t erase any of it. She was a Romanov. She was a Russian princess. She had imperfections—some visible, others not—and Ryan had looked past every one of them. He was her rock. She wouldn’t let him down.
Show no weakness. No cowardice. This was her life, and she would meet it head-on.
For Ryan. For Grams. For my parents.
Calling up her grand duchess façade, Anya whirled around and faced Ivanov, straightening her spine and arching a brow. “What the hell are you doing, Maxim?”
The barrel of the gun was now a breath away from her mouth. She heard Ryan’s sharp intake of breath.
Ivanov reared back in surprise, but kept the gun trained on her face. His eyes narrowed. “How dare you lower yourself to run off with an American spy.” At her look of surprise, he sneered. “You think I do not know a spy when I see one? Your grandmother claimed someone from the CIA would come for you. I had my suspicions he was already here. Andreev confirmed it after he saw the man coming out of your room earlier this afternoon. Another reason I wanted you inside the bunker.”
He knew who Ryan really was. Time for a big fat lie. “I wasn’t running off with him, you idiot. I was playing him.” She took a fortifying breath, and scrambled to come up with a convincing story. Which wasn’t easy with a loaded gun pointed at her mouth, especially when she could smell liquor on Ivanov’s breath, and see his hand tremble ever so slightly. “He’s not just any spy. He’s one who could cause a huge international incident. I brought him down here to keep him from leaving the Kremlin with all of our secrets. He knows everything. About you. About your cabinet. About the people you’ve had murdered in order to secure your place as president.”
So lame, but it was the best she could do, and mentioning Ivanov’s Achilles heel made him take a step back. All she needed was to throw off his suspicion of her for a moment and make him think she was on his side. She’d done it before, she could do it again.
Even with an evil-looking gun aimed at her face.
“Do you really think I would give up becoming first lady of Russia for…” Anya glanced back at Ryan and gave a dismissive snort. “Him?”
A frown creased Ivanov’s brow. “You’re lying.”
Bluffing wasn’t her strongest suit. However, the gun lowered to her chin, and his voice held less certainty.
“What can I do to prove it to you?” She held her ground, this time trying to convey sincerity with her eyes. “I know what my grandmother did during the Cold War. Why you brought her here and won’t let me see her. I know my parents were also traitors, and you had to deal with them. I want to make amends for my family’s deceptions and betrayals. Tell me what I can do to prove my loyalty to you and my country.”
Ivanov’s gaze cut to Ryan, back to her, seeming to ponder her offer.
She said the first thing that came to her. “Give me the gun, and I’ll shoot him for you.”
Ivanov smiled a slow, malicious smile, and pointed the gun at her forehead.
Okay, maybe she’d pushed her bluffing skills a bit far. “Fine.” She threw her hands up in the air as if in surrender. “We could have it all, Maxim. We could rule Russia and bring it back to a state of purity. We could make our country the greatest nation in the world from the inside out. But if you want to kill me here and now and throw all of that away?” She glared at him. “You’re the ultimate fool, and I’m ashamed I gave you so much credit.”
Ivanov didn’t speak, only searched her face as if reading her mind. Then he lowered the gun and motioned for her to come toward him. He held out his empty hand to her.
He believes me! Anya flashed him her biggest smile yet and reached for his hand. She had to cross in front of him to grab it. Now, Ryan.
But as Ivanov tucked her into his side, and his alcohol and sweat scent filled her nostrils, she turned to find Ryan still standing nonchalantly in front of them, as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
His gaze stayed on Ivanov, hard as stone now. He wouldn’t look at her. Her heart slipped around inside her chest as if it had come unhinged. He didn’t really believe her lies, did he?
She wanted desperately to go to him. To say his name. Anything to get him to look at her so she could wink at him. Let him know she was lying in order to buy both of them time and confuse Ivanov. He’d lowered the gun. If she could just get it away from him…
Ivanov’s hand closed over her upper arm, tightening into a vise grip. He hugged her forcibly against his side. “You will prove your loyalty, Czarevna, by doing everything I say.” He raised the gun once more. This time, the black barrel pointed at Ryan’s chest. “But I will be the one to shoot this spy.”
Her body moved before her brain registered Ivanov pressing the trigger. She grabbed his hand, but it was too late.
The gun fired. Ryan’s body jerked and spun to the right.
As Anya screamed his name, he went down.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Son of a bitch, that hurt.
Ryan lay on his stomach on the floor of the ruined bathroom, blood running across the concrete in a steady flow underneath him. He ignored it, keeping his eyes closed and playing possum, in hopes Ivanov would think he was mortally wounded. That he was no longer in the game. No longer an issue.
The bullet had struck between his right shoulder and collarbone, and damn it all to hell, the pain was brutal. He’d spun to the right trying to avoid it, and as luck would have it, it missed his chest. Anya was partially to thank for that. She never stopped surprising him. One minute she was pretending she was double-crossing him. The next, she was attacking Ivanov to save his ass.
Definitely keeping her away from Conrad. If I don’t, he’ll recruit her for his spy army.
