Ekaterina (19 page)

Kat closed her eyes, letting the memory of his sincerity seep into her bones.
I’m going to take good care of you. I promise.

Funny how that same statement coming from Matthew turned her into knots and tightened her jaw. Matthew meant, “Don’t do anything foolish. Obey me, and everything will turn out okay.”

She’d been obeying and dodging foolishness for three decades. She’d obeyed Matthew through college and beyond, too afraid to step out and follow her dreams, waiting year after year for him to finish school, believing that he knew best for her. She’d obeyed Grandfather, growing up on the farm, happily sheltered inside his singular attention. She had even obeyed when her mother lay dying, bleeding from a ruptured spleen.

“Stay here with Uncle Bert and be a good girl,” Grape-Grandma had ordered as she slid out of the pickup truck and slammed the door. “I’ll be right back.”

Kat stayed, counting the windows in the three-story county hospital, wondering why her great-grandmother had cut short Kat’s unpacking to rush them to the hospital, as if the old woman itched to go on her weekly visitation. If only Kat had known her mother’s life leaked out by the second.

Kat remembered her anger as she crossed her arms over her chest and willed her Grape-Grandmother to appear through the glass hospital doors. She’d waved good-bye to Mama and Papa only two short hours ago, looking forward to an entire glorious summer before her, riding through the timothy, and helping Grape-Grandma put up pickles, pick peaches and apples from the orchard. Summertime meant freedom and a life gloriously undefined by rules, conformity, and hemlines. Kat fought the urge to prop her feet up on the dashboard, anxious to get her vacation started.

She counted windows, mesmerized at the tint of morning sun turning the glass bronze. This hospital was minute compared to the one in New York City, where she’d visited Grandfather. A trickle of sweat streaked down her forehead and pooled at the stiff collar of her polyester dress.

It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last that she had been stranded in the truck while the old woman visited the infirmed. Her stomach lurched as Kat leaned her head against the hotel wall. Remnants of anger at the hospital regulations that decreed no one under the age of twelve allowed, at her Grandfather for being absent, out of town, again, at Grape-Grandmother and her notions of propriety that forced her into a Sunday dress when she would have much rather be in a pair of jeans and riding her mare, Hickory, on the farm. The injustice of Grape-Grandma’s abrupt morning plans had Kat gritting her teeth, and the drone of Uncle Bert drumming his fingers on the steering wheel only increased her pain. Uncle Bert wasn’t what she’d call overly sensitive. A bachelor with his own farm to run, he looked the disheveled part. Grandfather’s mutt collie, Butch, had a larger vocabulary than her gloomy Uncle Bert.

Grape-Grandmother finally appeared in the door, and something about the old lady’s expression had made fear coil deep in Kat’s stomach. She sat up as Grape-Grandmother approached, wringing a cloth handkerchief, her face solid, but her lip twitching just slightly, as if pain was about to leak out. Kat opened the car door.

“Oh, Kat,” was all the woman said.

Her wretched tone told Kat that the world as she had known it had shattered.

How could she step over the line after that? Rather, she’d been grateful for their protective hovering. First Grape-Grandma, then Grandfather. They treated her like something made out of milk-glass, and Matthew easily took over the job when she met him at Nyack University. She often wondered if her grandfather didn’t set up the meeting. It wasn’t every day that a medical resident wandered into the Nyack library, especially when he had his own prestigious library at Columbia. But he’d helped her pick up a stack of books she’d dropped, and she should have seen then that he’d made it his mission to keep her safe. . .too safe.

So safe that, after seven years of dating, her world consisted of Matthew, her college roommate, and two colleagues at work. A world that seemed to cinch tighter each year, her dreams becoming smaller and smaller. “You need me, Kat. You won’t be okay without me.” Poor Matthew. He’d been wrong. This journey to Russia seemed like the most okay thing she’d ever done. She’d help unite a family, she’d met a woman from the past who’d cracked the door to her grandfather’s war, and she’d met a man who made her feel brave and beautiful.

