But Novak was shaking his head, waving an admonitory finger. “I know what you’re thinking,” he said, from behind his blood-spotted handkerchief. “Forget your romantic notions. He told you the heart-wrenching tale of how I held his old patron hostage and threatened to cut him to pieces if he did not deliver you?”
She did not rreply.
“We concocted that scenario together. And yesterday, he did as I commanded and told you of Imre’s valiant sacrifice? Did he beg you to run away with him to live in romantic bliss on some green island on the Aegean? I see that he did. That bad boy. He’ll definitely get that fat bonus that I promised him. He’s earned every penny of it.” He took a step closer, staring at her as if he wanted to eat her alive. “Let me show you how much Vajda loves you, Tamara.” He glanced at András. “Pull the rope,” he commanded. “Off her feet. Ten seconds.”
András complied eagerly. The rope wrenched her up off her feet.
She hated herself for the shriek that scorched her throat. And for being so vulnerable. For having loved Val for even an instant, for having believed him. For getting caught. For everything. All of it. Rachel. Oh, Rachel.
She struggled to get a better grip on the rope with her left hand. Ten seconds. Ten centuries of lightning stabbing through her nerves.
She sobbed in air and hung on, delirious with pain—
Thud, down she went onto her floppy tied ankles. She clung to consciousness, and attempted the agonizing task of trying to stand again.
“Enough chatter.” The old man suddenly sounded irritable and exhausted. “András, go get the child. I want to begin.”
András wound the rope around a hook set into the wall at waist level, knotting it with a jerk. She gasped at a blaze of fresh agony. He strode purposefully out of the room, leaving her alone with Novak.
“The stupidity of women is always a fresh surprise,” Novak mused. “You are very beautiful, it is true, but even so, it is obvious what you are, what you exist for. You are a disposable toy, Tamara. How could a man declare love for a thing like yourself? Men don’t love women like you. They use them and discard them like the trash that they are.” He took a step closer. “But still, I’m surprised you were taken in so easily.”
Part of her was on her knees, no, on the ground, writhing and wailing yes, it’s true, yes, just kill me please and have done with it.
The other part whispered, come a little closer, you sick, filthy fuck.
She moved the tongue studs in her mouth, positioning the poison capsule between her molars and trying to work up enough spit to deliver it. Difficult, with such a parched mouth. She would have to be spot-on accurate. She tried to sniff down her useless tears of terror and agony and make them good for something.
Come on, old man. Two more steps. Just two, and I’ll melt the organs inside your body into slop.
Faster. She snorted, sniffed. Novak’s weight shifted. Time slowed. She was so tuned in, she sensed his every tiny movement as if her own body was making it.
Finally. The mix of tears and saliva in her mouth was ready to spit as he moved closer . . . jaws ready to chomp, lungs ready to provide air to propel her liquid projectile . . . closer—
Ding, ding. A soft, musical chiming sound shattered the moment. Novak broke eye contact, turned to look at the intercom on the table.
She almost screamed her disappointment. So fucking close!
Novak punched the button. “I told you I was not to be disturbed!”
“They’ve brought in Luksch,” a male voice on the intercom informed him.
Novak’s face changed. “Oh. Excellent. Bring him in, then.”
He turned back to Tam, rubbing his hands together. Too far away from her. The moment had slipped away. She wanted to wail, shriek.
“Georg has been bad,” Novak confided. “Wanting you for himself, even knowing how you had wronged me. Then I discovered that he was planning to murder me and take over my business! Can you imagine it? Millions spent grooming him to take over Kurt’s place! Ingrate! He will watch his toy smashed. That’s what happens to little boys who grab, grab, grab. I taught my Kurt that lesson, too. He learned it early. That’s what made him so strong, so unusual. Do you remember how strong he was, Tamara? Ah, Georg, my dear. There you are.”
Two large men hustled Georg into the room. The man’s face was battered, his lip split. Older bruises decorated him as well, relics from his fight with Val in the hotel blooming under both his eyes, purple and blue. His teeth were clenched, except for the gaps where two of them had been knocked out by Val in the hotel. His eyes were wild with rage.
