She put down the sock and held the sweatshirt to her chest, her eyes wide. Recognition washed over her face. “Get away!”
What game was she playing? She’d spoken perfect Russian before, had been rather stubborn about it, to boot. “Nyet. What happened here?” Either she was an extremely messy unpacker or someone had done the honors for her. He averted his eyes from a slip draped over the television set and a pair of pink silky pajamas that had landed on the desk lamp, and instead took a survey of the toiletries bag that had been emptied onto her bed. “Thorough, huh?” He picked up a gooey bottle of shampoo with two fingers, wondering what the thief was looking for inside the bottle.
She looked at him, half-horror, half-confusion, her knuckles white against her sweatshirt. “What are you doing here?” Her Russian, although stuttered, had returned.
He crouched before her, a little shocked at her fraying composure. “Did you think I wouldn’t find you?”
She opened her mouth, closed it. Clenched her jaw. He looked away when tears edged her eyes.
“Any idea who did this?” He tried to keep his tone dark, dangerous, refusing to allow her sobs past his disgust. The woman obviously wasn’t above playing games with a man’s emotions.
“No.” Her pitiful tone found soft soil and twisted. He had to admit, everything about her smacked of authenticity.
Except, of course, her rather telling relationship with an international smuggler.
“You know you’re under arrest, right? It’ll only help your case to tell me everything.”
All bravado dropped from her expression and she looked like she might just wail, right there. “My case?” She backed away from him. “I don’t know what you think I did, but I did NOT run away today. Someone let me go. And,” her voice shook and she wrestled it back into submission, “I have no idea, none, nyeto, who did this. Panimaish?”
Her Russian vernacular, slightly sarcastic and sassy, seemed completely out of sync with the fierce tremble of her hands. Still, it chipped another crack into his suspicions.
“My name’s Vadeem. I’d like to help you.” Now why did he say that? He felt like an idiot, holding his hand out to her like he wanted to make friends. Still, the damage was done, and all he could do was muscle up a smile.
She looked from his hand to his eyes, studying his face with unmasked disbelief. She’d obviously had her share of scrapes for the day. Her eyes looked battered and fatigued. Still, if he’d learned one thing about her, she wasn’t going to shatter in front of him. “Kat Moore, and I still don’t know anything.” She slipped her hand into his. It felt warm, and just strong enough for him to know she fought her fears.
“Glad to meet—
The window behind her exploded.
A million spikes sprayed them as Vadeem threw himself forward. He caught Miss Moore in his embrace and landed on the palms of his hands. They fell back onto the rug. She screamed, her hands clawing into his chest as he held her down. His arms covered their heads, his face next to hers, as he listened to the gunfire of a semi-automatic Makarov chip cement from the wall above the bed.
Chapter 4
Kat leaned her head on the dirty glass pane in the interrogation room. Hard as she tried, she couldn’t shake off the tremor that buzzed like a low hum under her skin. Two stories below, moonlight strafed the street in a long pale strip, and the trees jutted spiny arms into the sky, black skeletons silhouetted in ghostly light. She heard the low murmur of voices outside the door. Hopefully one of them was the soldier who had pinned her to the ground and saved her life.
So, maybe he wasn’t the menacing thug she’d pegged him to be.
She put a hand to her face and remembered the rub of his whiskers, recalled his warm breath as he whispered comfort to a stranger and protected her with his own body. She blinked against the burning in her eyes. Nope, after the bullets stopped flying, she’d dubbed him a bona fide hero.
As if on cue, the man, Captain Vadeem something, stalked into the room. He still looked like a walking menace with his sculpted physique and battle-etched face. He traipsed into the room and tossed a file on the metal table, then turned his chair backwards and sat down, straddling it and leaning over the top.
She didn’t miss the way her heartbeat revved into NASCAR speed. Why, she wasn’t at all sure—whether because of his grim look, or the way his blue eyes seemed to peer through her, down to her soul.
“How are you doing, Miss Moore?” His voice didn’t sound at all like he’d nearly been shredded by a battery of gunfire.
She could only shrug. It seemed particularly ironic that she both began and ended this day in the custody of the Russian militia. She’d stopped asking God to rescue her and moved on to asking why she needed to be rescued so often.
The captain indicated for her to sit. “Can I ask you a few questions?”
He deserved to ask her anything after his heroic stunt earlier in the evening. When he looked at her with worry in his brow she could hardly say no. Still, their relationship had her on edge—just what, exactly should she feel about someone who scared the breath out of her one second, and felt like an angel from heaven the next?
She sat down, feeling hollow, thankful that she’d pulled on the green sweatshirt before leaving the hotel. An igloo in Siberia was bound to be warmer than the barren cement interrogation room in the cop house. The smell of coffee drifted in from the dingy hallway and knotted her stomach.
The captain flicked open the brown file folder and flipped through it, as if searching for something. Kat pinned her hands together between her knees, hoping the file wasn’t about her. He stopped searching, and his fingers drummed on the sheaf of papers for a moment while his gaze swept over her. She swallowed a lump forming in her throat.
“Do you have any idea why someone would ransack your room or shoot at you?”
She gave a small shake of her head.
“Hmm.”
She watched his hands, strong and sleek, unearth a color photograph. She remembered those hands guiding her as she slithered across her hotel room floor to the hallway. Those hands took hers and helped her to her feet, even held her around the waist when she discovered her legs had turned to oatmeal.
“Have you ever seen this man?” He handed her a photo, and was polite enough not to comment when it shook in her grip.
She frowned. The man in the photograph looked Slavic by birth, with narrow panes to his face, and hard eyes. His tawny brown hair, pulled back, gave him a fierceness that was only accentuated by the thin scar along his right cheekbone. He looked vaguely familiar, but… “No.”
“His name is Ivan Grazovich. He’s Abkhazian, a military general and antiquities smuggler, among other things.”
She felt a tight burn, right in the center of her chest. “Do you think he was the one shooting at me?” She searched the captain’s face. He’d make a superb poker player, if he had ambitions in that realm. He merely drilled her with a blank look. Then, as if satisfied with her confusion, he leaned back and blew out a breath. She felt tension release its death-hold crunch.
“By the time we found the shooter’s perch, he was long gone. We’re combing it for evidence.”
“I don’t understand. You think this man has been following me?” She shook her head. “Why?”
The captain took the picture and stared at it for a long moment. She saw something dark flicker through his eyes and it sent a cold streak down her spine. “I’m not sure. Do you know anything about Bazooka rocket launchers or SAMs?”
Her eyes widened.
He smiled, and suddenly her stomach curled in delight. Was it her imagination, or had the midnight hours turned the Beast into someone kind and friendly? The shadows gentled his hard angles and, in the soft down of the night, he seemed even… attractive?