Maks set down his silverware, but he didn’t look up at me.
Uh-oh.
“Perhaps,” he said, and I exhaled. “It depends on your answer.”
I took a long sip of water to steady my nerves. I’d just jumped into the big-girl pool and it was a little late to wonder if I should have brought along the floaties. “You have nothing to worry about,” I told him. “There is nothing you physically did that alerted me to your bluff.”
“Then how did you know?”
I tapped my temple. “Because I’m psychic,” I said, making sure not to smile or appear coy in any way.
Still, he thought I was kidding. “Abigail,” he said, his voice low and even. “You must stop playing with me. Tell me how you knew.”
I leaned in really close to him. “I’m not playing, Maks. I am an honest-to-goodness psychic.”
He squinted at me as if trying to peer through a lie.
I smiled winningly at him, then shrugged and got back to my breakfast, even though I was now so nervous I could barely taste the food.
“All right,” Grinkov said carefully. “If you are psychic, what am I thinking right now?”
I couldn’t help it—all the tension that had built up in the moments after our food arrived was suddenly released by that silly statement. I laughed heartily. “I have no idea! That’s not how it works.”
“Then how does it work?”
I set my silverware down. “Well, when I focus, I can pick things up about people. I can sense their personalities, and events coming into their futures, and I can also almost always tell when they’re lying. That’s how I knew you were bluffing the other night. Your energy didn’t out-and-out suggest a lie, so to speak, but at times there was a hint of mistruth there coupled with concealment. I knew that every time your energy combined those two things, I needed to bet high and keep my fingers crossed, and when I felt no concealment in your energy, I needed to bet low and keep my fingers crossed.”
Grinkov’s head tilted slightly. “This is really how you won the match?”
I nodded. “Well, I did have a streak of good luck there too.”
Grinkov considered me for a moment. “I have two brothers and one sister. Is this true or a lie?”
I rolled my eyes. His lie was really obvious, but I knew he wouldn’t be satisfied by my telling him just that. So I peered into his energy and said, “You’re an only child, Maks, but you’re the father of two boys. The boys are also very close in age—I’m thinking that they’re twins even, but their energies are unique enough to make them fraternal rather than identical.”
Grinkov’s brow lifted in surprise. “How do you know this?” he whispered, and just by his reaction I could see what I revealed was a closely guarded secret.
“Don’t test me if you don’t want me to pull stuff out of the ether.”
Grinkov wiped his mouth with his napkin and nodded to the busboy who’d seen his empty plate and silently asked if he could take it. “I see now why Rick finds you so valuable.”
“We make a good team,” I agreed.
“Perhaps the three of us could make an arrangement,” Maks said.
That got my attention. “You’ll help us get a meeting with Boklovich?”
“I have heard some rumors. . . .”
“What rumors?”
“I have heard that something very valuable to the Americans was taken right out from under their noses. A small drone was piloted away from a military base carrying something that would be highly prized.”
I kept my face as neutral as possible. “Then you’re abreast of current events,” I told him. “But that is not the item we’ve been able to acquire. What we have is even more valuable.”
“Oh?”
I wondered if it was a good idea to be putting all our cards on the table, and wished that Dutch could be sitting here with me to take over the conversation. He was much better at this stuff than I was. Still, at this point, what did we have to lose? “We’ve got the code,” I said simply. When Maks’s expression revealed his confusion, I elaborated as subtly as I could. “The item taken over the border has a faulty component. If it’s used more than a few times, it’ll malfunction and render the device unusable and impossible to reverse engineer. We have the original code to the item in question. No reverse engineering required. Production on a large scale could begin immediately.”
Maks leaned back in his chair, the surprise and interest clearly evident in his features. “Vasilii would be most interested in this,” he said smoothly. And then he grinned. “I will arrange a meeting,” he said, “for a cut of the deal and a few terms.”
My radar pinged. Uh-oh. “What did you have in mind, Maks?”
“Forty percent,” he said, “and your services for an evening.”
