Читать книгу Shannon McKenna Bundle: Ultimate Weapon, Extreme Danger, Behind Closed Doors, Hot Night, & Return to Me - Shannon McKenna - Страница 9

Adrenaline kicked her right across the barrier of sleep.

Tam jerked up in bed, every nerve screaming, and instantly put every mental trick she had into action to block the dream that had provoked it. If the images didn’t sink their claws into her conscious mind, the feelings faded more quickly. Though never quickly enough.

Tonight, she couldn’t block it. The crackle of rifle fire. Hard, clutching hands holding her down under a bruised white sky. Dark silhouettes, mouths screaming, but she could not hear what they said. She was deafened by those rifles popping.

She squeezed her eyes shut and saw their stiff white faces, blank eyes staring up from the trench. Dirt showering into their open eyes. She had tried to close their eyes. Tried, and tried, but she’d had no coins to weigh their eyelids down. They would stay open forever. She could not hide what she’d become from those staring eyes.

And the fear, the shame. Burning, corrosive hatred for that evil leering monster. For what he’d done to them, to her. Stengl.

Her hands itched to kill him, even after sixteen years.

She pressed her hands against her face, and tried to breathe deep, but her lungs seized up halfway through each breath in a painful hiccup that jolted her whole body. Ah, God. She hadn’t dreamed about Stengl and his secret police squad, or the horrors of Sremska Mitrovica for years. She’d deep frozen it, buried it, rolled huge rocks over it.

But something was rolling the rocks away, one after the other. Something like Rachel. Fancy that.

Tam wrapped her arms around her knees. Her body ached, every muscle rigid. Her heart felt like it was going to explode, it raced so fast.

Moonlight streamed in the huge windows of her bedroom. She had chosen every detail of the room to calm, to soothe, having pictured an uncluttered, tranquil haven where she could feel safe and peaceful. What a fantasy. Sleep was a dangerous place for her to go.

The electronically programmed blinds would automatically close shortly before dawn to keep the room dim so Rachel would sleep longer, but the moonlight seemed blinding to her, casting shadows as cold and sharp as knives.

Tam looked down at the lump in the bed beside her. Rachel stirred, fussed in her sleep. Tam laid down alongside her, and stroked the child’s back. She wasn’t sure it was appropriate to take her nightmares into bed with the innocent toddler, but Rachel wouldn’t sleep on her own for love or money.

When she was being honest, though, she recognized that excuse for the cheap justification that it was. She just liked to be close to Rachel. She loved to watch her sleep, see the rise and fall of her little chest, the beatific relaxation in her face. To touch and snuggle that warm body. And she liked to be there when Rachel reached for her in the night. Right at the child’s fingertips. Instant gratification. The least she could offer, considering what Rachel had been robbed of up to now.

Just watching her was restful. Maybe she couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep herself, but watching Rachel get one was the next best thing. Tamara could lie there and feel that miraculous sensation that had taken her hostage in the aftermath of the organ pirate adventure. That hot softness in her chest. The melting.

The problem was, the rest of Tam’s emotional defenses were melting right along with her heart, and she was by no means ready to live without them yet. Scary.

Rachel rolled over and reached out, flinging a skinny but surprisingly strong arm over Tam’s neck, dragging her into a strangling, baby-soap, sour milk, and toothpaste-scented hug.

Tam grabbed the little girl, comforting herself with the warmth of that snuggly, wiry body. Rachel vibrated with life, glowing like a little sun. Being close to her fed something inside Tam that had been starving. Something she had thought was stone dead.

Rachel needed her so badly. Or rather, Rachel needed someone, and it had been the toddler’s questionable luck that Tam had been the one standing there, at the crucial psychological moment. Snap, click, and hey, presto…the kid was stuck to her like glue. And out of nowhere, Tam had suddenly come to crave being needed in return.

So strange. Where did that come from, after a lifetime of deliberately not giving a shit? After making not caring into a high art?

Rachel was barely three years old, and she’d had more crap luck than a lot of people pulled in an entire lifetime. Tossed into a sty of an orphanage at birth, scooped up by rapacious organ pirates to be broken down for parts, locked in a stinking windowless pen with a pack of desperate kids for months—it didn’t get worse than that.

Until you added in the fact that somehow, she’d managed to pull Tam Steele out of a hat for an adoptive mother. Yippee, what a prize.

