Stripped (35 page)

The closing of a door further down the hallway indicated her suspicion was correct. But Harvey and his crew weren’t allowed to exit through the girls’ door. They had a separate entrance that opened up behind the bar. The same exit the barbacks used to haul up beer and bottles from the basement cooler.

Natalya followed the noise to the askance stairwell door. She pushed it open quietly, again listening for footsteps on the stairs.

Silence reigned.

Strange. She’d have sworn someone had passed through here. The air even felt agitated. As if it had been disturbed from its usual dormant stagnation.

“Harvey?”

“Yes, ma’am?” His voice rang up the stairwell. In seconds, his carrot-red head popped over the banister.

“Did you just come through here?”

Harvey blinked. “No. Me and the guys are closing up down here. Organizing for tomorrow.”

“So everyone’s there then? No one came downstairs? The door was open.”

“No, ma’am. We’ve all been down here since we brought up the last round of trunks. Sorry to give you a scare—someone musta left it open.”

Natalya’s frown deepened. “Yeah. Okay.”

She’d
heard
the door open. Someone had been through here. There were only four doors. Her office, this one, the wide-open dressing room with nowhere to hide, and the back exit, which threw an alarm when opened.

Fighting off an uneasy chill, she turned to investigate the dancers’ lounge. Maybe she’d heard the backstage door, and whoever had come
back here had discovered this wasn’t the bathroom, thus making a speedy exit.

Halfway through the room, Brandon stormed inside. His intimidating size became more imposing under the influence of his malevolent scowl. Angrier than she could ever recall seeing him, his chest heaved with the effort of restraining his temper. The tiny scar on his chin pulled tight as he worked his jaw, and his scalding gaze swept down the length of her half-clothed body.

Alarm bells buzzed inside Natalya’s head. She’d known she would piss him off. She’d expected a little temper, a lot of yelling. Not the heat that rolled off him in waves and the searing way his narrowed gaze pierced into her. Instinct kicked in, along with a shiver. She fought down the reflex to run and hide. Ordered her legs not to shake.

She gulped, realizing a far more frightening fact. She stared at a man who could actually intimidate her.

He jabbed a finger at the door behind her. “Your office.
Now
.”

With calm that belied the nervous trip of her heart, she back stepped through her door. She wasn’t afraid, just off-center. With Dmitri, she knew what to expect. Knew which buttons would soothe his annoyance. Sergei and she fought like brother and sister, but while he possessed the skills of an agent, she could still outshoot him if she needed to. The rest of the people she encountered, she treated with polite mistrust. The less she
expected
from them, the more she anticipated the worst.

Brandon, however, was as unpredictable as the weather. She trusted him to a degree—her first mistake. That trust wanted to please. But the deep-rooted need for self-protection made trying to diffuse the situation with an honest conversation more frightening than confessing her betrayal to Dmitri.

Her office door closed heavily. Natalya’s knees hit the back of her chair, stopping her retreat. She clasped her hands in front of her waist and squelched an apology behind pursed lips. She wouldn’t apologize.
Not when she wasn’t sorry for doing what was necessary to see her mission completed.

Brandon met her level stare for several heartbeats, his jaw clenching and unclenching. Color rose to his cheeks. He took a short breath, then exploded, “What the fuck was that all about?”

Forcing herself not to give in to guilt, Natalya summoned a lighthearted laugh. “What? The dance? Didn’t sit well with you, huh?”

“Didn’t
sit well
with me?” His voice rose by several decibels.

“No, I suppose not.” She let out a false sigh and casually crossed her legs. “I should have expected this afternoon would give you the wrong idea. Jealousy isn’t a pretty thing for you, Brandon.” Willpower stopped the wince that threatened to creep across her face. Cattiness had never been her forte. Worse, a secret part of her soul
wanted
this afternoon to give him the wrong idea. Backed into a corner, however, with no way to protect herself from the blows of guilt and the weight of deceiving this incredible man, she had no choice but to turn the tables.

Instead of the shocked surprise she expected, his tawny eyes flashed with hot color, pinning her to the chair.

