Courted by Karma (The Adventures of Anabel Axelrod) (13 page)

I let out my breath with an appreciative,
“Holy Hannah, you hit the bars first! Master Manipulators R Us.” My brow wrinkled in disbelief. “Wait a minute, Svetlana’s an operator?”

Luke chuckled
. “No, Svetlana’s not an operator. She works in admin at the main Chicago office. She’s a scheduler for our teams.”

My mouth dropped and then I snapped it shut. “S
o, she’s the Nazi-Scheduler, huh?”

‘
Well, well, my fine inbred Svettie. Didn’t that little nugget of gold help explain why Luke was gone so much lately?’

I recalled
on Sunday night that even he seemed irritated with his overly hectic, busy schedule. There was an upside to knowing Svettie was the scheduler and visiting at Luke’s farm. The odds were looking good that Luke would actually get to stay here throughout the entire Thanksgiving weekend.

While he talked,
Luke’s hands were slowly massaging my thighs muscles and my hips. It felt divine. I think purring could be heard as I leaned into the strokes.

D
eciding straight forward may work best here, I asked diplomatically, “Luke, tell me about Svetlana and last night’s…er…emotional outburst.”

“I have no idea what her problem was last night
.” Luke replied promptly, forehead creasing as he thought it over. “She made no sense. I got her back to the house last night and didn’t stick around.” He raised a knowing brow and I grinned in return. The doubts about my very own satyr’s priorities were laid to rest. This was turning out to be a most productive lap-talk. “What happened before I saw you on the drive?”

Unconsciously, m
y hand reached to touch my cheek. It was still tender this morning. I take care of my own personal problems and didn’t need Luke running interference for me or getting involved in girl stuff.

I shrugged and answered truthfully,
“She told me you weren’t there. I guess you’ll have to ask her what her problem was and why she was freaking out.”

Luke’s glance
noted my gesture, but he only replied, “I’ll talk to her later.”

“So what’s her deal? Does
she act this way all the time?”

My
Hero met my eyes and replied evenly, “Without telling any secrets out of turn, Svetlana has had a miserable life due to bad luck and bad choices. I know you are a woman that respects privacy, Anabel, so you’ll understand I can’t tell you more.”

“
That’s cool with me,” I agreed readily, smiling derisively at Luke’s well-chosen words. Getting hoisted on my own petard was always fun. Anyway, I was thankful to be spared the gruesome details on how tough Svetlana’s life has been.

Bad luck and bad choices usually meant bad
childhood years and bad men. Partner that with drugs or crime, or both, and the names may change but the stories seldom do. What more needed to be said? Besides, a rotten life was no excuse for a grown woman to behave so badly.  I only cared to understand the role she plays in Luke’s life and how much I would have to put up with her.

I shrugged
. “So tell me what you are comfortable sharing because, like I said before, it’s obvious to me something’s going down. If you are going to be hanging around my people, I want to be prepared.”

Luke
’s long fingers easily circled my bicep and he teased, “Okay, tough girl.” He smiled when I flexed my little muscle with a smirk. “That’s cool with me, too. It’s why we are having this talk. There shouldn’t be any danger or I’d never involve you, but I agree you should be aware.”

F
rowning for a second over this non-involvement comment, I had to reluctantly agree that, in this instance, Luke was right. Were I in his position, nobody in my life would be put around certain danger that wasn’t trained to deal with it professionally.

“That makes sense to me, please go on.”

He kissed my cheek and pulled me in his arms while murmuring, “Have I told you lately how I love it when you’re sensible?”

I giggled against his neck. “
Gee, I wonder why? I saw what you normally deal with in action last night. You’re such a brave, strong warrior!”

Pulling back and seeing the
glint in his eyes, I laughed again. Giving him a long, soft kiss I encouraged, “Okay, make me aware. Then you can get me home.” I pouted playfully. “Since you aren’t going to be any fun and let me do dirty, naked things while straddling your lap, I have a long list of boring chores to do before the store opens.”

