Limbo Man (21 page)

“In
Orlando
?”

“You’d be surprised what some colleges get up to.”

His attempt at humor flew over Vee’s head as she considered Seryozha’s request. The only person who fit his specifications was Cade Doucette. As if this case wasn’t complicated enough . . .

“I can turn out my whole team in Sarasota,” Vee told him, “or we can settle for the one person I trust absolutely. Your call.”

“And that would be?”

“My partner, Cade Doucette.” Vee could sense the wheels turning behind Sergei’s professionally blank face.

“Doucette? Is he old or young?”

“Your age, maybe a bit younger.”

Sergei’s fork paused over his grilled salmon. The green eyes sharpened into laser beams, easily piercing her attempt at nonchalance. “You are more than friends, yes?”

Vee tried not wince, but didn’t quite succeed. “Occasionally,” she admitted.

Sergei’s face went from blank to stone as he chewed a bite of salmon. Finally, he shook his head. “He will know,” he said, Judge Tokarev pronouncing sentence. “Is not good if back-up wishes to kill me instead of bad guys.”

“Then we go it alone.”

“No, no.” He waved his hand like a king granting amnesty to a groveling subject. “Is okay. We will kill each other later. Make call.”

The trouble was, Vee thought, he just might mean it.

She made the call.

Chapter 15

Word must have gone out. Supervisory Special Agent Richard Everett never hesitated. Cade Doucette was hers, he told Vee, for however long she needed him. Gratitude.
Squirm
. Relief.
Squirm
. Guilt.
Corkscrew squirm
. She was going to be working shoulder to shoulder with the only two men she’d slept with in the last couple of years. Vee could try the distancing she’d practiced when she realized Homeland Security was pimping her out, but she didn’t think it was going to work now any better than it had the first time. There were certain situations it was tough to keep professional.

They found a room in one of the anonymous high-rise hotel/motels along I-4 north of the city, the side of town that catered more to business customers than visitors to Disney, Universal, and Sea World. They waited, stretched out on separate double beds, while five stories below traffic zipped by on the six-lane expressway that cut across the heart of Central Florida. Seryozha had gone all cold and aloof, as dour a Russian as she’d ever seen. Because of the looming confrontation with Dr. Robey? Because he was busy planning, calculating the odds of winning this ugly bomb hunt? Or—was it possible—that male pique figured in there somewhere? That Seryozha wasn’t any more happy about working with Cade Doucette than Cade was going to be about working with a Russian arms smuggler? And it was going to take Cade about the same length of time to figure out her role in the Sergei Tokarev scenario as it had taken Seryozha to pounce on her occasional flings with her partner. She should have lied.

Not. There were enough lies floating around. And, besides, Seryozha wouldn’t have believed her.

“Tell me about Robey,” Vee said. “What makes him a weirdo, other than being a traitor?”

Seryozha was lying with his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling. His face crinkled into a slight grimace as he contemplated her question. “It is possible
weirdo
is an exaggeration,” he conceded. “Robey is an eccentric, but so are many who don’t end up willingly creating an isotope that could kill a hundred thousand or so just for the sake of money.”

“It’s all about the money then? Robey was bought?”

“He has a grievance, a genuine one, but not enough to excuse mass murder.”

Vee thought about it. “Okay, he’s bitter and he’s greedy, but wiping out a city—that’s unconscionable. You were right the first time. He’s a weirdo, just plain nuts.”

“Does it matter why?” Seryozha sounded so bleak Vee twisted her head for a better look. He was still lying there, staring at the ceiling.

She sighed. “Guess not. I was just trying to understand how someone who’s not a terrorist fanatic could participate in something like this.

“Robey’s beyond weird. He’s divorced, lives alone. He collects things. Mostly clocks and antique mechanical toys. If he could get Tipu’s Tiger from the Victoria and Albert, he’d probably blow every cent he’s earning for the U-236.” Seryozha paused, snorted. “For all I know, maybe that’s why he’s doing this deal. He’s planning to buy his way around the V&A’s security.”

Abruptly, Vee sat up. “You’re saying he’d be an accessory to killing thousands of people so he could steal an antique
toy
?”

Seryozha’s shoulders heaved in a faint shrug. “Tipu’s Tiger was a toy for a king. Or it could be something else that’s caught his fancy. Museum quality, of course.”

“How on earth did you find him—you
are
the one who found him, aren’t you?”

“The search took a long time, but I have many sources,” he responded in a tone Vee considered way too smug. “When I heard about him, he seemed suitable.”

Suitable!
Vee charged the bed, pounced down beside him. Grabbing Seryozha’s shoulders, she shook him hard. “Why, damn you,
why
? Why would you do such a thing?”

He lay still, eyes closed. “Vee . . . Valentina . . .” His voice trailed away on something close to a groan.

“Tell me, Seryozha! If I’m going to die for my country, I demand to know why.”

He folded her into his arms, one hand pushing her head down onto his chest with an inexorable strength she didn’t even try to fight. For a long moment the room was quiet enough to hear the swish of high-speed traffic five stories below.

Seryozha ran his hand through the long golden blonde strands of her hair. If only he could lose himself in her, as he had allowed himself to do before. But it was too late for that. The game was in play, and any sort of distraction could make them dead. How much should he tell her? How little?
And
not insult her intelligence or her courage? He liked the little American. If he could find a way for her to survive, he would. But not at the cost of completing his mission.

And yet . . .

Just because it was her job to find out what he knew didn’t mean he should be so stubborn that he told her nothing. As much as it hurt—as much as he could hear the ominous creak of the lid on his Pandora’s box of secrets—she deserved better. She’d earned the few bones he could toss her way.

But where to begin . . . ?

