MadetoBeBroken (4 page)

Maksimov was standing on the steps of her hotel, shaking out
a match. His dark-brown mane ruffled by the wind and a squint of amusement in
his eyes, he looked like a man waiting for his date. He wore jeans again,
black, and a tight black T-shirt.

He pulled on the cigarette as she approached. “What legend
are you using,
krahsniy
?”

She stopped short. “I don’t have one. I’m here alone.” The
truth, yes, but also a way of protecting OSO. After all, even Americans didn’t
know the agency existed. He wouldn’t believe her anyway.

“You are lying to me.” He stepped down, towering over her at
close range. Coco didn’t flinch. “That will be last time.”

“It’s true. I made up my own story. Art student.”

“Very good. Come with me.”

He turned and took off down the street, his long legs
chewing up the pavement. She raced after him.

Her brain whirled. She had been prepared for anything, but
not for this. How much did he know and why was the fearsome Alexi Maksimov
acting like a semi-normal human being? Perhaps he was leading her into a trap.
Coco glanced around for telltale signs of confederates—solitary men whose faces
were shadowed by newspapers, the sudden screech of car tires as they turned
into the street. But the day was fine and placid, the sidewalk deserted except
for one large hulking man striding in front of a hurrying redhead.

“Where are you taking me? You must think I’m awfully
stupid.”

He did not turn around to answer. “
Nyet
. Better for
me if you were. We are here.”

She looked up at the imposing marble building. “The National
Gallery of Art, are you kidding me? This is a museum.”

A wide smile transformed his face. “You see? Not stupid.”

“The hell—?” Coco muttered as she mounted the steps. She was
thankful at least for the comfortable shoes. Footwear was always to the male’s
advantage in espionage. Well, almost always, depending on what else the woman
had on.

“I don’t like London,” Alexi was saying, mounting the steps.
“So I come here to escape it. In museum, whole world is open.”

His smile was like the sun coming out. Damn him for acting
so at ease, Coco thought. She herself was coiled like a spring, tense and
suspicious and, to her shame, she felt frumpy in her tourist costume.

She followed him up another flight of wide marble stairs,
pausing at a lurid painting of Salome holding up John the Baptist’s head in
triumph. Alexi was hopping up the steps two at a time while she rallied behind
him. Not at full strength yet, she had to admit. This might not bode well for
when she finally had him in the safe house. That’s where firearms came in—a
shot to the kneecap would put the advantage back in her hands.

She spotted his boot heel whisking around a corner and
emerged into a small, deserted gallery, panting. Alexi was already seated on a
leather bench, staring intently at a painting. It was of no great size and
depicted a darkish lake surrounded by fearsome mountains.

“‘Landscape, thought to be Sardinian, circa 1792,’” she read
from the tag on the wall next to it. “Great.”

“Sit with me,
krahsniy
.” He sounded tired. “Do you
love your country?”

Her eyes widened. “I work for the government, you already
know that.”

“Answer question. Do you love it?”

“Of course.” America, eagles, apple pie, freedom—how could
she not love it? She would never have agreed to try out for the FBI after she
graduated college if she didn’t want to serve her country. It was a young woman
in her boxing class who approached her, a petite Asian girl who was the only
opponent who had ever given Coco trouble in the ring.

Leilani was in officer school in the Marines. She took Coco
aside after a sparring session and confessed that, while she herself was too
short to apply for an FBI position, she’d like to see another woman as strong
and smart as she was take up a post in that venerable institution. But after
Coco’s FBI interview she was pulled aside again, and a business card slipped
into her hand. “We need someone young, smart and strong, but not here,” the
interviewer had said. “The Bureau has plenty of viable candidates. OSO takes
only the cream of the crop. I see something in you, Miss Fiori. If you’re
interested in going deeper into national security and special operations, I
believe they will make a place for you. Good luck.”

She had fingered the card until the type was smeared and
sweat-stained. Finally she made the call. Joining OSO had been the smartest
decision of her life. The dumbest one had been to think that sleeping with that
preening ass Rod Templeton was a good idea.

Alexi’s rumbling voice jolted her back to the present. “‘Of
course’. Is good enough answer for an immigrant.”

“I’m not an immigrant!”

“Your people are what—Irish?”

“Half-Scottish, some French and Italian,” she answered. “But
we’ve been here for at least a hundred—” Her voice died away as he turned to
her, his face serious. She realized they weren’t talking about the same thing,
but how could he know that for seventeen years, America was as much of a dream
to her as to any immigrant? His eyes were lighter than his hair, strangely
otherworldly with that glittering splash of gold, and slightly almond shaped.

“I love my country,” he said. “Everything I do is to
preserve it. The beauty, the culture, the people. Do you know what it is to see
that slipping away, to fight so it stays?”

Coco stared back at him, stunned. America had always been at
the top of the world heap. There was never any question that the country would
lose its power and its value. Everything she did, she did to keep her nation at
the top, not to fight for its survival.

“No. We have never had to do that. My job is to keep things
the same, protect the status quo,” she answered.

