There was a hole that could not be patched, and all the joy was draining away into it. All wasted, all lost, all gone.
It broke her heart. Made her so goddamn furious. So desperate.
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Nick demanded gruffly.
“Shut up,” she whispered. “You don’t want to know.”
He grunted expressively. “Probably not.”
She dragged herself up till she sat on the edge of the bed with her back to him. She felt heavy, exhausted. Stupid, too, for bringing this down on herself. She knew exactly how unpredictable he could be.
This was the last time she would ever try using sex to sweeten him up. It had blown up in her face like a grenade. She had no way to distance herself from him, and she could not bear his dark moods when they were channeled into the intense, driving intimacy of sex.
Her cell phone began to ring. She turned her head, tried to get up, but she felt too lethargic to move fast. Nick fished it out of the outer pocket of her purse, and wordlessly handed it to her.
She leaped to her feet, mood soaring skyward when she saw the display. Carrie. Oh, thank God, thank God. She hit talk.
“Carrie, am I ever glad you finally—”
“No, my dear. No, it is not Carrie.”
That oozing, faintly accented voice made her sink right back down onto the bed, suddenly boneless and cold. “Who is this?” she whispered.
“You know very well who this is.” The caller chuckled, pleased with himself.
“Zhoglo?” she whispered.
Nick went motionless, eyes wide.
“No names, for now, my dear. Are you alone?”
“What does that matter?” she asked, inanely.
“Because my message is for you alone. Not for your lover.”
“Why do you have Carrie’s phone?” she demanded.
“Why do you think?” His voice sounded almost pitying. “One moment. I will remove the gag just long enough for you to speak with your little sister. Excuse me…just a moment…” The phone was quiet for a second, and Becca heard a muffled, dry cough and a choking sound. A small voice said, “Becky?”
Cold faintness threatened her. The icy pit yawned inside her. Carrie had not called her older sister Becky since she was a tiny girl, four years old maybe. Tears sprang to her eyes, spilled out. She wasn’t big enough to contain this fear. It would shake her to pieces.
“Carrie? Baby? Are you OK?” she quavered.
“Becky?” the little voice croaked. “Becky? Please, I want to go home—”
The voice went away. Zhoglo returned. “That will do for now. Lovely creature, your sister. She’s been my guest for two days now. I confess, I’m getting fond of her. Your brother, too. Fine young man.”
“Josh? How…but he was just…I just—”
“Don’t waste time trying to find them in the house you visited today,” he told her. “They have already been moved to another location.”
She had to concentrate to get the words out of her shaking mouth. “What d-d-do you want?”
“I want Solokov,” Zhoglo said. “Your lover. Whatever his real name is. You need not say anything right now, of course. I know he must be with you. Just listen. If you wish to have your brother and sister back, you must think of a way to bring Solokov to a certain location, which I will communicate to you in our next conversation. When I have him, I will give you your family back, and you will all be free to go, back to your normal lives.”
“But I—”
“But if you do not succeed in bringing Solokov to me at the appointed place and time, you will receive a DVD in the mail, the contents of which will be most upsetting to you. I will use just one of them, for now. I will flip a coin to choose either your brother or your sister to star in it. I need not elaborate, no?”
“N-n-no,” she croaked. “Please, don’t.”
“Then, after you see this DVD, we will renegotiate,” Zhoglo said complacently. “Do we understand each other, my dear?”
It took several tries to get the word out. “Yes,” she said.
“Very well. I look forward to speaking with you again. Until then, my lovely Rebecca.”
Click. The line went dead.
The phone dropped from her numb hand, bounced on the carpet. Becca slid off the bed, down onto her knees, and curled around that awful hole of pure terror. Her entire body stuttered with fear.
She felt Nick’s big warm hands gripping her shoulders. “Becca?” he asked cautiously. “What’s up? Talk to me, babe.”
“He has Carrie and Josh,” she blurted out.