And if that wasn’t enough, the mother she had chosen was getting twitchy and paranoid. Which was to say, more twitchy and paranoid than usual, which was really saying something, given her impressive list of mortal enemies. It was a strange sensation, but she couldn’t shake it. For weeks, she’d felt her grunting reptile brain looking back over her scaly reptile shoulder, telling her she was being watched.

Paranoia or genuine danger? Impossible to tell. Her instincts were good. But the emotions that had broken ranks and gone nuts inside her might have knocked even that out of whack.

She might never get it all wrenched back obediently into line. Chaos ruled, inside and out. She just had to get used to it.

Tam petted the fleece-covered back of the sleeping toddler, stroking the warm curve of the child’s head. Her fingers marveled at the spider-silk ringlets, the swell of her soft cheek, that flowerlike pink mouth, half-open, shiny with baby spit in the moonlight. Such a pretty little girl. Her breathing deepened, her heartbeat slowed, steadied. And then, that incredible feeling unfurled in her chest, like it always did.

Hot and soft…and so alive.

Alive. God help her. There was something alive inside of her, after all. She regarded that development with mingled terror and awe, not quite sure yet if it was good news or bad.

Moonlight crawled over the wall with agonizing slowness. Tam stroked the child’s back and just breathed. The crackle of gunfire still echoed stubbornly in her head, the shrieks of pain and terror floated up from the basement cells and reverberated through her memory. But if she just concentrated on Rachel, on how beautiful and small and perfect she was, she could get enough oxygen. She could walk that narrow line through the bad memories without falling headlong into a stress flashback.

It was hard. The dream images weren’t fading tonight. They’d sunk in deep. She’d be hearing that gunfire, those screams, all night long. But she would endure. She was all right. Just…breathe.

Part of her missed the cold numbness she’d felt before Rachel. It was a pain in the ass, being continually tossed and flung around by her emotions like a twig in a flash flood. She hadn’t expected that when she took the child. The impulse had taken her by surprise. She hadn’t had the presence of mind in the turbulent aftermath of the organ pirate adventure to consider what Rachel would do to her equilibrium.

Hell, she’d thought she could handle anything. She’d been keeping it together fairly well, after all. Flying under the radar, turning a nice profit with her business, paying her taxes, not getting in anybody’s face. Her current identity was holding up nicely, even under the pressure of drawn-out adoption proceedings, which was a testament to her unusual skill set. She’d been a bit bored, yes, after her supremely eventful former career, but the raid on the organ pirates had helped with the ennui. That thrill ride had been calculated to keep her going for a while.

Enter Rachel. Talk about adventure. Hah. Bye-bye, ennui. She had no time for boredom now. She was fried, trying to stay on top of it all. Blitzed by the hugeness of the responsibility. The massive snarl of bureaucratic red tape that comprised an international adoption. The appointments, the special foods, the allergies, the naps, the illnesses, the medications, the baths, the fits. The fears.

And even so, life without Rachel was now impossible to contemplate.

The miracle happened so quickly. Sneakily, too. That skinny monkey of a baby girl wrapped her arms around her neck and hung on for dear life, and the place where her heart was theoretically supposed had gone all hot and soft out of fucking nowhere. Something twisted, swelled, went pop inside her and—

The kid just got to her. Those huge, liquid brown eyes, so much like little Irina’s—ah, no. No. Don’t.

Tears were slipping down her face, hot and fast. Her chest vibrated with sobs so fast, they were a seamless, silent shudder.

God, she hated crying. She gently detached Rachel’s clinging arm, and slid out of the bed and down onto the blond bamboo floorboards.

Fuck this. She did not want Rachel to wake up and see her this way. Pull yourself together, Tamar. The kid had enough to feel insecure about already without watching her mamma come apart at the seams.

Tamar. She’d slipped into calling herself by her childhood name. And that stern inner voice had sounded so much like her mother. Odd. She’d been insane, to use something so close to her real given name for her alias. A suicidal impulse? Or just pique? Or simply a need to claim something real for herself. To make herself feel more coherent.

A tall order. But she was stalling. Up, Tamar. On your feet. Be the fucking grown-up here. There’s no one else to do it.

She dragged herself to her feet, stumbled into the bathroom and leaned over the big marble sink. She splashed her face, glanced into the mirror. That proved to be a mistake. Her sight of her own thin, hollowed face, her red, staring eyes, her blurred, shaking mouth—it did not help. Eeeuw. Bad. But once one of her crying fits started, there was no way out but through. She leaned over the sink again, ran water into her hands, gulped it. Splashed water over her face. Rinsed away tears, snot.