I sucked in a breath. “I don’t know which is more offensive, the fact that you want more than a third of the money or the fact that you think I’m a whore.”
Grinkov looked taken aback. “Forgive me. I did not mean to imply that you were for sale sexually. I meant to request that you assist me with some business tonight.”
I hesitated. I was officially way in over my head here, and I didn’t know if it would be prudent to accept Grinkov’s terms outright, or to try to stall and figure it out with Dutch and Frost later. In the end, I decided I needed to demonstrate a little negotiation power and not appear too eager. “I’m willing to go to Rick on your behalf for thirty-three percent, Maks, but not a penny more.”
“Forty.”
“How can you justify more than a third?” I demanded.
“Vasilii is a highly suspicious man,” he told me. “He does not meet with just anyone, and every person recommended to him must be trustworthy or all parties will face the consequences. Richard has already proven to me that he is less than trustworthy, so the percentage is based on my own risk in arranging for him to meet Vasilii.”
“And you really think that risk is worth an extra seven percent?”
“I do. Do not forget that I can also help to legitimize your admittance into the meeting,” he added. “Vasilii would normally never think to negotiate with a woman of questionable credentials.”
“Questionable credentials?” I repeated. “What’s questionable about my credentials?”
“You have none to speak of,” he said, looking directly into my eyes. Ahh, so he’d done his homework. “Other than receiving a monthly allowance from your father, who would like to keep your connection to him a secret, and working for a temporary agency, your existence and connection to Richard Des Vries is a bit of a mystery, Abigail. You come with nothing to substantiate your legitimacy in a world where personal history is everything.”
Another ding from my radar told me to quit while I was ahead. “Fine,” I said with a sigh. “Rick’s not going to like it, but I’ll recommend the forty percent.”
“It will come out of your share,” Grinkov said.
I knew that were I dealing with the real Rick Des Vries, it would in fact come out of my share. “Probably,” I agreed.
Grinkov shrugged. “It will still be quite profitable for you.”
“Let’s hope so.”
The waitress came by and dropped off our checks along with my to-go order. As I was reaching into my purse for money, Maks slid the check out of my hand and handed it to our server with his credit card. I started to protest, but one look told me I’d lose that argument too. “Thank you.”
“You’re quite welcome,” he said, his eyes studying me intently again.
While his credit card was being run, Grinkov asked, “You did not agree yet to the second part of my terms.”
Aw, crap, he’d noticed. “I don’t know that I’m really comfortable with loaning myself out like that.”
“Why not?” he pressed.
I couldn’t think of an answer that might satisfy him, so I went with telling him that I’d have to clear it with Rick.
That seemed to frustrate Grinkov, but he didn’t comment furthe
r. Instead, he signed the tab and we were on our way.
The moment I walked through the door of the condo, I took one look at Dutch’s worried, swollen face and felt like a dog. He got up from the couch, grunted in pain, and walked stiffly over to me. Before I could even say anything, he’d wrapped me in his arms and pulled me to him gently. “Jesus Christ, Edgar!” he whispered in my ear.
“Honey, I’m fine,” I assured him.
The elevator doors opened again and a voice demanded, “Is she okay?”
I turned awkwardly in Dutch’s embrace and waved my to-go bag at Frost. “I brought everybody breakfast.”
“I don’t eat breakfast,” Mandy said sullenly, filing her nails in front of the TV. “Breakfast is for fat chicks.” She made a point then to give me the up-down with her eyes before adding, “And I wouldn’t eat anything you brought me even if I were a fat chick.” She then went back to filing her nails.
I stepped back from Dutch and reached into the to-go bag, pulled out a plastic utensil, and held it aloft. “Hey, Mandy,” I said, waiting for her to look up. “Fork you.”
She offered me a well-manicured middle finger. Such a charmer, that one.
“What happened?” Dutch and Frost asked together, pulling my attention back to the subject at hand. I glared one last time at Mandy, who was still practicing her sign language, and coaxed them both into the kitchen. “First, Dutch, you need to eat,” I told him firmly. “And I’ll tell you all about it over brunch.”