There had to be some way that Tam could turn this new wrinkle to her advantage, but if there was, she could not see it. She was too scared, too crazed with pain to crunch the data.
“There she is, Georg,” the old man crooned. “Your heart’s desire. The woman who plotted your best friend’s murder. But perhaps he was not quite such a friend as we all thought, eh?”
Georg’s thin, scabbed lips drew back like a snarling dog’s.
No. This could not possibly help, she concluded bleakly. Georg was bound hand and foot, a gun to his head. As badly off as she was herself. No, she needed a miracle. On the scale of an earthquake, a volcano, a tornado, a bomb, a meteor—
“Ey!” Georg shouted. He sagged to the ground between the two men who clutched his arms—and the room exploded.
Windows shattered with an enormous crash and glass flew, peppering her face and body with stinging shards. The mirror exploded and toppled backward. One of the men who had been holding Georg was hurled down onto his back. His jaw was torn away, a red, raw mess of torn meat, white glints from shattered bone and teeth showing through. He pawed at himself, eyes white-rimmed, rolling with panic.
Bam. The other man holding Georg clapped his hand to his throat. Blood jetted, black in the candlelight. It gushed through his fingers. His gun thudded to the carpet. He toppled, bounced, lay still.
The sudden silence was deafening. Georg sat up in a leisurely, unhurried way. He reached for the nearest gun, scanning the room through narrowed eyes. Cold air swirled through the empty window frames. The flames in the candelabra flared hellishly high. Tam watched the tableau, soul shaking with shock . . . and astonished hope.
Novak was curled on the ground, shaking. Blood spread quickly beneath his wasted body. His hand was pressed to his midriff. Gut shot.
Good, she thought viciously. Die in agony, scum.
Georg aimed the gun at the man whose jaw had been shot off.
“So you are the one,” he said. “Traitor and spy. I had to let all of my men be killed in order to identify you, Ferenc. This grieves me.”
The man gurgled, eyes bugging over his shattered lower face.
“I told the sniper to aim for your mouth,” Georg told him. “I thought it appropriate. Don’t you?”
Blood sprayed as the man shook his head. He clutched at Georg’s leg. Georg kicked him away. “The real punishment would be to leave you alive with that face,” Georg said. “But alas, it is not practical.”
He pulled the trigger. Bam. The contents of the man’s skull exploded from the back in a pink, splattering fan, over the carpet, wall.
Black-clad men bulked up with Kevlar, masked with helmets and bristling with equipment and weaponry were sliding into the room like shadows. One through the door and two through the space where the windows had been. Broken glass glittered everywhere.
Georg bent over Novak’s shriveled form. He slid the barrel of the gun into the old man’s gaping mouth and jerked his face up with it.
“You’re not the only one who had an inside man,” he said. “I had one, too. Someone to take out your security at just the right moment. You got soft, old man. Complacent. Now you die, and I’ll take back my toy. And everything else you have, as well. It’s mine now. All mine.”
Novak struggled to speak. Georg jabbed the gun sharply, knocking the old man to the ground again. Then Georg turned and looked at Tam. That persist
ent white froth of bubbly spit dangled from his grimacing lips. His eyes dragged over her, lit up with unholy lust.
He licked his wet, foamy lips and started toward her.
Chapter 28
The first sentry’s eyes barely had time to widen before Val grabbed the side of his head, whipped it down, and smashed the man’s temple into his jerked up knee. The sentry thudded to the floor. A swift, brutal kick to the nose to make sure he was out, and Val darted on.
He felt a detached sense of unreality to be slipping through the corridors of this hellish place again. The palace was drafty and cold, with a pervasive stench of damp and mold. He’d found the place crushingly depressing when forced to live and work there in his youth, like the dismal castle of an absentee vampire. He almost expected to run into himself as he passed silently by the mildewed library with its treasure trove of rotting antique books.
He stopped, listened. Heartbeat slowing, time slowing. Battle ready.
A sentry rounded the corner. Val jabbed a punch into his face, grabbed his neck. A head butt, an elbow raked across the throat, a knee jab to the groin, and the man was felled. In relative silence, but for the grunts and thuds.
