Tell Me No Lies (26 page)

She huddled into herself, wishing she could blend with the night, turn herself into inky anir and disappear.

Then she wouldn't have to reveal anything. Wouldn't have to expose herself.

But she was already exposed. Luka gone, Sonya gone. Alone, she hung by a thread, with nothing left to hold on to but the truth.

The truth Hank deserved. The truth that could cost him his life.

But it was too late for secrets. Those bullets could have hit him as well as her. Lies couldn't protect him. Not anymore.

But the long drive to Lakeview and the anticipation of what lay at the end of it coated her skin with icy dread.

Beside her, Hank was working on calm, but it took a good fifteen minutes for the sweat to cool. Hands fixed to the wheel, he sped into the night, thankful Alex was still and silent.

He hoped she stayed that way. Even fell asleep. He could use a shot of oblivion himself. Darkness was a good time for ghosts, and his were rising out of the grave.

He stared at the twisted black highway, powerless to stop them.

Because the truth was he couldn't save anyone anymore. Couldn't protect anyone. Not with love or good intentions. Not even with guns and bullets.

By every law of God and man he should be dead and Maureen alive. She was the one with a place in this world and children who needed her.

But she'd ended up under the ground, and he'd walked away.

Emotion tightened the back of his throat and he gripped the steering wheel, white-knuckled and desperate.

If she'd fallen an inch east or south she might have walked away with nothing more than a bump on the head. An inch, the difference between life and death. That same little bit, applied to the arm of a madman with a screwdriver, had saved his life.

Why had that fluke killed her but kept him alive?

Why?

The question seared through his brain, burning a well-worn channel, the same unsatisfying answers in its wake.

Random chance.

God's will.

Luck.

Fate.

Take your pick. None of it made sense. Life was one big crapshoot, and everyone played. Everyone gambled. And someday when he needed it most, his lucky streak would end.

Because the universe was going to redress the imbalance that had left him whole. Reset the scales, right the wrong. The final outcome decided not by what he did or didn't do, but by whatever joke the cosmos played on him.

He only hoped to God no one else got killed along the way.

He hit the gas, speeding into the night as though the whoosh of hot air outside the car could burn away the thoughts inside his head.

The car raced ahead, and he made the exit in record time.
Past the one-pump gas station, down a two-lane winding country road that upped and downed like a carny ride. To hell and beyond was no exaggeration.

"Up ahead, make a right."

He followed her instructions and in a few minutes, water appeared to his left, glistening in the moonlight. He hugged the shore's arc, easing around the north side where dark shapes morphed into cabins that hung over the lake. An hour earlier, she'd made a phone call, and as they drove up the dirt road in front of one, Mason came out to meet them.

"Pull around back," he called, waving his arms to point the way.

Hank drove into what passed for a driveway a track channeled into the dirt by truck tires. He braked, and Alex was out of the car in a heartbeat.

Mason shook his head. "This is not a good idea, Sasha."

Alex responded in Russian and Mason switched over. Hank couldn't say he was exactly surprised to hear the Slavic sounds coming out of the other man's mouth, but he hadn't been expecting it either.

For a few minutes, Hank listened to the two of them argue close and low. Then fury rising, he clapped his hands to get their attention.

"Enough. Enough!"

They broke off to look at him as though he were an appendage they'd forgotten.

"English." He drilled them both with a look he'd honed in years of uniform patrol. It was a look that said he was about to get nasty if whoever he was addressing didn't calm down and cooperate. It hadn't failed him yet. It didn't fail him this time.

Mason jerked his head in the direction of the cabin. "Inside."

"Wait," Alex said. She turned to Hank. "I... I appreciate everything you've done. But Edward can handle things from here." She gave him that regal smile. Polite, cold. Go away, it said.

A low rhythm beat in his head. A voice urging him to get in the car and drive away. Let someone else take care of her. Someone who wouldn't get her shot, wouldn't get her killed.

But then there was that other voice. The one that reminded him he was still a cop with a case to solve.

"I don't think so." He returned Alex's smile grimly.

"Go home. Your family needs you."

"Nice try, Countess, but we have a deal. A couple of hours ago someone tried to kill us, and I'm not leaving until I find out why."

15

We can argue about it inside," Mason said. Wordlessly, Hank tramped into the cabin. A single room functioned as both living room and kitchen, both bare-boned and unfinished. One side held an old leather recliner, several coolers, including one that doubled as a coffee table and held a pile of fishing magazines. Scattered over the area were reels, rods, fishing line, and a tackle box with several wicked-looking knives sitting on top. The kitchen side had the necessary appliances plus a wooden table and a couple of chairs.

Hank leaned against the table and while he waited for the other two to troop in, he called home.

Trey answered. Ordinarily, Hank would have asked to speak to Rose, but in a split-second decision, he plunged on with his nephew, giving him the consideration he hoped he deserved.

"Trey, I need a big favor." The kid was silent. Hank didn't know how far their new truce would hold, but he'd already bet on it so he continued. "Look, something's come up, and I may not make it back tonight."

"Where are you?" Suspicion rimmed Trey's question, but Hank ignored it.

"I don't have a lot of time for explanations, but I'm trusting you now, man to man. I need you to tuck in Mandy and if she wakes up in the night, to settle her back down."

"Why? What happened? Are you all right?" Fear replaced caution in the boy's voice.

"I'm fine." He put all the reassurance he could into his words; the last thing Trey needed was someone else dying on him. "But Miss Baker is in a lot more danger than I thought. I have to get her somewhere safe. Do you understand?"

"Sort of."

"I'm counting on you, Trey. Are you up to it?"

