Seduced

by Helena Newbury

  I nodded.

  “I want to go on record as not liking this,” said Roberta. “Arianna’s not a field agent.”

  “She went through basic training,” Adam told her.

  “There’s a reason they call it basic.”

  “Ultimately, it’s up to Arianna,” said Adam. He grinned at me. “Would you like to try? If it goes well, we can look at gradually moving you over to field work.”

  It sounded too good to be true. It was exactly what I’d wanted. I glanced at Roberta and got the no look again. I looked at Adam and he was a hundred and ten percent yes.

  I nodded. “I want to try,” I said firmly. “What would I have to do?”

  Adam’s smile grew even wider. “Let’s get you some coffee while we talk.” Then he glanced at Roberta. “You can go.”

  I didn’t dare look at Roberta as she walked out. I felt...disloyal? But that was crazy. This was good for my career. She’d want me to progress, right?

  “So,” said Adam. “Luka Malakov.”

  Oh shit.

  My face must have betrayed something because Adam frowned. “You look like you know him.”

  I shook my head, then nodded. “I just remember the name from transcribing his calls,” I said weakly. You know, like that one I listened to fifty-seven times.

  Adam nodded sagely. “Do you know anything about him?”

  I shook my head and braced myself. I’d been curious all this time but, suddenly, I didn’t want to know. I expected it to be bad.

  It was worse.

  “He’s an arms dealer,” said Adam. “Started out in the Russian mob, just like his dad, Vasiliy. Together, they’ve made millions—maybe billions—selling guns. Vasiliy’s getting old, so he mostly stays cooped up in a fortified mansion while Luka handles all the day-to-day running of things.” Adam looked right at me. “Luka keeps everyone in line. And very, very afraid.”

  My stomach flipped over. I’d been fantasizing about this guy.

  “We believe Luka is setting up a big deal to bring guns into the US. We need to find out who the buyer is.”

  I frowned. “I didn’t realize arms was our thing. Isn’t that more FBI or ATF?” Then I flushed. Who was I to question the head of Special Activities?

  “We have our reasons,” he said stiffly. “Luka will be at his place in New York on Saturday, the first time he’s been over here for months.”

  “Can’t you just arrest him? I mean, once he’s on US soil?”

  Adam shook his head. “We don’t have nearly enough evidence. That’s why we need to bug his laptop.”

  I swallowed. “So how do I fit in?”

  Adam smiled, relaxing a little. “He’s throwing a party. He’s hired a string quartet and we can get you in as one of them. You play some music, slip into his office and plant the bug and then walk out. Simple.”

  I’d see him. Actually be in a room with the man I’d been fantasizing about. I was still reeling from the idea of Luka suddenly being...evil.

  You moron. You knew he was a bad guy. Why did you think the CIA were tapping his phone?

  “What’s he...like?” I wondered. And then realized I’d said it out loud.

  “Brutal,” said Adam. “Unyielding. He did some jail time, a few years back, and that hardened him even more. Luka’s the new prince. He’s inherited the kingdom from his dad and he’s not going to let anything get in his way. He’s killed several times—that we know about—rivals, mostly, who’ve tried to encroach on his family’s territory. He’s not afraid to use his fists, when someone needs to be taught a lesson. People are terrified of him, right across Moscow.”

  And he twisted his computer screen around to show me some photos. Suddenly, I was face-to-face with Luka.

  I’d thought he’d be old, but the face looking back at me couldn’t have been thirty, yet. His hair was cut short—longer than I’d imagined, but still short—and it was so dark I could only just see the soft texture of it.

  He had high, prominent cheekbones and a wide, sensuous mouth, one corner curling up in a smile that was all dark malevolence and sex.

  He wasn’t handsome. Handsome is too bland. Hollywood celebrities are handsome.

  This guy was beautiful. Savagely, brutally beautiful, like mountain peaks that have been shaped by wind and rain.

  I’d realized I was staring. It had only been a few seconds but, for someone who can memorize a face in an instant, that was a lifetime. I couldn’t remember ever staring at a photo like that. I dragged my eyes away.

