Wiser Than Serpents (13 page)

Gracie pushed back the hair from Luba’s face, grimaced. “I think she was hit, maybe knocked out.” Mae translated this theory into Russian, and Luba nodded.

“Did you get a look at who hurt you?” Mae asked in Russian.

Luba stared at Gracie, eyes wide. Then she closed them, and began to sob.
“Da, Da.”

“Who, Luba?
Kto?
”

Gracie had no idea how to translate her answer.

Ina.

Yanna’s tough inner super spy must be malfunctioning, because she sat on the bus to Taipei crying as if she’d just lost her best friend.

Which, for all practical purposes, she had.

The look on his face when David had boarded the bus, panic, and even desperation, had made her feel like a water slug.

He’d only been trying to help.

Yeah, sure he had. Help her all the way back to Russia, leaving her sister to who-knows-what fate.

Yanna leaned her head back against the tall red cloth seats. Overhead, on a tiny television no larger than her toaster back in Khabarovsk, a ninja movie played, complete with subtitles in Mandarin.

All of Taiwan seemed one big sprawling city, separated not by rolling countryside, but smaller buildings, two and three stories high. Instead of vacant lots, rice paddies filled every spare inch of land between apartment buildings. The green rows in glistening brown water reminded her of dacha country—every hectare of earth used to mound potatoes. Storefronts advertised in glowing neon and brightly colored Chinese characters, and commuters filled the streets, wearing the ever-present patterned face masks.

Right before every stop, the driver would call out the name. She’d let Kaohsiung pass by, her destination Taipei and the international airport. She’d gotten a good look at the two thugs who’d brought her into the country, and guessed that she wasn’t the only woman they’d trafficked in through Taiwanese passport control. She’d camp out, waiting for them to show up, then follow them to Elena. Meanwhile, Taipei just might have what she needed to fix her GPS earrings. And she could start nosing around brothels.

Elena, where are you? The thought of her sister, who didn’t have a David or even the few kung-fu abilities Yanna possessed, captured by Kwan and his men…Yanna put a hand over her stomach, in case the rice packet decided to make its way back up.

So she’d been right about Kwan. In fact, she probably had tidbits of information that might help David and his undercover adventure. But no, David wouldn’t allow her to be an equal partner. She had to be the damsel in distress, he the dashing hero. What was it about him that always had to save the day?

Yes, she’d been handcuffed to the chair, helpless and had a knife to her throat, but she would have figured out something.

Really.

Yanna wiped away another tear.

She didn’t need him, and already regretted the briefest of moments she’d depended on him. This leaking was precisely why.

She had to face it—he
wasn’t
going to help her—not if he thought her life was in danger. He’d promised to help, but she’d experienced his promises before.

Men were all the same—disappointing.

She could find Elena on her own, as she planned to do.

She didn’t really have to track down Kwan. She just had to let him know she was still alive. He’d do all the work.

And next time, she wouldn’t be the one who ended up with a blade to her neck.

The bus stopped again, and she looked up, checking out the embarking passenger. She didn’t really think Kwan could have tracked her down already, but…

A man climbed the stairs, holding his little black-haired maybe four-year-old daughter, bows in her hair holding up two wispy pigtails. He appeared about forty, with a leather bag slung over his shoulder and strong arms around the girl. She looked around the bus, then back at him with adoring eyes as he found their seats.

Yanna swallowed, her throat suddenly thick. Apparently fatigue also made her susceptible to painful longings buried deep inside, because she was right there with that little girl, adoring the man who held her in his arms.

She hadn’t been sure if he was boyfriend number two or three, but Boris had been the man she’d wanted to be her real father. Older than her mother, he seemed to love both Yanna and her mom. He had worked at the local bread factory and perhaps her mother had seen in him someone stable, even kind, when she brought him home to live in their two-room house. He didn’t drink—well, not much at least—and loved Yanna like she might be his own. Yanna remembered his smile, the long walks in the park, the stuffed monkey he’d given her one year for New Year’s Eve.