Twenty-nine

N

atalya’s flippancy shredded Brandon’s control. In his years on the force, having seen the cruelty drugs could inflict and more dead bodies than any human being could ever want to witness, he’d never experienced the violent, unrestrained anger that her light laugh provoked.

Gave him the wrong fucking idea? She’d been right there with him as caught up by what was happening between them as he was. Hell, she’d screamed in pleasure. Nothing would convince him she didn’t share the same enormity of feeling.

He slammed the ball of his fist down on her desk. A box of chocolate-covered cherries jumped. He glanced at the white and red carton briefly, then dismissed it, locking his gaze with Natalya’s once more. “I’ll tell you about wrong ideas. Let’s start with how your
boss
told you
not
to dance, and you decided to do so anyway.”

“My boss?” Natalya laughed again. “Make up your mind which role you want to play, Brandon. You’re only my boss when it’s convenient. Otherwise you’re too busy fucking me.”

He clamped his teeth down on the stream of oaths that choked off his air. He couldn’t argue with the truth. Moreover, he caught the flat glint of her eyes. The unfeeling stare that told him the words were real enough, but the woman who said them wasn’t. For a moment, in the dancers’ lounge, he’d glimpsed that mesmerizing Natalya who drove him to maddening limits. While this shell made him every bit as crazy,
he ached for the woman who prompted him into foolishness.
She
had been on the stage.
She
deserved the fight.

“Damn it, where are you?” Frustrated beyond all means, he swiped his arm across the desk, sending the chocolates flying into the wall.

She blinked. But not at him, he realized, as he followed the trajectory of her gaze. She stared at the floor where the box had broken open. Smashed chocolate-covered cherries coated the floor, sugary ooze pouring from a squashed corner.

Brandon straightened. Unease filtered through his angry haze. He’d hit the box hard. But not hard enough to smash two entire trays of candies, each held in egg-shaped cups. Those chocolates were already crushed, long before he’d hit them. And to accomplish that, while keeping the flimsy plastic cups from collapsing, someone had done it piece by piece.

“Who gave you that?” His gaze flicked back to hers, and he took a small measure of satisfaction at witnessing the truth behind her eyes before she once again snapped the shutters closed.

“I told you jealousy wasn’t a pretty color for you.”

He pursed his lips, ground his teeth together. With patience that defied his years of training, he gritted out, “No games. Who gave you the chocolates, Natalya?”

Defiance radiated in the proud jut of her chin. Sparkled behind her challenging stare. Then, as she blinked, the facade crumbled. She shook her head. “It wasn’t here when I left for the stage.”

In the next heartbeat, the color drained from her face. He knew then, she’d made a connection. Associated the candy with someone else. Someone who had the capacity to strike fear into her fearless little heart.

His arms ached to draw her close. To offer comfort and reassurances. But he’d come to realize enough about Natalya that he also knew the moment he attempted to soothe those deep-rooted fears, she’d clam up and block him out.

Damn it. He didn’t know which to be more concerned about—the person who she was running from, or the people chasing him. They couldn’t be the same. The mafia didn’t work with subtle insinuations, and they wouldn’t want to intimidate
her.
If they had a message to deliver, it would come to him. They might use her as the vessel of delivery, but threatening Natalya accomplished nothing.

On the other hand, whoever erased her past on paper had resurfaced. Or something made her believe such, at least.

“Get your things,” he murmured. “We’re leaving. We’ll talk about this at my place.” Sighting her keys on the corner of her desk, he swiped them up and dangled them in front of her nose. “I’ll wait in the hall while you dress.”

Without giving her opportunity to object, he yanked open the door, stepped into the hall, and firmly pulled it shut. Standing in front of it, he looked up to find Jill seated on a chair in the lounge, a smug smirk tugging at her thin mouth. Unnaturally high eyebrows arched even higher. She mouthed,
Told
you.

Brandon bit back a low growl. He didn’t have the patience for her antics. Closing his eyes, he dropped his head against the doorframe and blocked out everything but the nagging voice that insisted Natalya was in danger.

