Deliberate stupidity annoyed him terribly.
“Did you bring her purse?” he snapped.
Nadia held up the new-looking black bag, worth fifteen dollars at most, along with Rebecca’s cotton jacket. “I had her leave them in the foyer.”
“I did not ask you for tedious details.” He glanced at Mikhail, jerked his chin at the items Nadia held. “Well? Get to it.”
Mikhail got to work, slicing open the lining of Rebecca’s purse for the first GPS locator, hiding the second more carefully by unstitching the cloth strap. Another was tucked into the hem of Rebecca’s jacket. Hopefully, Arkady Solokov would find one, but not the others. Of course, if he had a bug detector, he would eventually find them all, but no matter.
Zhoglo was not concerned about controlling Rebecca. Everything she cared about was in his grasp. She would fall right into line.
He rummaged through the woman’s purse in a desultory way, but found nothing of interest. He tucked the envelope he’d prepared for Solokov to find into the inside pocket. He held it out to Nadia. “Well?” he prompted. “Take all this back down to the foyer. And come right back here. Immediately.”
Nadia was back in the room in less than a minute. Zhoglo was deeply involved in Becca’s fascinating if somewhat disjointed account of what had really happened on Frakes Island, when that idiot prostitute had the unbelievable insolence to interrupt him.
“Are you…going to hurt him?” Her voice was very small.
Zhoglo turned his head and gave her a look calculated to stop her heart. “You are not being paid to concern yourself with that, whore.”
She was actually opening her mouth to speak to him again.
“Have you grown fond of the boy?” he asked, cutting her off. “A whore should know better. But I will promise you this much. When the time comes for his mercy blow—and it will be a long, long time in coming—I will tell him that it is from you. From the lovely Nadia. He will die screaming your name. Does that satisfy you?”
Color drained from Nadia’s face. For a moment, she was not remotely beautiful. She was a death’s head, hollow-eyed beneath her blush pink paint. The depth of the fear in her eyes stirred him.
The girl needed to be reminded of her place. A creature as excessively beautiful as she sometimes ran the risk of thinking her beauty gave her a special power. That it made her immune to discipline.
A dangerous state of affairs. He had to nip it in the bud.
He rubbed his hands together, considering possibilities. Mikhail had done well yesterday. He had succeeded in leaving without being followed, and had dispatched the Evans woman in a brisk and professional manner. He was due a reward. Kristoff and Pavel, both out of favor, could look on and salivate.
“Nadia, my dear,” he said. “I would like a more intimate demonstration of your oral skills. Upon him.” He indicated Mikhail.
It took Nadia a moment to break her paralysis, but her faltering smile came back, and she sank down in front of the flushed, grinning Mikhail, the very image of charming submission, and got right to it.
Zhoglo immediately regretted the impulse. Mikhail was noisy. His gasps and groans were extremely annoying. In fact, it was almost impossible to hear what Rebecca and Joshua were saying to each other.
“Be quiet, man,” he snapped. “I wish to hear this conversation.”
Mikhail sucked in a breath and got his response down to a high-pitched keening sound, like a dog’s whine.
Kristoff and Pavel watched, enthralled, as Mikhail’s penis slid in and out of the girl’s pink mouth, but Zhoglo soon grew bored. Rebecca and her brother were now arguing heatedly about whether or not Nadia should accompany them on their trip to look for their sister Carrie. Which was, of course, a non-issue.
He got up, leaving the grunting, wheezing Mikhail and his captive audience behind, and walked down to the end of the hall, to the smallest bedroom, more a cell than anything else. He walked in, with a friendly smile for the wretched creature tied to the bed.
Ah, how he loved the sight of a lovely girl, tied and gagged.
Her pale green eyes were wide with terror. Remarkably similar to Rebecca, although her hair was straighter, and her face more narrow. Her slender body strained against her bonds, bucking and heaving. She wore only the gray string tank top and underwear she’d been wearing when his men collected her from her dorm room bed.
