Ekaterina (10 page)

She tried to imagine him spit poor, owning nothing but the clothes on his back, lining up for bowls of food with big eyes like the children she’d seen on the adoption tapes their field workers sent in. She ached for what he’d been forced to overcome. No wonder he was such a health-food fanatic.

“The military and I got along well enough that I was promoted and asked to join the Red Berets.”

“Red Berets?” Kat echoed.

“They are similar to your Army’s Green Berets. We were the elite, trained for special operations.”

Her eyes widened at the image of him dressed in fatigues, holding an AK-47, black grease smeared across his rugged face. No wonder he carried himself like a soldier. She had no doubt he’d been one of the best. “Did you see any action?”

He shook his head, his smile crooked, his eyes etched in secrets when they caught hers.

Okay, so maybe she didn’t need to know that. “So how did you get into the FSB?”

“This I can answer.” He leaned back, settling both arms across the seatback, visibly relaxed. The gesture made her smile. “I was in special ops for ten years. It was good work, but I just felt like it was time to. . .get out.” He ducked his head. “I thought I might want to find someone to, uh, maybe, settle down with. And you can’t do it when you travel all over the planet two hundred and eighty days of the year.”

Settle down. Was he. . . her heart wobbled on the edge of a surprisingly painful fall. “And, did you?” she squeaked, horrified at her tone.

Those eyes saw right through her question. He looked at her, a grin that looked downright dangerous tugging at his face. “Not yet. I’m still looking for the right girl.”

“Oh.” A lump the size of Niagara Falls lodged in her throat. She fought to swallow it down, aware that her face had turned hot and that he was now openly grinning at her obvious discomfort. Where was her wit when she needed it? Her mind went blank.

“And what about you, Kat Moore? Have you found the right man to settle down with back in New York? Do you have anyone who waits for you there, who makes you laugh, who calls you
maya doragaya
?”

His soft endearment sent warmth in a wave to her toes. But she blinked at him, afraid of what she saw written in his eyes. “I,” she swallowed hard, “thought we were talking about you.”

A shadow crossed his face, his expression wary. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I guess we were.”

“It’s okay,” she murmured, but something heavy settled on her chest. She hadn’t traveled to Russia to find anything but her past. But she’d seen, very clearly, her future traced in the gaze of the FSB cop, and something about it sent a tingle of fear up her spine.

She liked it way too much.

Chapter 7

The Moscow sky glittered like a cache of diamonds poured out on velvet, a perfect canopy of romance as Vadeem walked Kat to the Hotel Rossia. He carried, rather than dragged, her suitcase behind him. Kat had balled her fists at her sides, her jaw tight. Anger rimmed her eyes.

So much for romance. Not that any cop in his right mind would consider it after Kat’s dash-and-dodge at the train station.

The sneaky vixen had tried to ditch him. As they’d climbed down from the train, he conveniently wrestling with her suitcase, she’d started wheeling through the crowd like an American football player. It felt like a knife in the gut. Especially after he’d actually begun to trust her, well, at least he cultivated the
desire
to trust her. Especially when she dug up his past, then acted as if she cared. Her soft words, her tender expression—they unearthed his long buried feelings and made him feel. . .safe.

His throat grew raw just thinking about it. A guy with his past should have an ironclad heart. Instead he’d let Kat’s laughter and counterfeit honesty in her eyes creep under his guard. He’d even started flirting with her. Flirting! More than that, he’d spent about a hundred kilometers cataloguing ideas on how to ease her pain over sending her packing. A fancy dinner had been at the top of the list.

Her fifty-meter dash put a foot through those budding hopes. He’d caught up to her halfway through the train station, and their seedling friendship died an ugly death. Even with an accent, the words “bully” and “creep” stung. And when he’d reminded her that she could easily be wearing handcuffs, she gave him a look that might melt nuclear waste.

Oh yeah, she’d yanked up by the roots all tendrils of trust.

