Beloved Enemy (25 page)

“I have no trouble resisting him.”

Leaning over the sink, Jonatha deposited an open-mouthed kiss on the mirror. When she moved away, the imprint remained, an erotic emblem branding the glass. Alix looked from the lipstick to Jonatha’s face. Her lips were wet, slightly parted. Her eyes seemed to burn into Jonatha’s flesh.

Reaching out, Jonatha took her by the hand and led her into one of the stalls, shutting and locking the door behind them.

“Really?” Alix said. “We’re going to do this? Here? Now?”

“Men always wonder,” Jonatha said, “what we do in the bathroom that takes us so long.”

Feeling the blood rising up into her face, she pressed her lips against Alix’s, felt her lips soften, then open. When their tongues met, it was like an electric shock passed between them. Jonatha felt Alix’s hips lurch toward her. Her hands came up, cupping Alix’s small, hard breasts, and she could feel her nipples rising to meet them. A small moan escaped Alix’s throat, passing into Jonatha’s mouth as a vibration.

One of Jonatha’s hands stroked downward, lifting the hem of Alix’s dress, searching out what was underneath. Alix’s hips bucked again, pressing the hot core of herself into Jonatha’s palm. Jonatha’s middle finger curled in. Alix was already wet with desire.

Jonatha’s heart beat fast as she slipped to her knees, burying her face in Alix’s surprisingly chaste underpants. The Catholic schoolgirl undergarment only inflamed her further, and she hooked her fingers over the waistband, feeling Alix’s soft flesh give. But before she could push them down, she heard Alix sigh, “No, leave them on. I want to feel your tongue through the cotton.”

Jonatha thought she would lose her mind. Alix’s scent made her dizzy. Alix was leaning back against the wall, her legs spread on either side of the toilet. They were both breathing hard. Jonatha reached up and grabbed one breast, rolling the erect nipple back and forth with her palm. Alix let out a little squeal.

They both heard the
clip-clop
of high heels on the tiles and they froze. Both had been too lost in their sex haze to hear the door open. The water ran briefly on the other side of the room, but no one stepped into the stalls on either side of them.

Jonatha started her tongue moving again.

“No,” Alix whispered. “Wait.”

Jonatha kept at it, and Alix threw her head back, closed her eyes. Her fingers twined in Jonatha’s hair, pulling her head hard against her groin. Jonatha was dimly aware of the door sighing closed.

Then Alix cried out, a sound cut off by her hand in her mouth. She lost control of her hips and her thighs began to shake as she slid down until Jonatha caught her. Her forehead pressed against Jonatha’s hard, flat belly as she gasped in breaths, shuddering still.

Jonatha held her, gently, tenderly, but when Alix’s fingers began to seek her out, she put a hand over hers, caught it, held it still.

“No,” she said quietly. “No.”

Alix looked up at her. “But I want to.”

Jonatha took Alix’s head in her hands. “And I want you to.”

Alix stared into her eyes. “You have someone at home.”

Jonatha’s mouth twitched, her heart lurched painfully.

“And I can’t tempt you the way you tempted me?”

Leaning forward, Jonatha kissed her on the forehead, but it was a chaste kiss.

“We’re all tempted by something, Jonatha.” Alix reached up, traced a sinuous path down Jonatha’s neck with the pad of her forefinger. “I know what you did to me was real, I know you felt something, you can’t lie about that.”

“I never said—”

“Then let me,” Alix put a hand on Jonatha’s lower belly, slowly moving it in an ever-widening circle. “Why should I have all the fun?”

Jonatha felt a return of the furnace between her legs. “We all lie about something.”

“We have to.” Alix continued her caress with admirable concentration. “We’re dirty creatures, at heart. We all have things to hide, things we’re afraid to show to anyone else. Lies protect us; they’re necessary.”

A muscle in Jonatha’s inner thigh began to jump and flex, and Alix ran her fingertips over it. “Oh, I know that response,” she whispered. “I know it well.” Her fingertips continued their journey. She gave a tiny squeal. “You’re wearing a thong. To work. I love that.”

Her fingertips were making circles again, small this time, and light as a breath of air. Then she rose, extended one leg, inserting the long powerful muscle of her thigh between Jonatha’s. Pressing in, she started a slow rocking motion, applying pressure to Jonatha’s mound.

