Smoke and Mirrors (21 page)

“No,” Anna said flatly, and he grunted and threw himself back down on the pillow. But Nell thought he was smiling.

“There’s something else,” Nell said in a rush. “I haven’t written it down yet, but just at the end, before I woke up, I saw the Guardian. Or someone who said she was the Guardian—she didn’t look anything like the fire goddess.”

Anna’s gaze, which had returned to the notebook, flew back to Nell’s and held, searching. “She wouldn’t, when she came to you. She speaks through whatever gift you have. Did you tell her about Rodion?”

“I tried very hard not to even
think
about Rodion. But I think—I’m sure—she knows where the children are. She told me she comforts them and that she’ll help them ‘when the time is right.’”

Anna’s fingers clenched white on the notebook. “Big of her,” she said bitterly. “If you ask me, she’s out-existed any usefulness she ever had. She isn’t guarding us; she’s
hiding
us.
Impeding
us.”

“Well, when this is done, we can reeducate her,” Rodion said, his voice quite wide awake despite being muffled in the pillow.

“You just love a challenge, don’t you?” Anna retorted. “But I draw the line at lost causes.” She returned to Nell’s notebook. After a moment, she said tonelessly, “They’re distressed. Is this new in your dreams of them?”

Nell nodded. “They’ve always been still and placid before, fast asleep. But this time, it was as if they were trying to wake up.” She moved her gaze from Anna’s averted face to the bed, where Rodion had propped himself up on one elbow. “Maybe there was finally something to wake up for. You said they’re psychic, right? What if Rodion was close enough to them last night for them to sense his presence, even through the drugs? And now they’re trying to wake up and speak to him?”

The brother and sister exchanged glances.

“Anna said I could dream of the present. Maybe I did.”

Rodion sat up. The only visible sign of his ordeal was the new paleness of his skin. “You still think they’re at the club,” he observed. “There are other clubs in Zavrek.”

“In similar old buildings? As tall?”

He nodded. “At least one other.”

“But not owned by the Bear,” Anna pointed out.

“True, so far as we know. But I was up there, right to the attic apartment—no signs of cameras or alarms. And Ilya checked the records—they’re all legally rented.” He fixed Nell with his piercing gaze. “Did you see where it was this time? The location?”

“A little bit. I saw the pattern of rooftops from the window.”

“She’s drawn it,” Anna said, holding up the book.

A warm smile flickered across his lips, causing her stupid heart to turn over. “Good for you.”

“Not that good,” she said ruefully. “I imagine it could be anywhere.”

“We’ll check it out. Anna, quick confab here in half an hour. Tell Ilya to bring his computer.”

Anna nodded, closed the notebook, and returned it to Nell before standing and leaving the room without further conversation. Alone with him again, Nell felt suddenly ridiculously shy. She’d admitted things to him last night, done things with him, that made her cheeks burn.

He said, “You look good in my shirt. Good enough to eat.”

“It’s big,” she argued. “It covers a multitude of sins.” And she jumped up and hurried to the tiny bathroom, which contained a toilet and a very basic, narrow shower cubicle. She needed time to gather herself, to deal with the overwhelming presence that was Rodion. Her lover.

Did a second night bestow that title on him? she wondered as she turned on the shower, found his toothpaste, and rubbed some over her teeth with her finger. She spat it into the shower cubicle and wiped her face on his towel.

She jumped when his hands touched her from behind, removing the towel and hanging it back behind the door. She found she was holding her breath as he drew the shirt down her shoulders, then back up, and down again.

She glanced quizzically over her shoulder. He was totally naked and totally, utterly desirable. He must have been fighting women off all his life, yet here he was naked in a tiny, seedy bathroom with her, a glint in his eye that was half teasing and half lust.

“I’m making a scientific comparison. You’re cute in the shirt. It makes me want to see beneath.”

The shirt fell to the floor at last, and he drew her back against his warm, naked body. She wanted to close her eyes in bliss, only then she’d miss the sight of his muscled arms around her, caressing her stomach and hips and gliding smoothly up to her breasts.

“And beneath,” he said unsteadily, “is pure beauty.” He walked her a pace forward, under the shower. Warm water cascaded over her head and body, making her gasp.

“You know, I’m in danger of believing you when you say these things. Leave me some reality.”

His head blocked the water jet, which sparked around his golden hair as he cupped her face, turning it up to his. “This is reality,” he said and kissed her mouth with long, slow sensuality. Before the kiss ended, he’d rolled on a condom and was inside her, and, despite the insalubrious surroundings and the not inconsiderable difficulties of such a small, enclosed space, it was the sweetest, most thrilling shower she’d ever taken.