  There were more photos below, some of them half off the screen. I got a few glimpses of his naked back, twisting black tattoos over heavy slabs of muscle. Very different from the slender, gym-toned bodies that my boyfriends had had. He looked hard...solid in a way they never were.

  I quickly looked away.

  “The party’s on Saturday,” said Adam. He must have read the worry on my face because he gave me a reassuring smile. “You can do this, Arianna. A few hours of violin and a few seconds of action. In and out. Easy.”

  Easy.

  Until it all went wrong.

  Saturday.

  With four hours to go, I sat in my apartment and stewed.

  My roommate, Nancy, was off in South America doing whatever proper field agents do—probably breaking some guy’s neck with her thighs—so I couldn’t watch movies with her. I’d practiced the violin until my arms ached. That left me pacing the apartment, a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Maybe I’m just not cut out for this.

  But I couldn’t back out now. Everyone was relying on me. The whole mission was based around me planting the bug.

  It started snowing at noon, which only made me more nervous. Snow made it harder to hold back the memories and the very last thing I needed was a flashback. What the hell was I thinking?! I can’t do this! No wonder Roberta had been pissed at Adam. She was right—I belonged safe and snug in the Language department.

  I knew I’d lose it if I kept thinking, so I did the only thing I could think of: I cooked.

  Nancy doesn’t have time to cook. She rolls in from an assignment jet-lagged and exhausted and sometimes wincing, her arm or leg in bandages. I figure that she needs to eat properly if she’s going to be able to jump out of a plane and seduce a guard and still remember to cut the blue wire not the red wire.

  So I cook for her. I keep the refrigerator full so that she can just pull something out and reheat it. And sometimes, like when it’s snowing outside and I really need to take my mind off things, cooking is a good distraction. I cooked a big pot of slow-cooked shredded pork with lime and garlic and some slaw to go on top, then chilled it all and stuck a note to the refrigerator door to tell Nancy it was in there.

  I put on a black dress and heels and put my hair up. Choosing what to wear was easy because I only have one black dress, an off-the-shoulder jersey thing that only normally came out once a year for our department’s Christmas party. I put on my one pair of hold-up stockings, too, because I figured string quartets were meant to look glamorous.

  A horn beeped outside. Adam, in a cherry-red SUV.

  Shit. I hadn’t known it’d be an SUV. And in the snow, too. At least I’d be in the front, not in the back.

  I’d been in cars since the accident, of course, when I absolutely had to, but only for a few minutes at a time. This was three and a half hours. God, I’m going to be a wreck by the time I get there.

  But, if I wanted to prove myself to Adam, I didn’t have a choice.

  I forced my legs to walk outside.

  I survived by looking out of the windows. If I concentrated really hard on the snowflakes whipping past the window, I could almost imagine I was safe at home and not in a car at all. Adam tried to make small talk but he could see I was distracted. He probably thought it was nerves. I wasn’t clear on why he was coming along on the mission—didn’t he have a whole division to run?

  Maybe he just wants to make sure you don’t screw it up, I thought morosely.

  I foc
used very intently on the scenery, trying to drink it in, trying to plaster the buildings and trees and sky all over my mind to cover up the slow-motion replay of another road trip, three years before.

  There are two ways to reach the highway, from my apartment. One is through town and inevitably snarled with traffic. The other is to skirt around the back roads. When Adam turned that way, I tensed up completely. The road was still covered in snow, just like—

  “Can we go through town, instead?” I asked.

  Adam blinked and twisted around to look at me.

  “I like to see it all lit up,” I said weakly.

  He shrugged and then smiled indulgently. “Sure.”

  I wanted to hug him.

  ***

  About four hours later, in New York, Adam pulled up outside a red-brick building—some classy performing arts college. Two men in their twenties were standing there with instrument cases over their shoulders. A cello case stood upright in the snow between them.

  “Where’s the third one?” I asked Adam. “Aren’t there meant to be three people, plus me?”