N

atalya shivered, unable to tear her gaze off the sugary goo on her floor and her mind away from the keys Brandon had swiped off her desk. For three years, she’d forced herself to swallow down the thick syrupy candy. Each time Dmitri went away for more than four days, he brought chocolate-covered cherries back. She’d eaten the first box only out of politeness, in hopes that enthusiasm over his thoughtfulness would bring her that much closer to the formidable
Bratva
leader. Over time, he’d just assumed she liked them.

Now they were here. Smashed in the box. Like someone had picked each one up and squeezed it between thumb and forefinger.

Jill’s warning. The strange text message from Iskatel´. Smashed cherries and keys that miraculously appeared when she left her office to assume the stage—all messages. Now, Brandon wanted her to take him home. Expected to finish this argument inside his house, with her car parked in his driveway, broadcasting for anyone who might be tailing her, that she was inside.

She might as well stand him in front of his bay window and paint a bull’s-eye on his back.

Damn it! What she wouldn’t give to have Sergei outside her door. But that wouldn’t happen. As enraged as Brandon was, she didn’t stand a chance at convincing him to give her more time before they left. Certainly not to have a personal conversation with her friend.

Natalya picked up her phone instead. Flipping to Sergei’s name, she quickly sent a cautionary message:
I’m in trouble. Must see you in the AM. Don’t reply.

Deleting it just as quickly, she shoved the phone inside her purse. Her fingers touched the cool metal of her gun, offering her a modicum of relief. As she withdrew her hand, her phone vibrated. She fished it out, scowled at Sergei’s name, and punched the answer button, lecturing in Russian, “I told you not to reply.”

“You also told me you’re in trouble. I’m not going to ignore that. Given the circumstances, morning might very well be too late.”

Her gaze pulled to the smeared mess on her floor. Shaky fingers tightened around her phone. “I think I’ve been made.”

“Made? What? How?”

“There’s chocolate-covered cherries all over my floor. I got a cryptic message from Iskatel´, I think—it was a private number—saying he was watching me.”

A muffled oath drifted through the phone.

“And Brandon wants to talk about
stuff
at his place tonight.”

“Stuff like your dance.”

“Mm-hm.”

At Sergei’s heavy sigh, she pictured the way he raked his fingers
through his long hair. A gesture so similar to Brandon’s self-conscious habit, it made the familial link impossible to ignore.

“What do you want to do, Natalya?”

She couldn’t help but chuckle. “What I want to do is selfish and wrong. I need to get far away from Brandon. From this mess.”

“Can you hold it together for two more days?”

“I think so. I’m worried about him though.”

“C’mon, babe, if anyone can keep him safe, it’s you.”

Frowning, Natalya scratched at a dried smear of fingernail polish on her desktop. “I don’t understand why you’re suddenly encouraging me to pursue your brother when less than a day ago you went to great pains to make me acknowledge the danger.”

“Look at who we are, Natalya. Any minute, you or I could cease to exist. You said it yourself—you’ve spent three years unfeeling. Maybe you made me realize lying to ourselves only makes everything worse.”

“But he’s your brother, which you still owe me an explanation for.”

He skipped over her not-so-subtle hint. “Yeah, he is, and if there’s a man in this world who can pull you out of this hellhole and keep you out of it, it’s him.”

She snapped her mouth shut, stiffening in her chair. Pull her out? Had Sergei recognized that she’d cracked? What if she didn’t want to be pulled out? She didn’t need to leave the agency and the Opals, she needed to leave this assignment. A few weeks from now, with Dmitri locked up and Brandon far away, she’d be fine. The blissful world of non-feeling would be a welcome relief to the chaos raging inside her now. She could once again look at her reflection in the mirror without cringing.

“Go on, babe. I’ll stay close.”

With that, Sergei terminated the call.

For several moments, Natalya cradled her phone and stared at the back of her door. Pull her out… Her own partner thought she couldn’t take the life anymore. Maybe he had a point. Maybe agents didn’t come back from falling apart. But she didn’t know how to live a normal
life. Wasn’t sure she wanted
normal
. What if she tried and failed? What if she’d gone so far beyond innocence, she’d never be able to find it again?

A stiff knock reminded her Brandon waited. She dropped her phone into her purse and quickly stripped off her bikini. Sliding back into her clothes, she blocked the frightening questions Sergei stoked and focused on what plausible lies she’d tell Brandon this time.