Soldier's Redemption (13 page)

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“I am. But this road doesn’t seem to be cluttered with restaurants.”

“I remembered that from the last time I traveled it. That’s why I asked the kitchen to pack a picnic for two, strictly things easy to eat while driving.”

“Bring it on,” he said, smiling at her.

Maybe it was his smile. Sure didn’t hurt. She reached for her carry-on and took out the box the kitchen had delivered at her request that morning. There were crisp crackers and pâté, bottles of sparkling water, pickles and olives, spreadable cheese. She laid it all out as well as she could on her lap and the console between the seats, and they ate while talking about the deteriorating weather as the altitude gradually climbed and the air outside grew colder. The rain that had started while they were inside Aneta’s family home in Chiaro began to leave icy trails down the windows.

“Who are you going to meet with today?” she asked as she handed him a chocolate mint as dessert.

“A woman who runs a small cooperative of local women who make handcrafted items.”

“Really?” She turned in the seat to smile at him. “Like with fabric, maybe? Fashion of sorts?”

“I doubt it,” he said quickly.

“Then what?”

“I’m not exactly sure. My partner set it up before I bought in to the business. I guess I’ll find out.”

“Do you want a translator for the meeting?”

“Uh, no. She wanted us to meet alone.”

“That’s all right,” Skylar said. “Well, Slovo isn’t exactly a huge place, but there is a little museum I read about that’s located at the Winter Palace Hotel that I would like to see.”

“That sounds nice.”

“It is. It’s a castle turned into a hotel. I told you about it the other day. I’ve never stayed there. Anyway, I think if we’re early enough, I’ll have you drive me over. If you don’t have time, I’ll catch a cab. Then if your meeting runs late, I can eat dinner there. Is that all right?”

“Sounds good,” he said.

“Just look for the bridge as we enter town,” she added, gazing out the window. It had begun to snow and the world was slowly turning white. The pitter-patter of rain was gone now, and it was very quiet inside the luxury automobile.

“Do you miss your old life?” she asked.

“The army? Sometimes,” he said. “But that kind of soldiering is hard on a body and soul, and eventually, most men outgrow the need for it.”

“You had a
need?
” she asked, stressing the last word. “I don’t understand. How can you have a need to be shot at?”

“It’s not just getting shot at,” he said, smiling at her as though she’d said something amusing. “It’s the need to do something important that involves risking your body. Putting everything on the line, giving everything you have.”

“I don’t get it,” she said.

“Sure you do. Why do you design clothes?”

“It’s hardly the same thing.”

“No, think. Why do you design clothes that you yourself might never wear?”

“Because I have to,” she said.

“Exactly. Your aunt has to blow glass and your uncle has to be involved in politics and strategy. I had to be a soldier. I had a feckless youth with parents who didn’t much care for me. That can make a person feel a little disorientated and worthless.”

“How could anyone not care for you?” she said.

He seemed to wince at the tenderness that had snuck into her voice and she touched his leg. The gesture was meant to diffuse the impact of her words, but when he covered her hand before she could move it, the effect was exactly the opposite.

“Your parents must have been worried sick when you came home injured.”

“My mother was ill. By the time I was out of the hospital and could go home to see them, she was in her grave and my father was ready to move on with his life.”

“What does that mean? No, wait. They never came to see you in the hospital?”

“Mom was too sick to travel, so I understood how my father was obligated to stay with her. That wasn’t a problem.”

Skylar sat back in her seat and stared at the wipers flinging snow this way and that and tried to imagine months in a hospital with no one visiting. Impossible. She’d be inundated with relatives and school friends. “Do you see much of your dad now?”

“No. I never see him.”

“Why?”

“There was just a kind of a mutual agreement not to prolong the agony of our relationship. I don’t even know where he lives now.”

It was unfathomable. “And the clown you carry?” she asked, her voice very soft.

He spared her a quick glance. “A leftover from childhood.”

So he did have some good memories, some connection to this family of his that apparently hadn’t been gifted at parenting.

