Ekaterina (5 page)

Then again, anyone with the slightest travel savvy—and especially an international fence for combat accessories—would know that taxis loved to pick up fares at the local bus station.

Vadeem zipped back to his
Zhiguli
, a loaner from the local FSB set-up, and followed her, just to keep her in his sights, as she adeptly scored a cab at the depot. He stayed on her taillights all the way back to Pskov and hung out at the ATM machine, fighting his awakened suspicions while she checked in at the local Intourist Hotel. Lodging options were few in Pskov, but it slammed a few more nails in her coffin that she chose Grazovich’s hotel.

She finally loaded her gear into a rickety elevator and headed upstairs.

He approached his newly acquainted desk clerk informant. “Which one is she in?” “302.” The desk clerk offered a conspiratorial smile, as if she’d joined the police force.

“Thank you.” Vadeem took a seat across the lobby, behind a full hibiscus, and crossed his arms over his chest, wondering if his little tourist was staying put for the night.

She appeared thirty minutes later, face scrubbed, and looking sharp in a pair of khakis and a pink wide collar blouse. She’d obviously emptied half her backpack. It sagged like a deflated ball off her shoulder. He fell in thirty paces behind her when she stepped out onto the street.

The wind reaped her perfume and sent it streaming back at him. Oh my, did she smell good. Floral, maybe roses, or lavender. Something simple. He paused on the steps, watching her go, debating the wisdom of leaving Grazovich unguarded.

Except, what was she doing wandering around Pskov?

He stuck his hands in his jacket pockets and followed her trail.

He found her just around the corner, sitting in an outside bistro, backpack at her heels and nibbling at a fingernail while studying a menu. One leg was crossed over the other and her tennis shoe moved to the pop rock they were piping over the boom box on the cashier’s table. At first glance, no one would guess she had just spent the day on the lam and wading knee deep into a terrorist’s agenda.

A half block past the bistro, he bought an ice cream from a vendor and ate it while he watched her pick at a potato salad.

She had her cover down to an art form. Presently, she looked about as forlorn as he felt every Saturday night in the bleak months of winter—restless, frustrated. But he suspected the brain behind those woeful eyes held a knowledge of the inner workings of a howitzer or a scud missile. Vadeem threw his cone into the trash, tired of this charade.

He skidded to a halt, stunned, as Ivan Grazovich approached the café like a man on a mission. He wore a smile. Vadeem bristled. Somehow the fact that his gut instincts had played true felt like a knife in his chest.

Okay, so he’d hoped, in the tiniest corner of his heart, to be wrong. He edged near a building, folded his arms on his chest, and waited in the shadows, craning his ear.

“Miss Moore!”

Vadeem grimaced as the young lady actually looked happy to see the international thug.

Grazovich sat down. Miss Moore smiled, a pitiful one, but still, the smuggler was on the receiving end, and it seemed as if the world had tilted toward evil.

Vadeem clenched his jaw as she shook her head, those pretty, deceptive eyes tearing up. She pulled up something from under her shirt, a brass key on a shoelace. Grazovich touched her arm. She looked grateful. The smuggler ordered a Pepsi.

Vadeem fought a sneer, knowing the man had already consumed half a bottle of vodka.

Then she laughed, and the sound of it speared Vadeem’s bones. He felt sick and wanted to hit something, hard, when the grin that followed looked genuine. Vadeem considered his options. Could he arrest the team yet, or did he have to wait until they actually committed the crime?

They’d already amassed enough evidence to satisfy his suspicions.

The pair stood, and Grazovich picked up her bill. Vadeem followed them like a hungry dog as they strolled back to the hotel, she with an obviously lighter step.

They said good-bye for a long time, while Vadeem was stuck examining a display of
Matroshka
dolls in the lobby gift shop. Grazovich left first, taking the elevator.

Vadeem turned to follow.

Miss Moore walked into the bookstore, nearly smack into him.

“Excuse me!”

Vadeem blinked, suddenly at a loss for words. Those eyes were honey to his reflexes. He turned away, his head down, his adrenaline spiking. “No, excuse. . .me,” he stuttered. He picked up a porcelain Gel vase, examining it. Although he’d traded the militia jacket for his brown leather coat and wore a pair of sunglasses on his head, one lingering look and his surveillance gig would combust on the spot.

She said nothing and moved past him. The perfume stayed.

While she examined a scarf, he made a quick exit, scooting out into the lobby and hiding behind his favorite hibiscus. The desk clerk gave him a look. He frowned at her and shook his head. The last thing he needed was an untimely update from his cohort in crime.

He was back at the ATM machine when Miss Moore exited the shop and headed up the elevator.

He took the stairs.

She was collecting her key from the floor monitor when he reached the landing. He backed down a step and flattened himself against the wall. He just wanted to get a layout of where she was, what side of the hotel, what room. He’d find a perch in the grocery store across the street and make sure she was tucked in before he trained his binoculars on Grazovich’s room for the night.

He was on the landing when he heard a scream. Fifteen strides later, he stood in her doorway, his pulse roaring.

She was on her knees, holding a green sweatshirt in one hand, and a wool sock in the other. Her body shook.

He heard feet thumping down the hall behind him. She turned, looked at him, and went white.

“Calm down. I’m not going to hurt you.”

She put down the sock and held the sweatshirt to her chest, her eyes wide. Recognition washed over her face. “Get away!”

What game was she playing? She’d spoken perfect Russian before, had been rather stubborn about it, to boot. “
Nyet
. What happened here?” Either she was an extremely messy unpacker or someone had done the honors for her. He averted his eyes from a slip draped over the television set and a pair of pink silky pajamas that had landed on the desk lamp, and instead took a survey of the toiletries bag that had been emptied onto her bed. “Thorough, huh?” He picked up a gooey bottle of shampoo with two fingers, wondering what the thief was looking for
inside
the bottle.

