The Russian Seduction (23 page)

After a while her eyes adjusted, and she could make out the sky’s milky light above the trees. Half a continent away, the winter sun was climbing to begin its short, shallow swing above the arctic horizon.

They crunched without speaking through snow and tangled undergrowth, and stumbled more than once on the uneven terrain. Once, a dark shape hurtled across their path, and Alexis barely choked back a scream. Victor’s hand tightened reassuringly around hers.

“Just a raccoon,” he whispered. “It’s all right, Alexis.”

Uneasily, she remembered there were grizzlies in these forests too, and she wished she hadn’t thought of that. But they could only keep pushing forward. Frequently he checked the compass programmed into his illuminated watch, then adjusted their course. The forest lightened around them, pale light spilling through the trees. After a while, the trees seemed to be thinning.

Finally, after a long pause to listen, Victor signaled a halt. Together they crouched beneath the sagging limbs of a massive spruce, concealed by its snow-laden branches, snug in a dry bed of fallen needles. He dug out a handful of trail bars from the pack, and she munched the mixture of dried fruit and honey, knowing they needed to replenish the reserves their bodies were burning.

“Do you, ah, have any idea where we are?” Alexis ventured without much hope, keeping her voice pitched low. They were in the middle of nowhere, as far as she was concerned.

Victor pulled a laminated map from his pack and spread it before them, lips moving soundlessly as he seemed to calculate distances in his head.

“Here,” he said at last, jabbing a gloved finger at a spot well east of St. Petersburg. “We should be a few kilometers east of this village. Kholodnogorsk.”

“How can you be sure?” Doubtfully she frowned at the sparsely-populated expanse.

“Russian trains are never late,” he shrugged, folding the map away. “I know precisely when we departed, the exact speed that train achieves, and I noted the time when we jumped. Submarines have been navigating at depth with no better data than this for decades.”

She thought about this as she caught her breath, hugging her arms around her knees. Her overheated body cooled rapidly as the biting cold seeped through her shearling coat. While she watched, Victor slid a bottle of water from the pack beneath his coat—warming it before they drank, she knew, to minimize the amount of energy their bodies would burn to process it.

“You’re very resourceful,” she noted, clenching her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. “A useful sort of guy to have around in all kinds of emergencies.”

He shot her a piercing glance, his eyes a brilliant blue against the snowy branches that walled them in.

“Cold?” he asked sharply. When she nodded, he climbed around behind her and sat, pulling her back against his chest. His bent legs formed barriers against the cold on either side, and he wrapped his arms around her to rub briskly.

The warmth and strength of his body seeped through her, and her chilled muscles slowly unclenched. With a sigh she leaned into him, his chin resting on her head.

In fact, he felt way too good for her peace of mind. How could she know he wasn’t actually working with those goons chasing her? That this wasn’t some well-designed ploy to drive her into his arms and keep her there?

“You know this doesn’t mean anything,” she whispered, impelled to take back some modicum of control, raise some barrier between them. “It’s a temporary thing.”

Despite all the layers between them, she felt him stiffen.

“Don’t worry about it, Ms. Castle,” he said coolly. “You have repeatedly assured me that I mean nothing to you. I can confirm receipt of your message.”

Well, that made her feel like a heartless bitch. Especially since it hadn’t stopped her from sleeping with him.

“You know it has to be this way,” she sighed, trying not to feel so guilty. She folded her arms over his. “If it didn’t…if I weren’t who I am…if you weren’t who you are…a girl could get used to having you around.”

“Could you?” he clipped out, obviously still irritated. “Our countries are not direct adversaries at present—at least not yet. But I suppose if you were to fall for a Russian, they would make you leave your prestigious job.”

“Yeah, they would.” Why did she feel like it was her fault? “Just like your side wouldn’t tolerate a guy in your position falling for an American.”

“I can’t deny this,” he murmured, heaving a breath. “Even if someday I leave the ministry, I’ll always be Russian. And I’ll always have the SVR in my dossier.”

So they both knew how it had to be. There was no way she could continue to climb the Foreign Service ladder, fulfill her father’s dying wish, and be with the guy behind her.

“They could…find a place for you.” Hell, the words just slipped out. An ambiguous statement, a suggestion no one without his background would understand.

“I couldn’t do that, Alexis,” he grated. “Christ. Russia is my Motherland—the only mother I’ll ever have. Regardless of what they did to me, the damn pointless loss of my command, I will never betray my country.”

“Then I’ll never ask you to.” She closed her eyes against the sudden sting of tears. What the hell else had she expected from this useless and futile conversation?

“Patriotism is something I understand pretty well,” she said huskily, “since I feel the same way. So…I guess that’s it, then.”

He exhaled against her hair, and resumed his efforts to warm her. Despite everything they’d just confirmed—that a relationship between them could never go anywhere—he felt like her only refuge, a fortress between her and a frightening world.

Suddenly he stilled, and he didn’t have to warn her to be quiet. Though she couldn’t hear a damn thing except the wind whistling through the trees, she sensed him listening with the fixed intensity of a hungry predator.

“We have to keep going, Alexis,” he breathed in her ear, so quiet she could barely hear him. “Try not to make a sound.”

As they crept out from cover, he slid out the gun.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

They were struggling through drifts of knee-high snow when Alexis picked up the sounds of pursuit. The land was rising, dense growth dwindling to clumps of trees, interspersed with open ground. When they topped the rise she hunched over, breathing heavily, while Victor scanned the route they’d followed.