That mission accomplished, her legs decided that no more was currently required of them. She pressed her back against the wall and slid bonelessly down. Her ass bumped onto the chilly floor tiles.

She curled into a shaking knot. She hadn’t cried in years, before Rachel. Over a decade, maybe. Hadn’t missed it, either.

She pressed her palms against her eyes until they hurt. Poor Rachel. Tam should never have touched the kid in the first place, considering who and what she was. But she had, and the damage was done, to both of them.

Rachel needed a mother so desperately. A real one, someone committed, smart, sane. Only an idiot would take on a hard luck case like Rachel, considering the child’s background, but an idiot would never survive the experience. The idiot would give up as soon as her pretty fantasies about how sweet and compassionate she was got dashed. And a kid like Rachel would be sure to dash them.

Rachel needed so much. She was a vortex of need, physical, emotional, financial. She’d been deprived since birth. Sveti, the older girl who had been penned up with Rachel in the organ pirates’ shithole, had been the first one to be tender to her, and Rachel had glommed onto the girl and sucked it up like a thirsty sponge. Just like she did from Tam.

Tenderness. Of all things to be required of her. Of all feelings to be entertaining, voluntarily.

Sometimes she missed the hours of quiet. The splendid, barren solitude. Absorbed in her jewelry making, bothered by no one. Needed by no one. And then, out of nowhere, the bleakness, the silence, the blankness of her life before Rachel hit her. And staggered her.

Rachel was over a year behind in development. She was three, but she looked, talked, and had the motor skills of a shrimpy twenty-month-old. And that was the good news. It could’ve been worse. She could have been a drooling vegetable. Or turned her face to the wall and died.

It was a miracle that she hadn’t. And Tam took that miracle to mean that she wasn’t meant to die. She was meant to survive, and to thrive, too, damn it. She was meant to shine, to bloom. Against all odds.

Rachel had made big progress in the months that she’d been with Tam. She no longer looked like a shriveled little monkey. She was walking better, talking better, babbling in three languages; the Portuguese of her babysitter, her own native Ukrainian that Tam was determined that she maintain, and English, of course.

Tam was proud of what she’d accomplished with the kid. But with the fear of stalking predators dogging her, with screams and rifle fire from her dreams ringing in her ears, she couldn’t get away from the thought of how selfish, how egotistic she’d been, to take the child just because she couldn’t resist the way Rachel made her feel. Because she looked like Irina. Because Rachel made her feel so unexpectedly alive.

As if she could offer the child some sort of normal family life as a fair exchange for that feeling. She had no such thing to offer in trade.

Normal? Tam had no parameters, no fucking clue what normal looked like, felt like. Her own early childhood had been good, but it was a million years away, and inaccessible behind that big stone wall in her brain that she’d erected herself. No models to work from there.

She’d been all alone in the wilderness for most of her life. Camped out on Planet Tam. Or not even a planet. It was more like a space station that orbited normal reality, with thousands of miles of vacuum at Kelvin zero temperature as a safety buffer.

What had made her think she could take a fragile, wounded little girl into exile on that space station with her? For company? What kind of egotistic madness was that? A selfish, solitary bitch like her with all her wires crossed? She wasn’t fit to mother a toddler. She was a thief, a crook, a scam artist, a swindler, even a sometime assassin when the situation called for it, although always in self-defense. And everyone she’d ever wasted had richly deserved it. No innocent victims. She was all too aware of what it felt like to be an innocent victim.

But she wasn’t innocent now, by God. She was wanted for a list of crimes too long even for her own steel-trap mind to keep straight. She was in hiding from international law enforcement agencies and the global mafia both. She was fucked, left, right, and sideways. In every way. On every level.

And yet, here she was. Mamma, for a problematic toddler with special needs. Everything was guesswork with Rachel. Tam just kept blundering forward into the dark, desperately hoping every little choice she made would work out.

And of course, there were all the vengeful, dangerous people out there who would love to grind her into paste. Daddy Novak was number one. Georg Luksch was a close second on that list, though he wanted something other than her blood. A chill shudder of disgust racked her at the thought.

She’d been horrified to discover that he was still alive, after the Novak bloodbath. She’d been unforgivably sloppy that day, not to have killed that venomous snake while she had the chance. He’d been hauled off to prison after they patched him up, of course, but she knew how that went. No prison could hold a man with his contacts.

