Smoke and Mirrors (9 page)

“I’d appreciate that.” The captain took his hand in a firm, rough grip. “Take care, lad.”

****

“I don’t like this,” Boris muttered as Rodion disappeared with the captain. “Where are they taking him?”

Ilya, balancing precariously on the far side of the boat so that he could see better what was happening aboard the trawler, said, “There’s only him and the captain going into the wheelhouse. The others seem to be going back to work.”

“So they just hit each other and sit down for a friendly chat?” Nell said in disbelief.

Beside her, Anna gave a slightly twisted smile. “That’s my Rodya.”

Nell regarded her. Even in shapeless oilskins, she managed to look graceful and pretty, if not quite glamorous. “Why does he do this?” Nell blurted.

Anna’s gaze shifted to her face. “Because he has to.”

“For his bloody treasure?” Nell sneered, not quite sure why she was so angry, but it had something to do with worry and disappointment and a piercing of some stupid bubble that had been forming since her encounter with Rodion this afternoon.

“Yes,” Anna said expressionlessly. And yet her eyes looked suddenly unbearably sad, huge with grief and misery. “For his bloody treasure.”

“Then why don’t you even
try
to stop him?” Nell raged.

Anna’s eyes cleared. “Because it’s my treasure too,” she said softly and sat down on the bench.

Since she’d nowhere else to go, Nell sat too. He shared the treasure with his sister? What the hell could it be that was so important to both of them? A means to getting out of
this
—whatever
this
was—for once and for all? A ticket to a tropical island paradise?

The wind whipped at her hood, blasting her face with a spurt of rain and giving the boat a warning rock.

“And by the way,” Anna added, “he’s not trying to make you complicit in drug smuggling. He’s trying to make you complicit with
us
.”

“Isn’t that the same thing?”

“Didn’t he tell you he’s trying to get us out of this?”

“He says lots of things. It’s impossible to know which to believe.”

“Actually, he never lies unless he has to.”

“Well, there’s the rub. How am I supposed to know when he has to?”

“Exciting, isn’t it?” Anna said wryly.

Nell almost laughed. It caught at her throat, although fortunately the wind whipped it away before any sound came out. Funnily enough, in a weird way, Anna was right. Life around Rodion certainly wasn’t boring.

She turned her head, gazing away from the trawler at the night sea and the clouds scudding across the sky to the distant coast. The misty rain on her face was cold but not unpleasant. And since Anna was there, and she had to know, she said, “It bothered him, didn’t it? That people died in the warehouse.”

She was aware of Anna turning her head to look at her. “Why would you think that?” Anna asked without expression.

“He was bothered about something. I thought it was the police, but it wasn’t. Or not just that. Is it anger because his plan didn’t go just right?”

“Partly. We’ve learned to live with a lot of things, a lot of violence and death. We’ve never learned to like them.”

“Did he know them?” she blurted. “The people who died?”

“He certainly knew one of them. In the biblical sense, if in no other.”

It was like a boulder hitting her in the stomach. She jerked back to face Anna before she could stop herself. The older woman gazed back, half challenging, half cruel. With just a hint of curiosity.

“Irina was his lover,” Anna said baldly. “His contact with Gadarin. It was she who betrayed him.”

Somewhere, she registered that Rodion was walking out of the trawler wheelhouse, making his way back to the ladder and climbing down.

It explained a lot, of course. The glimpses of black grief she couldn’t account for, the agitation he knew he wouldn’t be able to hide from the police, and so he’d provided himself with the excuse of a tobacco addiction. The hints of desperation as he’d turned either to her or away from her… He was eaten up with guilt and grief and anger, because he’d accidentally killed the lover who’d betrayed him. But he needed Nell’s help, so he had to lie to her. He had to pretend to a desire he didn’t feel, because for some reason he thought that would persuade her.