Even stranger, although they had to rush to be dressed before their half hour alone was up, the lovemaking itself didn’t seem remotely hurried. He was slow and tender, using his hand as well his cock to pleasure her, and when she came, he braced one hand on the wall above her head and continued his long, gentle strokes until he collapsed against her back, trembling, pressing her whole body into the wall.

She felt again the strange, rushing heat of his orgasm reigniting hers in that unique, exquisite ecstasy that seemed to come only from him. It was as if when he lost control at the moment of climax, his body burned up in his own fire and made it part of the pleasure. Fucking weird, but deliciously addictive.

He straightened on his shaking legs and kissed her head and shoulders.

“They don’t call it a knee trembler for nothing,” he said breathlessly and kissed her mouth while helping her wash her hair and body. Which, in that confined space, turned out to be unexpectedly fun.

By the time Boris and Ilya appeared with laptops and a bundle of electronic gadgetry, she was fully dressed in last night’s clothes and curiously light-hearted. Rodion was pulling a T-shirt on over his tousled head.

Boris and Ilya both grinned at her as if they’d seen her only yesterday and began to set up the laptops. Anna arrived a moment later, as cool and elegant as ever in skinny jeans and a long sweater. With her was the woman who’d been in the bar last night. She wore a worn, slightly grubby dressing gown, with the remains of last night’s garish makeup and a huge yawn; and she carried a large tray bearing a piled-high plate of buttered bread, a samovar and mugs, some of which weren’t cracked.

Rodion took the tray from her and won a huge smile. She got his quirky half-smile in response. Nell looked away. The woman was pretty in a blowsy sort of a way, and whatever her profession, the possibilities of what she might have done with Rodion already were enough to excite a surge of stupid, pointless jealousy. But at last the woman left, and Anna poured the tea with quick efficiency.

“We need the plans of the nightclub section of the building again,” Rodion said to Ilya, taking one of the mugs and a chunk of bread. “And we need the names of everyone who lives in the apartments above. Especially the attic.”

“I’m on it,” Ilya murmured.

Rodion sat down on the bed behind him, next to Anna. “Also,” he said, watching Ilya’s fingers fly while screens changed rapidly, “see if you can locate the Bear.”

Boris glowered at him from the stool where he was systematically demolishing bread between large slurps of tea. “Why? You think he’s on to you?”

“Someone spotted me last night. No one of the Bear’s, but still, word gets around in this country. Plus”—he took a thoughtful drink of tea—“if Nell’s right and the treasure is changing behaviour, he’ll be warned of that. Like us, he’ll wonder what it signifies.”

“But he thinks you’re dead,” Nell pointed out. “Doesn’t he?”

“He thinks I might be.” His lips twisted. “However, he has an almost religious faith in my ability to survive. He won’t believe for certain until he sees the body.”

Anna looked thoughtful. “Could we find him one?”

“Worth thinking about,” Rodion acknowledged.

“Okay, got the plans,” Ilya said. “From the renovation that was done at the time the club was set up. Looks like it was done by the book. No strong rooms or panic rooms. At least none that were recorded.”

Nell and Rodion peered over his shoulders.

“Can you check the measurements of the attic flat?” Nell said hopefully.

Ilya paused, as though doing quick calculations. “Same as the others,” he said at last. The plans disappeared. “But I’ve cross-referenced the tenants. They’re all employees of the Bear—legal ones who pay tax and everything.”

Rodion said, “Better break in, then.”

Nell’s gaze flew to his face in alarm.

“Not smart,” Boris grunted.

“And if you melt the locks, they’ll know it’s you,” Anna warned.

“Hey, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. I shared a cell with a burglar for fourteen months.”

“You’re sure there are no cameras?”

“One outside the club, easy to avoid. None outside any of the apartments. I’ll stay in touch with Ilya in case I come across anything inside. Any sign of the Bear?”

Ilya twisted around to look at him. “He’s travelling.”

“Here?”

“Could be. Or Siberia. I’ll keep watch.”

****

Since the best time to break in was obviously when the occupants were at work, Nell left them to it.

“Pick you up later,” Rodion said casually as she left the room. As a parting line, it might have lacked romance, but his eyes held a warm, lazy smile that promised much more.

Armed with his directions, she eased her way out of the tiny bar and walked up to a main street well away from the nightclub, where she found a taxi to take her back to her uncle’s apartment. She’d already texted to say she was staying the night at a hotel, so she’d no real need to invent a story that would exclude Rodion. She could just plead excessive tiredness and a lack of taxis last night. Or she could have run into an old friend.