There were plenty of other enemies. The list was long. Tam could be run down, taken, killed, or worse at any time. She could not guarantee a safe home for Rachel, even though it hurt like hell to imagine turning away from the child now that they had bonded.

Rachel would see it as yet another abandonment. Try to explain “for your own safety” to a wigged-out, scared little three-year-old who had never been able to count on anyone in her life. See how far you got.

Still. Arrangements had to be made for Rachel. And soon. Worst-case scenario. Tam tightened her gut, and grimly forced herself to consider the various options.

She could ask one of the McCloud women or Raine to take Rachel, or at least to be her guardian, should she get herself wasted. They were the only women friends she had, if one defined friendship loosely. Or if it wasn’t friendship, it was the closest Tam had ever come to it. They all owed her. They’d all gone through the fire, having found themselves on some scumbag’s hit list at some time or other. But not due to their own arrogance or bad behavior, as was the case with Tam.

Those women weren’t fools. They knew the score. They had no problems with tenderness, either. It would be hard and exhausting for them, and their men would be unthrilled, but whatever. Expensive, too, with the surgeries that Rachel had in her future, but Tam had plenty of money socked away. Money was never going to be a problem for the kid, for the rest of her life. That, at least, was a non-issue.

Any of those women would do it. Not one of them would say no to her. She knew that in her bones.

And still, she cringed to think of asking a favor that huge. Truth to tell, she was uncomfortable dealing with women friends at all. The bother of it, the noise, the time sink. Having them in her face on a regular basis. Having them care, for some strange reason. Their questions, their concern, their laughter, their chatter, it drove her nuts. Their very femaleness grated on her, unfair though that was. Estrogen overload. She could only take so much. She was a solitary creature. Atypical, asexual, asocial. Royally screwed up, yes. She had no illusions about that, and she made no apologies for it. She was what she was, and if someone didn’t like it, tough shit for him. Or her.

Not that their men were much better than the women. The McCloud Crowd menfolk were relatively intelligent, as men went, but they were all alpha dogs to the last woof, and as such, they all had that fog of testosterone obscuring their brains. Which made them prone to the usual arrogant, posturing male bullshit, for which she had no time or patience.

And yet, there they were. Underfoot all the fucking time. She couldn’t get rid of them. They felt protective of her, of all crazy things. Nick, too, now. After the organ pirate adventure, he’d landed himself squarely on that short list of people with controlled permission to annoy the living shit out of her without getting killed for it. Maimed, maybe, but not killed.

Their efforts to be her friends were puppyish and earnest. She was charmed by it—sometimes. Amused, even, when she was in the mood. Which hadn’t been lately, with all these nightmares she’d been having. They were way too much like the stress flashbacks she’d suffered back in her younger days. Before she’d turned herself into a human icicle. Robot Bitch, her alter ego.

She wasn’t an icicle now. Particularly not when she pictured Margot, Erin, Liv or Raine parenting Rachel. A jealous, vengeful and totally disproportionate rage blazed up inside her when she pictured one of those women sweetly, gracefully, effortlessly being a better mother to Rachel than she could ever be. Fuck that.

It wasn’t their fault. There was nothing wrong with those women. Oh, no. That was the exact problem. Everything was right with them. Damn them to hell. She would have laughed at herself for being so silly and crazy, if she were not mortally afraid that it would start her up crying again. Only in these naked moments in the wee hours before dawn did she let herself acknowledge humiliating truths like this. She was a jealous bitch. Bitterly envious. Not of their men, God forbid. The last thing she wanted was to be bothered with their silly, pointless, attention-hungry men, although all of those women had relatively good ones—insofar as any man could be called good. That being, after all, a blatant contradiction in terms.

No, it was because their lives made sense. They were hooked into the world, they functioned well, they thrummed, they glowed. They threw out vibes of sexual fulfillment strong enough to knock a celibate like herself back on her scrawny ass at fifty meters.

And they were so unafraid of motherhood. At least the ones that were well into it, and she had no doubt it would be the same for the others when their time came—Liv, and Becca, Nick’s fiancée, soon to be wife. All of them had that feminine, motherly vibe, just like Margot and Raine and Erin. Moo.

For them, motherhood was all joyous cuddling, spiritual fulfilment. Wallowing in bliss with a proud daddy looking on. Glowing at baby’s amazing progress and sparkling genius. Raine was almost due, and glowing like a full moon. Erin’s boy was a year old and Margot’s little redheaded girl was seven months old. Fat, uncomplicated babies, rolling on the rug, gurgling and laughing. In the top percentile for height, weight, good looks, intelligence and happiness. Tra la la.