She didn’t speak as they sped back across the sea, barely listened to the conversation or Rodion’s description of what had passed between him and the captain. By the time they reached the shore, the rain had gone off completely and the sky was beginning to lighten. The men pulled the boat up onto the beach, and Nell and Anna clambered out.

Just walking across the beach and onto the cliff path made her sweat inside her borrowed oilskins, so she pulled her raincoat off and let the chilly breeze cool her down. A moment later, she realised Rodion was striding easily along beside her, and found her voice, small, hard, and definite.

“You’re wrong on two counts, Rodion Andreyevich. For the record, I don’t sleep with men on whims, however tempting they might imagine themselves. And even if I did, that wouldn’t and couldn’t help you find your treasure.”

For a moment, he said nothing. She wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d sped up and left the others to make sure she followed him back to the house. It was the kind of reaction she usually got to such a speech—a hasty backing off with the unspoken subtext:
Whoops. Easy lay’s off. Try someone else.

But Rodion neither broke nor increased his stride. “What about fun?” he said.

She glanced at him, frowning. “What?”

He met her gaze in the darkness. “Do you ever sleep with a man for fun?”

“Do you imagine I close my eyes, grit my teeth, and think of England?” she retorted, although in some cases, it had come depressingly close. “Or Scotland…”

“I don’t know. And neither do you.” His teeth gleamed in the darkness. His fingers touched her wrist, a glancing, gliding caress that caught at her breath. “Not with me.”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” she said loftily.

“I’ll show you.” Without warning, he nudged her off the path.

She staggered, but he held her upright with both hands at her waist, and pushed her two steps farther until her back came up against a tree. His hands were warm on her waist, and they stood breast to chest, his hips deliberately touching hers. Between, she could feel him growing and hardening, and heat flooded her. The heat of embarrassment and fear and, God help her, a shocking, raging lust.

“Fun,” he repeated. “You and me, having sex for fun. What would you think of that?”

For the space of several heartbeats—her heart was beating very fast—she stared up into his stormy blue eyes. Her stomach lurched, for there was real emotion there. She’d no idea what it signified, but it was profound, intense, and dangerously exciting.

“Are you actually offering to show me a good time?” she managed. “After lying to me, getting me shot at, kidnapping me, and forcing me on a drug smuggling trip?”

“Yes,” he said softly and bent his head so close she could feel his breath on her lips, her cheek. “What do you say, Nell? You and me, just for the fun of it.” He began to sway subtly against her, while his hands stroked her hips through her jeans. His breath stirred her ear. “I have this feeling—such a warm, sexy feeling—that we’d be good together. So awesomely good…”

All she could manage was, “You’re kidding yourself.”

“Am I? I want you very badly, Yelena Black.”

She closed her eyes, as if that could blot out the temptation of his soft, sexy voice. It did things to her she didn’t want to think about.

“Tough. I don’t want you,” she said brutally.

It didn’t faze him, didn’t stop his hips from pressing her into the tree or his face from sinking ever closer to hers. “Yes, you do. I’ve seen it in your eyes when I touch you. I could see it there now if you’d just open them.”

She opened her eyes and glared. But he only smiled, and that didn’t help at all. His erection pressed between her thighs with just the right amount of pressure to be gloriously exciting without any overt threat. Her whole body trembled, melting against his. Every time he moved, brushing against her nipples like a caress, she tingled. She couldn’t break eye contact, didn’t want to, although his own gaze kept dropping to her lips and back to her eyes, tantalizing, forcing her to wonder again with new desperation, how did he kiss?

She just bet he’d be good at it. She was already so aroused, her stomach would do backflips at the first touch of his lips. If she let it. If she let him.

“Yes, there it is,” he said huskily. A smile, curiously warm and tender sprang into his eyes. “Don’t look so alarmed. One kiss and then I’ll stop.” He brought up his hand and traced the shape of her upper lip with his forefinger.