He froze in an agony of indecision at the top of the staircase.
Crash, gunshots, glass shattering. The noise broke his paralysis. He sprinted down the stairs. The Saints Salon, then. Novak’s favorite room with its baroque splendor and its creepy frescoes. Typical.
Georg had arrived and made his move. It was about fucking time. He experienced a flash of what almost amounted to warmth for the bloodsucking freak. Not that it would keep Val from killing the man at the first opportunity.
He began stepping over bodies, skirting puddles of blood. Novak’s staff, he assumed, taken by surprise by Georg’s attack force. Blood-spattered, water-damaged walls, and rolled in dark rivulets across the cracked antique tilework.
So he’d missed the first wave. Just as well. Not his fight.
The next corner he turned would put him outside the Saints Salon. With his sixth sense, he picked up the inaudible shush of fabric-clad thighs rubbing together, squeaks of rubber-soled boots against tile. The man turned the corner, whipping up his gun—
Thunk, Val’s knife sank into the man’s eye, before the shout had time to flash from the man’s brain down his nerve fibers to his throat.
He staggered, fell. Val sprinted forward and grabbed him under the armpits, dragging him out of sight of anyone around the corner.
Black-clad, heavy, slung with gear. The dead man was shorter and slighter, but the bulky vest might camouflage that for the brief moment that mattered. He whipped the helmet off the dead man—and gasped in a short, shocked breath. Staring at the corpse.
Cristo. He knew this man. Knew his name. A PSS agent, young, hired less than five years ago. Efficient, capable. Professional.
Val dragged his eyes from the accusing gaze of the pale, staring blue eye that remained. Unfortunate, but if he had not killed, he would have been killed, and Tamar had no time for moral ambiguity.
This man had made his choice. He had known the risks.
The fastenings of the Kevlar vest made a loud scritch as he wrenched them loose. He stilled, ready to shoot whoever might poke his head around the corner to investigate.
Seconds ticked by. Nothing. No one.
He donned the vest, ignoring the blood that stained it, put on the helmet, strapped on the chin guard. He angled his head for maximum shadow on his face and walked toward the other black-clad man stationed in front of the Saints Salon.
A gun crashed from inside. The man turned to look, distracted.
Val leaped, grabbed, wrenched. Crunch, the man’s vertebrae gave. The man flopped to the ground, neck snapped, shitting himself.
He did not recognize this one. Thank God.
The door to the Saints Salon was ajar. Val prodded it with the gun barrel until it swung further open. He peered around the door frame.
His breath froze in his lungs. Tamar hung from a rope by her arms in the corner of the room, her tangled hair falling like a dark curtain around her battered, beautiful face, a stark mask of pain and mute endurance. Still alive.
It wrenched something inside of him loose. Grief, rage, and terrified hope. He had been trying to brace himself against finding her dead. Trying and failing. But hope was more cruel than despair.
Three men were down on the ground. Four were on their feet, one of them Luksch. Val’s knife flew into the throat of the nearest man, and he spun, arms windmilling, glass crunching beneath his boots before he crashed to the ground.
Val dove, tucked, and rolled to dodge the bullets, but when he somersaulted back up into a crouch, still more bullets thudded into his chest, bam, bam, and flung him backward, like huge, punching fists. He slammed to the ground, wind knocked out, and rolled onto his knees without air, gasping for oxygen. He brought the gun up, took aim at—
Henry. Blue eyes and square jaw. Henry. Holding a gun on him. Val’s muscles locked for a fraction of a second—
Bam. His weapon spun uselessly out of his hand into space. It sailed in a high arc, bounced, skidded across the carpet.
Then, the numb, cold burn. The trickling heat of blood. Shot in the arm. Fucking shit. Henry had shot him. His friend.
“Valery.” Henry’s face looked distant, sad.
Val focused on the gun muzzle in the foreground. Henry’s face faded to a blur. “You?” he whispered.
“You weren’t supposed to be here,” Henry said dully. “I wasn’t supposed to have to face off with you, buddy. There was no reason for it.” Henry’s eyes flicked past him, focusing on someone behind Val. His voice muted. “But I can’t change things now.”