The random, untimely thought almost made him laugh. He tamped down the temptation, refocusing on the pain to clear his head. Losing a little blood was no reason to get delirious.
His quick reflexes had landed him a prize. As he’d twisted away from Ivanov and Anya, he’d drawn the gun from his waistband with his right hand, and slid it around to his midsection before belly flopping to the floor. Now, as he pretended to be dead, the gun dug uncomfortably into his stomach. He’d love to roll over, point the thing at Ivanov’s head, and pull the trigger, but he only had two bullets. His right arm—his shooting arm—was out of commission, folded under him and useless from the wound. He was trained to shoot with either hand, but even after constant drills at the range, his left was less precise.
With Anya still in danger of getting between him and Ivanov, now was no time for imprecision.
Behind him, she was screaming at Ivanov in a mixture of English and Russian. She must have been giving him hell with her fists, and maybe feet, because Ryan heard the sound of punches and grunts from Ivanov. Finally, his deep voice boomed off the bathroom’s tile w
alls as he told her shut up in Russian. The command was followed by the distinct sound of his hand hitting her flesh.
Ryan ground his teeth. Anger like he’d never experienced roared through him. Every atom in his body demanded he get up and beat the hell out of Russia’s president, but logic laughed at the idea. No matter how much he wanted to kill Ivanov, the only thing he’d end up doing was killing himself. The way to save Anya was to play dead.
So he played dead.
Anya’s screaming didn’t subside after Ivanov’s hit. If anything, she was more belligerent, and once again, Ryan found himself wanting to laugh. It was so not funny, but she was incredible, so alive and unafraid of anything. She seemed to be making up Russian curse words he’d never heard before. His heart swelled with pride. He’d never known a woman like her. Even spies couldn’t hold a candle to her fearlessness and grit.
He cracked one eye, stealing a glance at the mirror across from him. Ivanov had pushed Anya up against the wall, and all Ryan could see was the back of the man’s head and his bulky shoulders. Was he still holding the gun? Was Anya’s distraction enough to warrant Ryan freeing his weapon and taking the best shot he could?
Where was Andreev? Ivanov’s bodyguards? There had to be more people than just the president running around down here. They had to have heard the gun shot.
Patience. He needed more intel before he took a shot at Ivanov. There was still a chance he could rescue Anya and her grandmother, and get all of them out of Moscow without killing anyone. Sure the odds were equal to a snowball’s chance in hell, but if there was any possible way to keep from bringing even more shit down on his and Anya’s heads, he had to take it.
Slap! Ivanov struck Anya again and Ryan cringed. This time, she fell silent, and it took every bit of willpower he possessed not to come off the floor and tackle the son of a bitch. In the mirror, he saw Ivanov grab her and shove her through the fake armoire into the hidden door.
The room fell silent and Ryan drew in a steadying breath.
Ivanov would be back. Or he would send one of his minions to make sure Ryan was dead, and if he wasn’t, put a second bullet in him, this one in his head.
Easing off the floor, he gritted his teeth against the pain radiating through his chest and grabbed the gun with his left hand. Blood ran down his right arm, down his chest. His shirt, already soaked, stuck to his skin.
The room swam before he locked his knees and blinked away the fuzziness. He stood immobile, opening up all his senses, and tuning out the pain. He should find a way to stop the bleeding, but there wasn’t time to do any major first aid, and he didn’t want to set down the gun in order to pull a shirt out of the rucksack.
He took two steps toward the door, realized he was leaving a bloody trail, and stopped short. Damn, that was a lot of blood, no matter how much he wanted to deny it. Definitely had to do something to stop it.
Since his right arm and hand were useless, he had no choice but to set down the gun and root through the sack with his left. There on his knees, he found a cotton shirt and a wool cap and jammed both under his shirt, one in front over his pectoral and one in back over the bullet’s exit wound. Then he wrapped his belt around his upper chest to help secure the padding, struggling and swearing under his breath at his lack of dexterity with his left hand. Every few seconds, he stopped to listen, and watch the armoire’s doorway. No one came back for him.
Sweating and dizzy from the exertion, he managed to get on his feet a few minutes later, gun in hand, and staggered through the armoire’s passageway.
The change in décor was startling. A night and day difference. Ryan stepped from the cold, abandoned bathroom into a brightly lit, modern facility that mimicked the beautiful Russian subway system. High archways, marble tiles, and rail tracks that ran west from the heart of Moscow, east to the airport.
This was what Anya had told him about. A completely new bunker upgraded and equipped like a miniature Kremlin. Ivanov’s secret quarters. The lab. The computer launchers for the nuclear weapons.
Natasha Romanov Radzoya must be here.
Ryan looked right, then left. No sign of Anya or Ivanov. No sign of any train either. He’d have to walk.
Would Ivanov take Anya back to the Kremlin or deeper into the modern side of the bunker?
Before he could curse himself for leaving his tablet in the abandoned computer room behind them, a scream echoed down the corridor from the east.
Anya.
Forget walking. It was time to run.