There was no way she could explain her real terror, that one kiss with him and
she
wouldn’t be able to stop. She tried to speak, but the words dried in her desperate throat. She grabbed at the tree to stop herself holding on to him and saw the smile flicker across his face.
One kiss and then I’ll stop
. He bent even closer until she felt his breath on her lips, as he whispered, “If you want me to.”

His mouth closed on hers. And, oh yes, her stomach swooped and dived and didn’t stop.

He was so quick, so elusive, almost mercurial in both speech and action, that she’d never imagined his kiss would be slow. But it was, as if he forced time to stand still and wait for him, for both of them. Warm, firm, surprisingly soft, his lips pressed against hers before gradually parting them, tasting. Then his mouth began to move in gentle exploration, tender, arousing, and curiously…sweet.

Perhaps it was surprise that made her relax into his kiss. Or just basic, instinctive desire. Whatever, there was no steeling herself to bear the bad bits while concentrating on the good. There was only good, only pleasure from his touch, and it felt wonderful.

His hand was in her hair, holding her head steady, and caressing at the same time, sending shivers down her scalp to her spine. His body pressed closer into hers, leaving her in no doubt, even through her jeans and sweater, of the shape, size, and hardness of his erection.

It was only a kiss.

She opened wider to him, and slowly, tentatively, just to see what it would be like, she kissed him back.

His response was instant. His tongue slipped inside her mouth, and he deepened the kiss, caressing with his tongue as well as his lips. Nell scraped her teeth along his tongue, and he licked them, teasing and sensual, before he wound his tongue around hers and drew it into his own mouth. Enchanted, Nell sighed and gave herself up to kissing him. Somehow, her arms were around him, her fingers caressing his warm neck under his hair. His mouth grew more intense, more demanding, as he probed deeper. He brought both hands up to cup her face, then slowly slid them down her throat, over her shoulders and under her arms and down until he caressed the sides of her breasts.

She let out a tiny moan, and one of his hands moved inward, palming her breast while the other caressed lower, over her waist to her hip, pulling her harder against him. Involuntarily she arched into him, and he pushed back, grinding her into the tree while his palm moved softly back and forth across her peaked, aching nipple, and he ravished her mouth with his endless, devastating kiss.

She held his face between her hands, running her fingers over the corners of his mouth, as if looking for the secret of his magic. She imagined those lips elsewhere on her body, her throat, her breasts, plucking at her nipple, and lower over her belly and between her thighs. Oh yes, he’d be good at that. Christ, he was almost making her come just by kissing her mouth. She wanted his touch everywhere, all over her naked skin, and inside her body, pushing, writhing, like in the dream, only blessedly, overwhelmingly real.

She gasped into his mouth, stealing his breath, yet still it went on, and she never wanted it to end. There was nothing but his mouth and her own, and the overwhelming desire sizzling and building between them.

At last, his mouth loosened, yet still it didn’t leave hers. “You tie me in knots with a kiss,” he whispered against her lips. “And fuck me, it was fun. So what now? Will you come to bed with me?”

Nell paused, her lips already closed again over his because she couldn’t bear not to be kissing him.

One kiss and then I’ll stop.

She’d known she wouldn’t be able to stop, but she’d done it anyway. If this was how he kissed, how in hell did he make love? God, she’d be his sex slave in seconds.

Slowly, she released his mouth, while her brain searched wildly for all the suddenly elusive reasons she shouldn’t do this. And found the most important.

“Why me?” she said shakily. “Because you can’t have Irina?”

Chapter Seven

He went very still, and yet his hips still rested against hers. His arousal still nestled over the juncture of her thighs, and his warm, firm hands held her waist.

He said, “Right now, I’m not thinking about Irina.”

“I’ll just call you fickle, then, shall I?”

And subtly, everything changed. Although he still pinned her to the tree, causing her whole body to shriek with lust, she knew somehow that he’d left her, that for now, at least, she was safe.

“You
could
call yourself irresistible,” he observed.

“I could. It sounds so much better for both of us. Only it wouldn’t be true.”

His lips quirked. “Actually, it would.”