“Look. Here is circle of civilization.” He touched his
middle fingers and thumbs together to demonstrate. “Persia, India, China,
Greece, Rome, Europe. Inventing mathematics, astronomy, plumbing, typography,
democracy. In the wheel of history, many nations were here.” He tapped his
middle fingers together at the apex of the circle. “You believe America will
always be up top,
krahsniy
? What are you fighting to preserve?”

“That position!” she answered stoutly. “Whatever the future
brings, we are on top now, and it’s thanks to people like me. People like you
only seek to destroy all the good we do in the world, and ruin your own nation
in the process.”

“My nation? Is what—some farms, some mountains, some lakes.
One city.” He turned again to the painting. “But beautiful still. So, alone
American agent, you play at being art student. Tell me what you see.”

The painting wasn’t much to look at, but it had a certain
dark power. A small landscape, framed in gold more elaborate than the simple
scene it depicted, the painting sported a dark, grayish-blue lake surrounded by
mountains, jagged-topped and menacing. The trees that dotted the hills listed
slightly as if windblown. Coco could taste the fresh, bitter wind, smell the
sharp scent of pine and the glorious clean musk of water lapping on stones.

“A place with beauty,” she admitted, “a rough kind. It looks
like living there would take hard work just to eke out simple joys. But the joys
would be all the more satisfying because of what went into pulling them out of
the land.”

But I’d rather have a microwave and scented dryer sheets,
she finished inwardly.

They sat in silence for a time. Coco dared not catch his
eye. Somehow she wanted her answer to please him, and a disappointed or angry
look would crumble her.

“Is all that, yes,” he said finally. “But is another thing,
something you will never have, little red bird whose wings brought you to this
country, free to fly away again. To me, is home.”

Home
¼
He had to be
crazy, Coco mused as they exited the museum. Only a madman would insist that
home was a place that had birthed and buried your ancestors from time
immemorial. If that was his definition, he was enslaved by an accident of place,
and fealty to that notion drove him to destroy the land he claimed to love in
an effort to free it. His answer sounded gentle enough, even sentimental, but
to Coco it was evidence of a dangerous rigidity. Here was an unbending soul who
saw the world in black and white, and whoever got in the way of his
mission—whether enemies or innocents—was collateral damage. This would be a
hard man to break.

Which reminded her, she was still expecting those questions
from OSO. She pulled out her phone.

“Tied by bellybutton to your little device,” he said. “Like
all Westerners.”

“Don’t you have one?”

“
Nyet
.”

She scrolled down, vaguely wondering why he was still
hanging around. They were almost back at her hotel.

“Now you’re lying to me,” she answered distractedly.

“I am not, but if I had such a device, I would give it to
you to gain your trust. Then take it back after I kill you.”

“Hm.” Still no text; what was Templeton playing at? She
opened her purse again to drop the phone back inside. Before she could look up,
his hands were around her throat, pressing. She gagged as the edges of her
vision began to darken like an ink stain leaking into her eyes. Air, she needed
air desperately.

The thought that Alexi’s face, impassive, would be the last
thing she’d ever see sent a tiny rush of adrenaline shooting through her body.
Something hard slammed into her back and she realized that he had shoved her
against the panel of the white van.
If I can feel then I’m not dead yet.
Forget about the lungs. What in my body still works?
Her fingers touched
the grip of the Walther PPK and feebly tried to locate the trigger. She could
see nothing now but a fire-burst of stars against blackness, feel nothing but
his thumbs pressing on her windpipe. All she wanted was to breathe. All she wanted
was to lie down and let the sleep take her.

The most important rule of all. Don’t die.

The shot blew them both backward, Coco’s head slamming hard
against the van. Coughing, fighting the urge to throw up, she blinked her
vision clear. When the stars receded, she saw him lying in the street. She
managed to fish out the gun and aim it at his head, walking slowly toward the
prone figure.

He wasn’t dead—the bullet seemed to have gone clean through
his thigh, if the blooming stain of blood on his jeans was any indication—but
he seemed to have passed out from shock. She would have only seconds to get him
cuffed and into the van. Better use the needle first.

He was indeed two-hundred-plus pounds of solid muscle. It
took all of her strength to drag Alexi’s body, dead weight from the chemicals
she had plunged into his neck, onto the sidewalk and up into the van. She made
more work for herself propping him in the backseat on the passenger side, but
she wanted to be able to keep an eye on him while she drove. Inside, the van
was clean, too clean. There was no sign of useful supplies or even a rag.
Sighing, she tore off her scarf and bound up his still-seeping leg above the
wound.

A little backup, she thought ruefully, would not have been
fucking unwelcome, Western Ops. Or is that Western Oops?

She climbed into the driver’s seat and indulged in the
simplest, most necessary act of being alive—deep, cleansing breaths, the
sweetest she had ever taken.

Her legs were shaking, she was desperately thirsty and she
had not eaten for almost twenty-four hours, but none of that mattered. She
looked at the map, looked up and looked at the map again. This had to be
it—MacHeath Hall, Invergarten, Scotland.