“It comes from a time before I can remember the people who raised me,” he said.

“You mean before your parents?”

The glance he spared her this time was longer. “Yeah.” He lifted her hand in his and kissed her knuckles.

“Cole—”

“I see a green turret up ahead,” he interrupted. “I think we’ve found Slovo.”

Chapter Ten

Skylar had been one hundred percent right about the hotel. It was like something out of a fantasy or a fairy tale, sitting on an island that wasn’t much bigger than it was, reachable only by boat or the narrow bridge connecting it to the town, towers rising to be lost in the snowy skies, secrets lurking in all the shadows. For one minute, as he opened her car door and took her hand to help her out, he wished he could stay with her.

He’d tried, originally, to approach this mission like any other, but now the very idea of that seemed naive. This journey had been fraught with emotional baggage from the get-go. New brothers, a past revealed he’d never guessed at, his own life upside down, what little supposed family he had gone now and out of reach. He’d come here with a personal vendetta, carrying the weight of his brothers’ needs as well as his own, and the first thing he’d done was meet Skylar Pope.

And now he wanted to ditch this no-win scenario, seduce the living daylights out of her and spend a little of the inheritance that had showed up courtesy of his brothers. He was getting hedonistic at the ripe old age of thirty.

“I’ll be in the hotel somewhere,” she said, “but I’d rather you didn’t page me. I have my cell phone. Use the phone at the concierge desk to call me.”

“Sure,” he said.

“This place looks like it’ll take what’s left of the day to explore.”

He handed her the carry-on, and as she took it from him, their hands brushed. In that instant he was transported back to the first time she’d shown up at his hotel room door and he’d kissed her because he needed her to believe he was falling hard and fast for her.

Now he did the same thing, wrapping his free arm around her and pulling her against him, their mouths connecting like fireworks, her lips parting, both of them lost in each other as the snow fell unheeded. But this time, he didn’t need to kiss her—well, not for strategy’s sake, anyway. This time the need ran deeper and stronger. “Don’t go off alone,” he said, giving her one last hug. “Stay around other people.”

“I’ll try.”

“And if you get spooked, rent a room and lock the doors, but have someone escort you to the room.”

They both looked around at the other guests. Because of the weather, there weren’t many braving the outdoors, but those who were didn’t look the least bit threatening. Still, when she glanced back at him, he saw he’d reawakened the nerves she’d greeted him with that morning.

“I will,” she said. “Don’t worry about me.”

He left before he could change his mind.

The bridge was partially covered with a long, narrow enclosed building on one side. He’d noticed it when he drove Skylar to the hotel, but this time he found a parking area with five or six cars in it.

The building was empty floor space except for a few benches. The walls were hung with large framed prints of the bridge under construction and looked out toward the hotel through a bank of windows. Of course, the hotel and the island on which it sat were almost invisible now thanks to the falling snow. The room was partially heated but still cool enough to demand a coat. He took a quick perusal of the handful of other people walking from poster to poster, a smattering of different languages reaching his ears.

None of the women wore a green scarf and a black coat. He hoped Irina wouldn’t be too late for a host of reasons, starting with his desire to see Skylar again and ending with the difficulty of appearing interested in an exhibit that was worth ten minutes, tops.

A half hour later, it was almost dark outside, and he’d about written her off. She was a cop. Maybe something had happened at work that had held her up. Plus the weather was deteriorating.

He kind of wished he hadn’t made Skylar nervous about being followed. She said she wasn’t afraid of her uncle—just annoyed at being watched like a kid, but there was something about her reactions to all this that made him wonder. If she truly wasn’t frightened, then why all the subterfuge?

As for him, he’d thought he’d shaken off concerns about being followed when they spent all that time in Chiaro looking for the Cazo house. Nobody could have trailed them through the narrow streets that dead-ended without warning. So why had he warned her about going off alone?