Still debating the relative merits, she paid the taxi outside the apartment building and walked the few yards to the front door. Parked only a few feet beyond it was a black car of some obscure Russian make. Nell wouldn’t even have noticed it if it hadn’t been for a suddenly clear view of the driver.

He looked straight at her, as he’d done in the trendy bar last night. The man in the blue T-shirt. Except, under his leather jacket, his T-shirt today was white.

Without warning, she flashed back to him shooting the mugger last night, and with the horror came a surge of anger. Because Derryn’s people were quite as ruthless as the Bear with other people’s lives.

Nell walked straight past the front door and stopped beside the car. She reached up to rap on the window, but the cool bastard was already rolling it down. He even opened his mouth—to say what, Nell never discovered, because this time, at least, she was faster.

“If you ever try anything like that again, I’ll knock your teeth out,” she said in precise English. “And then, since I see from your expression that you don’t believe I could, I’ll let Rodion Kosar kill you.”

For the first time, anger spilled across his face, not untinged by alarm, because he knew exactly how Rodion Kosar could kill. It wasn’t him but Nell who inspired the contempt in his supercilious sneer.

“You think I won’t do that either?” she said softly. “Arse. Who do you imagine would touch me for it? Who do you think is more valuable to your employers? To just about everyone, including the poor little shit you paid and shot last night? You? Or Kosar?”

Then she simply turned, walked back to the front door, and pressed the buzzer.

Chapter Fifteen

“Hey,” Sonya said, bearding her in the bedroom they shared for Nell’s visit. “There’s a gorgeous man at the door asking for you.”

Nell, who’d been watching out of the window on and off for hours under the pretence of checking for the British security guy’s return—while actually hoping for the appearance of just this man she had no difficulty in recognizing from her cousin’s description.

“Tall, blond, long coat?” she asked lightly, while her heart hammered like a teenager’s when confronted with her first serious crush.
Is that what this is?

“That’s him.”

“Don’t look so impressed. He’s an old friend,” Nell said. Well, older than her visit to Zavrekestan. She straightened from the windowsill and grabbed her coat as she went out and along the hall to the front door.

Rodion shimmered in his fiery gold aura. Her heart seemed to melt and slide downward.

“Are you going out, Yelena?” her aunt called from the kitchen.

“Just for a while. I’ll call you,” she said over her shoulder. Sonya, watching from the bedroom door, winked at her, and Rodion laughed. She shut the flat door behind her and almost scuttled past him.

“Where are we going?” she demanded. “Breaking and entering?”

“Rush, rush, rush,” Rodion murmured. “Not yet. No one turns up for work at the club before five.”

Nell glanced up and down the street. A dull blue car had replaced the black one, but there was no sign of an occupant. Rodion marched toward it as if it were his own—which it turned out to be.

Wordlessly, Nell got in. “I have got this right, haven’t I? You didn’t nick this car?”

“Boris hired it.”

“Where are we going?” she asked as he pulled away from the kerb.

“Out of town.”

“Why?” she asked suspiciously.

“Timing a getaway,” he responded. “Maybe. Or perhaps I just want your company.”

“Both, if I know you,” she said dryly, and he laughed. “No point in wasting time, is there?”

The smile died on his lips. His gaze met hers in the mirror. “No,” he said.

I have so little time. He knows that somehow. Even if I tell him, he’ll never forgive me.

She dragged her gaze free and watched the road as they drove through the city. She smiled faintly. “This is almost like the first time I met you. Driving, looking out for people trying to kill me. Or you.”

“Good times,” Rodion said fondly, and she let out a breath of laughter. She felt his gaze on her and glanced up. “They’re all good times with you.”

Heat and shame flooded her, flushing through her body with some unnameable emotion. There were no words, because she realised suddenly it was true for her. She’d rather spend a day at risk, dodging bullets and fires with him, than live a lifetime with anyone else.

Oh shit… What’s happening to me?

Rodion drove out of the city and onward for a few more miles until they reached heavy woods on either side of the road. He pulled off the road, bumping over rough track through the trees, and stopped.

“What are we doing?” she asked as he got out. She followed him and shut the car door.

“It’s the romantic date I never took you on.” He threaded his fingers through hers and began to walk. The air smelled fresh and piney; their footfalls sounded soft and muffled, like the birdsong and the scuttling animals she could hear in the distance from all over the wood.

She smiled, gazing upward at the tall trees with their bright new growth, mingling with the evergreens and wild trailing plants she couldn’t have named if she’d tried, although she was sure she recognised a few wild herbs.

