Veiled Revenge (25 page)

“This is all healthy speculation, people,” Vic cut in, “but if this is true, we have a crazy woman out for blood. Blood times six. She’s killed one person already, and he doesn’t even count to her. We need a plan.”

“Lacey, you must talk to the boatman,” Marie said.

“What boatman?” Lacey said.

“The man who fished her out of the water and saved her life. You’ve already met him, the man from New Orleans.” Marie smiled patiently, waiting for Lacey to catch on.

“From New Orleans? Rene Thibodeaux? He’s here looking for some woman named Leah—oh, my God. Is that Natalija?”

He’d said life had roughed her up and you could see it in her face. Was he talking about the scar?

“He doesn’t know who she really is,” Marie said. “His vision is clouded by love. My vision hit me like a tidal wave, and I’m still amazed I didn’t faint. I may be growing. As a psychic, I mean.”

“He’s following her, and she’s following us,” Vic said. “But if she has been trained as an agent or a spy, even a bad spy, why has she missed so often? Why did she kill a man she apparently didn’t plan to kill?”

Kepelov settled his chin on his fingertips. “Three thoughts. One: Natalija is bad spy. Still dangerous, maybe more so. Two: Her goal is to stretch out suspense, make anticipation worse. Torture makes revenge sweeter. Three: After her fall into Mississippi in the water, she has gotten sloppy. Out of shape, out of practice, or maybe her head is damaged. Maybe crazy. Crazier than before, I mean. She was always crazy.”

“She can’t be as skilled as she thinks she is,” Lacey said.

“Good point,” Kepelov said. “She tried to kill me in Paris and I am still here.”

Natalija had known about the legendary diamond-filled corset because her great-grandfather and Magda Rousseau’s grandfather had stolen it together after the Romanovs were executed, and then hidden it away for almost a century out of remorse. People believed he was out of his mind, but Natalija listened to his ravings. She had been a bewitching woman. Apparently she still was, despite her scars, physical and mental. When she started her affair with Kepelov, he believed he was hunting a lost Fabergé egg. She knew better. Natalija followed Kepelov to Paris and tried to take him out of the competition, with a nine-millimeter pistol. But the old spy proved tougher than she thought.

At that time, Lacey didn’t know who to trust, except Vic and Brooke and Stella. Since then, time had tested how she felt about Nigel Griffin and Gregor Kepelov. Lacey had warmed to them, though she’d never allowed herself to trust them one hundred percent. Yet one mystery remained for Lacey: why women were so attracted to Kepelov. She certainly wasn’t attracted to the cool-eyed spy. Natalija Krumina was once his type—beautiful, tough, and heartless—but he’d fallen hard for Marie, the gentle zaftig psychic with the big heart. Marie’s many charms, Lacey reflected, included
not
wanting to kill him.

Kepelov lifted his eyes to her. “Anger and pain make Natalija careless. Lucky for me. Lucky for all of us. But still very dangerous.”

Silence fell over the group. Lacey was the first to speak.

“We have to call Turtledove. He knows where to find Rene Thibodeaux, and we have to let Rene know what he’s dealing with,” Lacey said. “I don’t get it—she used him and ripped him off, why didn’t she kill him?”

“Maybe he’s part of her plan,” Vic suggested.

“If he is, he doesn’t know it.”

Marie was holding up well, but the strain was beginning to show. Her eyes were at half-mast, but she managed a sleepy smile for Kepelov, along with a wink.

“I must get Marie home,” Kepelov said.

“One question, Gregor,” Lacey said. “Is she going to keep trying to kill us? All of us?”

“Of course,” he said. “Definition of crazy: Keep doing the same thing, no matter what the result.”

Vic retrieved a black Glock pistol from a lockbox in his office. He checked the clip and chamber and secured it in a shoulder holster. “I’ll ask our friend Forrest to arrange a chat with Mr. Thibodeaux at his earliest convenience. Tonight,” he said. “What are you going to do with that shawl, Gregor?”

Kepelov carefully folded the shawl, smiling broadly. “I will see that it goes to proper authorities in investigation,” he said. Lacey suspected he lied.

No doubt he thinks he is the proper authority
, Lacey thought.
But it’s not my problem tonight. Let Kepelov deal with Broadway Lamont
.

They said good-bye in the lobby. The rain had stopped, but the sidewalks and streets were still wet. The earlier storm had chased everyone home, leaving the downtown Rosslyn neighborhood quiet.