He put his hand on her cool, silken thigh, just for the pleasure of feeling her muscles jerk and recoil. “I imagine you are wondering why you are here,” he said. “It’s your sister, you see. She’s been playing dangerous games. She cost me money and time. She must be punished.” He shrugged almost apologetically. “Your family is small, so my choices were limited. But watching you and your brother die should be enough.”
Her body seized up in a shuddering paroxysm. He stroked her rigid body and realized that he had an erection. He massaged it idly.
“You may be interested to know that your brother and sister are in this very house right now,” he informed her. “Last I heard, they were arguing about going to look for you. They are so worried that you have not called. How good of them to care, no?”
Another jerk. She mewled desperately behind her gag, her horrified eyes dropping to where he massaged his crotch.
The impulse was strong, but the girl lay on her back, strapped to the bed. Faceup, feet fastened together with tight, complicated knots. He was irritated at the thought of picking them apart, or fetching a knife to sever them. He was even more irritated with the idiot who had tied her. A little foresight from this pack of fools who served him—was it too much to ask? Then he heard water running in the bathroom on the other side of the wall. He left the room just in time to intercept Nadia, who was patting her face dry, presumably after rinsing out her mouth.
Nadia would do to soothe his itch. Her fear was just as powerful.
“I hoped to catch you before you went downstairs,” he purred.
Nadia pulled back before she could stop herself. She tried to smile to cover the gaffe, but her lips trembled.
He took her by the arm, and guided her to the door of his own master bedroom. He pushed open the door and gestured with a smiling flourish for her to precede him inside.
She stared at him, frozen in place. “I…I…but he will be expecting me downstairs…” Her voice trailed off into a trembling thread. She sucked in air, tried again. “And I must be, ah…”
“Fresh?” His smile widened. Her fear honed his desire to razor-sharp intensity, and this was only the beginning. “Not a problem, my dear. There is a bathroom. Wash afterwards. Make yourself as clean and sweet as a new blown rose.” He shoved her before him, making her stumble, and followed her in. “Your little friend will never know.”
“Run it back. Play it again.”
“Nick.” Davy’s voice was heavy. “You’ve seen it ten times since I unscrambled it.”
“Run the fucking thing back and play it again,” Nick snarled.
Davy sighed, and obliged him. The recorded digital image of the woman on the monitor went back out the door of Zhoglo’s house, put her suitcase back into the trunk of the yellow cab, was sucked backwards into the rear seat. The cab began to move.
Freeze frame. Davy hit play. And Nick watched it again.
He guessed he kept hoping it would be different, that it would be some other woman who would get out, collect her suitcase, pay the driver, shoulder her purse—and walk right into Zhoglo’s lair.
As if it were no big deal. Something she did all the time.
But no. It was Becca who disappeared into the maw of that door. The door shut. The house seemed to stare at him with blank insolence.
His whole self was screaming and struggling against the blunt, inescapable conclusion. He didn’t want to give into it, but it was winning. Full realization was dawning, without his help, without his consent. The taste in his mouth was bitter as gall.
He’d been had.
His brain stretched like a tortured body on the rack around this new piece of information. Joints wrenching loose, muscles and tendons tearing as he tried to accommodate it. His breakfast had turned to a lump of jagged ice. The coffee sloshing around was corrosive acid.
Seth sat in the swivel chair on the other side of Nick, his face a mask. Connor was there, too, his arms folded tightly across his chest. All three men looked grim. And embarrassed as hell.
No one would look him in the face. Just as well. Nick didn’t want to look into anybody’s face, for the rest of what passed for his life.
“Play it again,” he said hoarsely.
Davy gave a muttered curse. “Look, man. Please. Stop torturing yourself,” he pleaded. “Don’t make us watch this.”
“Look sharp. She’s coming out again, in real time,” Connor said.
