Take Me for a Ride

by Karen Kendall

  “Okay, enough already,” he muttered.

  Mikhail grinned at him and spoke Russian to Ivan, who backed off. “We make apologies that you have bad experience in Moscow, eh? Most Russians, we very, how you say? Hospitable, yes?” He blithely ignored the fact that Americans weren’t at all popular in his country.

  But Eric and Natalie nodded, and they all said their good-byes. He took her hand and held tightly to it as they walked away, with no thoughts whatsoever of trying to disengage. Instead, he wanted with every fiber of his being to protect her from harm.

  “What I don’t understand,” he said, “is why that guy would be taking photos of us one second, and two other guys try to grab you the next second.”

  “You think they’re related incidents?” she asked.

  “No, I don’t. That’s what’s bothering me. We’re being tracked by two different people or organizations, and I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.”

  Twenty-two

  “Kelso wishes to know when the wedding is,” Liam said to Avy when he looked up from his iPhone.

  “Why is my boss e-mailing you? Especially when I haven’t heard from him in at least a week.”

  “You know Kelso and I are old chums, my love. And you’re frightfully competent at your job, so why should he feel the need to e-mail you?”

  Avy twisted her long brown hair into a knot on her head and secured it with a pencil. Then she fixed her fiancé with an implacable stare. “Don’t tell me. It’s Kelso who’s put you up to this whole kidnapping thing.”

  Liam deliberately focused on the screen of the iPhone and began to whistle. When he looked up, Avy was stepping out of her panties and twirling them around on her index finger. “Liam? Cutie-pie? If you’d like to have sex with me anytime in the next five years, you’re going to put down the crackberry and tell me exactly how this whole plot came about and whether or not my boss is behind it.” She blew him a kiss. “ ’ Kay?”

  Before he could respond, the panties hit him in the mouth.

  He stared at her long, tanned, muscular legs. She wore high-heeled black pumps, a black leather miniskirt, and a tailored jacket.

  Liam licked his lips and meekly put down the iPhone. “Where would you like me to start?”

  Avy sat down in a straight-backed chair that faced him, smiled sweetly, and pulled a classic Sharon Stone maneuver before crossing her legs.

  Liam’s eyes glazed over. “Right. How about if I start at the beginning, then, my love?”

  She nodded.

  “A couple of days ago, Kelso got in touch. He told me that ARTemis is working on tracking down a very valuable necklace that used to belong to Catherine the Great. This necklace was stolen from a restoration specialist in Manhattan, and the specialist’s insurer had engaged your red-haired colleague to find it.”

  “McManWhore,” Avy said, nodding.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Just a nickname we gave him. He’s quite the ladies’ man. I’m actually amazed that he’s back on the job this soon. He took quite a beating recently.”

  “Ah. Well, at any rate, ARTemis got a second call, this one from an old gentleman in Moscow who, quite curiously, claims that the same necklace was stolen from his safe. And he, too, would like to engage ARTemis to hunt it down.”

  “Kelso smelled a rat,” said Avy.

  “Precisely. The old man’s accent held traces of German, even though he professed to be Russian, and so our Kelso toddled off to do a spot of research. He found that there’ve been rumors swirling around this Oleg Litsky for years, the gist of which are that he’s a Nazi war criminal with the blood of hundreds on his hands.”

  “Knowing Kelso, he tapped into his vast network of international contacts.” Avy uncrossed and recrossed her legs, which resulted in great distraction for poor Liam. He quite lost the thread of his narrative.

  “Liam!”

  “Yes, my love?”

  “Focus.”

  “Oh, but I was, my darling.” He smirked evilly.

  She glowered at him.

  “Right. Kelso has indeed poked around and substantiated the rumors. Which leads us to right here and right now. You and I, my sweet, are about to pay Litsky a formal visit to discuss just what ARTemis can do for him.”

  “Oh, we are? How professional of us.”

  “Indeed.” He beamed at her. “Though you might wish to put those back on.” He pointed at the panties, which lay on the floor.

  “You think?”