The building had a secure parking garage for employees, but Kepelov had parked hastily on the street by the front doors. Vic and Lacey waited to watch Marie and Gregor cross the street safely to their purple Gremlin. He was walking slightly behind Marie at the streetlight when two shots rang out, echoing in the empty street.

Kepelov clutched his chest and staggered. As he fell he pushed Marie to the ground. He lay still, his body partly covering hers.

Chapter 29

A dark-colored car was speeding away. Its lights were out and the evening’s post-rainstorm gloom made it impossible to read the plates or see the driver. But everyone knew this wasn’t a random drive-by shooting.

Natalija Krumina was at the wheel.

Lacey and Vic sprinted across the street to where Kepelov lay sprawled on the pavement. She pulled out her phone as they ran and dialed 911. At the operator’s request Lacey kept the line open as she scanned the street. Kepelov was moving, trying to get up. Marie had struggled out from beneath him and she was sitting beside him, cradling his head. Her hair was a dark veil that reached for him. Vic raced to Kepelov’s side and tore the Russian’s shirt open, looking for bleeding bullet wounds to compress.

“Talk to me, my sweet Gregor.” Marie’s eyes filled with tears that splashed on his jacket. Lacey didn’t see any blood yet, but Vic was blocking her way.

“Don’t cry, Marie.” Kepelov opened his eyes and took her hand in his. “I am hard to kill. I am tough old dog.” He grimaced and tried to sit up. “Catching bullets is what bulletproof vests are for.” He coughed and his face contorted in pain. “Kevlar catches the slugs, but the impact— whew! Like a giant punches your gut.”

Lacey felt so much relief she nearly fell down herself. “But we saw you fall,” she said. “Vic, is he really—”

Vic got to his feet, smiling. He held Lacey steady. “He’s wearing a good vest, no penetration. He had to fall to make her believe she put him down. So she wouldn’t keep shooting. Like he said, a gunshot is a great big punch in the gut, and he took a couple of them. How are you doing down there, Kepelov? Don’t move. Paramedics will be here soon, we already called.”

“Not moving, thank you. Could be worse. Unfortunately, I think maybe broken ribs.” Kepelov coughed again and gulped for air. “People expect you to fall down when they shoot you. Because of TV and movies. Bullets don’t always make you fall, sometimes you have to help them a little. How did I do, Marie? Convincing death scene, yes? You all right?”

“Convincing? I nearly died of shock!” Marie kissed his face. “We really have to chat about your ex-girlfriends, Gregor.”

“What if she comes back?” Lacey asked.

“She might,” Vic said, his gun drawn and ready. “But she knows we’ve called 911. Hopefully she’ll keep her distance and watch out for cops and paramedics. I’d better check to see if she put a GPS bug on their car. Purple Gremlin, right?”

Kepelov was still trying to sit up, but Marie gently restrained him. “Don’t you dare move, Gregor, cher. Not until you’re checked out and those ribs are tended to. Because I love each and every one of them.”

“No worries. I am not dead. Good thing I wear the vest. Because Smithsonian warned me. And Olga nagged me,” Kepelov said. He sounded strong, but he didn’t look good.

“When the cops get here, give them the basic description of what happened, no extras,” Vic told them all. “They don’t need the backstory right now, and they won’t appreciate what they’ll consider a loony conspiracy fantasy.”

“Got it.” Lacey wasn’t interested in amusing the Arlington cops until the wee hours of the morning. “I wish I didn’t have a creepy feeling that we’ll find Natalija in the rearview mirror going home.”

Sirens screamed. The police and the ambulance arrived and blocked the street.

 * * * 

Marie was strong and stoic throughout the ordeal. Her tears dried, and she watched over her man like a protective bulldog as the EMTs lifted him onto the gurney and into the ambulance. Once she was sure Kepelov was taken care of and in capable hands, Marie promptly fainted.

Vic caught her before she hit the pavement. The EMTs bundled the unconscious psychic into the ambulance beside her fiancé.

It was almost eleven p.m. by the time Lacey and Vic finished their interviews with the Arlington police. The responding officer said it was very unusual to see a drive-by shooting in “their neck of the woods.” After all, he said, this wasn’t the District of Columbia.

 * * * 

“You’re telling me that my sweet girl, my Leah, is a killer? She maybe never cared about me at all?” Rene Thibodeaux said. “I can’t picture it. Maybe she had to clear out of New Orleans in a hurry for some damn reason, but there was a time she cared about me. And she shot at some kind of a Russian spy? Good God Almighty! That’s gotta be just pure fantasy.”