They all lunged to the trio of real-time monitors that covered the three angles of the Gavin Street house. Sure enough, there was Becca. Dragging her suitcase back out to the curb. Another cab idled there. The driver got out, and put the suitcase in the trunk for her. She slid into the seat, and the car pulled away. So flat, so anticlimactic.
“How long was she in there?” Connor asked.
“Thirty-eight minutes, seventeen seconds,” Seth said promptly.
The fact that Becca had left the Vor’s hideout had broken the bubble of false hope in his mind. Nick no longer wanted Davy to play that footage back. He was going to be looking at that footage in his head for a long, long time to come.
Unless he got himself offed. The odds of which were looking pretty good, considering how things were shaping up.
Hey. He might even get lucky and buy the big one this very day. Then he wouldn’t have to feel this way anymore. A guy could hope.
The silence was deafening. He was tempted to throw a computer, just to break that wall of silent pity and judgment.
But these guys had enough to put up with from him as it was.
Seth cleared his throat with a cough. “Weird,” he said cautiously. “That she would go there, if she knew that we were watching—”
“She didn’t know,” Nick cut in. “I never discussed too many details with her. She knew Zhoglo’s name, yeah. And she knew I was watching someone, but not who or where.”
“Well. Thank God for that, at least,” Connor said.
Yeah. Thank God. If she’d known they were surveilling Zhoglo’s digs, she would never have exposed herself. And he’d still be racking his brains trying to figure out what the fuck he could sell to pay for the rock he wanted to buy her. He still would not know that the woman he had begged to marry him was a treacherous, two-faced whore, hired by that scum-sucking vermin to seduce him, enthrall him, monitor him. Control him.
She’d been doing an amazing job of it. She was good. She must have been pleased with herself. Zhoglo must have been fucking thrilled. She’d probably be able to set herself up for life for what he’d paid her for this stunt. He wondered where the hell Zhoglo had found her.
He racked his brains, in a last-ditch desperate effort to think of any reason, any explanation at all for why Becca might saunter into a mobster’s house, hang out for the better part of an hour, and then trot out again, all with that calm, businesslike air.
He wondered if she’d ever serviced The Vor. Maybe she had today. Thirty-eight minutes and seventeen seconds was more than enough time for that, even with lead-in and cleanup, if they were brisk.
What burned in his chest now like a red-hot coal was the thought that he had let go of his search for Sveti for the sake of this lying bitch.
Davy let out a slow sigh. “Nick. I’m sorry that your—”
“Don’t,” he said. “Please. Just don’t.”
“You’ve got to look ahead, man,” Davy went on, his voice flat and implacable. “You need a plan, and you need it now.”
“Fuck it,” Nick said savagely. “Fuck you. Fuck this. All of it—”
“Shut up.” Connor’s voice slashed down, making him jerk. “You do not have the luxury of freaking out. You got used. You got fucked over. It’s bad, it hurts, we’ve all been there, we all survived—”
“Leave me alone, Con—”
“Hear me out,” Connor pressed grimly on. “The only useful thing you can do with this now is to turn it to your own advantage.”
“Advantage?” He started to laugh, incredulous. “Yeah. Right.”
“Yes. Advantage. You cannot confront her about this, Nick.”
Three sets of eyes bored into him as that sank in. “Holy fuck,” he muttered, helplessly. “You mean I—”
“Yeah,” Davy said heavily. “You have to keep on just as you are. Like nothing ever happened. Play it cool. Go and buy the fucking ring.”
That crack stung like the lash of a whip. He recoiled from it, and covered his eyes with his hands. “Oh, Christ.”
The silence stretched out again, as cold and silent as doom.
“Can you do it?” Seth asked quietly.
“Do what?” he snarled. “You mean, can I fuck her?” He imagined it. Imagined putting it to her, looking into those luminous green eyes. Their bodies joined, juicily rocking together.
Knowing what he knew.
His gut rebelled, and it took all his willpower to keep breakfast down. No fucking way was he giving in. He’d yarked a few times in his life from stomach viruses and hangovers. Never from hurt feelings.