Without warning, he swooped and pressed his mouth quickly to hers, and there it was at last, what she’d expected in the first place—hard, fierce sensuality. But over almost before it had begun.

He detached his body from hers, leaving her cold. She stumbled forward, away from the tree, and his arm dropped around her shoulders, warm and ridiculously comforting considering what had just transpired between them, as he guided her back to the path. So lost had she been in Rodion’s kiss, she hadn’t even heard the others passing, but she could see them now in front, making their way toward the house.

She said suddenly, “Do they do the fire thing too?”

“Who?”

She waved one hand in front of her. “Anna. Ilya. Boris.”

“No. Just me.” He glanced at her. “They have—other gifts.”

“Okay. I can’t believe I’m asking this. What gifts?”

It felt weird, behaving as if the kiss had never happened. Except that his arm still lay across her shoulders, like a lover’s. As if he hadn’t given up. At that thought, the settling butterflies at the pit of her stomach sprang back to life.

“Loyalty. Violence. Computer expertise,” Rodion said. “And the patience to hang around me without committing murder.”

She regarded him without favour. “Git.”

“All secrets aren’t mine to tell.”

“All right, I’ll keep it impersonal. Are there other people who have a fire gift like yours?”

“One or two. It’s rare, though. Even rarer to have it in the strength I do. It made the Guardian proud of me once. Now I think she’s jealous.”

“Seriously?”

“No, I’m making it up. She doesn’t speak to me anymore. Not in any meaningful way.”

Oddly, there was a tinge of regret in his voice, though when she peered at him through the darkness, his face was perfectly serene.

“Do you want her to?” Nell asked.

He shrugged. His fingers rubbed distractedly at her shoulder. “One day, she’s going to have to. Probably. In the meantime, I just have to work around her. Another of life’s many inconveniences.”

As they entered the front door of the house, Rodion’s phone beeped, causing him quite naturally to drop his arm from around her in order to answer it. Since the others were in the hall, shaking out raincoats, she was glad not to be observed in intimacy with him, however little importance it had for either of them. Just a kiss. And an arm to keep her close in case she bolted. Rodion, it seemed, did very little without purpose. Or double purpose. Living with him must be like wandering constantly around a maze tangled by threads that pulled you in one direction or stopped you going in another.

And yet there was feeling in him. Strong, profound, intense feeling. She just didn’t know what any of it signified or what it was for. She wished she hadn’t kissed him. Touch of any sort always affected her deeply, and she really, really didn’t need to be affected any more by this man.

“What?” Anna said, standing still to gaze at her brother.

Rodion leaned against the closed front door and raised his eyes from the phone. He said, “We have the go-ahead to pass the shipment to Gadarin for half the cost.” His lips curved. His eyes blazed into excitement. “And Marenko’s coming to oversee the exchange this time.”

“You told him Gadarin would want revenge for the warehouse fire?”

Rodion nodded. Anna took a deep breath and smiled. “Then we’re on.”

“We’re on,” Rodion agreed.

Ilya and Boris were thumping each other on the back. “Vodka,” Boris said with satisfaction, heading into the sitting room. Clearly, the news was a matter of celebration.

Nell, still haunted by the ghost of Irina and her own reaction to Rodion’s kiss, had no wish and less reason to celebrate with them. She walked purposefully toward the stairs, but Rodion caught her hand and swung her back.

“Where are you going? It’s party time!” And he raised her hand high, spinning her across the hall, under his arm, and into the sitting room before she managed to break free.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, torn between annoyance and the infection of his high spirits.

“Celebrating. Because we’ve finally got Marenko where we want him. Or will have by tomorrow. He’s on a night flight from Moscow.”

“Who’s Marenko?” she asked, accepting the glass half full of vodka from Boris, who grinned at her so beguilingly, despite his unashamedly villainous appearance, that she found herself smiling back.