  “I think.” Liam nodded. “Unless you aim to give the gentleman a heart attack.”

  “And just how are we going to get him out of his house, Liam?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.” Liam’s expression changed to one of gravity, even sorrow. “Our poor Mr. Litsky, you see, is eighty-two years old, and at that age, almost any medical emergency can arise. One will, thanks to the syringe in my pocket. Or, come to think of it, maybe you should leave your panties here?”

  “I don’t think so. What if he takes Viagra and gets a boner instead of a heart attack?”

  “I should not like that,” Liam said.

  “Funny; me, neither. Let’s use the syringe.”

  “Quite so. You and I will then call an ‘ambulance’ immediately, and he will leave his home on a stretcher. The ambulance will go not to the hospital, however, but directly to a small airfield.”

  “So we’re going to airlift him out of there?”

  Liam’s lips twitched, and all sorrow dissipated from his aristocratic features. “Oh, not exactly, my love. Not exactly.”

  “Tell you what,” said Avy. “You can fill me in on the details later, after you assure me that you understand something very clearly.”

  “And what might that be, my sweet?”

  She gritted her teeth. “The next time you make plans involving me and my company with my boss behind my back, I will break every bone in your high-handed, low-minded, aristocratic body. And then I will turn you over to my U.S. Marshal dad, who has definitely not given up his search for us and could be in Moscow as we speak. Do you read me?”

  “Yes, Commander Hunt, I do. Like a very sexy book.”

  Twenty-three

  Moscow State University was a little way outside the city, in an area called Sparrow Hills, or Vorobyovy gory. The university was housed in a massive, thirty-six-story Stalinist-Gothic building that had been completed in 1959.

  After several evasive maneuvers to lose the men tailing them, Tatyana and the colonel succeeded and arrived at the university. There they found the history department and knocked on the office door of her old friend Professor Dmitri Prokofiev. A gaunt, stoop-shouldered man with a thin mop of gray hair, he embraced Tatyana warmly and shook hands with Colonel Blakely.

  “Tell me, Ted, what the professor looks like after all these years,” Tatyana said. “He’s thin; I can feel that. And”—she chuckled—“you smell of pickled herring, Dmitri.”

  He kissed her cheeks. “But yes, my favorite cologne.”

  “What does he look like?” Ted mused. “Well, it all depends on whether or not he’s an old flame.”

  “Yes,” claimed Dmitri.

  “No, no,” Tatyana said, feeling herself blush like a schoolgirl.

  “Well,” said the colonel. “This rival of mine, this Dmitri character—you must understand that he has only one tooth left in his mouth, and a rotten one at that.”

  “Eh?” Dmitri said, clearly startled.

  “He’s bald as an egg, too . . . and pulls his pants up to his armpits.”

  The professor burst out laughing. “This is not true, my dear Tatyana!”

  “Ted!” She reached out, found the colonel’s arm, and lightly smacked it.

  “Well, I’m just trying to make sure you don’t ditch me for him,” Blakely teased her.

  “Dmitri, pay no attention to him. You tell me what you look like. All right?”

  “Yes, yes, much better. I am, of course, six and a half feet tall, with full head of
yellow hair, square jaw, many very white teeth. I have the big shoulders, yes? And the wash-machine stomach. All the women in Moscow, they desire me.”

  “You’re filthy liars, both of you!” Tatyana said as the professor guided her to a chair. The two men laughed.

  They chatted about the trip, about the changes in Moscow since she’d left, and about current events. Then a lull came in the conversation, and Tatyana said, “I need to show you something, Dmitri. I need your help.”

  “Of course.”

  She nodded at Ted, and he pulled the strange key from his pocket. Especially since they were being followed, they hadn’t wanted to risk her purse being stolen. The necklace was locked in the hotel’s main safe.

  Ted handed the key to Dmitri, who found his reading glasses on his desk, put them on, and then bent to examine it. “It appears to be some sort of safety-deposit-box key,” he said.

  “Yes, but do you have any idea which bank it’s from?”

