Tell Me No Lies (10 page)

Miki's apartment.

She would have liked to protest, but couldn't. Getting into his home had been one of her key objectives from the beginning. But to have the goal slide into her lap so easily, and on today of all days, was a bit daunting. Her stomach did a nervous flip as he helped her out of the car. "Come, my dear. I have the most marvelous meal planned."

He spoke in Russian, and she answered in kind. "You've been plotting this, haven't you?"

He held a hand to his heart in mock repentance. "You have found me out."

Oh, if only that were true. "You've gone to such trouble, Miki. The flowers, now this. I don't know what to say."

"Say whatever you like,
dorogaya."
The Russian word for
darling
rolled off his tongue, deep and smooth. "You have the most marvelous way of speaking like a schoolgirl and also like a native. Where did you learn your Russian?"

A buzz of warning vibrated inside her as the uniformed doorman opened the door for them. She was on Miki's ground now, his territory, and she had to walk carefully. "I have an ear for languages. I studied in school, of course, and college. And spent several years in Moscow. You know that."

"Of course. But someone once told me you have family there."

"In Russia?" The alarm started to clang. "No. My family was from Boston My parents died in a car accident when I was sixteen."

He leaned toward her, close and intimate. "Then it must be true what I hear about you."

She met his eyes, fear thumping behind her ribs. "And what dreadful rumors have people been spreading about me?"

"That you are as brilliant as you are beautiful." He smiled, a wicked gleam in his coal-dark eyes. Tucking her arm into his, he escorted her into the elevator

Relief was quickly swallowed by the door closing Escape blocked, she shivered.

As though he knew and understood why, Miki rubbed her hands "You are so cold,
dorogaya."

"Ah, but that is my charm."

He blinked, and she felt a second of satisfaction for surprising him, but it was quickly overwhelmed by Miki, who threw his head back and roared with laughter.

He was still smiling when the elevator opened, and she stepped onto a lush carpet m shades of charcoal and pale gray.

A harsh tang greeted her immediately. Leather and steel. The furniture was night black, and, even without touching she could tell, butter-soft. A globe of twisted metal stood on a sculpture stand at the entry way. Across the room, a collection of swords stared back at her from the wall, hilts of ivory, silver, and brass intricately carved.

Miki followed her gaze. "Interested?"

Again, surprise laced his voice. The race of blood she felt looking at the collection surprised her. But the sight of so many lethal objects in proximity to Miki Petrov held definite appeal. "Of course."

He led her across the room and took one down, a long, curved sword with a carved hilt. Stepping back, he slashed the blade through the air, his lithe body as gracefully lethal as the weapon he held. The blade whistled as it cut through space, a haunting, mournful death song, and the sound seemed to please Miki. He smiled with approval and presented the weapon with two hands and a short bow, laying the blade flat on her outstretched palms. "Careful, now. It's sharply honed."

"What is it?"

"A Cossack
shashka.
A curved saber." He traced the arc of the blade in the air. "This one dates to the sixteenth century. The hilt is bone. Legend has it, human." He watched for her reaction, and she was careful not to pull away.

"Fascinating."

"Note the engraving on the blade."

She ran a finger over the Cyrillic letters incised into the polished metal and spoke the words aloud. "Die enemy from my hand."

For a second she was tempted to put the weapon to good use and split Miki Petrov in two.
Die enemy from my hand.

She hefted the sword it was lighter than she'd imagined and sliced through the air, as he had done earlier. The blade keened its sharp song, and Miki eyed her.

Did he feel her hatred? She turned the blade on him, laying the tip against his chest. Their gazes locked.

"Should I run you through?" A goblin voice inside her head hissed,
yess, yess.

"If you'd like us to kill each other,
dorogaya,
I can think of far more pleasurable ways," he said softly.

Carefully he took the'weapon from her, replacing it on the wall, and as if the last moment hadn't happened, coolly pointed out a Russian hunting dagger, an eighteenth-century sword that had once belonged to one of Catherine the Great's guardsmen, and a wickedly curved Persian saber with a blade of Damascus steel called a
shamshir.