“Number two bastard in the Bear’s organization,” Rodion said. He raised his glass. “
Za vashe zdarovye
!” With a flick of his wrist, he threw the vodka down his throat, whirled around, and hurled his glass into the fireplace.

The others cheered as it shattered before drinking their own vodka and sending their glasses to join Rodion’s.

“Your turn,” Anna said to Nell when the crashing had stopped.

Nell eyed her glass doubtfully. There must have been at least four normal measures there. She compromised. “
Za vashe zdarovye
,” she said, took a reasonable gulp, and threw her glass into the fireplace. Some of the rejected vodka did spray out in passing, catching Rodion, who only grinned and shook his arm like a large, shaggy dog in the rain.

“Well,” Nell said, eying the carnage of broken glass among the last dying embers in the fireplace, “at least I know what to buy you guys for Christmas.”

Boris and Ilya grinned at her, and she had the very odd feeling that she was being accepted. That they were accepting each other. Stockholm syndrome, she realised. She was identifying with the people who had, to all intents and purposes, kidnapped her and kept her isolated among them. Although she doubted it was supposed to work like that in twenty-four hours. She must be weak-minded.

“More vodka,” said Boris with enthusiasm.

“
One
more,” Rodion said, throwing himself onto the sofa. “We need clear heads tomorrow.”

Nell dropped on to the pouffe to avoid sitting beside him.

“What’s the plan?” Ilya asked.

“We set up a meeting between Gadarin and Marenko, and make Marenko tell us what we need to know. And then we eliminate the threat.” Rodion’s gaze found Nell. “You could help us there.”

“Could I,” she said without enthusiasm.

“You could leak the time and place of the meeting to the police. To Lamont.”

“Couldn’t you do that yourself?”

“I could. But he’ll suspect a trap. If you do it, it will seem much more natural.”

“How,” Nell inquired with sarcastic patience, “will it seem more natural for a mere translator who’s done one job for the police to know the details of a major drug deal?”

“Because I’m pretty sure they know you’re missing. And I’m pretty sure they know you’re with me.”

“How can they possibly know that?”

“Gadarin’s hit man left bullets in the street. We were seen running away, and I’m sure our descriptions are recognizable. A car spontaneously combusted close by, killing a known thug. At the very least, the police will have been looking for you to find out what the hell went on. They won’t find you, although they may find your phone. Then you turn up with the information you overheard while in the hands of your fiendish kidnappers.”

“So the police get Gadarin, Marenko, and the heroin?”

“I’d like Lamont to have them. I owe him for causing him a sleepless night.”

“You’re all heart,” Nell said, staring at him. “Except that doesn’t get you the location of your treasure, does it? It gets you prison. You’ve got something else up your sleeve, and I suspect that will burn everyone in your path. Literally.”

He continued to meet her gaze, neither disputing it nor agreeing. It was Anna who said, “Sometimes there has to be collateral damage, but we don’t seek it.”

Incensed, Nell swung around to the older woman. “And that makes it all right? No. I won’t accept
any
so-called collateral bloody damage! I couldn’t live with it!”

Anna’s eyes went cold. Her lips curled in a way that looked positively dangerous. “How nice for you to have that luxury. Some of us have had to live with it since childhood.”

“Bollocks,” Nell said roundly. “There’s no ‘have to’ about it. There’s always a choice.”

“Oh God, preserve me from innocents! What the
fuck
do you know about anything?” This was the Anna Nell had always suspected lurked just below the laid-back, elegant exterior. But Nell was on sure ground.

With at least equal contempt, she said, “I know I could never risk the lives of policemen in some inferno just so you guys can find your
fucking
treasure.”

Anna’s eyes narrowed, and yet, to Nell’s surprise, the anger died away. Her gaze flickered over Nell’s head to her brother. “Tell her, Rodya.”

Nell turned to face him, but his eyes were locked to his sister’s.

“She won’t help us unless you do,” Anna said flatly.

“She might not help us anyway,” Ilya observed.

