Lie to Me (40 page)

Surprising Sasha, he reached between them and patted her knee. “You were such an adorable little girl. Your pigtails bobbing; your smiles warmed my heart. Your laughter could chase away rain.”

To her shame, that one expression of love brought instantaneous tears to the corners of her eyes. She blinked rapidly, trying to hold them in, but one lone droplet slid silently down her cheek. He had wanted her at one time. Those were the days she held dearest to her heart. When he’d sat her on his knee, read her stories at bedtime.

“They came out of nowhere the night your mother died. I was walking home from work, taking a stroll on the first day of spring, glad
winter was gone. The next I knew, I was in an alley, and instructed to commit a deed I shall not name. I refused. It was indecent.” He stopped to pick at a scab on the back of his hand, turning silent for a heartbeat. When he spoke again, his stare remained fixed on the sparse gray hairs there. “They killed my Irina that night. Ran her car off an embankment. I received their call seconds after the authorities phoned.”

Sasha gasped. No. It couldn’t be—her mother had collided with a truck. The driver had been drinking. She’d heard the story so many times she could see the accident in her mind as if she’d stood on the highway and watched. “But you told me—”

“Yes, I did.” He nodded solemnly. “What else was I to say? You were seven. You were
my child.
”

She buried her head in her hands, her fingers spanning over her ears in a vain attempt to block the sound of his voice. She couldn’t listen to the rest. Not the emotion that turned her father’s voice ragged, or the truth that sandpaper rasp revealed. To hang onto what bits of sanity she possessed, she grabbed at anger. “So was Petro. He was your son.”

Her father shook his head and expelled a heavy sigh. “I did not kill him, Sasha. Nor did you.”

Her head snapped up, fury rising through the clench of her chest. “Then who? Why? Why did you let me believe I did?” Before she realized what she was doing, she raised her hand to strike him.

He caught her wrist before her palm could connect with the side of his face, gently pressed it back into her body. “The butcher belonged to the brotherhood. I had asked Petro to aid with a
Bratva
matter. Not because I wanted to, but because I was presented with no alternative. He refused. I was glad of it. But they eliminated him because they did not take my word that he would say nothing.”

Slowly, he pulled her hand into his lap and covered it with his other. “As for you, my daughter. My error came with pride. I told everyone how smart you were, how you were destined to be great. They demanded
your compliance and cooperation. To save you from the same fate as Petro, I told you lies. It was the only way to keep you safe.”

Sasha pulled on her hand, needing to escape, to move as far away from her father as the small, musty room would allow. She pried at the tight hold of his fingers, her thoughts in violent protest of his claims. “You’re lying now.”

“No. I am not.” His hand tightened, and he shifted to one hip, altering his position so he faced her squarely. “I manipulated my daughter, knowing I would earn her hate, to keep her from dying. They would have killed you, Sasha, if you did not do as they requested. Like Petro, you would never have agreed to their designs. I could not stand the thought of losing you and so I fed you stories that would guarantee your cooperation.”

“No. No.
No.
” He could have told her, warned her. He had the connections to get her out of the country—anything but the deception he wanted her to believe was truth. “You threatened me when I turned in the arms shipment. You hired Grigoriy to kill me.”

His blue eyes bore into hers. “I had a gun at my head when I threatened you. Yes, I could have taken that bullet, but that would not have stopped them from finding you. The
Bratva
holds too many connections. To maintain my appearance of cooperation, I threatened to kill you myself. Did you think I did not know you would run? I knew where you would eventually go. I told Boris to keep you safe. To hide you until I could find a means to get you out of Russia.”

“Then you knew I was kidnapped!” With a fierce jerk, she yanked her arm free.

“Yes. I did.” There was no apology in his voice. No remorse in the steady light of his eyes. “I learned of it twice. From Boris, and through the
Bratva
. It was how I knew to contact Saeed, who I had met that summer at the racetrack in France, where his horse and Dmitri Gavrikov’s ran neck and neck. We shared an amicable dinner and many drinks that night. He was a good man. My heart hurt to hear he had died.”