Not like Tam’s intense, clinging Rachel with the fits of rage, the screaming nightmares, the developmental delays. Bone malformations in her ankles and hips, eye problems caused by months of confinement in artificial light with nothing to focus on farther away than a concrete wall in front of her face. The doctors were always muttering about possible brain damage from abuse, neglect and malnutrition, but Tam was privately convinced that it was bullshit. All they had to do was look Rachel in the eyes, and it was clear that the kid was as sharp as a brass tack, tracking at all levels. She was just a stubborn, hard-headed, suspicious little pissant who did not appreciate being cognitively evaluated by strangers wearing white lab coats. Tam could relate to that perfectly. The doctors just didn’t get it.

Rachel was determined to make up for every last bit of what she’d missed in love and affection, and no one could blame her, but her craving for attention made Tam feel she had the kid wrapped around her head sometimes. Rosalia helped, the sweet, stolid Brazilian lady who came in every day to provide Tam with a chunk of quiet time for work, but that precious chunk was always chipped away at each end by some daily emergency or other, if it wasn’t eaten up entirely, and in any case, it just wasn’t enough. She could barely hear herself think. God, she could barely breathe.

And even so. Even so. That kid was hers. Everyone else had failed her, but Tam would not. No fucking way. She would make it work. Tam pressed her eyes against her knees until the pressure made them ache, and still she saw that dusty trench in the ground they’d thrown her mother and her baby sister into. Irina had been two. Their faces, so pale and stiff and still. Their eyes, so wide. Dirt showering down on top of them. Tossed away like garbage.

The image was stamped on the inside of her eyelids.

Ah, God. Her least desirable memories, crashing into her like a runaway train. This was the price she had to pay for dredging up tenderness out of the depths of herself for Rachel.

She’d dreamed of revenge all her life, not tenderness. She didn’t process tenderness well. It crossed her wires, blew her circuits. It confused and rattled her. Revenge was so much more simple and comprehensible. Revenge she could wrap her highly functioning mind around and feel it start to buzz and hum and work.

She was a well-tuned revenge machine, programmed to locate and kill Drago Stengl, and put the ghosts of her past to rest. And now look at her, trying to manufacture tenderness for Rachel out of a revenge machine. It was like making cookies with a rocket launcher. Like making lemonade with grenades instead of lemons. Problematic as hell.

Rachel’s shrill, teakettle shriek suddenly sounded, and Tam sprang up like she was on springs and bolted for the bedroom. The kid always freaked out when she woke in the dark and found herself alone.

She slid under the covers and curled up around the rigid little body. After she had soothed the child back to sleep, she nuzzled Rachel’s neck, inhaling the fragrance of no-tangles shampoo. Feeling the magic happen. The tension, easing inside her. That soft, hot place, blooming open. So sweet. She couldn’t resist. She was strung out.

Now that the dream images were easing off, her habitual obstinacy was rearing right up to take its place. She was glad. That was much more comfortable.

Hell with it. Rachel might not have a normal mom, or a normal life, but she’d have pure screaming hell on wheels to protect her if anyone ever tried to hurt her again. That was worth something. That counted. It had to count.

So Rachel was damaged. Big fucking deal. So were they all. She was also tough, and strong. Tam would try everything money could buy to help her. Anything that might give her back some small measure of what those murdering pieces of shit had stolen from her.

Rachel was not so damaged that she should be tossed like garbage in a hole. Buried with indifference and bureaucratic bullshit. Rationalizations about points of diminishing returns. Poor allocation of resources. Black holes.

Fuck that. Rachel was not so damaged as that. And even if she was, fuck anyone who didn’t want to waste his or her precious time and energy on black holes and damaged goods, anyway. Fuck them all.

Tam snuggled the child and inhaled the scent of her hair as if it were pure oxygen in a vacuum. Rachel murmured in her sleep, and grabbed a hank of Tam’s long hair in her damp little fist.

She thought of Novak, Georg, all the rest. She thought of the prickle on her neck. Reptile brain, warning her she was being stalked.

The resolve burned itself into Tam’s mind like a brand.

Just try and take her away from me. Go ahead, try. Watch who dies, and how fast.