“
Papichka,
will you be my daddy and stay with me forever and ever?” she’d asked him once, right before first grade, as he’d picked her up from kindergarten. Even at six, she knew that not all daddies stayed. Boris had knelt right there on the sidewalk, tugged her long, dark braid wrapped with brilliant red ribbon, and said.
“Ya obeshaio.”

I promise. She knew all about men and promises. Perhaps not all men broke promises, but the ones she loved did. Over and over and over. Like Boris, when he left them only three months later, simply disappearing into the night after a ferocious fight with her mother. Yevgeny, then Slava, had promised, and left. Some of her “daddies” she’d silently begged to leave, especially when they promised to make her life very, very difficult if she told her mother what they did to her when she wasn’t home.

After a while, she didn’t care who promised what.

Until, of course, she’d met David.

Why was it that every time she let a man into her heart, he tore it to smithereens?
Especially
David. Because once she had let him close, she’d never really gotten him out of her system, as evidenced by her gigantic lapse in judgment on the boat. She could hardly believe she’d nearly kissed him.

She closed her eyes, willing herself not to sleep, but feeling tired. So very tired.

Which was when the memories usually surfaced.
“This time, you’re going down, Yanna!”
David’s voice found her, and she frowned, knowing that if she followed the memory long enough it could only churn up hurt. Yet, as if pulled by some ethereal force, she lost herself in the briny smell of the sea, the feel of hot sand beneath her bare feet, the sun overhead, the shouts and laughter of children running into the surf.

“Bring it on, Yankee,” she retorted, dusting off her knees and glancing at Roman behind her, ready to take their friend Mae’s serve. The sun overhead left its mark on blond David’s fair complexion, turning his nose red, his shoulders a deep russet-brown and lifting from his skin a field of freckles. He’d taken his shirt off, and she’d refrained from telling him that he was only asking for trouble. Because, though she was his friend, she also had plenty of appreciation for his physique, toned from hours at the gym and playing street hockey.

Behind her, Roman taunted David in Russian. “It’s the 1980 Olympics and finally you’re going down, Yankee!”

“Game point,” Mae said, twirling the volleyball in her hand. She’d pulled her curly red hair back into a ponytail, and wore a pair of beach shorts and a sleeveless shirt. Yanna had preferred wearing her bikini, and even David had given her a long once-over, trying to hide it of course, when she emerged from her room at the Black Sea Resort. It wasn’t hard to figure out that calling them “just friends” hadn’t made him immune to her.

Perfect.

Because with David leaving in about five short weeks to head back to America, and possibly out of her life for good, she wanted him to remember her for a long, long time.

She flicked her hair back, shiny and dark in the sun. David’s gaze squared in on her. Mae tossed the ball and served it over the net.

Roman met it with a bump, setting it up. Yanna sent it over. David scooped it up, Mae set it and David jumped high to spike it. Yanna saved it low with a bump and Roman got under the ball, setting it high.

“Drill it!” Roman said. Yanna jumped high, spiked it hard.

David dove and bumped it right before it hit the sand. Mae set it up high for him again. This time, Yanna paralleled him to block it. But David was going for broke, and he jumped, drew back and arrowed the ball over the net.

It slammed Yanna square in the face. Blood spurted as she dumped into the sand. She cupped her nose, eyes watering, face smarting.

“Yanna!” David ducked under the net and skidded in the sand to her feet, horror replacing the triumph in his voice. “Yanna, I’m sorry!”

Roman had torn off his sweaty shirt. He thrust it at David, who tried to get Yanna to move her hands. She pinched her nose, tipping her head back. She took the shirt, bunched it under her nose.

“I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, but tears ran down her face, her nose burning, the pain making her dizzy. She even put a hand out as she fell back onto the sand.

“I’m taking you back to the hotel,” David said, and before she could protest, he had scooped her up into his arms.

For a second, the briefest of seconds, she let him. Just stayed right there next to all that sweaty, golden-red skin. And then she came to her senses. Because, well, she’d never been a pansy, and especially not in front of Roman and David.

“Put me down!” But David was already walking across the sand, Roman behind him. “I’m fine!” She kicked, struggling, blood spurting from her nose as she pushed against him.

He put her down. “Knock it off. I’m just trying to help you.”