Saeed?
Sasha’s jaw dropped. She stared, dumbfounded, certain she was dreaming.

“Yes, daughter, I knew where you were. I tried to buy you from Amir. Saeed told me what it would cost, and it was beyond my means. Selling everything I owned would not bring me close to half.”

This was impossible. He was asking her to believe the life she had known these last two and a half years, the safety she’d lived in, was because of him—the very man who’d destroyed her.

“You were intended for Mohammad. I begged Saeed to keep you from that brutal fate. He resisted until he saw you. Then, you were his, and you were safe. And I could have died at peace, knowing he would give his last breath to protect you.”

She huddled deep into her body, shaking. Why hadn’t he contacted her? Told her this sooner? Saeed would have let him visit. She wouldn’t have spent the last two years despising the man she’d once looked up to.

He chuckled, the noise uncomfortable in the stillness. “I sent you a blouse for your birthday—did you get it? As I recall it was blue. Nearly the color of your eyes.”

Oh, God.

A sob wrenched free, and she buried her face against her knees. “Yes,” she choked out. “Yes.”

“I had finally found a means of repairing all these wrongs a few weeks ago. I spoke to Saeed, and he gave me permission to join the both of you in Dubai. I was coming here to England first, for a convention. I did what I should have many years ago. But back then I was not given the freedom to travel unmonitored. Then, the
Bratva
watched my every move.” He shifted position again, hefting his stocky legs out in front of him, crossing one ankle over the other. “When I arrived, I made contact with Hughes and told him all of this.

“He told me he knew a way to give you back your freedom and send you to America where the
Bratva
would never be able to touch
you.” He slipped his fingers over her hand, pulled it gently into his, and twined them together. “And here you are, and I have trapped you without even knowing. I did not know he was dishonest until this morning, when instead of taking me to see you, he led me here and locked me in.”

Trapped? Slowly, the word filtered through her grief, and she lifted her head to give him a confused frown. If she wasn’t here in this dingy stone room to confront him, then why had Hughes taken her? Why had he locked her father in this cellar as well?

“So yes, Sasha, I have destroyed the daughter I love beyond all reason. Not because I meant you harm. But because I have always loved you. It was the only way I knew. There is no fiction in the claims that once allied with the
Bratva
, forever owned.” With misty eyes shining in the unnatural light, he lifted her knuckles to his leathery lips.

As fresh tears trekked down her cheeks, she swallowed hard. “What are you talking about? Why am I here? Why did Hughes lock you up?”

Before her father could respond, the door banged open, crashing into the wall with an ear-splitting thud. She jumped. Her gaze swung to the intrusion, her heart at a momentary standstill. Bleary vision created a watercolor version of Hughes standing in the doorway.

The gun he held in his hand exploded. The bang ricocheted off the stone walls with a cannon’s fury.

Sasha screamed.

At her side, her father slumped into a motionless heap. Blood oozed from a single hole in the center of his forehead.

Hughes stepped into the room, shutting the door behind him. “I believe the happy reunion has come to an end.” He motioned Sasha to a tiny chair positioned by a child’s drawing table. “Since your father cannot bring himself to punish you, I will.”

A
lexei climbed out of the car to complete stillness. Unnatural quiet. No birds twittering in the nearby trees, not even the sound of a heating-cooling unit running on the aged stone house. Like nature realized a threat lurked beyond those friendly white shutters and had burrowed into safety.

He kept his gun in hand as he approached the stone edifice, jogging quickly to press his back to the wall before Hughes or Yakiv could sight him through the wide clear windows. No word from Misha. He was on his own. His only backup was silent in his ear, for now.

Not that he hadn’t been in worse situations on his own. Unlike the police, he was used to working solo. Partnering with Grigoriy had been a rare exception these last few years. But with his name so widely known in Dubai, extracting Sasha had demanded an extra gun.