“Yeah?” He slid his hands under her armpits and lifted her up, setting her gently on the edge of the bed. She doubled over again, unable to bear the sucker-punch agony in her middle. “What does he want?”
Becca’s eyes overflowed with tears as she looked at him. It was the moment of truth. She could not betray him and deliver him up to Zhoglo. That was simply not an option. She didn’t have it in her.
The instant she told him, the instant she made that move and put Nick on his guard, Carrie and Josh would be lost forever.
So was she. Worse than lost. She was damned to hell for all time.
Nick shook her shoulders. “What does he want, Becca?”
Her lips formed the word, but could get only the faintest puff of air behind it to turn it into a tiny whisper. “You.”
Chapter
28
W ow. Amazing performance. He watched her weep and carry on with all his senses wide open, feeling for the vibe behind the vibe behind the vibe, and it rang perfectly true. She was a world class actress.
Or maybe she was just nuts. Maybe she’d psyched herself into believing the tales she told. That was how it worked under deep cover. Who knew better than him? You pumped the false persona full of life and juice and detail and emotion. Until it lived and breathed. It made you half-crazy, yes, but he’d been more than half-crazy to begin with.
There might even be a part of Becca’s splintered brain that sincerely believed that she loved him. Every instinct told him she was for real. That her evident distress for this sister and brother was real.
If only he hadn’t seen that footage.
Christ, he wished he could throw it in her face and examine how she reacted, but Davy and the rest were right. He’d lose every possible advantage the situation might give him, for the sake of a stupid, desperate hope. He would not permit himself to do that. No.
“He wants me?” he asked quietly. “Tell me.”
She mopped her face with a trembling hand. “I’m supposed to lure you into a trap, for him. When they have you, he says he’ll—he’ll give Carrie and Josh back to me. And if not…” She was gasping for air.
“Don’t tell me what happens if not,” he said. “I’ve seen it.”
Strange twist. He pondered it. Why alert him to the trap? She might have sensed that he smelled a rat. Maybe this was a salvage job. She was smart enough, intuitive enough. Games within games within games. It tied his brain in knots. This chick was seriously complicated.
“Where’s the trap?” he asked. “When’s the meeting?”
She shook her head “He’ll call with that info later,” she whispered.
He hesitated for a moment. “Why’d you tell me, babe?”
She looked up at him, wet-eyed, utterly bewildered. “Come again?”
“Why tell me about the trap?” he repeated. “Why not just do the trade?”
Her back straightened. She wiped her eyes. “You son of a bitch. How dare you say that. If you have to ask me that question, then you don’t deserve a goddamn answer!”
He shrugged. “Don’t take it personally. I just figured, hey, your first responsibility is to Carrie and Josh, right? Goes without saying.”
“And you think I’d be capable of doing that? Of turning you over to that monster after what you did for me? I love you, you stupid jackass!”
He thought about how he’d felt, staring at the blank façade of that town house today. “And what about Carrie and Josh?”
Her face crumpled. She sagged into herself.
Huh. He was not sure what, if anything, he’d learned from this touching melodrama, other than the fact that her performance remained watertight. The backstory was so believable. The dinky apartment, authentic-looking photos of the little brother and sister. That fucking phone call from Josh, at just the right moment—how the hell had she organized that? She must have had visual monitoring already in place. She must have been so sure Nick’d crawl back, begging for more, after the island. He didn’t blame her. He’d have been sure too, if he were her.
The heart-wrenching tale that they’d bonded over: dear old Dad, Mom eating the pills, Becca raising little bro and sis all alone. That vibe of stoic endurance, tinged with stubborn good humor. Such a likable, masterful touch. He’d eaten it up with a spoon.
But why had she waited so long to turn him in? She could have delivered him at any point in the last few days. He’d been utterly off his guard. His head between her legs, his brain melted down.