I spent the next hour giving them the details, and the moment I mentioned the second part of Maks’s terms, Dutch slapped his hand onto the table and growled, “Not on your life!”
One glance at Frost, however, said he wasn’t opposed to the idea. “It might help us win Grinkov’s trust, Rivers.”
“She already has his trust,” Dutch countered.
“I doubt it,” Frost said. “From what I’ve been able to gather, Grinkov doesn’t even trust his own mother. The guy has one of the lowest profiles in organized crime. He keeps everything about himself a safely guarded secret and we’re still unable to identify much about his background. He’s something of a ghost to us.”
Now it made sense why Maks had looked so surprised when I’d mentioned his children.
“Exactly why we need to keep our distance from him,” Dutch pressed. “We don’t know enough about him to trust that he won’t hurt her.”
“He won’t hurt me,” I said, and both Frost and Dutch looked at me.
“How do you know?” Dutch asked.
I shrugged. “He likes me.” Dutch’s expression was unreadable, but there was a tint of the green-eyed monster in his energy. “I don’t mean like that,” I told him quickly. “I mean, he thinks I’m amusing. And he thinks I’m useful. He’s not about to do anything that’ll jeopardize my potential usefulness to him.”
“She’s got a good point,” Frost said. “And if Grinkov can get us a meeting with Boklovich, then we’ve got to take the risk.”
Dutch was still shaking his head, however. “I don’t like it.”
I reached out and took his hand. “I’ll be very careful. And Frost is going to have my back, just like he did when I went in to get you out of Maks’s house, right, Agent Frost?”
“Absolutely.”
“See?” I said to my fiancé. “The sooner we recruit Grinkov, the sooner we can arrange the meeting with Boklovich and get an invite to the auction so that we can flush out the thief. Honey, it’s win-win, and the only thing we have to do is wait for me to get through tonight.”
Dutch lifted my hand and kissed it. “I don’t like it,” he repeated. “But I guess we don’t have a choice.”
I sighed with relief. My radar said that meeting with Maks was the right way to go.
“Hey, are you guys talking about Maks Grinkov?” Mandy asked from her place on the couch.
“Yeah,” Frost said. “You know him?”
Mandy got up and walked over to us, her high heels clicking on the wood floor. “A little,” she said with a shudder. “I went to a party at his house once, right before I met Rick. I was dating this other guy, Zuri, who supposedly did a lot of business with Grinkov, and he introduced us and I told Zuri I thought Maks was hot, ’cause I was trying to make Zuri a little jealous so he’d take me on a cruise.
“Anyway, Zuri told me that I shouldn’t even think about getting mixed up with Maks, because he knew for a fact that Grinkov had been married once, like, ten years ago when he was still living in Russia or something, and one night, Maks walks in and catches his wife in bed with another guy and he gets so mad that he kills them both. But he didn’t kill ’em right away, nuh-uh. I heard that he took his time, you know, torturing them to death over a couple of days. First he tied ’em up; then he shot each of them in the foot; then he left ’em there for a while to bleed and stuff; then he came back and shot ’em in the other foot; then he left ’em alone; then he came back and shot them in the shin, then the other shin, then the knee, then the other knee, then the thigh, then the—”
“Mandy!” I snapped.
“What?” she snapped back.
“We get the picture, and you’re not helping.”
Mandy offered me her middle finger again, then turned on her heel and stalked away.
I looked at Dutch and Frost as if to say, “Can you believe her?” But I noticed that both of them were looking at me as if to say, “Aw, shih tzu.”
Grinkov’s driver came to pick me up at seven. I had dressed up a little more from that morning, wearing a charcoal gray wool-blend suit with a dusky-rose-colored shell and patent leather pumps. The suit was beautiful, and as the limo came to a stop right next to me, I had the distinct and somewhat morbid thought that I hoped I didn’t get blood on it.