Budapest, Hungary

“Are you keeping him under strict surveillance, András? Your men should not take their eyes off him for a second. Vajda is a highly trained secret agent. He can melt into thin air before you know it. Who do you have watching him? When did they last report?”

András sighed, inwardly, folded his massive arms over his barrel chest, and carefully modulated his voice. It would not do to display impatience when mafiya boss Gabor Novak used that fretful, querulous tone. “Bede and Gálas reported to me exactly six minutes ago,” he repeated. “He is at the Országos Traumatólogiai Intézet, and he has not moved from the old man’s bedside, except to piss, for three straight days. Csobán hacked into the patient database, and it tells us that Imre Daroczy is due to be discharged from the hospital at midday. We can make our move this evening, when they are back at Daroczy’s apartment, if you like.”

“If I like?” Novak repeated. “If…I…like? What do you mean, if I like?” Novak turned his poisonous green gaze upon his second in command, purplish lips drawing back from long, yellowed teeth like some fanged beast. “You think this is a matter of liking, András? You think this is a fucking whim?”

András schooled his face to utter impassivity. “No, boss. Not at all,” he soothed. “Of course, we will act as soon as possible, but the Országos is too public a place to abduct them. We must be patient. We must wait until they—”

“Patient? Don’t talk to me about patience! He told me she was dead!” Daddy Novak spat the words out. “Georg told me that treacherous snake Tamara Steele choked to death on her own blood the day Kurt was killed. He lied to me! Why did he lie, András? Why?”

The gazes of the other men standing around the table shifted, darted, uncertain where to land. The boss had been dangerously unpredictable since his son’s untimely death a few years ago. People died without warning when he used that tone of voice.

The intercom buzzed, and András leaned over and punched it, intensely grateful for the diversion. “Yes?” he barked.

“It is Jakab Lajtos,” the sentry said. “Georg Luksch sent him.”

“I told Georg to come himself! Not to send one of his useless butt-lickers!” Novak snarled.

The sentry hesitated, nervously. “Should I, ah, tell him to go?”

“No. No. Send him in, send him in,” Novak muttered. “I want to talk to him.”

Luckless dog, András thought. It was Jakab’s shit luck to happen upon the boss in one of his moods. There would be a mess to clean up today. Not that he was complaining. Better Jakab than András. Oh, much, much better.

The door opened, and Jakab paused at the threshhold, sensing mortal danger. His polite smile faltered as his gaze darted from Novak’s wild grimace to the stony caution on the faces of the rest of the men. “Ah…Luksch sent me to see what you needed,” he said warily. “He could not come himself. He is in Odessa, attending to some problems at a munitions plant. There was a problem with the delivery of a load of—”

“Do you see this thing, Jakab? This filthy thing?” Novak stabbed a skeletal finger toward the huge teak table that dominated the room. A golden torque, displayed in a black velvet box, lay upon it.

The sentry shoved Jakab from behind. He stumbled forward into the room. “Ah…ah, I, ah—”

“This thing is an insult to my son’s memory!” Novak’s pointing finger shook with the violence of his emotions. “That woman’s existence on this earth is an insult to his memory! And you knew about her, did you not, Jakab? Did you not?”

“No! I know nothing about this!” Jakab protested desperately. “Nothing! I am just a messenger! I was sent to find out what you wanted—”

“I want her blood,” Novak hissed. “I want her entrails, spread out upon the ground. That is what I want.”

Jakab swallowed repeatedly. He was gray-faced, shaking. Novak reached out, and stroked a finger along the ropes of gold that twined and twisted, snakelike, in an ancient Celtic design. The finials of the crescent were adorned with cabochon rubies. The piece pulsed and glowed in the light from the library lamp, as if it were somehow alive.

Novak pushed one of the rubies on the finial. It came loose, and a tiny blade slid out. “Do you see this? It’s a miniature of the dagger that opened my son’s throat. It is an exact reproduction of the torque Kurt gave McCloud’s woman. My Kurt’s foul murder is immortalized in a cheap bauble for a brainless whore!”

Jakab jumped as Novak drove the small blade into the table. It stuck, vibrating. He cleared his throat with a dry, nervous cough.

Novak picked up the card in the black velvet box. No logo, no address, just bold letters.

DEADLY BEAUTY

Wearable Weaponry by Tamara

And below, a cell number. Inactive, of course. Nothing so simple as that.

“A direct message,” the boss muttered. “A slap in my face.”