Life would improve about three-thousand percent when he shoved her on an airplane for America.

Despite the June air, Vadeem shivered. Beside him, Miss Catch-Me-If-You-Can didn’t even acknowledge his presence. Or the fact that he hauled her bag through Moscow like an underpaid porter.

Egoistaya Americanka
.

He wasn’t going to give into her tears either, although he felt nearly pummeled by her sobs—Plan B on her list of crafty escape methods. But he wouldn’t even consider pulling her into his arms—to lift his weapon, or perhaps worse. And, gauging from her white-faced response to the Russian endearment he’d murmured on the train, even if she wasn’t an international con artist, and that was a big
if
, she’d obviously rather suffer alone than let a Russian cop soothe her pain.

If only for a moment under the soft canopy of the train lights, he thought he’d met the one person who could understand his demons. “
You can’t possibly know what you are destroying
,” she’d said. Oh yes, he knew. Better than she could imagine. He knew all about the longing to belong. To have a family. He understood how it felt to stare at the ceiling, conjuring up parents. Conjuring up love. Pain coiled around his chest and squeezed as he glanced at her, stomping along, her frustration audible in occasional gut-wrenching sighs. Oh, he knew exactly what he was making her give up…
destroying
, as she put it. If she was, truly, simply an American on a personal mission, he understood exactly why she’d tried to ditch him, twice. If he wasn’t tied up thwarting an international thug, he might even help her shake the truth out of the skinny monk.

Who was Timofea, indeed? And what exactly did Kat’s key unlock?

More than that, if she was innocent, what did Ivan Grazovich want with a beautiful
Americanka
from New York state?

Some questions would have to remain unanswered.

The last thing Vadeem needed right now was a distraction with caramel colored hair and eyes that dug a hole through a man’s walls. It pained him more than he wanted to admit that, when he’d called her “my dear one,” somewhere deep inside he wanted to mean it.

Down, boy.
Vadeem drew in a calming breath. He kept his eyes ahead, off her profile, off the way she walked beside him, resolute, waves of anger rolling off her shoulders.

For the first time in two days, he wished his instincts were dead wrong.

The din of evening traffic had settled to a low murmur. The clang of trolley cars occasionally dented the air and mingled with the rumble of late night buses. The smell of baking bread wafted out of a nearby factory and found a hole in his stomach. It groaned, and he grimaced. She must be starved as well.

“Would you like to stop and get something to eat?”

She shook her head.

So she wouldn’t even look at him now. He clenched his jaw.

Red Square loomed ahead. The walls of the Kremlin, a fortress from the past, rose shadowed and jagged against the navy sky. On the other side of the square, Hotel Rossia sparkled like a casino. He’d called ahead and reserved a deluxe room. He was still debating whether he should post a guard.

“Do you think I can trust you to stay put until morning?”

She pursed her lips.

Yes, definitely a guard. Maybe two.

They stopped at the streetlight. Ahead stood Lenin’s museum, dark and foreboding with its grandiose czarist architecture. The brick building cast a bulky shadow across the street, through puddles of streetlights. Vadeem took Kat’s arm. She tensed, but he pulled her across the street into the envelope of shadow, towards the hotel.

He stepped onto the sidewalk, and released his grip.

He heard a crack as pain exploded in his head. Hitting the ground, knees first, he caught himself on his palms. He felt like the top of his head had come off. The world swirled in darkness and light.

Somewhere distant he heard screaming.

The next blow drove his chin into the cement. Darkness crashed. Swallowed. Took him deep, flooding him with memory. And nightmare.

-

The wind howled like a spirit, moaning, clawing at the house as snow piled against the door. Vadick felt no fear. The two-room shack radiated warmth
—
in love and in temperature. Fumes and heat crept out like watchmen from the coal furnace in the center of the room to every corner of the house, playing sentry against the frigid Siberian blizzard.