It was as though kissing her had awakened instincts he didn’t know he had. The thought of something bad happening to her made him shiver inside. And there was only one road in and out of Chiaro. Someone could have easily waited for them at the turnoff and picked them up again when they reemerged.

“Mr. Bennett?”

He turned to find a woman fitting Irina’s description. She was younger and prettier than he’d thought she would be, early forties he guessed, with raven-black hair and very pale skin. Her green scarf floated around her shoulders, sparkling with snow.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“Irina,” she said, extending a gloved hand. As they shook hands, she sized him up the way every cop he knew seemed to do. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she said at last.

“Don’t worry about it. Do you want to talk here or go somewhere else?”

“There’s a man who wants to meet you,” she said, her voice soft although it seemed to Cole they were the only ones left in the building.

“Who?”

“I don’t want to say his name in a public place. He’s waiting for us. He’s quite elderly and he’s still afraid—”

“Afraid? Of what?”

“I’m going to let him tell you. Do you want to ride with me or follow in your own car?”

“I’ll follow,” Cole said, glancing at his watch. It was almost five o’clock, and the way Irina was acting was just odd enough to make him wary. She took off in a dark red truck—that would be easy enough to follow in the snow.

She led him into the town of Slovo, its narrow cobbled streets crowded with what must be rush-hour traffic. It took several minutes to get to the far edge of town, and then she turned down a road that seemed to skirt the lake. After a mile or so, he began to get nervous about getting stuck out here and wished he’d ridden in Irina’s truck, which sat a lot farther off the ground than his rental and probably sported four-wheel drive.

Finally he made out a small house ahead, set off by itself. He parked beside Irina’s truck and walked with her to the front door.

It opened as soon as they stepped onto the porch and an elderly man motioned them inside. He spoke to Irina in his own language, and Cole found himself wishing he could have brought Skylar along because now he was at the mercy of Irina’s translations.

He reminded himself his brother John had trusted Irina. He’d lived down the street from her right here in Slovo when he was a kid and had reconnected years later when he’d come to try to understand his past.

“This man’s name is Roman,” she said, turning to Cole and switching to English. “He doesn’t call himself that anymore. Now his name is Tincte, but years ago and in his heart, he is Roman. That’s his last name, the only name he needed until this. He’s given me permission to tell you that. Does his name mean anything to you?”

“Roman was the last name of the young woman the ambassador supposedly had an affair with and killed.”

“Yes. This man is her father and the last remaining member of his family. Two of his sons were murdered many years before by a man your brother John ran into a few months ago back in the United States.”

“I know who you mean. Smirnoff. John told me about him.”

“Good. You know that John asked me to keep asking questions after he left Kanistan the last time.”

“Yes. I know the first time he came here he questioned the people who raised him and that they were murdered when they called Traterg police for help in dealing with him.”

“Yes, I discovered that call myself.

“Why did Smirnoff kill Roman’s sons?”

“That was the conclusion of the police investigation,” Irina added. “Mind you, these are the same police that said Roman and his sons were responsible for the retaliatory bomb that destroyed the ambassador, his wife and their three sons. Roman’s own boys were killed, supposedly during an arrest attempt. Roman and his wife got away and have been hiding ever since. He claims they had nothing to do with sending a bomb.”

Cole looked closely at the old man as he spoke to Irina. “How did you find this man?”

“I didn’t. He found me. His wife passed away recently, and he contacted a trusted friend with the news. That person told Roman I had been asking questions.”

The old man touched her shoulder, and she turned to him. He spoke to her in a weedy voice, emotion etching deep lines down his face, bracketing his mouth.

“He’s been ashamed,” she said, looking back at Cole.

“Ashamed? Why?”

“Because he didn’t avenge his children. Because his wife died without her family. Because he lost everything, and to protect what little he had left he changed careers, going from a professor to a fisherman. And because he heard rumors that papers were forged and documents altered.”

“Tell him I understand,” Cole said gently.

The old man’s eyes watered as Irina spoke to him, and he sagged a little. Cole caught his arm and supported him over to a chair pulled up to an old, scarred table.