“Didn’t you notice how she talked?” Lacey asked.

“Sure, she had a little accent. I thought the way she talked was so pretty, like music. She told me she grew up overseas, her hippie parents dragged her all over Europe when she was growing up. So, she spoke a bunch of different languages—like French and Russian and—” He buried his face in his hands for a few moments. They gave him time to let the story sink in.

Turtledove sat by silently. They hadn’t had any success so far in locating the lost “Leah,” and both men were very interested in what Vic and Lacey had to tell them. The four of them met just before midnight at the all-night diner on Route 50, where the customers at that hour were few but the coffee was hot.

The diner, straight out of the 1940s, was the kind of place that served breakfast all day and all night. The décor of polished chrome and Formica and fluorescent lighting, a combination that flattered no one, cast its greenish light upon all. But the old blue tiles and cramped booths were pleasantly kitschy.

Rene contemplated his beer, holding it up to the light. “It’s like we’re talking about two completely different women.” It was harder than Lacey thought it would be, telling Rene that the woman he adored was trying to murder everyone who stood in her way. “Besides, her name is Leah.”

“Her real name is Natalija,” Vic said. “Most people who choose false names pick something similar to their real names. Makes it easier to remember.”

“Natalija Krumina fell off a riverboat on the Mississippi, the steamship
Natchez
,
in November of last year,” Lacey said. “After she tried to kill me, and several other people. What happened after that, Rene?”

“I don’t know nothing about no Natalija, whatever her name was. I fished a drowning woman out of the water. It was November. I’m not saying she was this Natalija you’re talking about. It was my Leah.” He paused a moment. “But I found her some ways from where the riverboat
Natchez
was running. She wasn’t breathing. I gave her mouth-to-mouth, slapped the water out of her, got some air into her lungs, and she started living again. She was cut bad on the face, so I taped it up. Got her cleaned up and took care of her. She was bruised bad too, bruised all over, but still I could see she was such a pretty girl once.”

“What happened after that?” Lacey said.

“She woke up real confused. Didn’t know where she was, what happened to her. I was taking care of her, so I guess she trusted me. Eventually she told me her boyfriend tried to kill her, hit her, threw her off his boat. Now I don’t like the idea of cops, but I told her to go make a report, told her I’d go with her, tell them how I found her, help her get the man locked up. She said no. Leah and I feel the same way about
po
-lice. No offense to present company. We just don’t need them, we do just fine for ourselves without ’em.”

“Why didn’t you take her to a hospital?” Vic asked. He squeezed Lacey’s hand under the table.

“People go to hospitals to die, man. I never had nobody in my family go into a hospital and come out alive. Besides, I got a friend, used to be a medic in the service. Forrest knows him too. Does a little first aid, sells a few, um, pharmaceuticals on the side. He stitched her up, used real tiny stitches so the scar wouldn’t be so bad. He did a right nice job. Guess she cut her face on the side of the boat when she went over. Leah’s still pretty upset about that cut. Said it ruined her life, but I don’t agree with that. She’s still a beautiful woman, if only she’d just see that. See, how I feel about her—”

Apparently Natalija was still attractive enough to use her looks to her advantage. And she had an impressive talent for deception.
Maybe she really was trained as a spy. Or she’s simply a natural-born sociopath.

“You said Leah stayed with you for about four months,” Lacey said. “Why didn’t she try to find anyone else she knew?”

“Said she didn’t know anyone in Louisiana, except the guy who tried to kill her. I kind of figured she was on the run, either from him or her family or the law. Didn’t matter which one to me.” Rough in appearance in his worn jeans and plaid flannel shirt, Rene Thibodeaux seemed a little too trusting, as long as he wasn’t dealing with police, doctors, or other authority figures. Staying under the radar seemed to be his main goal in life.

“You didn’t care about her past?” Turtledove asked.

“Why should I? That was all over and done. I took her for face value, like she took me. She didn’t ask me no questions about
my
past. She cooked for me, she took care of me, she kept me company. She even cleaned my damn house,” Rene said.

Cleaned it out, you mean
. Lacey understood Natalija’s reasons for staying. Rene was a safe haven, no questions asked. He cared for her like she was a bird with a broken wing. In her few months with him, Natalija recovered from her injuries, safely tucked out of sight in Louisiana. Everyone believed she was dead. No one was looking for her.

