Yes, he had lost those years … but soon, he would have all that he desired. And his brother would remain this shell of a man. Carrying, he hoped, the guilt for what he’d done with him to his grave.
The guilt that Roman had seized upon as his own salvation; a tool to obtain what he desired most.
“And Marina? What does she know about this? About us?”
“Nothing! Of course, nothing!” Fear leapt into Victor’s eyes. Good. His daughter meant something to him. Leverage was always useful when playing such cat and mouse games.
“I have told her nothing.”
“That is well. She will be joining us soon, Victor. I prefer to be the one to educate her, if you don’t mind. My brain is not sodden with — is it Stoli? — and I wager I’ll do a better job.”
“Don’t involve her in this, Roman. What good will it do?” Victor had a fleck of spittle on his lower lip.
“What good? Why, she has the blood of Shamans and Skalas in her. She is the last of the Aleksandrovs and she must meet her grandfather. She must fulfill her destiny.” He fiddled with his thumb, checking a bruise on his nail which had blossomed from a small grey-blue mark to over the entire nail with black. “She is a brilliant, brave young woman. You must be proud of her.” Bitterness tinged his voice. Jealousy.
“I want no harm to come to her.”
Roman looked at his twin, born the older by no more than one hundred seconds. One hundred seconds that had haunted him all of his life. One hundred seconds that had driven every decision he’d ever made. “Of course there will be no harm to her. Why would I harm the Heiress to the Sacred?”
30
Whether they were in Siberia or not, Marina didn’t want to remain in the chamber any longer. She supposed GPS devices weren’t incorrect very often, but she still found it hard to believe they could have traveled thousands of miles in three hours.
The pod they’d traveled in sat in its place, wedged into the metal-edged wall just as it had back in Canada. She brushed her hand over its smooth surface as if touching it would explain its mystery; but it remained silent. To her surprise, it wasn’t hot. It was barely warm.
“Seems like if we’d been traveling so far so quickly, our space ship would be burning with heat,” she commented, walking toward Gabe, who held his gun like an extension of his long arm. Pointing down.
“You’d think. Maybe the sat phone’s got an error and we really didn’t travel that far. We won’t know until we get out of this underground launching pad.”
“Let’s go.” Marina, suddenly antsy, started toward the far wall. She presumed there was an exit just as there had been an entrance at the beginning of their journey.
“Hold up,” Gabe ordered. “Let’s wait a few to make sure that the arrival of this — ping pong ball — didn’t send some kind of alert.”
“I’d rather not wait in here and be cornered if it did.”
“So you’d rather rush out to meet whatever’s coming?”
“Guess that’s the difference between you and me. And you the trained spook; me, I’m just an ordinary girl.” Marina continued her way to the wall she was sure contained a door.
“Ordinary’s not a word I’d use.”
The next thing she knew, the wall was rough and cold against her back, and Gabe was looking down at her, fingers solid on her arms. His eyes were very blue, and very serious. And very close. “You might be used to taking risks in rescue missions, but this is different. This is guns and terrorism and God knows what else — it’s my expertise, Marina. You’ve got to take a step back.”
She knew he was right. Even though his sudden proximity sent her mind spinning in a whole lot of different directions, she nodded. “All right.”
He nodded back at her. And then he bent forward.
His mouth fit over hers and she lifted her chin to meet him head-on. Her eyes closed, and she settled her hands against his warm chest, curling her fingers over the tops of wide shoulders. He was good; it was good. A delicious warmth erupted under her skin, sending little shivers down her back and along her arms as they tasted and sampled and tested out the attraction between them. Hip to hip, thigh sliding between thigh, cold, rough wall scraping the back of her.
After awhile, he pulled gently away and she opened her eyes when their mouths broke apart. His lips were full and they parted in a little smile. “I’ve been wanting to do that since you stepped out of the shower,” he said. “At the hotel.”
“I hadn’t…until I saw your face after that plane ride.” She slid her hands down from his shoulders, feeling the solidness of his pecs, then pulled away. He was still smiling, his eyes glinting with humor at her comment.
Then, as if a switch had been turned on — or off, depending how she looked at it — he sobered. His face tightened, his gaze sharpened, his muscles tensed against her. He was back in the game. “I don’t know if we’re really in Siberia or not, but either way, we’re at a disadvantage.”
“Yes, but if we find the Skaladeskas, I’ll be the one they’ll listen to,” she reminded him. “I’m one of them.” Marina felt along a groove in the wall and slipped her fingers in. Nothing happened when she pressed or pushed.
“If you’re looking for the way out, it’s over here.”
Marina turned just in time to see the door open. She moved along the wall to stand next to Gabe, out of sight of whatever might lie beyond the opening.
She realized she was holding her breath when she was forced to expel it, several minutes later, when nothing happened. No sounds of alarms, no alerting cries, no booby-traps springing up or open around them.
Just silence.
She started forward, but Gabe snatched her wrist and propelled her behind him. “I’m going first. I’ve got the weapon.”
“Yeah. Okay. Maybe I do need to learn how to fire one.”
“A little late for that now, don’t you think?”
“It’s never too late.” She followed him through the doorway into a passage of sorts. A hall, not a cave chamber, of pure white. The ceiling was rounded and she felt rather like a hobbit stepping through a round door, into a hall illuminated by the glow of lights set into the ceiling, studded along the way every six or eight feet. “Guess we’re not in Kansas anymore, huh, Toto?”
She wiped damp palms over her jeans, realizing her only tool was that small light slipped into her pocket. She wished she’d taken up Gabe’s offer of a gun.
They’d walked perhaps a mile in the white corridor without meeting anyone, or hearing any sound but the dull pad of their own footsteps. The air and the temperature remained constant, so Marina couldn’t tell if they were still underground, or heading further into the earth. If the passage tilted slightly downward at one point, it rounded back up at another.
The air was fresh, not stale or musty as one might expect a long, uninterrupted hall to contain.
At last, they came to a door. The same pure white as the walls, it nevertheless differentiated itself by its smooth metal and a barely discernable line down the middle where it likely split open.
Marina looked at Gabe, who’d found the small niche which contained buttons and switches.
“The labels are in English,” he told her. “Ready?”
She nodded and he flipped a switch.
The doors peeled apart and they found themselves in a spacious room. Room wasn’t quite the word, Marina considered, stepping through the door. It felt more like an airport terminal; in particular, with its four-storey ceiling, glass walls and open stairways, the building reminded her of Munich Airport.