I’d worn my hair loose, and at the last moment I’d told Frost privately that I wouldn’t be wearing the hair clip with the camera or the earpiece again. He’d protested. I’d insisted. He’d threatened to tell Dutch, who would make me wear them, and I’d threatened to walk out on the deal if he did. My radar had absolutely insisted that I not wear any kind of a wire, and experience has taught me not to ignore such warnings.
I waited for the limo driver to come around and open the door for me, but both of the front doors to the car opened and out stepped a big guy in a navy suit holding the same electric gizmo the guard at the gate to Maks’s house had used to sweep me for bugs.
This time I was treated to a pat down before I could even get in the car, and the gizmo was swept over the entire length of my body, from the top of my hair, all the way down to my toes. I was asked to remove my jewelry, my shoes, and the contents of my purse, and the wand was swept over all of it.
Thank God I’d listened to my own internal warnings—I’d have been made for sure as a spy.
The big man then confiscated my phone—which was fine. I’d backed it up to Dutch’s computer inside the condo and I’d restored the phone to its factory settings. No one could get anything personal off it.
I was then allowed into the backseat of the limo and we drove in silence until we reached Grinkov’s front gate, which opened smoothly and allowed us to enter without stopping.
Grinkov’s British butler greeted me at the door and led me deep into the house through a winding series of corridors. By the time we reached Grinkov’s study, I was a little disoriented, but I had a feeling we were probably somewhere at the back of the house, because there were large windows flanking the far wall that overlooked a beautiful and well-tended garden. “Abigail,” Grinkov said warmly when I was shown into his study.
“Maks,” I replied, just as warmly. Maybe tonight wouldn’t be so bad after all?
Grinkov was dressed casually in a lightweight black sweater with matching dress slacks and wine-colored loafers—no socks. His wrist was adorned with a beautiful gold watch studded with sapphires, and I had no doubt it was a Rolex. He looked relaxed and sexy and tempting as heck. I tried to remind myself about the mission and to whom I was enga
ged.
“Would you like some wine?” he asked.
Now, I wanted that wine like you cannot believe, but I knew that if I had a glass, my defenses would start to peel away, and that was just too risky for obvious reasons. So I offered him a polite excuse that I hoped he’d accept. “Thank you, Maks, but I find that alcohol interferes with my sixth sense, and as you’ve asked me here in a professional capacity, I think it’s wise to remain completely sober.”
The corner of Grinkov’s mouth twitched. “Pity,” he said.
When he didn’t offer another topic for conversation, I made a show of looking around the room and noticed several photos of Maks engaging in various extreme sports. Curious, I walked over to a row of framed photos and examined them. One showed him midjump from a helicopter, wearing a set of skis and facing a very steep slope. In another he was mountain climbing, in a third he was skydiving, and a fourth showed him leaning against the hood of a race car in full racing attire. “I see you’re an adrenaline junkie.”
Maks came to stand next to me, allowing me a whiff of his cologne, which was, like the rest of him, sexy and dangerous. “I like to combine speed and risk, if that’s what you mean.”
I turned to him and flipped on my radar. “Is that how you hurt your hip?”
Maks’s eyes widened a bit. “Yes,” he admitted. “I injured it last year right after this picture was taken.” He pointed to the one of him jumping out of the helicopter to ski down the side of a very steep mountain. “It’s been bothering me quite a lot lately.”
I waved a hand in a circular motion around his right hip. “I can sense the pain.” Maks opened his mouth to say something, but I cut him off. “Frankly I don’t know why you’re putting off the surgery. Your hip is shot, Maks. It’s time to replace it.”
Maks’s eyes got even bigger before he seemed to rein in his reaction and he considered me seriously. “You are a most remarkable woman.”
I smiled. “Thanks. Now, what was it you needed my help with?”
Maks waved me over to his desk and I followed behind, curious to see what he’d have me tune in on. On the desk was a rolled-up blueprint, and right away I started getting stuff off it. Maks began to unroll the paper and I said, “You’re building an ice rink?”
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