Jonatha emitted a little gasp, and her arms flew around Alix, the nails clawing at her back.

“Lies,” Jonatha breathed into Alix’s ear. “We’ll have to lie about this.”

“We lie for a living, we lie about everything, even our identities,” Alix said. “What’s one more lie to blur the lines between true and false?”

Jonatha, panting like an engine, rested her head on Alix’s shoulder. “We live in a world where all the lines are blurred.”

Alix, intoxicated by Jonatha’s intimate scent, rubbed her sex against Jonatha’s hip bone. “But what happens when the lines disappear?”

*   *   *

“How did you know I’d be here at the hotel?” Jack asked.

“Why don’t you lie back and rest?” Romy gave him a concerned look.

“I need to find Pyotr Legere. Do you know where he is?”

“Right here two floors down.” Romy put her hand against his chest as he began to rise. “Not now. You don’t have the strength yet, and he’s not going anywhere.”

“How can you be sure?”

Romy’s lips twitched in the semblance of a smile. “He won’t leave without me.”

Jack stared up at her. “And why would that be?”

She shrugged. “He sees something in me other people don’t.” Then she burst into laughter. “Or maybe he likes what I do to him in bed, or the shower or the living room floor or the park or—”

“I get the picture,” Jack said.

“Not really, you don’t.” Romy put her hands in her lap. “But that’s as it should be.”

“You’re just doing your job, is that it?”

She watched, possibly to see if he was serious.

“I don’t judge anyone,” he said, “not in this line of work, anyway. You didn’t answer my question.”

“My dear Herr McClure, your whereabouts have been monitored from the moment you called Ben King.”

“Dennis’s pilot.”

She nodded.

“You’ve been monitoring me?”

“Just since you arrived here in Zurich.”

“And before that?”

Romy turned away and was pouring him another glass of water when he took hold of her wrist, turning her back to him.

“What are you keeping from me?”

She put the water down, sat on a chair across from him, her back curved, elbows on her knees. “Is this necessary? Isn’t it enough—?”

“No,” Jack said, “it isn’t.” His eyes searched her face. “If you were me wouldn’t you want to know?”

“Please let me go,” she said softly, but she would not meet his eye.

“Why don’t you want me to know who’s been tracking me?”

Her hands were busy doing nothing. “Did you mean what you said before, about not judging anyone in this line of work?”

“I did.”

She took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Annika has been monitoring you.”

Jack felt as if an icy sword had passed through him, and his mind leaped ahead. “Did she have Dennis killed?”

“No,” Romy said. “God, no.”

“Then who did?” He gripped her harder, making her shudder. “Do you know? Does Annika?”

“I don’t. And as for Annika, if she did know, the murderer would be dead by now.”

Back to square one, Jack thought. But then again maybe not. The whole picture was starting to form in his mind, and at the center of it, like a spider in its web, the identity of Paull’s killer becoming ever clearer.

“Tell me about Pyotr Legere.”

Romy glanced down at where his fingers encircled her slender wrist. At once, he let her go, feeling ashamed when he saw how her skin had been marked.

“I’m not that sort of man.”

Romy’s smile was as pale as her skin. “But Pyotr is. I’m not too much of a lady to call him a sick fuck.” Her eyes slid away again. “The things I do for Dyadya.”

“Dyadya is dead,” Jack reminded her again.

She shook her head. “He lives on in Annika.”

“Still,” he said, “nothing is stopping you from walking away, starting your life over.”

She sat back now, seemingly more comfortable with him. “I could say, ‘and do what; this is all I know,’ and that would be correct, but it wouldn’t be entirely correct. I owe my life to Dyadya. There is nothing I wouldn’t do for him, even after he’s gone—especially now.”

Jack sat up, the initial dizziness vanishing quickly now. “What d’you mean?”

Romy frowned. “Are you Annika’s friend or enemy?”

Jack thought for a moment, wondering what to say. “I’m both,” he said truthfully. “I suppose she’d say the same.”

“That’s not possible.”

“You would think it’s not possible,” he said. “My experience with her and with Dyadya says otherwise.”

“He loved you like a son.” She smiled sadly. “I see how shocked you are that I would know such a thing.”