“I have been undercover as Sergei Tokarev for so long,” he said, “that I have to pry the truth out of my mouth. Actually . . . I sometimes forget who and what I once was. It seems that I have spent my entire life . . .”
Drop that line of thought . Bad move
.

He began again. “I have been undercover for twelve years. It is not possible to be undercover that long without doing bad things, or experiencing bad things, as you learned from my dream of Africa. Sergei Tokarev is not a good person, and Sergei Ivanovich”—he carefully omitted his last name—“has been tainted beyond recall.” Vee was so still, she might have been a
mannikin
. Yet she was warm and comforting, like a child’s security blanket. Saying nothing, just
there
when he needed something to cling to.

Childhood was behind him by a quarter century. He didn’t need a damn security blanket. He didn’t need
her
.

But she felt so good. He could even feel the beat of her heart, hard against his chest.

“I hunt the lost bombs,” he told her. “Even before I became Sergei Tokarev, I hunted the bombs. It is my job, my mission. A miserable task,” he admitted. “In all this time I have found only two. If I find this one, that still makes four more to go.”

“That’s awful,” she breathed, raising her head to stare straight into his face, looking as if she really cared. “Surely your government can assign someone else?”

“Do I work for a government?” he challenged. “For yours? For Mother Russia? That I cannot share with you.”

Vee’s head slumped back onto his chest. “And you call Robey weird,” she grumbled.

He patted her backside, managing a smile. “Never thought you’d meet a real, live Don Quixote, did you, Valentina?”

“Some windmills,” she muttered darkly.

“Once upon a time when I was young, my head was filled with heroic thoughts.” And then came shame, guilt, dishonor, and few other bits of ugliness he wouldn’t name. “But my shining armor has become irreversibly tarnished, my sword dull and nicked to the point of breaking. I am an unsung soldier in an unknown battle. I will still be chasing after bombs in my wheelchair—”

“
Idiót!
All you have to do is quit. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and give it up.”

Groaning, he rolled her over, pressing down on top of her. The green eyes mocked. “The way you said no when they asked you to whore for your country?”

“I haven’t been at it for twelve years!”

Air whooshed out of his lungs. He slumped onto the bed beside her.

“You’re entitled to a life,” Vee added. “If we live through this, tell your bosses to go to hell.”

Bosses
. As if he had one.

The knock on the door was the sharp rat-a-tat of someone sounding a known signal. Ah . . . the boyfriend. Someone else he might have to kill. But for the moment . . .

Vee was already at the door, pausing to smooth her hair, her shirt and slacks. Mustn’t give their visitor the wrong impression. Seryozha rolled to his feet, looking suitably rumpled enough for both of them.

Karasho!
Sergei Tokarev and Sergei Ivanovich Zhukov both smiled. Grimly.

Until she saw them together, Vee had not realized how much the two men in her life had in common. Both tall, with Seryozha topping Cade by not more than half an inch. Both well-muscled, lean rather than stocky. Intelligence gleamed from both pairs of eyes, Seryozha’s green to Cade’s amber. The warm brown fuzz on Seryozha’s head was several shades lighter than Cade’s short, perfectly straight hair. And though Cade won handily on good looks, Seryozha was catching up fast. Neither would ever be pretty boys, but each had that certain something that caught and held a woman’s initial once-over. Both were even-tempered—most of the time—with strong dollops of humor.

Trustworthy, dependable . . . Vee sighed. Those adjectives she had to save for Cade.

Struggling to keep her misgivings in check, Vee made the introductions. Cade looked from Vee to Seryozha and back again. His cordial professional façade never wavered, but she could feel him bristle. He shouldn’t have been able to guess that easily. And even if he had, he ought to realize Sergei Tokarev was an assignment.

He probably did. But, Cajun to the core, he lived by an ancient code. Primitive.

So, Vee suspected, did Seryozha, but it was unlikely he cared enough to be jealous.

Who was she kidding? As the two men shook hands, tension exploded, filling the room with so much testosterone she could almost smell it.
Shit!
They were like two tomcats, heroically restraining their snarls while vying for position on the backyard fence. Using the need for ice as an excuse, Vee fled the room, hoping Cade and Seryozha would come to some accommodation by the time she returned.

As she plunked the ice bucket onto the room’s small round table where the men were now sitting, she got the distinct impression they had agreed on only one thing—Glenlivet single malt. Maybe two things. They weren’t going to kill each other right at this moment. That pleasure could wait. Vee perched on the edge of the bed next to the table. As she recapped the ten days since she’d last seen Cade, he responded with a low whistle here and there, and a heartfelt
Fuck!
a time or two.

By the time she got to Dr. Weldon Robey, Cade just sat there, silently shaking his head. “Been doing your own version of the Grand American Tour,” he finally drawled. “New York, Connecticut, Wyoming, New Jersey, and Florida in five days. As much as I’m flattered you’d take the time to think of me, what the hell am I doing here? If you two can’t handle a college professor, then you sure haven’t got the chops to find a missing nuke.”

That was another thing the two men had in common, Vee realized. Neither was what you’d call the strong, silent type. They both had golden tongues that could throw darts at the flick of an errant thought.

To Vee’s surprise, Seryozha seemed uncomfortable. Or as close to it as he ever got. Whatever his thoughts, they weren’t pleasant.

“I told you I didn’t get all my memory back, and maybe never will,” he said. “But I’m afraid I skimmed some of the dangers involved. Not just the missing information, but the fact I may have told the bad guys what they needed to know—”

“No!” The protest was out of Vee’s mouth before she could stop it.

With an agitated
stop
gesture, Seryozha waved her to silence. “You flatter me, Valentina. A beating I could take, but who knows what drugs were used? Odds are, I held out, knowing I had to keep the deal going until the bomb surfaced, but . . .” He shrugged.