I’m not the kind of girl to just give up, so I tried to pull myself together. The whole reason I was out there, I reminded myself, was because I thought Alaric was going to kill me. So if I did die out there—which was looking and feeling much more likely with every passing second—at least I’d done it under my own terms.
And also, I thought smugly, he would probably never know that I had died out there in a boat, and so maybe I would at least have the small victory of him thinking I had gotten away.
Time passed, and it got hotter and hotter. I dug through the contents of the boat and found a small shelter, which killed some amount of time while I figured out how to set it up. I sat under it for a moment and was overtaken by panic again. So I started digging through the supplies and found a pair of binoculars, a first-aid kit, a flashlight, and a fire extinguisher.
Great.
I took out the binoculars and brought them to my eyes to scan the horizon. I moved in a slow circle even though I thought things were hopeless. And sure enough they—
I squinted.
Far, far away, though I would never be able to say how far because the distance were so distorted at sea, I saw a speck of slightly darker gray-blue than the water. The water and sky blended and made me dizzy as I stared at it, trying to determine what it was, and as it stayed steady, with sharp angles that could not be anything but rock or metal, my heart went sailing to my throat and then back down to my feet.
It was something.
And I could get to it.
But what was it?
Chapter Nineteen
Alaric
The day on the water had been nice. Sailing had always calmed me, and I hardly ever did it. It was a perfect day on the water, Natalia was enjoying herself, and it was almost possible to pretend that I had some other kind of life: a wife, a family, a boat to sail on, and nothing dark lurking in every corner of my world.
I could tell that Eric was brooding about something. He had his eyes on Natalia with a strange light behind them. I hadn’t told him anything about her—I hadn’t even told him why he was there yet, but Eric was no fool. We weren’t the kind of friends who visited each other for a nice day of sailing and to introduce our girlfriends. If we summoned each other, there was business on the table, and I had, by rights, only one kind of business with Eric: the favor he owed me.
He didn’t know about Kyril, but he knew of Kyril, and in our line of work, rumors didn’t travel fast but they did travel. I wondered, as he looked at Natalia with his eyes half-closed, as though she were a woman he had met once and couldn’t place.
I dismissed it as paranoia; I needed Eric’s favor if I wanted to find out if Natalia was pregnant and to have our baby delivered with discretion. There could be hundreds of reasons why I might do that, and Eric was my choice precisely because he owed it to me not to ask questions.
“I’m going to bed,” Natalia announced early in the evening. She was genuinely tired, which only added confirmation to my suspicions. I took her to bed and returned to talk to Eric.
Eric cleared his throat and leaned forward to set his drink down. “Pretty girl,” he said.
It was Eric’s way of saying a lot in few words. I set my own drink down and rolled an ice cube in my mouth.
“Tell me why I’m here, mate.”
I looked out at the dark blue of the ocean. “I need a favor.”
Eric took a sip of his whiskey and cleared his throat again. “I got that, mate. What I don’t understand is what you’re spending your credit on, exactly.”
I was silent.
“Tell me it isn’t her.”
“You know it is.”
He cracked an ice cube. “Mate, look. You know you’ve got whatever you want coming from me... but it’s... you can take care of this kind of thing through the mail.”
“That’s not what I want.”
Eric let his head fall back, looking up at the stars. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
It’s what I was afraid of, too. But I decided not to say anything.
“Rumors are going around, mate,” Eric said after a long pause.
“About?” I asked sullenly. It couldn’t have been Natalia; no one knew about her being here. “If it’s about her, I know where they came from.”
“Not about her. About some Lucy, in a Stoney Creek Mental Health Facility.”
My heart skipped a beat—and that’s not something that happened to me. Not because I cared about Lucy, but because Lucy was one step closer to Natalia. One step too close.
“What’s the rumor?”
Eric swirled his whiskey. “There’s a rumor that this girl Lucy is really somebody else.”
I turned sharply to him. “And who would that be?”
Eric knew he was on to something. “People are saying...” he cleared his throat again, “It’s a strange thing that someone like Alaric Vitkus is paying for a mentally ill patient in a mental ward. I don’t think it’s too long before they start thinking of all the people it could be. Before someone gets around wondering if it could be... I don’t know... that long-lost daughter of Kyril Karkarov’s.”
“She’s dead,” I said bitterly. “Lucy is a favor.”
“To who?”
“I don’t kiss and tell, you know that.”
Eric laughed lightly.
“That Karkarov girl. What was her name?”
I glared at him. Something in my expression must have frightened him, because he held up his hands in mock surrender. “Look, mate, you got no problem coming from me, okay? I don’t know any Natalia, I never met any Natalia, and I don’t want one fucking thing to do with any Natalia, Karkarov or otherwise. Every Natalia I ever met was bad news. But look, man... you’re putting me in a bad place asking me for this favor.”
He was right. And I’d never thought of it, not even for a moment.
Eric cleared his throat. “Look. The guy I knew—the guy we all know—wouldn’t be playing this game. How long you think it’ll take for someone to put two and two together? They’re gonna go after that Lucy girl, and when they carve her eyes out and they don’t work, they’re not just gonna go home and say, oh well. And if Lucy knows, knew, or has even thought about knowing some Natalia in her whole life, she’s gonna say so by the time they’re done with her. So you tell me. Is Lucy going to know a girl named Natalia?”