In fact, the message was hardly direct. By pure chance had András noticed the torque on the mistress of a business associate at a party in Paris some weeks before. It had caught his eye, since he knew the odd manner of Kurt’s death. The woman had demonstrated her torque’s special properties when András got her alone, and helpfully shared the name of the broker who had sold it to her lover, but she’d been unwilling to part with the piece when András offered to buy it. Happily, no one noticed that the jewelry was not on her broken body when she was found shortly thereafter, having flung herself from the penthouse terrace.

Drugs, of course. A useless life, a meaningless death. So sad.

The broker had been most forthcoming, with András’s knife digging into his carotid artery. He’d provided the business card and a physical description of the torque’s designer. A stunningly beautiful, mysterious young woman who could only be Kurt’s lying, murderous ex-mistress.

Whom Georg Luksch had sworn was dead. How very strange.

“Help me understand this situation, Jakab.” Novak’s voice was deceptively gentle. “I spent a fortune to have Georg freed from prison. I spent another fortune to have his face and body put back together. I groomed him to be my successor, to take Kurt’s place at my side. I made him rich, powerful. Now I discover, by pure chance, that this filthy whore is alive and flourishing? And that Georg has contracted a PSS agent to locate her? Without informing me?”

“He…how did…but how do you—”

“How do I know this?” Novak’s smile peeled back from long, yellowing teeth. “I have my ways, Jakab. I know everything, sooner or later. I know that it is my old protégé, Vajda, who is charged with the task of looking for her. A good choice. A whore to catch a whore.” He wrenched the dagger loose. It left an ugly divot in the gleaming table. “I have been used,” he announced. “Lied to. Where is she, Jakab? Where is Steele?”

András braced himself. Lied to, Novak’s pet hate. The words “lied to” always ended in a bloodbath.

Jakab reached out an entreating hand. “Boss. I don’t know! I swear! They don’t tell me these things! And I am sure that Georg did not mean to mislead you. Perhaps this is a misunderstanding. The situation is complex. The woman is—”

Thunk. There was a choked gasp from Jakab. The dagger had pinned his hand to the table. The man’s jaw sagged. Blood pooled under his palm.

“Complex, did you say?” Novak’s voice had gotten even gentler. “I think it is quite simple, Jakab. Nothing like a knife through the hand to simplify things.”

Jakab had begun to shake violently. “But…but I cannot…I don’t—”

“Where?” Novak put his hand on the jeweled finial. “Where is she? Or shall I twist it?”

Jakab gasped, breath hitching. Novak wrenched the blade out. A shriek of agony jerked from Jakab’s throat. “Tell me, you useless bag of shit!” the old man rasped. “What has Vajda discovered? Where is the bitch? Tell me! Now!”

But Jakab could no longer answer. Something was very wrong with him, something more serious than a minor puncture wound. His mouth began to froth. He pitched forward, eyes wild, face squashed against the table, blood pouring from both nostrils.

His twitching slowed, gradually ceased, while they all watched, in silence.

Novak blinked, and examined the dagger in his hand with renewed interest. “Poison,” he commented. “Interesting.”

András stared at the meat that was now his responsibility to remove, with an inward sigh.

“Get rid of this garbage, András,” Novak ordered. “Cut off a few identifying pieces and send them to that lying pig, so we all know where we stand. Then get Vajda for me. He had no business working for Georg in the first place. We will remind him of where his real loyalties lie.”

“I will take care of it, as soon as Daroczy is discharged from the hospital,” András repeated, with grim patience.

But Novak was no longer listening. The boss’s eyes burned as he turned the dagger in his hand. “He will bring her to me. And I will use this blade,” he mused, his voice almost dreamy. “This very blade, once the poison is removed, of course. It must be slow. She will watch, in the mirror. And I will save her eyes for last.”

Georg bucked and heaved grimly against the body of the sex professional who writhed against him on the bed. She was making too much noise. It was spoiling his fantasy.

He was annoyed. He’d thought she’d do so perfectly when he’d seen the photographs of her. The initial effect was striking: the long red hair, the perfect body. She’d had extensive cosmetic surgery done to her face to make her look as much like Tamara Steele as it was possible to look. The surgeons had done a good job.

It was her voice that was the problem. He remembered Tamara’s husky alto voice all too well. It made him shiver with raw hunger.

This woman’s wailing squawks of feigned appreciation were high-pitched, strident, stupid. They ruined the effect.

It was disappointing. Boring and exhausting, too, but there was no question of stopping, not with three of his men standing over the bed watching him, as was his custom. He could no longer conclude a sexual act without an audience.