“Why?” Val demanded, his voice hard.
“Money,” Henry said matter-of-factly. “A lot of it. Hegel told you. We would have been happy to share, but it just didn’t work out. Your dick prevailed, man. But no woman is worth millions.”
Val’s eyes flicked up to Tamar’s bright gaze. It blazed down, unquenched. An instant injection of passion, of power, straight into his muscle fibers, his nerves, his mind.
So beautiful. So precious. Her intelligence, her courage, the steely endurance beneath the smooth, seductive curves of her tortured body.
Tears slid down her cheeks. She rubbed them angrily against her stretched arms. So tough around her secret core of tenderness.
Worth millions. Worth anything, everything. His life, his soul, his heart. But Henry would never understand that.
Not this Henry who he had really never known at all.
“. . . would have helped you save Imre,” Henry was saying.
“Imre is dead,” Val informed him. “I am here for her now.”
Henry shook his head. “You can’t save everybody, Val. I’m sorry. I was hoping you would stay the hell away from here, but you just had to poke your nose in. It’s just business. My friendship for you was real.”
Val glanced pointedly at Henry’s gun. “Do not talk of friendship and hold a gun to my head.”
Henry’s mouth tightened to a colorless line. “It’s just business,” he repeated, his voice hard. “Good-bye, Val.”
Val stared up at Tamar, locking eyes with her. He had never feared death before and did not fear it now. What he felt was piercing grief for the life he had thought he might live with her. An improbable fantasy, destined to end with a bullet to the brain, but even so. That fleeting fantasy, that brief hope had been the sweetest, finest thing he had ever known. Even so, he was grateful.
He braced himself. Waited for it, his eyes fixed on Tamar’s.
“No,” said Georg suddenly. Glass crunched under his feet as he started walking toward them.
Henry glanced at the other man, alarmed. “What?”
“Don’t shoot,” Georg said slowly. He gazed at Val, an expression of discovery on his face. “Not quite yet. I want him to watch first.”
Henry frowned. “Watch what? Do you mean . . . oh, no. For God’s sa
ke, you can’t be serious. Now?”
“Yes. It’s perfect.” Georg’s eyes were gleaming with wild excitement. “He’s the perfect audience. It will be the sexual experience of a lifetime. Here, bring him closer so he can see everything. Hold him. He watches. Kill him when I come. Exactly when I come.”
Henry’s mouth twisted in distaste. He gestured with his chin for the other black-clad man to approach. “Hold your gun to his head,” he ordered the man curtly. “If he moves, blow his brains out.”
The man held his gun up to Val’s temple. Henry stepped behind him and wrenched Val’s wounded arm back, then the other one, hyperextending the mangled, wounded shoulder. Torquing them into a tense, shaking hammerlock of pure pain.
Val’s lungs jerked, in hard, shuddering gasps. Blood ran down, dripping off his fingertips. The wound in his shoulder had torn open again. He felt the warmth, the sting. Hot liquid, spreading.
Henry dragged him toward the corner where Tamar was hanging. The man with the gun to Val’s head accompanied them, step for step.
He was a couple of meters from her now. Henry behind him, the gunman to the side, and Tamar before him, staring down, eyes blazing.
“This is your life, from now on,” Val said to his former friend. “Pandering to that crazy sadist’s whims. Kneeling to kiss his stinking ass for your money. Enjoy it, Henry. You deserve it.”
“Do not fuck with me,” Henry hissed. “I did not choose this.”
“Yes, you did,” Val said. “You bought it. And you will pay for it.”
But all thoughts of Henry vanished from his head as Georg started toward Tamar, massaging his crotch.
As if she needed more of a fucking challenge. As if things were still a bit too tame around here, too easy. Now Val had to show up and put himself in mortal danger.
Damn him for complicating things. She would rather have died with her feelings hurt, hating his guts, thinking him a backstabbing traitor, than be forced to watch him die trying to save her. Much rather.
How many more pieces of her heart were going to be torn out of her chest and stomped to death before her eyes? There was no end to it.
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