I looked at my drink. “Lucy is unrelated.”
Eric made a derisive sound with his nose. “Right.”
“I did the wrong thing, asking you here,” I said. “You’re right, it puts you in a bad position.”
“You’re fucking right it does.”
“I’ll pay you.”
Eric sniffed again. “Not enough money even in your bank accounts, mate, for the trouble you’re causing me. And anyway, that’s not the thing.” He pointed at me, pouring more whiskey into his glass. “The thing that troubles me, mate, is that you didn’t even think about that, and it’s more obvious than Kim Kardashian’s ass. And now I get here, and you’re playing Beach House Barbie with Natalia Karkarov, and you want me to what—?”
“It’s not your business. You owe me a favor and I’m cashing in on it.”
“You’re overdrawn, mate.”
“Then go home tomorrow. Have Randy take you home.”
He shook his head.
“See, this is what I’m talking about,” Eric said after a pause.
“Save it,” I interrupted.
“No, no, no. No. I won’t save it. You need to hear it. This is just the beginning, mate. You’re using up favors, and it won’t be me, mate, but eventually you’re not going to have any left, and... look, she’s a pretty little number, I’d throw one into her—”
I reacted, without thinking, lunging at him and gripping him by the neck. I hadn’t lost control in twenty years, since I was first trained as a dark ops soldier, and now I was ready to crush the throat of an ally—a loose ally, but an ally nonetheless. It was unprofessional, weak, terrifying, and yet I co
uldn’t help myself. “Never. Say anything like that again.”
Eric gripped my wrist and squeezed hard, just to let me know he wasn’t going down without a fight. “Hey hey hey. Okay. See... Alaric, listen, man—” He grunted and pushed my arm down, freeing himself from my grip, which I relinquished, my lack of control just dawning on me. “This is the kind of thing I’m talking about,” he said. He pointed at the ground. “Right here.”
I glared at him.
“Mate. You’ve made lot of enemies in your lifetime. A lot more enemies than you have friends. You don’t think that as soon as word gets out that there’s something Alaric Vitkus can be broken by, they aren’t coming after you? I know this girl is beautiful, I know you’ve got some romantic idea in your head that you can keep all that a secret. But you can’t. And sooner or later, someone is going to find out about her.”
I turned and stared out at the water, my jaw rigid. Eric was looking at me imploringly.
Eric was the closest thing I had to a friend in the world, I realized.
“You want my advice, mate?”
“Not really.”
Eric sighed.
“Get rid of her. Get rid of Lucy. Get rid of her... at least get rid of the baby.”
I turned to Eric. He was right, of course. It’s the same advice I would have given him had the situation been reversed.
But I couldn’t follow it. My mind could keep up with the game: Natalia was dangerous to me, her friend Lucy needed to be liquidated, and if Natalia was pregnant, I was up shit creek.
The old me would have called someone to take care of Lucy weeks ago.
The old me would have stashed Natalia Karkarov somewhere off the map and put the fear of God into her to stay put and silent.
Fuck Eric.
“Do what I asked,” I told him. “Then we’re even.”
Eric squinted at me, his expression searing. He was looking at me the way cats look at some of their few predators, when they see a weakness. The look made me hate him, but I knew he was still good for his word—and only that much.
“Your call, mate. I’ll examine her and work up a plan A and plan B, but you’re on your own for everything else. I was never here.” He threw back the rest of his whiskey. “And I’m not coming back.”
Eric turned and walked toward the guest house. He didn’t know where I lived, and he knew better than to tell anyone who he was going to see. But he was right: if any of these secrets leaked, and he was discovered, I’d put him in the very unenviable position of having information that people wanted.
I didn’t expect Eric to wait long enough to find out how someone would get it out of him. He knew how things worked and he had a very pretty face. He wasn’t going to offer it to anyone, but if someone came knocking, he was going to hand them the keys to the safe.
Which meant Lucy was, indeed, a very loose end.
I had another whiskey, while I pondered my dilemma. I came to a decision—and not one I felt good about, but it seemed that fewer and fewer decisions were as cut and dry as they had been before I had entangled myself with Natalia.
I walked up the stairwell, lost in my own thoughts—had I not been, I would have seen something, noticed the rigid black in the moving gray of the water.
But I didn’t.
Her room was empty. I had wanted to crawl into bed with her, to bring back the feeling from earlier in the day, however false it might have been. I’d let her fall asleep in my arms on many nights after using her body relentlessly, but now I wanted to sleep beside her, to remain there all night, to ease my conscience by absorbing her scent and the heat of her body.
Disappointment gripped me first when I saw that her bed was empty.
I looked on the balcony, then, slowly and calmly at first, but with mounting panic, I moved swiftly through the house, my training turning on like switches with each room I searched and found empty. My stomach was cold, I looked menacingly at the guest house, but I resisted the urge to storm into Eric’s room.