“I’m going to take care of you,
” Vadeem had said. For the first time, she liked the idea of a man looking out for her. And Vadeem’s sudden appearance gave her the distinct feeling that Vadeem had invested in her mystery. Invested enough to do some digging into her past. Invested enough to hop a plane. Invested enough to surrender sleep to make sure she got hers. And that meant he wouldn’t hold her back.

Vadeem was a good man. Kat knew it in her bones. She sensed his controlled emotions as they walked back to the hotel, the way his muscles tensed under her arm, and his tenderness as he ran a finger along the bruise on her jaw line, now turning yellow. “See you in the morning,” he’d said, as he lowered himself onto the hard wooden floor. He hung his arms over his up drawn knees. “Go to bed. You’ll be fine.”

It wasn’t herself she worried about. She couldn’t let him sleep in the hall. Not another night. Taking care of her didn’t mean he had to sacrifice his health. Guilt pushed her to her feet, and she yanked opened the door before common sense reined her in.

Vadeem stared at her, his face muscles tight, as if he’d been watching her through the wooden door with Super-Vadeem-man x-ray vision. “What’s the matter? Are you okay?”

She shook her head. “I can’t let you sleep out here.”

He smiled, his blue eyes lighting up and sending fire through her veins. “Well, I can’t sleep in there, and I’m not going to put any more distance between us.” He pushed to his feet. “Kat, I’m fine. I’ve gone days without sleeping before.” He smiled, and she saw a hint of his classified past on his handsome face. “Trust me. I’m okay out here.”

She wasn’t buying. She saw weariness bagging under his eyes. The guy had traveled a thousand miles with news that could change her life. She wasn’t going to let him sit in the hall like a bug. “I have an idea.”

-

What was she up to now? Worry flickered through Vadeem’s mind, the briefest suspicion that she was about to make a run for it.

But, if that was the case, she would have gone through the window, not be trying to convince him she cared about his stiff neck muscles and lack of sleep. He stretched as he followed her down the hall to the desk clerk, then beyond to the tiny second floor lobby.

Tall windows framed the night and sent shadows like a blanket across the two fraying armchairs and the brown velour sofa. Kat sat on one end and patted the place next to her.

With that, his heart began drilling through his chest. He sank down next to her, every muscle taut. What was this sudden shower of warmth? The last thing he needed was for her to encourage the emotions he was having a hard time ignoring. He leaned forward, clasped his hands, elbows on his knees, suddenly more awake than he had been in the past twenty-four hours. “Uh, Kat, I think you should. . .”

“I read some place that soldiers can take naps, a full REM cycle in about twenty minutes. Can you do that?”

Where did that come from? “Well, yeah, but if I’m asleep, how can I watch over you?”

She put her hand on his back. It sent ripples down his spine. He jerked, then hated himself for it. He couldn’t sleep if he wanted to.

“Maybe
I’ll
watch over
you
.” Her hand moved up to the nape of his neck. “Lay down on the sofa. Stretch out and take your twenty minutes. Take an hour. I’ll sit here and keep watch.”

He turned, blinked at her, any words locked in his chest. Oh, she was so beautiful with her tousled hair, her eyes searching his, warm and candy sweet. She took her hand away. His gaze trailed to it, remembering how she’d dug that hand into his jacket only twenty-four hours earlier. “I’m supposed to protect you, remember?” He was having a hard time remembering that himself at the moment.

“So, I’ll wake you if any terrorists show up.” Tease played at the corner of her mouth.

The idea rubbed against his better judgment. No, he shouldn’t lie down, bring his legs off the floor, curl up next to her. No, he definitely shouldn’t lay his head in her lap and get lost inside her tender expression.

He was never any good at following better judgment.

Only, it would be a miracle if he got one minute of sleep.

She must have seen the turmoil in his eyes, for she patted his chest. “Tell me about your childhood, before the orphanage, Vadeem.”

He winced. Why did she have to sour this incredibly sweet moment with that question? A jaunt down memory lane, however, was probably a whole lot safer than the memories he wanted to create.

“I had a big brother. My father was an electrician, my mother a nurse. We had a small home, lived a normal life.” His mind drifted back, warmth cascading over him.

“What did you do for fun? Did you have any hobbies? Did you play sports? Were you on any teams?”