She had plenty of time to plan her next move. Perhaps she’d read news stories about the trove of Romanov diamonds that had been found in the French Quarter—the treasure she felt should have been hers.
The Eye Street Observer
certainly played it big, and named all the players. The story had made national news and it was all over the Web for weeks. Mac had even gotten copies for the newsroom of Russian newspapers that ran
The Eye
’s coverage word for word, or so he was told. In Russian, of course. The Russian ambassador even visited
The Eye
to meet Lacey, after which a security team swept the office for bugs.

It was easy for Natalija to choose her targets for revenge. And make her plans. Perhaps Kepelov had mentioned the shawl to her sometime in the past. But there was no way Natalija could have known the shawl would be at the bachelorette party. She seized the moment and spiked it with its poisoned needle—and then later stole it, after its barb pricked the wrong target.

Embroidering the shawl with the puzzle message? That was probably an improvisation too
, Lacey decided.
Something to do in those long hours late at night, with no one handy to kill.

“Leave her past crimes out of it for the moment,” Vic said. “She tried to kill Lacey and two of our friends the other day, and she tried to kill another friend of ours tonight.”

“You sure of that?” Rene looked up from his beer.

“We think you’re in danger too. Especially if she sees you with any of us, and she probably already has. We’re why she was in New Orleans and why she ended up in the Mississippi. She’s proven she’d mow down anyone in her way.”

“She’d want to kill me? Me? Just because I know she’s alive and I came looking for her?” Rene sat up straight. “Let me get this straight, y’all. What you’re saying is I don’t have to find her? She’s going to find me?”

“Maybe with a bullet. Thought you should know,” Vic said. He fished a business card out of his jacket pocket. “And call me if you see her, anytime, day or night, or if you think of anything else we should know.”

“Even if she did all these other things, Leah wouldn’t want to kill me. I saved her life. But listen, I appreciate your concern.” He snorted a short laugh. “Leah took my money and my heart. Sounds like a damn country song. I’m just lucky she left me with my old truck. Couldn’t get along without that truck. Even slept in it on the way up here. Forrest here was kind enough to let me stay with him. I’m grateful, man.”

“No problem, Rene,” Turtledove said. “It’s not safe sleeping out in the open like that. Especially with her out there.”

“Mind if we swing past the liquor store if one’s open? I got a feeling I need to get drunk tonight. Real drunk.”

Turtledove smiled. “You sure you want to do that?”

Rene stood up to pay his bill. “Oh, yeah. I’ve got some forgetting to do. A lot of forgetting.”

 * * * 

“Calm down, Lacey—even killers need their sleep,” Vic said. “And she’s been hard at work. Been a big day for her. She probably thinks she killed Kepelov.”

“That is so reassuring, darling.” She was craning her neck to watch the road and every inch of the landscape all the way to Alexandria. They were back in Vic’s Jeep, which Vic now deemed safe, with new brakes and a thorough checkup by his mechanic.

Lacey’s nerves were on edge all the way home. Every car on the road made her flinch. She tried to chill out and calm her fears, but when she managed to forget that Natalija might be lurking behind every bush, she realized she had other things to worry about. Like Stella’s wedding.

“Should we tell Stella and Nigel?” she asked. “About Natalija?”

Vic shook his head. “Hold off. Things are already in such an uproar with them. First, Turtledove and I will try to track Natalija down tomorrow. I’ll put as many of my guys on it as I can. I’m guessing she’ll be watching Thibodeaux as well as the rest of us, so she won’t be too far away. Lacey, I’m curious—what would you do if you were her?”

“Not sure. Making a big splashy entrance at the wedding might be tempting. Say, with a bomb, or a missile launcher. Bow and arrow maybe, just to mix it up. And she’s already used nicotine, stolen cars, damaged your brakes, and shot Kepelov. Natalija’s ruined everything.”

“The bachelorette party wasn’t ruined, exactly, was it?”

Lacey eyed him. “I don’t know. One dead uninvited guest, a killer disguised as a waitress, a stolen shawl, a fainting fortune-teller.
Ruined
is a pretty good description.”

“Cheer up, sweetheart. We’ll stop her. I promise.”

“No more bodyguard for me?” Lacey asked.

“Depends on what happens tomorrow. I still have my guys watching your apartment building tonight, anyway.” He glanced at her and squeezed her leg. “You’re off work tomorrow, right?”