So much for being one of them. “Hello,” Nell said, waving both hands. “Still here.”

Rodion caught her gaze. “You accept that some things are worth fighting for, and dying for?”

“A few,” Nell said cautiously. “A
very
few.”

“Well, to us, our treasure is one of them.”

“To me,” Nell said coldly, “it isn’t.”

“Only because you don’t know what our treasure is. Who it is.”

“Who?” She frowned. “Your treasure is a person?”

“Two people,” Rodion said matter-of-factly. “Children, twelve years old. Twins. The Bear holds them hostage to ensure my—cooperation. Worse, these children have telepathic gifts, and he keeps them permanently drugged so that they can’t reach anyone to give away their position. Can you imagine what that would do to any child?”

Nell felt her eyes widen, searching his for the truth. He lied only when he had to. And apparently he had to have her cooperation. Imprisoned, abused children… Whose heart strings would not be plucked by such a tale?

He was hiding something. She’d come to recognise that veil over his intense, calculating blue eyes. And she hated the sense of disappointment churning her up that he could use such a story to try to manipulate her.

A tiny, tinkling crack dragged her gaze to the glass held crushed and broken in his white fingers. Blood oozed over his hand. Anna started toward him, then sat back down as he waved one impatient arm.

Slowly, Nell raised her eyes back to his. Anguish. That was what he was hiding, what had snapped the glass in his hand because he couldn’t let it out any other way. It would destroy him, destroy his only chance of saving them.

“Whose children are they?” It came out as little more than a whisper, filled with dread, and it was Anna who answered.

“They’re our brother and sister.”

Nell’s breath hissed between her teeth.

“Half-brother and sister,” Anna corrected. “Our father died in the Russian war. Our mother almost did, but lived to remarry and give birth to twins before she died too. My step-father was killed when the twins were taken. They have nobody except Rodion and me. And if we play by the rules you understand, we’re helpless.”

Nell’s hand shook as she tugged it through her hair in a nervous effort to think. What would she do if someone she loved,
children
she loved, were alone and abused in the hands of a man such as the Bear?

She’d do anything.

Rodion said steadily, “So will you help us?” The veil was gone from his eyes. He looked merely eager and determined once more.

She gave a lopsided smile. “I don’t have a choice, do I?”

“Actually, you do.”

But she wasn’t having that. “You’ve never given me one before.”

“You have a very short memory.”

She flushed.
One kiss. And then I’ll stop. If you want me to.
She couldn’t think of that here. Her bones would explode.

He said, “Before you make that choice, you should know that if we’re successful, all your problems with gangsters will be over. But if Gadarin or even Marenko escapes, you’ll be in acute danger. Word will get out that you informed.”

“Unless you kill them all,” Boris said judicially.

“I don’t want him to kill them all!” Nell said, distressed.

“Not even all the criminals?” Boris sounded disappointed. “I can do some if it’s easier.”

“We’re not killing them all,” Rodion said impatiently. “We’ll do what we have to, and if that’s not good enough, then Nell will have to come with us.”

Nell’s stomach flipped, stupidly, because such an outcome would put her in his company for longer, and because he was looking out for her—which in fact was the least he could do after asking her to stick her head in the lion’s mouth. She began to deny leaving was an option, but Anna was already considering practicalities.

“She doesn’t have a fake passport,” she said, “And we can’t get her one in time.”

Rodion smiled. “I have a new fishing friend who doesn’t mind about passports, so long as we don’t carry drugs.”

“Is that our way out?” Anna said doubtfully.

“Call it Plan B,” Rodion said vaguely. “Or maybe C.” He got up and wandered over to the CD player.

Nell watched his back, frowning. “That can’t be right,” she burst out suddenly, unable to get her head round the realities of such a situation. “How can a known criminal imprison two children in a civilised country and no one be able to do anything about it?”

“It’s not unique,” Rodion said, removing a CD from its case. “Children disappear all over the world. The police don’t always find them.”