  At that moment, a head poked out from behind the cello case. The woman behind it was so small, she’d been hidden behind it completely. She couldn’t have been much over 5’4”.

  I jumped out and smiled goodbye to Adam, as if he was a dutiful dad dropping off his daughter. I was faking the smile but, the instant I was out of the car, I felt better. I hadn’t realized how much I’d been holding back the memories with sheer force of will, the entire journey.

  The short woman reached out a hand. “I’m Karen,” she said. “Thanks for stepping in. Our normal violinist suddenly canceled. He’s never done that before. Stomach bug.”

  He didn’t have a stomach bug, of course. He’d met some gorgeous woman that morning and she’d practically unfastened his pants on the spot. He’d agreed to a date that evening in a heartbeat. She’d stand him up, but by then it would be too late. He’d slink back home, despondent, and never tell his friends the truth.

  This is how the CIA works. We give your lives tiny little nudges and you’re not even aware we’re doing it. We may have even done it to you.

  I grinned at Karen. “Happy to help.”

  ***

  We got a cab to Malakov’s place. Weirdly, cabs don’t bother me. They don’t feel like a car.

  There was a cable TV repair truck parked a little way down the street. Even as I glanced at it, I heard Adam’s voice come from the earpiece I’d burrowed deep into my ear canal. “We’re right here,” he said. “I can see you. And we’ve hacked the house’s cameras, so we’ll be able to see you inside. He only has cameras in the hallway and living room, but that’s all we need.”

  Most of the time, what I do is so abstract that I forget it’s wrong. It’s just recordings—somehow it doesn’t feel like people’s private conversations. But this—watching a guy in his own house, through cameras he’d installed to keep himself safe from intruders—this made some deep, moral part of me itch.

  I started to walk across the street with Karen and the others. It was overwhelming to think that all this—Adam driving me all the way here, the elaborate ruse with the quartet, the truck full of monitoring equipment—was for me. What if I messed up?

  And then a familiar voice came through the earpiece. “You okay?”

  Roberta. She must have persuaded Adam to let her tag along in the monitoring truck. It was like receiving a warm, reassuring hug. I gave a tiny nod.

  “You’ll be fine,” she told me. “Just stick to the plan. If anything goes wrong, get out. And whatever you do, stay away from Malakov.”

  I gave another tiny nod and then we were at the door. It was opened by a bodyguard in a suit—a guy in his forties, massively muscled, with a ragged scar across one cheek. He checked our driving licenses. I had a brand new one, carefully aged to look ragged, with my name as Arianna Ross—Adam figured I’d be less likely to slip up if I only had a new surname to remember.

  “In,” the bodyguard said at last in heavily-accented English. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “Living room.”

  I took a deep breath and stepped inside.

  The house was huge, extending far back from the street. An elegant staircase led up to the second floor with another suited, frowning bodyguard at the top to make sure none of the guests strayed up there. At the far end of the hallway, I could see the huge living room through an open door. And in the corner of the hallway was another door, tightly closed. The door to Luka’s office.

  We trooped through to the living room, sat down on the chairs they’d put out for us and got out our instruments. We’d tuned up and were just about to start when he walked in.

  Some people have presence. I know this because I have none of it myself. I disappear into the background.

  When Luka entered the room, all of us looked up. Even people who’d been facing in the opposite direction turned around. You just knew he was there, like a sixth sense for pure, undiluted evil.

  He was wearing a black suit and white shirt, but the shirt was lazily unbuttoned at the neck and his tie hung unfastened around his neck. I could see just a hint of broad, curving pec and a glimpse of black—tattoos. The photos from his file swam up into my mind: symbols of gangs and death and brotherhood¸ a world completely different from mine.

  He was huge—not just taller than me but broader, too, his shoulders almost seeming to brush the door frame, yet his waist was tight and perfect. He looked as if he was chiseled from stone, no softness anywhere.