With shaking hands, she gripped her purse, hoping he wouldn't notice. She could have killed him. She could have plunged the blade into his heart and everything would have been over.

Except her father's name would still be sullied.

She swallowed hard and tried not to think about what Petrov could do with those swords if he found out about her link to Luka. Instead, she calmed herself and studied the layout of the apartment, a huge, spacious home that took up the entire eighth floor. But though she expressed interest in seeing all of it, Miki demurred.

"Lunch first, then we'll tour."

Lunch turned into an all-afternoon affair, with a meal that dragged on for hours, every tidbit accompanied by Miki's subtle probing. Where did she grow up again? What did her parents do? What happened to her after they died?

She sidestepped what she could and when she couldn't, she repeated the stories she'd told for years.

"My family was from Boston, where my father was a doctor, my mother a housewife. They were simple, ordinary people. After they died an aunt took care of me. She also passed away."

He peered at her closely. "You have had many losses."

"Yes." She returned his gaze easily. It was the truth after all, though the losses she'd sustained were not what he imagined.

"And so you grew up in Boston? I have been there. Very historic city."

She smiled, recognizing the probe for what it was. "I went to boarding schools mostly." She leaned toward him, hoping to deflect the rest of the interrogation. "You can't possibly want to hear all this. It's quite boring."

An animal watchfulness slithered across his face and into his dark eyes. "You could never bore me,
dorogaya."

She forced herself not to turn away, and thankfully, he did, returning to the Chilean sea bass on his plate. "So they packed you off to boarding school. In Europe?" He spoke casually between mouthfuls, but she knew there was nothing casual about the continued questions. And nothing casual about her stream of practiced answers.

"Oh, no. Right here in this country. Briarcliffe in New Hampshire."

He gave her a long, measuring look. "Yes. I can see you there. All bundled up in a hat and wool mittens. Me, I went to the school of hard knocks, as they say here."

"We each have our own path," she murmured, suppressing the anger that rose at his bid for sympathy.

"I suppose we do. And yours. After, what was it Ne.w Hampshire tell me, my dear, where you learned such bril-liance."

"Princeton and, as you well know, Harvard." The truth came as easily as the lies.

"And were you top of the class?"

"Of course," She repressed a jolt of fear. What more was he after?

He smiled and took another bite. "The fish is marvelous. Really, you must eat some."

Dutifully, she nibbled, his sharp gaze searing her from beneath those formidable black brows as though she were the object of all his desires. .

"So, Boston. Tell me what that was like." And the interrogation began all over again.

By the time she extricated herself, she was exhausted, palms damp, blood like frost. Worse, she'd seen enough of the apartment to know he kept nothing of interest there. No files, no computer.

"This was wonderful," she told him at last, gathering her purse. "But it's late, and I still have to drive home."

"Oh, no. Please. You must let me take you home." Miki's long, thin fingers wrapped around her upper arm like a manacle, the lump of gold on his little finger digging into her flesh.

"Please, darling, don't fuss." She gave him a diminutive pout and twisted in his hold, pecking him on the cheek and forcing him to drop his hand. 'This has been marvelous, truly glorious. Thank you. But my car is here, and I'll need it tomorrow."

His black eyes gleamed with barely concealed displeasure that stopped her breath. Would he really let her go?

"You drive a hard bargain,
dorogaya."

"That is why I'm so useful." Folding her arm through his, she led him to the door. "Come now, don't sulk. If you insist on being helpful, Yuri can drive me to the garage."

In the end, Miki settled for that, escorting her into the elevator and out to the curb where the limousine waited. He performed the attendant duties himself, opening the door for her with a flourish. "We will see each other again," he promised.

"I look forward to it" She gave him a last cool smile and slid into the car. He closed the door and stood at the curb to watch them leave, dangerous as one of his sword blades.

Finally free, she sat back against the seat, weak with relief. She forced herself to breathe slowly, in and out She thought about home, eager to get to her refuge.