She said, “You’ve got a drug dealer or an assassin waiting at the end of the path, haven’t you?”

His hand slid up her wrist and arm and across her shoulders. “No.”

She couldn’t help leaning into him, and they walked like that in silence. She liked the silence with Rodion too. She liked everything with Rodion. Something began to ache, so deep inside her that she couldn’t recognise it.

Under the branches of a massive oak, as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he turned her into his arms and bent to kiss her. She parted her lips and tilted up her face, and his mouth covered hers in a long, slow kiss that turned her stomach to liquid and her knees to jelly.

It went on a long time. And when it ended, he began another. She reached up to touch his cheek, her other arm around his neck, drawing him closer. It was sweet, exciting, and all she wanted. He made no effort to back her into the tree trunk, to make it more than kisses, and something about that made her want to cry. Her emotions were a mess, confused, building and tumbling around her as if trying to get out or to make themselves understood.

And quite suddenly, she did. Everything since she’d laid eyes on him had been leading to this.

“I love you,” she whispered into his mouth. And was appalled.

His lips left hers. He looked down into her eyes, not laughing, not even smiling. But he didn’t run away either.

He said, “Thank you.” And kissed her again.

Slowly, they began to walk on, still kissing.

****

She’d said the “L” word.

Unlike many men, Rodion had never run screaming from it. People said it all the time for all sorts of reasons, meaning lots of different things. He just didn’t use it himself, because it always led to misunderstandings.

And yet that Nell had said it to him warmed his overburdened heart too much for comfort. Or perhaps that was exactly what it was. Comfort. Because there could be no happy ever after, no “commitment” between him and Nell; and yet she loved him. He couldn’t doubt that. Whatever she meant by the word, she’d spoken it from the heart.

He liked Nell’s heart, he thought, driving back to the city for a spot of breaking and entering. She sat quietly beside him, watching him sometimes or just thinking her own thoughts. Occasionally, their eyes met, and they smiled.

And that was the trouble too. He liked Nell’s company. He liked it too much and always had. But he’d never been in the habit of torturing himself or others by wishing life could be different, and he wasn’t going to start now. You worked with the hand you were dealt and did your best.

He parked in an anonymous concrete car park, and they walked together toward the nightclub.

“I’ll come with you,” she said.

“I only do solo break-ins.”

“No, you don’t.”

He glanced at her in quick amusement, and she gave him a wheedling smile. “If it’s not dangerous, as you keep saying, then where’s the problem for me to come too? Seriously, Rodion, it might help the dreams if they’ve ever been there or been in the company of anyone else who lives there.” She frowned, adding with disarming honesty, “I think.”

Rodion laughed. “All right. Just remember the escape route, which is the green car two ahead of us.”

She clocked it immediately, which was a good start. “Where’s Ilya?” was all she said. “In the boot?”

“Didn’t your mother tell you not to put all your eggs in one basket? Keep close to me as we come nearer the club. We need to avoid the camera.”

The only time she showed any surprise was when they reached the secure entrance to the apartments and he picked it as easily as if he’d used a key. But still she said nothing, merely followed him inside and up the stairs. The building was eerily silent, without even the music from the club drifting through the walls. They were decent-sized apartments for young, single people in a low-paid line of work, which probably made the tenants amenable to turning a blind eye to anything illegal that went on in the club under the Bear’s auspices.

No new alarms or camera systems had appeared since yesterday. But nevertheless, as they climbed to the attic flat, Rodion pulled his hood up over his head so that it fell forward and hid a large part of his face.

He was close. After two years, he finally felt he was close to his brother and sister. Every instinct was to go charging in there, breathing fire and burning anyone and everyone who’d hurt them. He wanted to break bones; he wanted to kill the people who’d stolen two years from the lives of innocent children, kept them in fear and damaged their growing minds with drugs.

But this was a reconnaissance. His chances of breaking them out today were slim. He couldn’t allow himself to consider the conditions in which he might find them. The important thing was to slip in and out without being noticed so he could plan their final escape.

Cool thoughts. And yet his heart beat like a rabbit’s. As if she sensed it, Nell slipped her fingers through his and squeezed. The human contact,
her
contact, seemed to ground him, calm him.

There was only the one flat in the roof space—no communal storage, no cupboards, except what looked like a gas meter in the wall at the top of the stairs. Rodion picked the apartment lock in only seconds longer than it would have taken him to melt it, and walked warily inside, keeping Nell behind him. But there were no cameras there either. No alarm beams. No guards or any other kind of occupant. Just a slightly untidy two-room flat.

