Limbo Man (14 page)

“So my mind’s playing see-saw, that is not why I don’t like Nick. He is an invalid, not the solution we need in a crisis.”

Vee snorted. “I’ve got news for you. Nick was no wimp. He held my own gun to my head. In bed at three a.m.”

“In bed? Tell me that wasn’t all I aimed at you.”

“Believe me, the gun to the head was as far as you got.”

He almost summoned a Tokarev leer, but managed to morph it into his blandest poker face . A delectable morsel, Blondie. “Your name,
dushenka
. Vee is too stark for a woman like you.”

“Valentina.” Little more than a grumble, but it made him smile. “Valentina. A good Russian name.” Forgetting he had no physical attraction to flaunt at the moment, he leaned toward her, his voice deep and enticing, “So, my gallant Homeland Security warrior, will you follow your assignment to its extreme? Will you run away with me?”

She frowned, softly pounding her fist against her mouth, obviously still reluctant to make the break with the rules that bound her life. Finally, a reluctant, almost infinitesimal nod of agreement.

Not the
level of cooperation
he’d hoped for, but for the moment it would have to do.

Chapter 10

The monster was invisible. Vee saw only the green eyes, intense (pleading?), invading her space. Asking the impossible. She tried to protest, tell him he was mad, but the words wouldn’t form. Breathless, she could only stare at him.

“You would not be jeopardizing your career because I am your assignment. Where I go, you must go, even if it’s not where Daddy Dearest decreed.”

“They’ll think you turned me!”

“
Ah, da.
” His breath hissed past his teeth as he straightened, his eyes suddenly focused on infinity. A frown, and then, “It does not matter what these men think. Once we are gone, you will call your papa and explain.”

Every instinct said he was right, no other solution possible, yet she’d spent her entire career following the rules. Leaving the safe house, going rogue with a Russian
organizatsitz
, was flat-out insane.

“Poor choice for this job, were you?” He leaned back on the couch, arms stretched  to his sides, palms out. “Look at me, Valentina. I’m the man who knows how to find what you’re looking for. You should be willing to dare anything to help me.”

Vee returned his look, ice to ice. Just because she’d never played this particular game before didn’t mean she couldn’t be as cool and calculating as her opponent. “You don’t understand—it’s not that simple.”

“So tell me.”

Nick was back. He might want to be called Ser
yozha
, but the tone of voice, the body language was all Nick. The trouble was, she couldn’t be sure if he was James Bond or Hitler. Every instinct said Nick was a good guy, but Sergei was an out-and-out villain, and she had doubts about Seryozha, who gave orders as if he were Boss of the World.

“I was assigned to protect the man we called Nick,” she said at last. “And, yes, get close to him. Which wasn’t hard because Nick had a certain charm . . . until he stuck a gun in my face at three in the morning. But Sergei, the arms dealer, I didn’t like at all. And
you
, whoever you are, are a complete mystery. If I help you get out of here, I have to ask myself who’s seducing whom. It would appear I’m the one who’s being played.”

His eyes changed, brief sparks of anger fading into green depths, refocusing with an entirely different emotion on a strand of her hair—lifting, letting it fall over long pale fingers that belonged to a creature of the night. Strong fingers. Gentle fingers. Playing . . .

Sparks exploded to every corner of her body before pooling in her most private places like molten gold.
Blast it!
This was exactly what she’d feared. She was actually attracted to this ugly, mixed-up Russian enigma. And it wasn’t just the raw power of the man who had materialized out of Nick the Invalid’s body on the airplane. She’d been drawn to him before that. The Nick who gave her the appreciative but not salacious once-over in the hospital. The Nick who had managed to follow her through their underground getaway, even though he’d just climbed out of a hospital bed. Nick, white-knuckling a shopping cart in Target to keep himself from falling over. Even the Nick who’d stolen her gun and aimed it at her in the middle of the night. Most of all, the caring Nick who bent over her in Aunt Victoria’s kitchen, massaging away her moment of weakness. The Nick who let her sleep on his shoulder on the airplane.

Yet when she woke, she was sleeping with a stranger. With a man who talked to Bill Grimes like a colleague and treated top Homeland Security Agent Wade Tingley like a lowly lackey. The man who was manipulating her right this minute, assuming command, ordering her to pack.

Idiot! This is building rapport to the max. Tingley would love it.

Not if I’m the one being seduced, dammit.

“We have some time to kill.” The smooth, insinuating words came from behind as she headed toward the bedroom to pack her meager belongings.

Vee paused, her back to him, stiff and uncompromising. “I don’t need help packing,” she told him, adding a coolly dismissive, “Thank you.”

“Five minutes for packing. Two, three hours until it’s safe to leave. Why not begin as we mean to go on? You are supposed to keep me happy, yes?”

Arms hugged to her chest, Vee turned, every slender inch of her broadcasting cold fury. “Leaving here against orders breaks all the rules, Sergei Whoever-you-are. If we ever sleep together, it will not be because it’s part of your scheme, my scheme, the
organizatisiya
’s schemes or DHS’s. It will be because we both want to. Now, goodnight. Knock on my door when it’s time to leave.”

Not waiting for a response, Vee stalked into her bedroom and shut the door. For a moment she simply stood there, eyes closed, replaying the last few minutes. She was actually doing this? Running from the safety she’d longed for because the stranger who had emerged from under Nick’s brutally damaged skin
asked
her to?

Ridiculous! And yet she was going to do it because, for some absurd reason, she believed him. And the chance of preventing a nuclear disaster was worth her personal humiliation if she was wrong.