But the trip to the garage was a hellhole of taxicabs, buses, and cars that clogged every avenue. After she'd transferred to her own car at last and left the city behind, traffic continued thick, expanding the usual drive home to over two hours. All the way up the interstate the back of her neck prickled as though someone were following her. But when she stared into the rearview mirror all she saw was an endless stream of anonymous cars packed on the roadway like ants.

Daylight was dwindling into evening by the time she turned into her gravel drive. Steering up the familiar tree-lined path, she anticipated closing herself up behind her own walls where welcome silence waited.

But what she found when she turned the last curve and the house came into view set her pulse hammering. A police car, blue light flashing, stood hi front of the bay window.

Her first thought was for Sonya. Something had happened to Sonya.

Alex bolted out of the car, up the steps and through the door. "What happened? What's going on?'

The florist must have come because the oil rig from the party no longer stood there, giving her a clear view of the room. A heavyset policeman stood in the entry trying to talk to Sonya. A huge boulder lifted from Alex's shoulders. The housekeeper was safe.

But near hysteria.

Wringing her hands, the elderly woman broke into a cloudburst of Russian the minute she
saw
Alex. Something about a dead rat and the florist?

"Hush, darling," Alex said, putting an arm around her. She looked up at the officer. "What happened? Why are you here?"

"Someone called in a complaint," a new voice said from behind her. Alex whirled to find Hank Bonner at the door. Just what she needed to top off the day from hell.

The detective strolled in, nodding at the uniformed officer by way of greeting. "Officer Newcomb."

"Well, if it isn't Detective Bonner. Didn't think the detective division was necessary. It was a raticide, not a homicide."

Hank gave the officer a deadpan look, as though he were used to this kind of ribbing. "What's going on, Pete?"

The officer produced a plastic bag, holding it up by its contents. A tail. A tail attached to a dead rat. "Someone pinned it to the front door."

A spasm of revulsion gripped Alex, and Sonya went into another paroxysm of Russian. "I told them not to
call the police. I told them we didn't want "

Of course Sonya wouldn't have called the police. "Who? Who did you tell?"

"The people with the flowers. The florist. They came to take the decorations down and they found the... the ..." she nodded in the direction of the plastic bag "on the door and I told them not to but they insisted..." She shot a fearful look at the uniformed officer.

"Calm down. No one's going to hurt you."

She twisted her hands together. "But who would do such a thing? Don't tell me, I know. They are here, they are back. They won't stop until they kill us all. We must leave this place. We must..."

"It's all right,
nyanya,"
Alex murmured, "Look at me. Look at me." She forced the older woman to face her, "You are safe. We are all safe. Hush now." She stroked the woman's head. "Hush."

Hank Bonner was watching her. Even while she concentrated on calming down Sonya his gaze bored into her back. The gaze mat meant questions. Always questions.

Bonner asked his first. "Who do you think did this?"

She held Sonya's hand, stroked it. "I have no idea."

"Maybe someone doesn't want your oil deal to happen."

"That's nuts," the uniform said. "Everyone in town wants it to happen."

"Maybe it has something to do with Luka Kole," Hank said, dropping the name into their midst like a grenade.

"Who's Luka Kole?" Newcomb asked, but the question was nearly drowned by Sonya's half scream.

"What do they know about Luka?" She clutched Alex's hand, her Russian fast and desperate. "My God, my God. How do they know about him?"

"Sonya, please "

"Something has happened. Something has happened to Luka,"

Alex looked up at the two policemen. "Please, can. I take her to her room?"

The uniformed officer shrugged. "I got everything I need."

"Go ahead," Hank said quietly.

"Come, dear." Gently, Alex led Sonya toward her room. "I'll give you something to calm you down. You can rest We'll talk later. Hush now. Everything is all right. Hush.''

Hank watched Alex cool, calm, unfeeling Alex wrap a comforting arm around the shriveled old woman and escort her away. So she did care about something, even if it wasn't her own father.

Hie two women had spoken Russian, so he didn't have a clue what they said, but he didn't need a translator to understand fear and distress. And whoever the older woman was grandmother, aunt she'd been.terrified of something. Or someone.