“
Aren’t you the poor, deprived baby?” Luke’s eyes were narrowed and glittering now, but his expression gave nothing more away, as he continued with his “Anabel Awareness” talk.

“
Svetlana has worked in our company for the last year. Originally, she knew my mother.” He nodded that nose at me. “I told you my mom’s an attorney? Damaris has a firm that is small, but very well-known for going balls to the wall for women in ugly, contested divorce scenarios. She got called from a colleague to assist with Svetlana and ended up taking her under the Drake family wing, as my father calls it.” He smiled a little and shook his head at a thought. “Mom’s a tiger for downtrodden women. She doesn’t have much patience or a very good bedside manner, though. She leaves that up to my dad, he’s much nicer.”

I laughed at this and was entranced getting a
peek into Luke’s family life. Having no parents, I knew little about the day-to-day workings of a marriage. I tried to picture a fierce, Greek attorney married to a patient, Midwestern pastor and Luke as their only child.

I couldn’t get past the image of seeing Luke in his bunk bed every night playing with his favorite toy; a miniaturized version of the virile man
whose lap I was sitting on.

“Svetlana’s a linguist,”
My brows skyrocketed in astonishment at this fact dropped casually from Luke’s lips, “and knows several Russian languages. It’s very helpful in a business such as ours.”

I couldn’t get past seeing Svettie at her desk and talking like a
lisping child while feverishly scheduling Luke on missions to keep him away from Northfield.

The commie-kaze
was totally hung up on Luke. It was completely obvious now the reason she reacted to my name how she did, and why she was so upset at my presence. I still didn’t get the whole An-a-bel the Cow thing, unless perhaps seeing me dressed like a steam punk pygmy soldier didn’t impress upon her the depths of my beauteously blonde magnificence. Regardless, it was clear she hero worshipped my Hero and considered me the threat that I am.

‘I could only hope she c
omes decked out in all her white fur to Thanksgiving dinner. Stella will have a field day dressing her down!’
I bit my cheek at the image of that thought, too
.

Luke’s
voice hardened. “I can’t share specifics on Svetlana’s past, that’s her story to tell, but I’ll tell you why she’s here at my farm this weekend. She’s a witness for the prosecution against her old boyfriend. We’ll call him Boris. Boris is the money man for a Russian crime boss whose main claim to fame is running drugs and girls. Very young girls. Svetlana’s old boyfriend Boris is considered a big catch by the Feds.”

My mind
instantly scanned for any info I may have caught on TV, but Crookie’s right—much like the weather forecasts, I just don’t pay attention to the news on a regular basis. It did sound like an exciting episode I’d recently caught on Law and Order, Criminal Intent. Those witnesses were picked off like soup cans on a fence railing, one after the other, by a sharp-shooting assassin.

“What are we calling the Russian crime boss? Can his name be
Radu?”

Luke eyed me.
“I thought we were calling him the Russian crime boss. Why Radu?”

I made a face
of distaste. “He was Vlad’s brother and a bad dude.”

Luke had that arrested look on his face. “
The only Vlad that comes to mind is Vlad the Impaler and you don’t mean…” Luke chuckled in surprise at my nodding head. “You do mean Vlad the Impaler?”

“
He was given that name long after he was dead and gone. To his people, Vlad III, Prince of Wallachia was considered a hero for beating the crap out of the Ottoman Empire when nobody else had.”

Luke’s eyes widened with interest
, but he was skeptical. “If I am remembering my history, it was documented that Vlad impaled thousands and was the inspiration for the story of Dracula. I’m very curious, why you think it’s his brother who’s the bad dude of that pair?”