  Dmitri peered at it again and pursed his lips, turning it over in his hands. He clucked softly like a Slavic hen, then whistled. He then clucked again as he turned to his computer and pulled up the Internet. He typed something in using Cyrillic letters and waited for a moment. He nodded.

  Smiling, Dmitri turned his monitor so that Ted could see it. Ted compared the logo on the screen to the one on the key. “I think you may be right. It looks like part of the SovBank design.”

  “Is medium to big bank; three locations in Moscow,” Dmitri said, tapping the addresses noted on the screen.

  “Which location should we go to?”

  “Central,” said Dmitri decisively. “Will have boxes at central, most likely. Bolshaya Dmitrovka Street.” He frowned. “But you will not be allowed access without proper identification, you know this? Even with key.”

  Ted leaned back and crossed his foot over the opposite knee. “Ah, but this is where years of government bureaucracy come in handy. All we need is a convincing-looking power of attorney.”

  “Dmitri, do you know of an attorney who could help us?”

  The professor looked disapproving. “Tatyana, this is not ethical.”

  “I understand your reluctance,” she said. “But was it ethical of that Nazi officer to shoot my father in front of his wife and children? Was it ethical of the officer to steal our belongings?” Her voice rose. “Was it ethical, Dmitri, for my mother to be violated or for her to starve to death in a concentration camp?”

  She lapsed into Russian, the words tumbling from her now-trembling mouth. “Don’t talk to me about the ethics of this!”

  “But, Tatyana, the box may not be that officer’s. You understand? He perhaps sold the necklace to someone else.”

  “I don’t care,” she said bitterly. “I have to look.”

  “He is probably living under assumed name. You cannot get blank power of attorney. You see?”

  Tears from her impaired old eyes began to pour down her face. “Help me, Dmitri,” she begged. “Please. You know it is the right thing to do, even if the methods are wrong.”

  He stood, went to her, and took her hands. “Is okay, Tatyana. Is more simple than you think, hmm?”

  “Is it? What can we do?”

  He cast a speaking glance at Ted and rubbed his thumb against his index and middle fingers.

  Light dawned across Ted’s face. “Of course,” he said. “Tatyana, we don’t need a forged power of attorney. All we need is cold, hard cash delivered to a susceptible bank employee.”

  “Everyone,” Dmitri said, a trifle embarrassed, “take the bribe in Moscow.”

  Natalie clung to Eric’s hand, acutely conscious of each step she took on solid ground. There was nothing like being grabbed by a complete stranger and tossed around like a sack of oranges to make one appreciate liberty and autonomy.

  What frightened her was how easy it had been for the thug to snatch an adult woman off the street. He’d stolen her as easily as someone else might pocket a package of beef in the grocery store, and God alone knew what he might have done to her.

  She felt jittery, as if she’d just inhaled a tank of helium. She knew it was still adrenaline from the incident coursing through her system, but she literally feared that if she let go of Eric’s hand, her body might defy gravity and rise up into the clouds like a woman-shaped balloon.

  “So you think two different people are after us?” she asked. “Obviously our Russian Mafiya friends are, but who else?”

  Eric’s expression was taut and grim, his eyes shuttered. He shook his head. “Like I said, I don’t know. But what happened back there was way too damned close for comfort. I want you to stay in the hotel from now on.”

  She tried to pull her hand out of his, but he’d laced their fingers together, and he refused to loosen his grip. If anything, he tightened it. “Stay in the hotel? And not find my grandmother or see anything of Moscow? You’ve got to be kidding me, Eric.”

  He stopped and turned to face her. “Do I look like I’m kidding?”

  His eyes glittered an icy, sapphire-saturated blue. You could break rocks on that jaw and those cheekbones. The area just around his sensual, mocking mouth had turned white with rage. He looked intimidating, dangerous, and vengeful.

  She shivered, and it hit her with full force that she did not know who this man was, not at all. He showed her the face that he wanted her to see. He turned charm on and off like a tap. But what was behind the charm and the sensuous sexual appetite? Did he look like he was kidding? No. No, he most certainly did not.