  It was his face, though, that really hit me. His eyes were blue but not the warm, clear blue of a summer day. They were like a winter sky when the air is so cold it hurts. And I couldn’t stop looking at his mouth, at that gorgeous full lower lip pulled tight in anger, or the shadow of stubble on his cheeks.

  If someone had painted a portrait of the devil, he’d have looked exactly like Luka Malakov. Evil and beautiful. Scary and tempting.

  The photo hadn’t even come close to doing him justice, not to his looks nor his sense of menace. It’s not that he was different from a normal man, in the way night is different from day. Night is just the absence of light. Luka sucked the light right out of the room.

  I saw Karen react out of the corner of my eye. Her mouth fell open. Her knuckles went white on the bow of her cello. Fight or flight, like a mouse seeing a hawk. I think she stopped breathing for a few seconds; I know I did. My heart started slamming against my ribcage, my palms sweaty. I was terrified on a deep, instinctual level I’d never felt before.

  Wait. That’s not true.

  Once. I’d been scared like that once.

  But this time, the fear was churning and boiling inside me, turning into something else. A deep, dark heat was separating out and spreading down through my stomach...down to my groin.

  Fight or flight.

  Flight or fuck.

  There were a couple of people hanging around in the middle of the room, blocking Luka’s path, but he just strode towards them and expected them to get the hell out of his way, and they did.

  He spoke in rapid-fire Russian to the bodyguard who’d let us in—the one with the scar, who seemed to be in charge of the others. I didn’t even process what he was saying, even though I’d been happily translating his calls for months. I was lost in the sound of his voice.

  Like the photo, the recordings weren’t the same as the live experience. Each hard, snapped-out syllable felt like my brain was being slapped with a warm leather glove. I was reeling in seconds.

  This was him. This was the man I’d been secretly fantasizing about, made flesh after so many months as just a voice. And now I knew what he was: a man who sold death to the highest bidder. A man who’d kill me if I got in his way. He’d certainly kill me if he found out I was CIA.

  I have to get out of here. Right. Now.

  And yet I was trapped there like an insect in amber. His presence seemed to drain all the will out of me. I didn’t want to run. I wanted to s
tay right there and look at him. And, down between my thighs, there was a lashing, snaking heat like I’d never felt before.

  No. This is just a twisted crush. Desperate for excitement, I’d locked onto some fantasy guy, created in my own head from a voice. This is the real thing, Arianna, and he’s dangerous. I needed to pull myself together and look away—

  He looked at me. Just a glance at the four of us, a sweep of those icy blue eyes. But, as he passed over me, his gaze lingered.

  And then locked.

  It was as if someone had opened an oven door right in front of me. The wave of heat licked every exposed inch of flesh, from my bare shoulders to my arms to my legs. The heat throbbed and then started to pulse, burning through the fabric of my dress to the skin beneath. I couldn’t seem to draw a breath, the room’s air suddenly desert-dry in my throat. The warmth seemed to slide around my breasts, underneath and then over the top, stroking my nipples in an elegant caress.

  Some men undress you with their eyes; Luka was full-on groping me with his. Our gazes were locked together—he seemed as unable to look away as I was. The heat was rising and scalding inside me, destroying every coherent thought. Between my thighs I could feel the arousal tighten and turn to slick moisture. Another few seconds and I’m going to melt right into my chair.

  Then Roberta’s voice, right in my ear. “Focus!”

  I jerked and tore my gaze away. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Luka stare at me for one more beat of my heart...and then finally look away.

  Roberta knew. She’d seen me on the security cameras, staring at Luka like some lovesick puppy. She was too kind to ask me what the hell I was doing—she’d just snapped me back to reality. I owe her one. Did Adam notice? Maybe not. Maybe it was the sort of thing only another woman would pick up on.

  Maybe I could still pull this thing off.

  Luka was marching out of the room. When he passed through the doorway, the whole room seemed to take a breath. I drew in a long, shuddering gasp myself and it felt like the first one I’d taken in minutes. Under the dress, my breasts still throbbed with remembered heat.