She looked at him, half-horror, half-confusion, her knuckles white against her sweatshirt. “What are you doing here?” Her Russian, although stuttered, had returned.

He crouched before her, a little shocked at her fraying composure. “Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”

She opened her mouth, closed it. Clenched her jaw. He looked away when tears edged her eyes.

“Any idea who did this?” He tried to keep his tone dark, dangerous, refusing to allow her sobs past his disgust. The woman obviously wasn’t above playing games with a man’s emotions.

“No.” Her pitiful tone found soft soil and twisted. He had to admit, everything about her smacked of authenticity.

Except, of course, her rather telling relationship with an international smuggler.

“You know you’re under arrest, right? It’ll only help your case to tell me everything.”

All bravado dropped from her expression and she looked like she might just wail, right there. “My case?” She backed away from him. “I don’t know what you think I did, but I did NOT run away today. Someone let me go. And,” her voice shook and she wrestled it back into submission, “I have no idea, none,
nyeto
, who did this.
Panimaish
?”

Her Russian vernacular, slightly sarcastic and sassy, seemed completely out of sync with the fierce tremble of her hands. Still, it chipped another crack into his suspicions.

“My name’s Vadeem. I’d like to help you.” Now why did he say that? He felt like an idiot, holding his hand out to her like he wanted to make friends. Still, the damage was done, and all he could do was muscle up a smile.

She looked from his hand to his eyes, studying his face with unmasked disbelief. She’d obviously had her share of scrapes for the day. Her eyes looked battered and fatigued. Still, if he’d learned one thing about her, she wasn’t going to shatter in front of him. “Kat Moore, and I still don’t know anything.” She slipped her hand into his. It felt warm, and just strong enough for him to know she fought her fears.

“Glad to meet—

The window behind her exploded.

A million spikes sprayed them as Vadeem threw himself forward. He caught Miss Moore in his embrace and landed on the palms of his hands. They fell back onto the rug. She screamed, her hands clawing into his chest as he held her down. His arms covered their heads, his face next to hers, as he listened to the gunfire of a semi-automatic Makarov chip cement from the wall above the bed.

Chapter 4

Kat leaned her head on the dirty glass pane in the interrogation room. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t shake off the tremor that buzzed like a low hum under her skin. Two stories below, moonlight strafed the street in a long pale strip, and the trees jutted spiny arms into the sky, black skeletons silhouetted in ghostly light. She heard the low murmur of voices outside the door. Hopefully one of them was the soldier who had pinned her to the ground and saved her life.

So, maybe he wasn’t the menacing thug she’d pegged him to be.

She put a hand to her face and remembered the rub of his whiskers, recalled his warm breath as he whispered comfort to a stranger and protected her with his own body. She blinked against the burning in her eyes. Nope, after the bullets stopped flying, she’d dubbed him a bona fide hero.

As if on cue, the man, Captain Vadeem something, stalked into the room. He still looked like a walking menace with his sculpted physique and battle-etched face. He traipsed into the room and tossed a file on the metal table, then turned his chair backwards and sat down, straddling it and leaning over the top.

She didn’t miss the way her heartbeat revved into NASCAR speed. Why, she wasn’t at all sure—whether because of his grim look, or the way his blue eyes seemed to peer through her, down to her soul.

“How are you doing, Miss Moore?” His voice didn’t sound at all like he’d nearly been shredded by a battery of gunfire.

She could only shrug. It seemed particularly ironic that she both began and ended this day in the custody of the Russian militia. She’d stopped asking God to rescue her and moved on to asking why she needed to be rescued so often.

The captain indicated for her to sit. “Can I ask you a few questions?”

He deserved to ask her anything after his heroic stunt earlier in the evening. When he looked at her with worry in his brow she could hardly say no. Still, their relationship had her on edge—just what, exactly should she feel about someone who scared the breath out of her one second, and felt like an angel from heaven the next?

She sat down, feeling hollow, thankful that she’d pulled on the green sweatshirt before leaving the hotel. An igloo in Siberia was bound to be warmer than the barren cement interrogation room in the cop house. The smell of coffee drifted in from the dingy hallway and knotted her stomach.

The captain flicked open the brown file folder and flipped through it, as if searching for something. Kat pinned her hands together between her knees, hoping the file wasn’t about her. He stopped searching, and his fingers drummed on the sheaf of papers for a moment while his gaze swept over her. She swallowed a lump forming in her throat.

“Do you have any idea why someone would ransack your room or shoot at you?”

She gave a small shake of her head.

“Hmm.”

She watched his hands, strong and sleek, unearth a color photograph. She remembered those hands guiding her as she slithered across her hotel room floor to the hallway. Those hands took hers and helped her to her feet, even held her around the waist when she discovered her legs had turned to oatmeal.

“Have you ever seen this man?” He handed her a photo, and was polite enough not to comment when it shook in her grip.

She frowned. The man in the photograph looked Slavic by birth, with narrow panes to his face, and hard eyes. His tawny brown hair, pulled back, gave him a fierceness that was only accentuated by the thin scar along his right cheekbone. He looked vaguely familiar, but. . .“No.”

“His name is Ivan Grazovich. He’s Abkhazian, a military general and antiquities smuggler, among other things.”

She felt a tight burn, right in the center of her chest. “Do you think he was the one shooting at me?” She searched the captain’s face. He’d make a superb poker player, if he had ambitions in that realm. He merely drilled her with a blank look. Then, as if satisfied with her confusion, he leaned back and blew out a breath. She felt tension release its death-hold crunch.