  “Eric,” she said carefully, “I’m not going to stay locked in a room for the next few days. That is not on my agenda.”

  He dropped her hand and took her by the shoulders, his fingers digging painfully into her flesh. “Is it on your agenda to be kidnapped? Is it on your friggin’ agenda to be killed? Which part of what happened back there do you not understand, Natalie? Huh?”

  “You are hurting me,” she said in cold, clear tones.

  He released her immediately, but his furious face was still inches from hers.

  “Why are you angry?” she demanded. “And at me? Do you think I put on a sandwich board that said, ‘At tention, thugs, please kidnap me!’ Well, I didn’t. So back off, buddy.”

  He stood there staring at her for a long moment. Then he scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m sorry. I’m not angry with you, babe. I’m angry with myself. For leaving you at risk and unprotected like that.”

  “Eric—”

  “When I looked across the street and that guy had you, I dunno, Natalie. I freaked. For the first time in my life, I was . . . scared. No, scratch that—I was heart-in-my-throat terrified. Beyond all reason.”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “No. No, it’s not okay. I need to tell you this. Look, I don’t do fear. A guy like me, it’s not part of my vocabulary. You page to the F in the McDougal index, kiddo, and you’ll see maybe three words: fast, fuck, and fun. But fear? No way.”

  “I get it.”

  “No, you don’t.” Eric looked at her and shook his head. “Because I don’t get it. All I know is it made me mad to be afraid. But none of any of this is your fault. So again, I’m sorry.”

  He looked so miserable that she stood on tiptoe, reached up, and kissed him. He wrapped his arms around her and held her close, so close that she could barely breathe.

  “I would have killed that man,” he said, in bemused tones.

  “What?”

  “The driver. I would have torn open his throat without a second thought.” He drank deeply of the cold, clear air as if to cleanse himself. Then he shook his head.

  “It was self-defense, Eric. A normal response to being attacked.” She’d laid her head on his chest, and his heart beat against her ear.

  “No. This wasn’t about self-defense, Natalie. I’m not sure exactly what it was about, but it was something primal. Something that came from a deep, dark place that I don’t think I want to visit again anytime soon.”

>   Eric took her hand in his once again and held on a little too tight.

  But Natalie liked it. “I don’t care what you say, Eric McDougal. You just saved my life—and that makes you a hero.”

  An expression of deep discomfort crossed his face. “Don’t call me that.”

  “I will,” Natalie said mulishly. “I will.”

  Twenty-four

  McDougal hated authority almost as much as he hated fear, but it was easier to hate authority because it was always external. Fear came from inside, from some hidden, filthy, primordial place in the bowels. Authority, however, usually came from an open and irritating location: the mouth of a boss.

  Unfortunately, he had no choice now but to check in with Avy. He’d drop dead before asking for help on his own account, but today’s incident with Natalie had illustrated for him in full color that he had to ask for help in order to protect her. He could risk his own life guilt free, but not hers.

  Calling Avy was akin to shrinking his balls in a hot dryer, but it would soothe his own fears for Natalie’s safety, so he’d suck it up. In the great scheme of things, Natalie’s life was more important than his own pride.

  Shocking, but true.

  Once they were back at the hotel, McDougal told Natalie that he had to make a private business call and stepped out of the room. He grimaced and cracked his neck before hitting the speed-dial number for his boss. He didn’t dislike Avy, exactly . . . but there was the inevitable head butting between two highly intelligent, rebellious, and competitive personalities.

  Not to mention the perplexing fact that Avy was, and always had been, utterly impervious to both his looks and his charm. And, okay, maybe the fact that she’d out-earned him for the past couple of years got under his skin a little bit.

  Avy was like another bossy, annoying older sister, and he didn’t relish explaining what was going on to her.

  “McManWhore,” she said, by way of a greeting. “What’s up? How’s the noggin?”

  He had been jumped and knocked unconscious recently by one of their own people, a rogue agent who was now in jail awaiting trial. “My head’s as hard as they come, Avy. You know that.”