“I’m more shocked that he genuinely felt that way.”

Her smile broadened. “Yes, for some people it was impossible to believe that Dyadya was genuine about anything. For others, just the opposite. This was the kind of man he was—one of the astonishing consequences of knowing him. He was a chameleon—it was his nature. But you have to know that he gave himself to very few people—he trusted even fewer. You were one of the ones that had both from him.”

“Why?” Jack said. “Why should he trust me?”

“Dyadya was a shrewd judge of character. I believe he understood you better than you understand yourself; he certainly did me.”

“He misjudged his granddaughter’s feelings about me.”

She cocked her head. “How can you be sure?”

“How often can you be betrayed by one person?”

“By someone you love.”

Jack said nothing. Slipping off the chair, he padded into the small kitchen, found bread, cheese, and fruit in the half-fridge, and began to eat standing up.

“You can’t walk away from this,” Romy said. “From her.”

“I have.”

“There’s no point in fooling yourself.” She rose, came up beside him, but seemed indifferent to the food. “I’m proof of that.”

“Everyone’s different,” Jack said around a bite of cheese.

“And yet we’re all human.” Romy took up a paring knife and cut an apple into segments for him. “We’re all subject to the same laws of desire and destiny.”

“You really believe that?”

She rinsed the knife blade, wiped it, and set it aside. “You would do well to believe it.”

“And what are your feelings toward Pyotr Legere?”

Romy laughed. “Other than disgust, I have none.”

“You let him handle you.”

“My mind is far away, in a place he can never reach.”

“And your body?”

“My body recovers, as from a strenuous workout.” She raised one leg and kept on raising it until her ankle rested on his shoulder. “It’s flexible that way.”

Jack swung her leg, the odd, unspoken invitation, away from him. Finished with the bread and cheese, he packed them away. He took up a slice of apple, crunching into it. “About Pyotr,” he said. “I’ll need an edge when I confront him.”

“There are three things you need to know about him,” Romy said. “First, he’s exceedingly clever. Second, he’s exceedingly cruel. His cruelty has trapped him, as it always will. Evil is inherently stupid, Herr McClure. Its refusal to change is part of its nature.”

“And the third thing?”

“Ah, well, the most important of the three. He’s quintessentially Russian, despite his family name.”

“Meaning?”

She turned to him. “He’s not afraid to die.”

S
IXTEEN

W
HEN
J
ONATHA
passed through the pair of Secret Service suits and strode over to the car idling in Dennis Paull’s driveway, the blacked-out rear window slid down and she saw DCS Director Kinkaid Marshall’s lined, sour face.

“Have you been waiting long?” she said.

“Too long,” Marshall barked.

“I’m terribly sorry, but dinner went on and on.” She stepped back as the door opened and Marshall got out.

“I can’t fathom why you wanted to meet here, of all places,” he rumbled. “And at this hour.”

Jonatha went by him, picking her way across the gravel to the front door. Krofft had given her the key. Now she turned it in the lock and they both went inside. She led him through, turning on lights as she went. The place smelled of books and hunched men in overcoats, the agents who had been pouring through the house like locusts.

In the study, she threw open several windows, letting the night in.

“Paull was shot to death near this time,” Marshall said, glancing around with obvious distaste. He was the kind of military man who looked uncomfortable out of uniform, the kind of military man who wore his career on his sleeve, who knew his best days were behind him, that no matter how high he had risen, his current position was the penultimate step to being let out to pasture, like an old stud who could no longer fulfill his duty.

“To answer your question,” Jonatha said, settling herself in Paull’s chair behind his desk, “I thought, since this interview is largely window dressing, it would be more comfortable for both of us outside the office.” She gestured for him to sit.

“What shall we talk about?” Marshall said, glancing at his watch. He remained standing.

“What would you like to talk about?”

He gave her a sharp look. “Frankly, I’d like to get home.”

“Why?” she inquired.

“Sleep.”

“I heard you don’t sleep.”

“Would you care to come home with me and find out?”

“How would your wife feel about that?”

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it, his lips almost disappearing as he pressed them together.

She stood up. “Maybe I
will
come home with you.”

Marshall’s eyes slid away from her. “I wasn’t serious.”

“I am.” She came around from behind Paull’s desk. “Shall we go?”