“I don’t need your help.” Yet, as she took a step, she had to hold out her hand for balance, the earth spinning.

“Uh…I beg to differ.” David grabbed her around the waist, taking her sandals from Roman. “We’ll meet you back at the dorms.”

Roman jogged back to Mae, who had begun to collect their things. “We’ll track down Vicktor and get a place in the café!”

Yanna barely heard them, focused as she was on staring at the sky, trying to stop the flow of blood.

David threw down her sandals. Guided her foot into one, then the other. “I’m fine,” she said again, sounding much like she might be talking through a tunnel.

“Sure you are.” David took her by the elbow. “I’m really sorry. I thought you’d block it.”

“I did block it,” she said, almost tripping on the curb.

“Yeah, with your nose. I thought you were supposed to use your arms or your torso.”

She glared at him—not so easy while holding her nose—and walked through the parking lot to the four-story sanitarium. They’d found the resort, as Mae and David called it, through friends of Vicktor’s mother, a nurse in Khabarovsk, Far East Russia. Fifty acres of beach and wilderness, with a spa, a cafeteria, segregated dorm rooms, and plenty of Black Sea beach. The five friends had taken this last break from Moscow University for a final hurrah before graduation.

David slowed and Yanna did, too, looking down for a moment to find the sidewalk.

David took her elbow. “I’m not going to let you fall, I promise.”

Yanna stepped up, took her hand away from her nose. Looked at it, and Roman’s sweaty, blood-soaked shirt. “I think it’s stopped bleeding.”

David tilted her chin up and surveyed her nose. “Maybe. It might be broken.”

She didn’t want to confirm that it felt like it might be broken. Because, then he’d go all horror face on her again, and possibly treat her like she might be pitiful or weak.

And Yanna didn’t do weak.

Only, she suddenly didn’t care about her nose. Or that she had blood all over her hands, or down her chest. She only saw the concern in his blue eyes, the ones that could turn her into some sort of sappy schoolgirl. She didn’t even protest when he said, “Let’s get you cleaned up.”

Nor did she protest as they walked in, past the
storge,
the dorm mother who sat at her desk. The old woman, built like a tank, raised an eyebrow as she handed Yanna her room key, dangling from a giant wooden knob.

“Volleyball accident,” David offered.

Yanna smirked. David never took his hand off her elbow as they walked up the stairs and down the hall. Yanna noticed how her heart had started to thunder, how her pulse felt hot, everything inside her aware that he walked beside her, tall, amazingly handsome, with arms that could carry her, with a smile that made her forget her own name. This incredible American she’d known for two years, the one who had protected her when she needed it, and even when she didn’t.

In fact, she didn’t recognize this Yanna, not really, because this Yanna didn’t depend on men, didn’t let them see her crumble.

But this Yanna loved David Curtiss.

Probably had since the day she’d met him, in that dark alley off of Red Square.

They reached her room, and she stood there, suddenly shivering as she opened the door.

“You cold?” David asked, his hand, his
hot
hand, on her shoulder.

“It’s just the blood loss,” she said, smiling up at him.

He looked at her and his smile dimmed. She watched him swallow.

And then she opened her door.

He followed her inside the tiny room, where two single beds were shoved up against opposite walls. A thin rag rug lay on the floor in front of a long wooden night table. The bathroom door hung ajar.

“I’ll get a washcloth,” he said, turning, the strangest tone to his voice.

She watched as he wet a towel and brought it back to her. She held out her hand, but he took her chin in the cup of his hand, lifted it, and began to wipe the blood from her nose, her chin, her lips.

She put her hand on his arm.

He stilled, then looked her in the eyes. And right then, before he could blink it away or hide behind that perfect smile, or his righteous exterior, she saw it.

He loved her, too.

Or something like it, because suddenly he bent down, put his hand around the back of her neck and kissed her. And it wasn’t a gentle, I’m-sorry-that-I-just-gave-you-a bloody-nose kind of kiss, either, but urgent and needy and nothing like she would have expected from Mr. In-control David Curtiss.

But, well, she didn’t mind. She put her arms around his broad shoulders and stepped close, curling herself into his arms and kissed him back. Just like she meant it.