In a heartbeat, his face went blank—the inscrutable firewall of a captain on the bridge, his goals and tactics classified, all doubts locked up tight. Swiftly he crouched, pulling her down beside him.

Squinting to see through billowing gusts of snow, she glimpsed the bright red flash of a ski parka a hundred yards below. One of the goons had been wearing red, she recalled. Quickly the guy ducked into a cluster of evergreens, where she couldn’t see him.

Victor pulled her back from the bluff, behind a clump of stunted firs.

“Two of them,” he murmured, frowning at his watch as if to calculate how much time they had left. “They’re following our trail through the snow.”

“Let’s use your mobile phone,” she urged. “If we’re close enough to that village, maybe they’ll send someone to help us. The local
militsia
, or at least a medical crew.”

He dug out the cheap plastic phone and tossed it to her. “Stay hidden while you call. I’m going to take another look.”

Alexis watched him crawl out on his belly while she powered up the phone and immediately switched it to vibrate. The last thing they needed was the damn thing going off while they were trying to hide.

Thankfully he’d charged the phone on the train. But concern stabbed through her when she saw the signal in this low-populated area—all but nonexistent.

After a few seconds of hard thinking, she dialed the Embassy switchboard and asked for the security office, only to be shunted to voice mail. Gritting her teeth, she severed the connection. Then dialed the Ambassador’s secretary, a number she knew by heart.

When she heard the woman’s cheerful greeting, Alexis fought to hold it together. Hoarsely, she identified herself and asked for the Ambassador, on an urgent basis.

“Alexis?” Stuart Malvaux’s warm caramel voice was sharp with concern. “Where are you? Candace said you didn’t come in today, and you’re not answering your phone. I was about to send someone to your townhouse.”

“It’s kind of a long story. I’m near a little village called Kholodnogorsk, with, ah, Victor Kostenko.” Keenly aware of the seconds slipping past, she sketched in the highlights, their current situation, and their goal of reaching St. Petersburg.

“My God.” The Ambassador fell silent, obviously thinking through what she’d told him. Static hissed across the line, and she prayed they wouldn’t get disconnected.

“We’ll alert our Consulate in St. Pete,” he decided. “See if they can send someone out to get you, even if it’s only the local
militsia
. And you’re not going to like this, Alexis. But I think Geoff had better get on the next flight out, and meet you in St. Pete.”

“That won’t be necessary, sir.” She scanned the screen of snow and bristly branches and wondered where Victor had gone. Frankly, she’d almost rather deal with the thugs chasing them than her ex-husband. Inevitably, Geoff would act as though she were a rank amateur who’d landed in hot water, and he alone could save the day.

“I’m afraid it’s very necessary,” Stu said grimly. He hesitated, and a prickle of apprehension skittered across her skin.

“Alexis.” He cleared his throat, and her apprehension doubled. “Candace went into your office this morning to deliver your mail. She…found something on your desk. I was in a meeting, so she brought it straight to your immediate supervisor—Geoff.”

She’d been straining to hear over the mounting buzz of static, trying to minimize her own noise footprint, worrying where the hell Victor was. Now her attention zoomed in on Stu’s uncomfortable tone.

“What did she find?” Alexis asked carefully.

“She found a file of rather explicit black-and-white photographs. Of you and—well—it looks like Captain Kostenko.”

“
Shit!
” The expletive burst out before Alexis could catch it. She closed her eyes, her heart sinking to her boots. There it was again, the sucking sound of her career being flushed down the toilet.

No need to ask for details because she already knew, didn’t she? They’d be pictures of her and Victor lying naked on a bearskin rug. Pictures of her getting off, in the arms of a Russian intelligence operative.

“Alexis? Hello?” Stu’s voice broke through the static—or maybe it was just the buzz of panic in her brain. “Are you still there?”

“Yeah.” She had to clear her throat twice before she could speak. “No doubt I’m about to be contacted by our friends at Lubyanka, wanting me to come in for a meeting. So they can tell me what I’d need to do to keep the scandal quiet.”

“That seems likely,” he agreed. “And if you refuse to cooperate, as I have no doubt you will, they’ll threaten to leak the photos and the story to the press. Two weeks before the presidential visit, I don’t have to tell you how bad this is, Alexis.”

“I know.” God, she was furious with herself for getting in this mess. She’d walked straight into it, with her eyes wide open. And Victor—damn it—he’d betrayed her in every possible way. Then told her that bullshit story about blowing his own cover to escape the SVR, just to throw her off the scent.

“This is tricky, Alexis,” Stu repeated, and she tried to focus on what he was saying. “It harkens straight back to the Cold War and all those shenanigans. If it leaks out that the Russians are still playing these games with our people, given your rank and his, it could derail President Cartwright’s visit altogether.”

“I know,” she said miserably. “It’s going to be difficult enough for her, given the current freeze in our bilateral relations, not to mention the Ukraine crisis.”

“You’ve got it. If it now becomes apparent the Russians have resumed full-scale intelligence operations against us, she’ll have to send a strong message.” Stu paused. “If she doesn’t, she’ll be portrayed as weak, a pushover trying to appease Moscow.”

“I won’t let that happen,” Alexis said firmly, gripping the phone so hard her hand hurt. “I’ll resign from my position first. Take a desk job back in Washington…or wherever they’re willing to post me.”