Still, pulling her out of this tiny house, an eighth the size of Saeed’s palace, held greater danger than if he’d walked down Dubai’s streets with his name printed on the back of his shirt. If he failed here, he didn’t just screw up a mission. He lost her. Forever.

“Nikanova, can you hear me?” Clarke intruded on his thoughts as he edged down the wall, closer to the front door.

“Loud and clear,” he murmured.

“Okay, I put in a call to Wendall, the former executive director of MI6. He selected Hughes as his replacement. And I’m standing here with James Tennyson, current associate director.”

Alexei snaked his body closer to the window, leaning forward just enough to peek inside and see the room was empty. Exhaling in relief, he moved to a better angle, searching what he could see for signs of life. When no shadows moved beyond the two open entryways within, he ducked, used the trimmed hedges for cover, and proceeded to the next window.

“Yakiv isn’t your threat. It’s Hughes.”

Blinking, Alexei stopped. That contradicted everything Sasha told them. “How’s that possible?”

“Tennyson was here when Yakiv came to MI6. He took the initial report about the
Bratva
’s intended bomb, Sasha’s involvement, and her status in Dubai. Hughes covered it up. Squelched it from getting released to us, to the public, to the media.”

Alexei’s breath came out in a low rush of air. “Why? That doesn’t make sense.”

“Sure does. Hughes should have never been on this case. His wife and son died in that London subway bombing. That’s why he wants Sasha. I’ve got phone logs, things he didn’t bother to even try to hide. He’s been working with Symon Pushkin, current head of the
Solntsevskaya Bratva
, who he chummed up with when Wendall sent him on assignment in Moscow fifteen years ago. Codename Isaak Yegorov. He was part of a 1970s operation that led to the discovery of the mass supply of Russian chemical warfare agents, including Novichok.”

Facts clicked into place in Alexei’s head, his years of knowing the
Bratva
players entirely too well supplying the rest of the story. “And Symon’s family is Ukrainian. His father was a Soviet leader. When the Republic collapsed he went from rich to dirt poor.
He
has the beef with Ukraine joining the EU.”

“Right. Hughes cut some sort of deal with Symon to get to Sasha. He let that bomb in, and Yakiv was ignorant of his involvement when he came forward.”

“Son of a bitch,” Alexei muttered. “You’re certain Yakiv isn’t a threat?”

“Tennyson says the man broke down in tears. Begged him to help clear her name and make things right by giving her amnesty in Britain.”

A small window near his boot caught Alexei off guard. He stopped, seconds before his foot blocked the glass. Alarms blared in his head. Slowly, he retracted his foot. If the house was empty, and the tracker put her here, downstairs was likely.

Carefully, cautiously, he backed up enough to drop to one knee and
duck his head down long enough to get a brief glimpse of Sasha sitting against the wall, a broad pair of shoulders and carrot-red hair standing in front of her. Her father lay dead at her side.

“Confirmed, Yakiv isn’t a threat.” Alexei levered himself to standing once more. “He’s dead.”

And Sasha was at gunpoint. Son of a bitch, that man was going to pay.

“Alexei, this is ground zero on emotions. No missteps,” Clarke droned in his ear.

“Understood.” He’d never understood anything more clearly. Hughes was a loaded weapon, outfitted with a hair trigger. One wrong move, and Sasha would end up just like her father.

He jerked the earpiece off to escape the distraction. Biting down a blast of sheer fury, Alexei moved beyond the bushes and made a wide berth to the front door. He pushed it open, stepped inside, and ordered his feet into a controlled, decisive pace.
Find the stairs. Eliminate the threat. Get her out alive.

S
asha rose on shaky legs. Her focus remained on the gun as she shuffled sideways to the tiny chair, not daring to look away. Perspiration beaded on her brow, trickled beneath her arms. She’d known she would die in London, but she’d never imagined time could move so slowly, that when she finally faced her end, she’d be so terrified. But she was scared beyond reason. Her hands shook as she lowered herself into the miniature plastic seat.