Chapter Forty
Ryan’s dead. Anya’s mind reeled against the knowledge, but she’d seen the bullet strike him in the chest. Saw him fall. Saw the gushing blood and how still he’d lain on the bathroom floor.
As she spit her own blood out of her mouth—the split lip Ivanov had given her was already swelling—she knew she could have been an ER doctor, trained in saving gunshot victims, and she still couldn’t have saved Ryan from bleeding out in an abandoned bunker under the Kremlin.
Ivanov shoved her into a chair. They’d entered his modern computer command center surrounded by glass, the sliding door behind them making a sucking sound as it sealed them in. The room looked similar to some of the university classrooms Anya had studied in. Tiered seats in a half-circular layout. Only these seats boasted individual high-tech computers, monitors, and printers, and the only person sitting at a computer was Andreev.
His head was bandaged. She should have felt relieved she hadn’t killed him. Instead she felt the opposite. She wished she had killed him. An awful, but nevertheless truthful fact.
An assortment of flat screens hung on the far wall, two Russian flags on either side. Andreev wore a headset and pecked at keys on the keyboard under his fingertips. Every few seconds, he glanced up at the monitors, went back to his pecking. He sneered at her once, and then ignored her.
A dozen different images played out before them on the screens. Live shots of Moscow, the subway station, and various buildings around the Kremlin. Images of other countries’ capitals as well. Anya recognized London, Paris, and Washington D.C.
The game was up. She should have been worried, but she couldn’t dredge up the emotional energy. She was numb. She’d played her last card, trying to convince Ivanov she was on his side, and it had failed. She wanted to cry. For Ryan, for Grams. For all of them.
But she wasn’t a crier.
Sitting up straight, she willed the numbness to fill her body like she’d done when her parents had been killed. It was time to end the game. “What are we doing here?”
Ivanov strutted over to the wall of screens, put his hands on his waist and studied them. He was wearing his military uniform, looking every bit the part of the crazy leader surveying the war field. “America is responsible for the terrorist bombings in the subway. We must retaliate.”
“America?” Anya couldn’t help snorting. God, she was tired. “Americans didn’t bomb anything. The Chechens did. Ryan told me.”
Ivanov whipped his head around to stare at her for a moment, as if the idea she knew anything about politics and terrorists was shocking. Then he narrowed his eyes, letting her know he didn’t appreciate her second-guessing him, throwing Ryan, and his opinion, in his face.
He went back to studying the board as Andreev continued manipulating images on the screens. “The Americans have backed the Chechens and other militia groups since the fall of the Soviet Union in an attempt to weaken Russia. My predecessors may have ignored such blatant terrorism but I will not. How dare Pennington and Morrow come here under the guise of being allies while they are helping my enemies destroy my homeland? Any country that backs terrorism on Russian soil will be dealt with and dealt with harshly.”
Downtown Manhattan appeared on a screen next to the one showing the White House. On the other side, a US naval base appeared. Anya surged out of the chair, no longer able to stay numb. “You’re going to start a war with America over a subway bombing? Are you crazy?”
Stupid question. Of cou
rse he was crazy. “You can’t do that. Innocent people will be killed, both here and in America. Don’t you understand? You’re starting a war you can’t win.”
He whirled on her, thumped a fist on a nearby desk. “I will win. I will destroy every last American. All I need is the code to override your father’s password.”
The monster of her dreams surfaced behind his eyes. “What are you talking about?” she whispered. “What does my father have to do with this?”
Something off to the left caught Ivanov’s attention. “Ah, here we are.”
In the hall, Inga appeared. With her was an older woman, bowed over at the waist and barely shuffling along. Inga seemed to be supporting her. The woman’s gray hair stuck out in all directions, and she appeared dirty and unkempt. As the room’s security door slid open with a soft whoosh, Anya’s heart dropped to her knees.
Grams.
“Oh my God.” She ran and caught her grandmother’s arm as Natasha and Inga cleared the threshold. “Grams!”
Natasha raised her head and looked Anya in the eye. Bruises covered her face and Anya couldn’t stop the small whimper of distress that passed her lips as she hugged her grandmother to her, careful not to squeeze too hard.
With Inga’s help, they guided Natasha to a chair. “Anya.” Natasha patted her cheek and smiled at her, and Anya’s heart warmed. Grams was in horrible shape, but she was alive. I never should have given up on her.
“I’m so sorry,” Anya said, holding her grandmother’s hand. “I’m going to get you out of here. I promise.”
“You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.” Ivanov stood behind her, the gun again in his hand.
Grabbing Anya, he spun her away from Natasha and Inga, and pressed the barrel of the gun to her temple. “Tell me the code, Natasha, or your precious granddaughter dies here and now.”
Natasha’s smile fell. Her eyes went cold, hard, but Anya sensed her hesitancy to tell Ivanov what he wanted to know. Grams would never put Anya’s life in danger, so the code had to be something that carried enormous consequences. It had to be the one thing that would start the war with America. “Don’t tell him, Grams. Whatever the code is, don’t tell him.”