Stranger.
He was certainly that, this oddly compelling madman with dubious selective memory. How much did he rem
ember, and how much did he
know
only
because she’d told him remained a mystery. He could be a total fraud, just using her to get away from the
Feds
. And then, poof, Sergei Tokarev, the international arms dealer, was in the wind, his laughter echoing back to her.

If he left her alive.

The worst part, the one thing she could not get around—he
was
Sergei Tokarev. His nightmare confirmed it. And yet . . . this was a chance she had to take. And if she was going to travel with this stranger, she had to have a name for him. He’d rejected Nick, Sergei was a criminal and a boor. So . . .?
You may call me Seryozha.
For lack of anything more appropriate—madman, nut case, amnesiac—Seryozha it was.

Vee let out a long sigh. So be it. She was committed. Without turning on the light,
she
walked across the room to the window and peered out. Obviously, use of the ski resort as a safe house had never crossed the architect’s mind. Security lights were non-existent at the heavily forested rear of the building where their rooms were located. Only faint ambient light from the resort’s front entrance provided enough illumination for her to see anything at all.

As her eyes adjusted, she could make out a solid wall of evergreens and underlying scrub, punctuated by silver trunks of birch trees glowing in the moonlight. The forest loomed with not more than thirty feet of cleared space between her window and the treeline. Beautiful but eerie, and less secure than a house in suburbia. An army could sneak up on them without being seen. Grimly, Vee shut out her overactive imagination and began to pack.

Seryozha sank onto the edge of the bed, plunged his head into his hands.
Govnó!
With the lives of thousands on his shoulders, his head was filled with a woman. Screwing with his brain, turning him into a mewling idiot. He had thought to use her, and somehow the blasted woman had imprinted herself on his soul.

Her bosses had planned it, of course. He’d known it from the moment he saw her on the airplane, and every careful word from her mouth when she’d recapped their escape from New York had confirmed it. And still he
had
let it happen. He’d been caught in a trap more devious, more diabolical than anyone could have envisioned. He
liked
Valentina Frost, and that was bad.

The solution was simple. He’d go without her. Travel alone, as always. The American mantrap was an aberration, to be rooted out, tossed aside . . .

He couldn’t. Shoving sentiment aside, he needed her. Time was not on his side, nor was his memory cooperating. As far as he knew, he had no allies, and he needed fast transportation, computer backup, very likely armed backup. All the necessities of a hunt that Vee could provide—Jack Frost willing.

Yet he’d be putting her on the front line of danger. Ser
gei
scowled at the backpack he hadn’t bothered to unpack. Okay, so reality hurt. He was committed to finding a bomb and Vee was an FBI agent. She’d signed on, knowing the risks.

An amnesiac mafioso and atom bombs? Unlikely. But she’d rise to the occasion, even if success included the ultimate sacrifice.

Muttering some of Russia’s more colorful “mother” profanities, Ser
gei
flopped back onto his pillow, hands behind his head, glaring at the ceiling. This was not how he’d planned to spend his last few hours here. Miserable woman, couldn’t she admit they’d made a connection?

Five minutes for packing. Two, three hours until it’s safe to leave. Why not begin as we mean to go on? You are supposed to keep me happy, yes?

And how many times did those soft, insinuating words echo through her head while she waited? The recklessness of leaving the safe house vied with thoughts so heated they felt like flames searing her soul. By the time Seryozha knocked on Vee’s do
or, she was concentrating—hard—
on not thinking at all. His tall, lean body, silhouetted against the light in the sitting room, immediately followed his knock. “The patrol will pass in two minutes, and then we go. My room. Now.”

Silently calling herself an idiot, Vee followed.

“The
window
screen is off,” he whispered as she joined him in the dark bedroom. “As soon as the guard passes, we go.”

“Fine.” It wasn’t, of course, but her instincts had always been good, and running seemed the best of an array of bad choices. If there was a leak at DHS, then they weren’t safe here, nor could they track a bomb without the bad guys knowing where they were every step of the way.

“Patrol passing,” Seryozha whispered. “Get ready. I go first, help you out.”

Vee made a face, lost in the darkness. “If her Russian wanted to be chivalrous, why not? He probably just didn’t want her to turn an ankle and mess up their escape.

He shoved aside the draperies with care and looked out. Unwilling to be shunted aside, Vee peered around his shoulder. Moonglow added to the ambient light from the spotlights in front, revealing the same view she’d seen earlier. Calm, beautiful, but somehow threatening . . .

Vee grabbed Seryozha’s arm as he reached for the bottom of the window. “Wait! I thought I saw something.”

Instantly alert, he stepped to the side of the window, motioning her to do the same. Slowly, they surveyed the woods. Nothing . . . nothing— “There!” Vee hissed. “Did you see that?”

“
Da
. Shadows—not trees.”

Now, again, nothing moved, but she knew, they both knew.

Tingley? Could Tingley be the traitor?

“Tell the others,” he snapped. “I will watch.”

Vee grabbed her Glock from her backpack. “Here. I’ve got my ankle gun.”

Calmly, he reached for it, checked the magazine, slammed it back in. “Come straight back. Let them shoot at each other while we get the hell out.”

“And leave our guys here? Like the agents in New York?”

“Nothing’s changed. Protecting us is their job. Getting out is ours.”

Dear God, but he was right. The mission, the mission, always the mission. Vee turned and sprinted for the doorway. At least the agents wouldn’t be caught asleep in their beds.

A few minutes later, as chaos erupted around her, Vee found Seryozha, Glock in hand, poised in the door to their sitting room. “There’s a rear exit that may work. I scouted it earlier while you were playing cook.”

“So we can walk straight into an ambush.”

“Better than being here when they start lobbing RPG rounds or tossing firebombs.”

“Oh, shit.” Vee chambered a round in her .38.