He hesitated, feeling the answer as a burning flame in his chest.

“I was a member of the Pioneers.”

It was the worst day of his miserable short life. Vadick sat in the back row of the auditorium on the third floor of his school, kicking the legs of the straight-back chair.

Everybody knew. His best friend Sergei Ishkov’s eyes bore a hole through Vadick as Sergei stood in line with the rest of Vadeem’s classmates, waiting for his pin. Sergei looked so smart in his red handkerchief, his eight-year-old face glowing with pride.

Vadick ached to have a red scarf. Tears burned the back of his eyes as he looked away. He searched the audience for Ivana Ishkova. She was lost in a cluster of other parents filling the first three rows of the auditorium seats. Vadick hung his head, not able to watch as names were called, and his classmates filed forward, one by one, and received their Pioneer pin.

He would run away. That’s what he’d do. He’d run, as soon as the snow melted and the river broke, he’d take his father’s
lodka
and let the current take him south, to Nevyansk or perhaps even to Ekaterinaburg. That would scare them. Not far enough that they wouldn’t find him, but enough for fear to do its duty. His mother would clasp him to her chest and beg forgiveness for keeping him from being a Keeper of the Motherland, a Pioneer member, dedicated to preserving their strong and pure State.

Vadick’s chin bobbed as tears burned his throat. He heard Sergei’s name called, and quickly swiped at his shame, wanting to watch.

The Pioneer leader, Comrade Korillovich, a wide, ruddy man with power in his arms and fire in his brown eyes, bent over, shook Sergei’s hand, and handed him the pin.

The pin with Father Lenin’s face engraved in the front. The pin they would all wear to school on the days of Pioneer meetings. A pin Vadick would never own. He pounded his hand against his knee.

That’s when his legs moved forward. So his mother hadn’t signed the permission slip? It was a formality. Hadn’t Comrade Korillovich said just that when he asked Vadick why he wasn’t joining?

Vadick ran furiously to the front, up the center aisle, dragging with him a hundred piercing, curious stares. He skidded to a halt at the back of the line. His labored breathing drew the attention of his classmates, boys and girls who frowned at him.

He ignored their stares and fixed his gaze on Comrade Korillovich. His heart pounded in his throat. The sides of Korillovich’s mouth tilted just slightly, and a hot wave rushed through Vadick. Oh, yes, he’d be a Pioneer.

He still remembered the way the straight pin drew blood in his palm when Comrade Korillovich slapped it into his hand. “You did the right thing, Son. Welcome to the Pioneers.”

“Vadeem, are you sleeping?”

Vadeem blinked, and the world of his childhood vanished. Kat’s gaze kneaded his with concern.

“You stopped talking, but your eyes were open. I didn’t know.”

He was horrified to feel moisture filming his eye. He blinked and it squeezed out, dripping down his cheek like a marble.

She saw it; her face twitched. Then, gently, she drew her thumb across his check and wiped his tear. Silence drummed between them as he stared at her, feeling her questions in her worried expression. The answers rolled into a lave ball in his chest and it was all he could do not to let them erupt, spewing horror and pain across their fragile relationship.

He closed his eyes.

She sighed. Then, “Sleep Vadeem. I’m trusting God to watch over the both of us and I’m not going anywhere.”

She’d been saying that for three days. For the first time, he was glad she meant it. He smiled slightly, and buried himself in the sweet envelope of sleep.

-

“I don’t know!” The young monk’s face twisted against the knife digging into his neck. True to his Abkhazian blood, he glared back at Ilyitch like a mangy dog in a corner.

“Back off Ilyitch. I already asked him. He doesn’t know.” General Grazovich looked considerably less foreboding than he had after Ilyitch’s arrival an hour prior. So, their uneasy relationship might have spiraled a bit out of control. It set Ilyitch’s every nerve on edge trying to get face-to-face with a man hounded by the FSB, and perhaps it did make him a bit trigger happy with his fists, especially when Grazovich accused him of trying to get them both collared. Right, like he ached to return to a Russian prison? He’d tasted enough ten years ago. Did the slimy general think he did this for the game of it? Ilyitch knew better than the general the torture techniques of the FSB.