“Borscht tonight, Mama?” Vadick slid onto a bench, his woolen valenki boots now touching the floor. He’d grown three centimeters just this fall, and was proud to see the chip on the door that marked his progress edging closer to Max’s tally.

“Shee, Vasha. Meat is for Sundays.” Mama ladled out four bowls and set them on the rough-hewn table. The smell curled off the top like fingers, clawing at his empty stomach. “Go, wash for dinner.”

Vadick crawled off the bench and ran to the bucket sitting by the door. He grabbed a chip of soap and scrubbed his fingers. The chilly water sent a thousand icicles through his arms as he plunged them in to his elbows.

The outside door thumped, then voices
—
Papa and Maxim, back from the store to purchase fresh bread to accompany the cabbage soup. Vadick slid onto his seat and had his spoon in hand when the two swept in. Frost spiked Papa’s brown mustache and beard and he made a show of slobbering a kiss on Mama. Vadick smiled as something warm barreled to the center of his chest.

Vadick’s older brother, Maxim, didn’t even elbow him as he slid onto the stool and reached for his bowl, blue eyes alive with hunger. Mama sliced the bread and piled it in the center. “And what did you learn at school today?”

Vadick scowled, then remembered. He had learned something today. . .something about brotherhood. He dug in his pocket, and handed his mother a note. “They sent this home.”

“Not now, Sveta. Let us thank the Lord.” Papa’s hand on Mama’s arm made her slip the note into her apron. Vadick’s heart fell. He needed an answer by tomorrow.

But prayer came first. He knew that well. Eight years of habit made him stand, clasp his hands, bow his head. Papa prayed for them until the soup cooled.

Vadick’s parent’s warned him never to ask questions about God, or even hint at his family’s regular church attendance. But he never understood why they didn’t pray in class, why, in fact, his teachers never mentioned God. Father Lenin, yes. Once he’d made the mistake of asking Papa if Father Lenin and God were one in the same.

He’d earned a whippin’ and never asked again.

The soup warmed his insides and filled him better than any fried peroshke or blini, although he’d happily stuff himself to the ears with any of Mama’s baked goods.

“The Bible, Maxim.” Papa slid his bowl away, his blue eyes trailing Max as the elder brother went to the sofa, opened the cushion, and dug out the family treasure. He carried it like a piece of Babushka Anna’s china, tiptoeing to the table. The book had been in the family for three generations. Gold embossed words had faded off the top, and the corners of the leather cover peeled. Two pages were missing, one in James, and the other in Hebrews. His father had painstakingly copied the Hebrew passage from someone else’s Scripture and tucked it into the back page. Once, he’d read it aloud. Vadick remembered something about Esau, but nothing else except the memory of shivering at Mama’s crying.

“Tonight we’ll read in John, chapter nine.”

Vadick listened, then, “Papa, why was the man born blind?”

Papa’s blue eyes always entranced him, drew him in, and finally rendered him powerless to escape. “That’s the point of the story, Vasha. There was no reason except that God be glorified in the healing.”

“But then that man suffered for no reason.”

“Not for no reason. The reason is clear. What confuses you is why God allowed it.”

“Yes. Why would God allow his child to suffer?”

Papa laid down the Bible, steepled his meaty fingers, elbows propped on the table. “That is part of the mystery of faith. God allows suffering. It is a part of the believer’s life. When we suffer, we turn to God. Through it, our faith grows. It is hard to understand, child, but God plans for us to suffer. It’s not ours to ask why. It’s only ours to trust, to hold onto our Lord for strength.”

“But what if it is too hard to trust?” Vadick saw his mother’s face blanch white, but Papa smiled. “You will suffer in this life. It’s your choice to suffer trusting in God’s plan or to turn away and walk alone.” He closed the Bible, and rubbed his hand on it. “When your time comes, you will choose,
Moy Lapichka
. If you choose God, you will find He will give you the light and comfort you need to walk the path of pain.”