Maybe she was going for a bigger prize. After all, Daddy Novak would pay big money for Tamara. And he’d enjoy cutting the McClouds into bloody pieces, too, for what they’d done to his son.
With his usual legendary bad judgment, Nick had exposed and endangered every last friend he had. “Get dressed, babe,” he said.
She looked like she was going to be sick. “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” he told her honestly. “Anywhere. I don’t give a fuck. I’d rather be a moving target. And I think better when I’m moving.”
She plugged her cell phone charger into the wall, attached the phone, stumbled into the bathroom. The shower began to hiss.
Nick sat down heavily on the bed, and stared at her purse. He wasn’t sure where the impulse came from, to unsnap the clasp and look through it. Self-torture, maybe. Punishment for his own stupidity.
The envelope in the inside pocket made his jaw twitch. It was a European envelope, the dimensions different from American stationery. The paper was thinner, shinier, yellower. The flaps folded differently. It was unsealed, and barely big enough to contain the wad of cash it held.
He flipped through it. Fifteen thousand, in crisp new hundreds. The bills stuck to the cold sweat on his clammy hands.
He shoved them back into the envelope, stuck it into the purse, and looked again, more carefully. Found a slit in the lining of her purse. He groped in, pulled out a GPS locating device. A commercial brand. Not professional level, but it did the job. The shower shut off. He shoved the locater back into the lining, tossed the purse where it had been.
So, then. That solved that mystery. She’d gone to Gavin Street to make her report, pick up cash for miscellaneous expenses, obtain a monitoring device. Maybe she’d been ordered to plant it on him.
Which meant he couldn’t lose it without her copping to him.
He groaned, dropped his face into his hands. His head throbbed. Complicated, hell. Complicated didn’t even begin to describe it.
She burst out of the bathroom, damp and naked and beautiful in a billowing cloud of back-lit steam. “Did my phone ring?”
He shook his head, watched her dress with frantic speed. Her hands shook. She kept dropping things. Shirt on inside out. Tripping when she put her legs into her pants. When she got to the laces of her shoes, he couldn’t bear to watch it anymore, act or no act.
He kneeled and pulled the laces of her sneakers tight, tied them for her. Mr. Solicitous. She reached out to touch his face with her fingertips, a butterfly caress. Her eyes were glowing with tears.
Whoo-hah. Brace yourself for the tender moment, chump. Jesus. He had his limits. He flinched away. “You ready to go?” he asked.
She grabbed her purse, checked her cell phone, tossed the charger into it and the phone into the outside pocket. “Ready,” she said.
His mind spun in circles as they got into the truck, considering all his options. All of them ugly. He could ask Tam for some girl assassin trick, something like a nerve gas capsule he could tape to the roof of his mouth. Crush it with his teeth and spit death into Zhoglo’s face while the prick was gloating over his broken body. That would be satisfying, for the brief seconds he would have to enjoy it before his own lung tissue melted. Tam always had a stash of wicked shit like that on hand for her wearable weaponry biz, but her studio was pretty far away.
He’d improvise with what she had on hand. Assuming she was in town, and that she would speak to him. She just might be willing to provide him with the means of his own death, she was that pissed at him. That would be better than asking for help, organizing an ambush. He didn’t want to put his friends into more danger than they were in already. They were family men, all in some stage of procreation. Except for Sean, who was on a plane to Italy with his bride for his honeymoon.
The other happy bonus that the Lone Ranger suicide plan had to offer was that he would no longer have to wonder what the fuck to do with his own inconvenient self for the rest of his useless life.
His life for Zhoglo’s. A fair trade. Hell, it would be a blessed relief.
He just had to figure out what to do with Becca first. He had to plan for this, to prepare, and he couldn’t let her witness it. Nor could he take his eyes off her at this point. And he couldn’t bring her with him on a suicide mission. The chances of her getting killed were too great, even if she was on Zhoglo’s team. It was her job to keep him under control. If she failed to do that, she was dead meat.