"What do you think?" Vestiges of the old bravado came through the phone, and Hank was glad to see his nephew hadn't done a complete one-eighty.

"I think you are or I wouldn't have asked."

"I can take care of stuff tonight, but what about tomorrow? How will we get to school?"

"Call your aunt Lori. Tell her I'm working on a case and see if she can take you. And don't mention Miss Baker, okay?" All he needed was Ben breathing down his neck. "Just say what I told you that I'm working on a case."

In the background, Rose's voice drifted through as though she'd just entered the room. She wanted to know who Trey was talking to. In front of him Alex and Mason were settling in, waiting.

"Look, I gotta go. Tell your grandmother I'll touch base tomorrow." He was about to disconnect, when Trey spoke.

"Uncle Hank!"

"I'm here."

A pause. "Be careful."

A burst of warmth flew through Hank. "Back at you, kid."

He ended the call and returned the phone to bis pocket. In other circumstances he might have dwelled on Trey's last piece of advice and what it meant for the two of them. But right now, he couldn't afford the distraction. So he tucked it away where he could examine it later and addressed Mason.

"I want to know what's going on. Who are you? And don't give me that lawyer crap."

Mason opened a cabinet and took down a mug. "Coffee?"

"Explanations."

Mason poured a cup from a carafe on the counter and handed it to Hank anyway. He poured another cup for Alex and one for himself. Hank knew what he was doing inserting a little civility into what could be a rude confrontation. Hank ignored the cup, and Mason set it down.

"As it turns out, I am a lawyer." Mason replaced the carafe and removed a container of cream from the fridge, poured a dollop into his cup, and set it on the table where Hank and Alex could reach it. Neither of mem moved. "At least, I graduated with a degree in international law. But I didn't spend much of my career in a courtroom."

"Where did you spend it?" Hank eyed him. Mason was calm, in control. When he answered, it was matter-of-fact.

"The Soviet Union mostly."

Surprise, surprise. "Doing what?"

Mason shrugged. "That's classified information, son."

Hank paused, Mason's words conjuring up the host of images he'd intended, all of which Hank didn't like. "State Department?"

"No."

Hank's eyes locked with the other man's. There weren't many other alternatives with "classified" in their description. "CIA."

"Forty years. Now retired." He sipped his coffee, watching Hank over the brim of his cup.

"And that's where you met Alex."

At the sound of her name, Alex looked down at her hands. From the minute she'd entered the cabin, her body had frozen into a block of ice. The time had come. It was here. She would have to tell him everything.

"I... I met Mr. Mason when I was sixteen." Her mouth wasn't working, her lips tight, her tongue thick. "Luka took me to him."

She was throwing Hank off that cliff, letting him free-fall into the danger that was her life and hoping neither of them paid the price.

"Luka Kole," Hank said.

"Kholodov," Mason corrected. "Luka Kholodov." He smiled. "We thought it best to Americanize the names."

Hank looked from her to Mason and back again, brooding assessment in his eyes.

"So you're not Baker."

"No."

"And you're not Kholodov. Will the real Alexandra Jane please stand up?"

She flushed, ashamed that she'd lied to him though it couldn't have been helped.

Mason said, "Meet Aleksandra Ivanovna Baklanova."

The name sounded distant, foreign. A memento of another person. Another life.

"Ivan is, of course, Russian for John," Mason said. "John became Jane. A nice, unobtrusive American name that works well with Baker."

Hank didn't respond. His gaze remained on her, the look penetrating.
Who are you?
it said.
I'm waiting, tell me.

She crossed into the living area, needing distance. Somehow she thought it would be easier if he couldn't stare at her that way. "My father was Ivan Baklanov. He was treasurer of the Communist Party."

She risked a direct look at Hank. His eyes remained keen and measuring. She sat on the arm of the recliner and focused on Edward's tackle box. On the knives lying on top. A sudden image of the sword in Petrov's apartment rose in her head.
Die enemy from my hand.
"You remember I told you that all the party assets disappeared?"

"I remember."

"The money didn't just vanish. Someone was held responsible. Someone was accused of stealing them."

"Your father." It wasn't a question, but a confirmation of the conclusion he'd already drawn.

She nodded. "He ..." She closed her eyes, squeezing out the memory. "He fell from his office window soon after the scandal broke."

"Fell?"

Her face heated. "Threw himself, or at least that's what everyone said."

"Unless he had a little help on the trip down," Mason said.

Hank's jaw tightened. "Petrov."

Mason acknowledged the name with a nod.

"I was there that evening," Alex said. "In a small room off the main office." Despite her efforts, the pictures came anyway. The little anteroom with its tiny desk, the stand with the ancient mimeograph machine. The smell of the ink and waxy blue paper.

"Because of my father's position, I went away to school and didn't see him very often. But that week, I was home. It was my sixteenth birthday, and my father had thrown me a huge party."

She smiled, remembering the fancy dress he'd gotten her in Paris. Absently, she touched her throat, where the little sisters necklace lay beneath her blouse. Her father had given her the necklace at the party. "We spent the next day together."

She remembered waking up early, their special breakfast with
klubnichnoye varenye,
homemade strawberry preserves on wafer-thin slices of bread, the surprise when her father handed her the envelope with the tickets.

"That evening, we were going to the ballet, but first he had a brief meeting in his office. I came with him and sat in the little room reading a fashion magazine he'd given to me." Another rare, wonderful gift. She could still remember the cover: Nadya Novikova wrapped in white fur, shoulders bare.

"After a while, I heard the door open and thought my father's appointment had arrived. I heard nothing at first. Then they began to argue. Their voices grew angrier, they were shouting at each other. I heard a crash, like they were fighting, then a..."