Fortunately, Georg had no lack of willing spectators.

He tried to close his ears, picturing Kurt Novak’s pale, crazed eyes watching him as he possessed Tamara. Sweat broke out on his forehead. The most erotically intense moments he had ever experienced.

The thought detonated something inside him. He jerked, convulsed, came.

He collapsed for a few panting seconds upon the woman’s damp body. He could hear the heavy breathing of the men watching. Her perfume was unpleasantly strong in his nostrils.

He clambered off her body, fastened his pants, buckled his belt. The woman propped herself up on her elbows. He did not look at her, but he saw out of the corner of his eye her miffed expression. Arrogant bitch. Expecting to be praised and petted for doing her job.

One of his men cleared his throat. “Uh, boss?”

“What?” He sat down at the desk and powered up the computer, already putting the experience out of his mind.

“Can we…?”

Georg glanced back at the three men who’d stood slavering over the bed, and then at the growing outrage on the masklike Tamara face superimposed upon the redheaded woman reclining on the bed.

He shrugged. “If you like. I don’t want this one again.”

She folded herself up defensively. “That wasn’t in the contract! There’s nothing about taking on four men in my contract!”

“So you’ll be paid quadruple,” he said indifferently. “In cash. And I can refrain from mentioning this bonus to the agency.”

Her red lips pursed and her eyes narrowed, calculating.

Georg turned back to the computer, bored with it, and pulled up the file of digital photos he had collected of Tamara. He clicked through them with dreamy concentration, studying her from every angle. The whimpers, grunts, and muffled laughter that began to emanate from the direction of the bed faded away, and he was alone on the earth with her. No one else existed. Perfect beauty. Beauty, strength, perfect symmetry. The only fit mate for him. She just didn’t know it yet. She had no idea of the vast empire he would offer her, the power, the wealth, the luxury.

A voice intruded on his reverie. He turned and found one of his men, Ferenc, holding a waxed cardboard box in his arms. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed that the woman was now on her knees, rocking vigorously as she serviced two men at once, one with her mouth, the other with her backside. The man holding the box did not appear to notice the pornographic tableau behind him.

That alone was remarkable enough to snap him to full attention.

The man’s eyes were frozen wide, his skin greenish gray. There was a greasy sheen of sweat on his forehead.

“What is it?” Georg demanded. “What’s in the box?”

“Jakab,” Ferenc said hoarsely. “Or…some of him.”

Georg pushed aside the packing material. A blood-drenched, severed head and hands were wedged inside. Jakab’s eyes stared up at him, wide and startled. He looked perplexed at his fate.

It would seem that Novak had discovered Tamara was alive.

Georg grabbed the blood-stiffened hair and lifted out the dead man’s head. Ferenc jerked his gaze away, throat working. Soft, Georg thought scornfully. Useless. He dropped the head into the box, and pulled out his phone, waving the man away. “Dispose of it.”

The man scurried out, stumbling in his haste. The panting and gurgling from the bed was beginning to annoy him. “Shut the fuck up,” he snarled at the writhing knot of limbs. “I’m working.”

The heads of his men swiveled. They gave him assorted nervous glances. The head of the woman could not easily turn since she had a penis in her mouth, but her eyes rolled toward him. Her face, distorted by the act of fellatio, no longer looked even remotely like Tamara’s.

He turned away, letting it fly out of his mind while he concentrated on this puzzle. The operatives at Prime Security Solutions would never let slip any details about their search for Tamara Steele. The reputation of their organization depended upon it.

Which meant that there was a traitor in Georg’s own midst, in contact with Daddy Novak. He stepped out onto the balcony, pulling up the number for Hegel, the PSS agent on the case, as he ran through the roster of his staff, one by one, trying to imagine which one deserved a slow dismemberment.

The man picked up on the first ring. “Yes?”

“There’s been a new development,” Georg said. “I have discovered that she is in danger. I need her brought to me immediately.”

The man hemmed. “Ah, I will get in touch with the operative—”

“Immediately.” Georg dropped the phone into his pocket and looked up at the moon. It hung full and bloated on the horizon.

So he was no longer Novak’s chosen surrogate son. He did not really mind, he realized. He had developed his own power base by now. He preferred the role of avenging conquerer anyway. It suited his personality better.

He was tired of kissing the old man’s mummified ass.

A new era was beginning. His heart thudded with excitement.

He could hardly wait.