I waved a hand and replied,
“It’s convoluted, but when they were young the brothers were hostages of the Turks to keep their father, Vlad II, in line. Then Hungarian Boyars killed Vlad II and their oldest brother. In the meantime, Radu was disloyal to his own blood,” I snorted in disgust. “He converted to Islam, the big baby, and he ended up attacking his former homeland. Not our Vlad. He hated the Ottoman Empire AND the Hungarians for what they had done to his family and his kingdom. He eventually regained the throne of his birthright again and kicked some major ass to get his kingdom back in business. Sure, his methods of dealing with his enemies were a little cruel, but sometimes you have to use methods that send a definite message to restore law and order.” I stared at Luke’s face unseeingly, as I pictured the life back then in my mind. “Granted, impaling everyone who crossed him may seem a little barbaric to some now,” I shrugged cheerfully and kissed Luke’s cheek, “but it sure worked for him. Six centuries later, I’d say Vlad’s message is still pretty clear.”

After a moment of
Luke staring back at me with an enigmatic expression and without speaking, I raised my brows in return. Maybe Luke didn’t enjoy history as much as I did.

Luke
shook his head slightly and went on, “There are four witnesses testifying against Boris, not just Svetlana. Her testimony is pretty minor, actually. The problem is the Feds have recently uncovered more dirt on Boris. If he’s convicted of these charges, it changes his prospects drastically. Instead of doing an easy couple of years in a minimum security prison for some minor tax issues, he’s looking at hard time. Maybe even a life sentence.

“
Radu,” Luke continued, while smiling at my hard squeeze of approval, “knows how these things work. Depending on the depth of his loyalty, Boris could give up Radu to the Feds to save his ass. Now, Radu can try to eliminate Boris, who is protected by the Feds, or eliminate the need for Boris to talk. My mother was informed one witness has gone missing as of two days ago.”

“That’s bad
,” I whispered under my breath, listening intently.

Luke shrugged. “
Could be. The circumstances are not suspicious enough to be considered foul play by the authorities,” His brows rose at the vagaries of law enforcement and I made a face in agreement, “but we had a family conference. Not only is Svetlana’s scared stiff of Radu and his enforcer, but Radu is a bad dude and he’s cornered. We decided not to chance it.

“
Svetlana moved to Chicago over a year ago. She’s changed her last name, but like you thought,” Luke added dryly, but with fondness in his voice, “she’s not exactly a professional operator. She’s a passionate, impulsive woman that could easily make mistakes leaving a trail behind her a mile wide. We’ve tried to cover them, but it’s just a matter of time before an experienced tracker would locate her in Chicago. She is due to testify next week. Until then, we’ve decided it’s smart she stays out of Chicago and under the radar this weekend.”

“Very smart,” I agreed.
Luke and his family must really like Svetlana. I considered it very generous of him to describe her bizarre, hysterical behavior as passionate or impulsive. She seemed like a complete dipshit to me and nothing Luke told me has changed this opinion.

‘
She’s Russian, and so it’s par for the course she has a tragic past. I will probably have to feel sorry for her at some point, but I draw the line at pitying her.’

I sighed, but told Luke
thanks for cluing me in. This sensible, cold-hearted, killer of a woman gave him a final kiss. I crawled back to my own seat and buckled in. There was a lot to absorb and I needed quiet time to rejuvenate. We drove north for a while on the black top. I saw a county road sign. Memorizing the number, I was dozing off with my head against the window for the rest of the ride back to Northfield when I had one last thought.

‘
Hard luck life, a criminal boyfriend, a pimping crime boss and his enforcer aside, it didn’t mean the Svettie-Yeti got a get-out-of-jail-free card for slapping me and then lying about it.’

Chapter
V

“
Every Breath You Take” by The Police

Wednesday, 11/21/12

7:
35 AM

I
opened my eyes to the truck slowing down. We weren’t at my building yet, but we were approaching Northfield. Luke was turning off Hwy 3 to either stop at McDonald’s or the SA gas station.

Luke noticed
my stirring and smiled. “Hey sleepyhead, I’m hitting the drive-thru for a McMuffin. Do you want anything?”