But as every place I looked turned up empty, I felt a sensation brewing in my chest that was completely unfamiliar. It rose up, from my chest through my head, and it blinded me slowly, a rising curtain. Drowning out my thoughts, filling me with a very particular kind of rage.
And then I snapped.
I remember going to Eric’s villa in disjointed segments: loading a gun, the snap of the cartridge. The cool of the plants in the small garden. The light in the window. His face staring sullenly at the wall, bringing a whiskey to his mouth. The barrel against his temple, his eyes black with fear, my own voice screaming, “Where is she?”
Blood dripping between his fingers.
Another gun, this one pointed at me.
“You’ve lost your fucking mind, mate.”
Sweat dripping from Eric’s temple.
And then descending, down to the beach, the door to the boathouse flinging open with a clatter.
The gray, unlit hollow where the lifeboat should have been.
Blackness. Rage, eating through it in sparkling squares that spread across my field of vision.
A screen, switches flipping, my cold and calculating mind taking over. A soldier’s mind: there is a task, complete it.
Locate Natalia Karkarov.
A red blip, the lifeboat locater blinking on the screen, north of the island. Going nowhere.
Wind speed, current charts, calculations.
Target would not be going anywhere. The soldier’s mind closed as thoughts irrelevant to the mission attempted to crowd in: Where was she going? Why?
The soldier’s mind was steering the boat.
The sailor’s mind was sailing at night, no lights, only radar.
The soldier’s eyes on the red blip of the lifeboat, and only deep beneath many layers of tissue and cold, calculating muscle reflex, was there the tiniest, beating sentiment:
Please, let the red blip contain a live Natalia.
Chapter Twenty
Natalia
There was nowhere to go.
As he approached, the shape and size of the sailboat—sails falling down at that moment—reached my eyes. And even that far away, I recognized Alaric’s swift grace in the gray figure that hopped around on the deck. He stood, and seemed to be staring in my direction.
“Oh, God,” I whispered. “Oh God, oh God.”
I turned around and then the other way, making the boat shift side to side. Could he see me? Did he see me? Where could I go?
The dull roar of the boat motor skipped across the water toward me. I looked around again. There was nowhere to go. The boat was advancing, Alaric’s figure, solid and angry-looking even at this distance at the helm. The boat was pointed right toward me.
My stomach dropped. The boat was fast; there was no doubt he was coming toward me.
No doubt he had plans to kill me.
I shrugged off the life vest and looked at the water. Maybe he hadn’t seen me. Maybe I could make it look like the boat had capsized, and I was gone.
And then what?
I didn’t know. But it would buy me some more time. Even as I did it, I thought it was dumb.
I tossed the lifejacket out at the open water. Then I jumped in. It was far colder than I had expected—nothing like the warm water of the cove. I gasped and flailed my arms, and fought to control myself. I reached for the edge of the boat and dunked down, then up, and then plunged down again, pulling hard on the boat with me.
It tipped, but not enough to capsize it.
I had never been on any kind of boat but a rowboat and a paddleboat, so I didn’t realize that this boat wouldn’t capsize because of its keel, at least not from me tugging it. The boat was heavier than me.
I held on to the side and looked behind me at the blue water. That’s when the panic set in. I started kicking and flailing, and then I lost my grip on the boat. I was drowning, and I was sure I was going to die, and even though saving myself would just make me last until someone came to kill me, my body wouldn�
�t let me just give up without a fight.
And then, everything was greenish blue, and I started to think maybe I should just give up.
But something hooked me around the waist, and I was emerging violently from that dream before I could give into it.
I gasped for air and kicked and fought, and then I felt myself getting tipped back. As soon as I was supine, I lost all the will to fight, realizing how tired I was. I wasn’t a good swimmer, or even a good drowner, and I just felt resigned.
This is it, I thought, my eyes stinging with saltwater. I saw Alaric’s arm across my chest, and the blue water. My eyes filled up with tears, which actually felt good, because of the salt.
And then, he hoisted me up, and I was on the deck of the sailboat, and he was standing over me, yelling.
“Natalia!”
A slap hit me hard across the face. I coughed. Water came out of my mouth.
Alaric lifted his wrist to his mouth, as though to wipe it, and stood up. He was panting heavily. Water dripped from his body. He wore only water shorts from the day before and a gun strapped around his thigh.
I stared at it.
“What the fuck,” he panted. “What the fuck were you doing?”
I wasn’t listening.
I reached out, lunging with all the strength I had left, and got as far as touching my fingertips to the gun.
Alaric moved faster than a panther and grabbed my wrist, pulling me up at the same time so that I was near his face and standing on tiptoe. He had somehow grabbed the gun with his other hand and brought it up to my face to show it to me. “This?” he shouted at me.
He stuffed the gun into my free hand, dropping my wrist and closing the fingers of both hands around it. “Is that what you want? You want to shoot me, Natalia?”
He stepped back, shaking his head, his eyes icy cold and yet blazing. He extended his arms and gave a laugh. The gun was heavy in my hands.
“Okay,” he said. He looked up at the sky. “Go for it, Natalia. Shoot me. Please.”
His for the Taking Page 12