They measured the floors and the walls to make sure they matched Ilya’s plans. They did. The disappointment was crushing. Not only were the children not there, there were no smallest clues that they ever had been. Nothing even to remind Nell of her dreams.

She stood by the window, her notebook in her hand, gazing out at the skyline. Rodion followed and looked with her, comparing the view to Nell’s rough sketch. The pattern was wrong. All wrong. She turned and glanced up at him, her eyes troubled. He touched her hair to show it was all right, then turned and walked away.

They left the apartment exactly as they’d found it.

“What now?” Nell asked as they descended the stairs.

“The music’s a good lead. We’ll go back to investigating the other clubs and bars. None of them that we know of belong legally to the Bear, but there could still be a connection with him.” He spoke brightly enough, even felt the logic and the eternal hope in his own words. But it felt wrong to be leaving here. As if he’d let Liza and Vadim down again.

He opened the front door of the building, keeping his hooded back view toward the club camera.

“Hey!” said a voice from the direction of the club.

Nell, blocked from the newcomer’s view, glanced at him in alarm and went very still. Rodion considered his choices. Run like hell, escape but arouse suspicion. Face it out, risk recognition but possibly defuse suspicion. As the door closed, he turned, slouching into the wall to avoid the camera, and faced the man now striding toward him.

Shit.
One of the club bouncers. “What were you doing in there?” the bouncer demanded, deliberately threatening.

Rodion let his eyes widen with surprise, since it was hardly normal to be questioned by an aggressive stranger outside an apartment block. He plucked a name off Ilya’s half-remembered list of tenants. “Looking for Igor Rostov. He’s not in.”

“He’s working.” The bouncer jerked his head toward the club and came to a halt in front of Rodion.

“Great.” Rodion made to brush past him, but the bouncer stood firm.

“The bars don’t open until seven.”

Rodion sighed. “Then I’ll come back later.” He glanced at Nell. “I bet the bastard’s lost these CDs and doesn’t want to admit it.”

Taking his lead, Nell sighed and nodded. Which would have been a good time to walk away, only the bouncer’s pal had arrived and was openly ogling Nell. He’d done that in the foyer last night too as she’d left the club.

“
She
can come in early, though,” he said, smirking at her. From the look of him, he was the sort of sleazy arse who said, She’d
get it
, without considering or even much caring that the lady he so honoured would rather opt for lifelong celibacy than let him anywhere near her.

“No, she can’t,” Rodion said mildly.

“Hey. Hey,” the first bouncer said, getting in his face. “Let the lady decide for herself.”

Rodion shrugged without taking his gaze off the bastard, whose eyes were sparkling at the prospect of a fight.

“I’ll come back later, with
him
,” Nell said, glaring at the second bouncer, who was trying to insinuate himself between her and Rodion.

Rodion took her hand to prevent it—which only left him one fist left to fight with. What the hell—he still had both feet and his head. But the first bouncer wasn’t interested in Nell, and he wouldn’t fight unless the second provoked it. So the best plan was to turn and walk away. And hope Anna was paying enough attention to drive toward them. They’d have to ditch the green car after that.

It was the best plan, but unfortunately, just as he turned, the first bouncer said, “Hey,” yet again. “I
do
recognise your face. You were here last night.”

“So?”

“So Igor was working last night too, and you walked right past him. What the fuck are you up to?”

Just his fucking luck: an aggressive barman with observational skills. The Bear had chosen him for a reason. It might have been an exciting discovery if only he hadn’t already known the treasure wasn’t here.

In the meantime, and rather more pressingly, the bouncer was pushing him farther into the wall. If he’d been on his own, he might have let the shits rough him up a little before he ran, just so they didn’t notice him too much. But he couldn’t risk them taking Nell in there while putting himself out of action, even for a few minutes.

So he shoved back—one-handed but forcefully enough to make the big bouncer stagger backward. The second bouncer, seeing his chance, grabbed at Nell, who spat at him—an act which surprised him for long enough to let Rodion yank him forward and send him crashing into the first bouncer.

While they untangled themselves with much cursing, Rodion bolted, dragging Nell with him. Her much shorter legs flew along at his side, pumping like pistons. But the bouncers, although heavy, were fast and good at their jobs. Ahead, the green car was pulling out from the kerb, but no way would they get to it in time.

Rodion dived up the first side street, threw himself into the alley opening off it, and leaned against the first door with more hope than expectation. It gave, in blessed silence. Nell ducked inside with him, he released the lock as slowly and quietly as he could, and, for several moments, they just stood in the gloom, listening.