The safe house was hardly worthy of the grand title “hall”,
but still perfect for her needs—secluded, on a small, wooded rise above a loch,
like a lakeside cabin in the States, if such a thing was outfitted with a nice
kitchen, a fireplace and better yet, shackles attached to the ceiling, walls
and bed. There was also a supply of bindings, blindfolds, cuffs, collars,
lashes and, for some reason, a shelf of condoms in the bedroom armoire. That’s
what set her to humming as she clipped a very groggy Alexi by the wrists and
ankles. The only hard part had been holding him upright long enough to fasten
him to the wall. The distributor cap to the van was in her purse and her
prisoner was stuck to the wall like an insect pinned on a card.

She stood back and observed her work—not bad. His head hung
down, a mane of dark hair over his face, but he was sentient enough to will
some tension into his muscles so that the restraints would not pull his arms
from their sockets. The dark T-shirt stretched tightly over his wide chest and
flat belly, the denim on his left leg sported a hydrangea-sized blossom of
blood.

Dismissing a passing impulse to kick him in the balls for
good measure, she made a circuit of the cabin, discovering with gratitude that
a place fully stocked with implements of torture and restraint also boasted a
well-stocked infirmary. She gathered antiseptic, towels, bandages and tape for
him then helped herself to an apple from the kitchen.

The file had made it clear that she was to keep him alive
until he answered all of her questions, which he unfortunately must have figured
out, because she hadn’t shot him in the head. Alexi knew he would be in for
some pain, but that would be the worst he’d have to endure. She wondered how
much he could take, a man of his strength. She far preferred a clean shot. The
results of examination by slow torture were always spurious.

At any rate, a man that powerful would not perish from a
blasted thigh and a little blood loss. Plenty of time to bind it up after he
had suffered for a while, just to give him a taste of what he was getting into.
Her throat was still tender and the memory of those hands cutting off her air
supply angered her all over again, and the anger stiffened her spine. It was
nice to have the advantage over this monster. When she came back to check on
her captive, he was awake and glowering at her with those strange, brown-gold
eyes.

“
Sooka
!” he spat.

“I’ll assume that’s not the Russian word for ‘sweetheart’,”
she replied, munching the apple.

“You shot me.”

Coco approached the prisoner, humming again. Delicately she
wrapped her free hand around his neck and positioned her thumb over his Adam’s
apple. The look in his eyes—pure rage—gave her great pleasure.

“We are not in the same business, Alexi, but we share some
of the same tricks, don’t we? Like this little number.” She pressed her thumb
on the nerve bundle at his throat, eliciting a satisfying groan of pain. Her
thumb dug into the flesh, feeling the ridge of his larynx. He made an awful
gargling sound.

“Does that hurt? It sure hurt the fuck out of me when you
did it. Then again, you didn’t take your time while trying to choke me to
death. Lucky for you, I’m patient.”

As swift as a cobra, his head dipped and he clamped his
teeth on the tender web between her thumb and forefinger. Coco cried out in
pain and shock. Before she could jerk her arm back, her thumb slid into his
mouth.

She wanted to pull away, to wrest back control of the
situation, but her hand felt numb, as if it wasn’t attached to her body. Her
mouth hung open and she forgot to breathe as Alexi sucked on her thumb then
moved to her next two fingers, running his tongue across her skin, sucking
gently, eyes locked on hers. His mouth was warm and wet and his scent rose into
her nostrils—tobacco, leather, sweat and autumn leaves.

She jerked her hand away.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Your skin is so white, like cream. I wanted to taste you.”

She stepped back, out of reach from his head. “You won’t be
trying that again.”

“Not until you beg me to,
krahsniy
.”

“Funny. There’s a whole closet full of restraints that says different.”

His eyebrows managed a weak elevation. “Is there? Is what
you like, little bird?”

“I ask the questions here.” She retrieved a knife from her
purse and knelt before him.

“Is good position, agent,” she heard him chuckle. “Stay down
and I tell you everything.”

Once she’d cut the denim off, the wound appeared mid-thigh,
nowhere near the femoral artery or the bone, but there was a lot of blood, both
crusted and tacky, to clean. Alexi did not flinch when, none too gently, she
began to wipe it off with a wet towel.

“Your superior wants me alive,” he said.

Ugh, so he did know. And double ugh that technically,
Templeton was her boss for this mission. How he must be relishing the tin-can
operation he’d given her. She grunted around the roll of tape between her
teeth. “I don’t have a superior.”

Coco sat back on her heels. The gauze looked tidy, only a
little blood was seeping through. She couldn’t help thinking that such a
magnificent male specimen deserved better than to be strung up like this,
unless it was at his request for his own pleasure and that of a swarm of supple
females.

It wasn’t often she encountered an enemy who behaved like a
human being, with all the kaleidoscopic shades of humanity on display. Usually
she was assigned to a frustrating negotiation in an airless room or stifling
tent, or told to aim very carefully at the eye and disappear without leaving a
trail. Some had been intelligent, some even amusing or hospitable, but without
exception, the men she had dealt with were loathsome creatures who toiled in
fields of poison flowers—egomaniacal, destructive and as willing to put a
bullet in her head as she was in theirs. No one had ever sat in front of a
painting with her and talked about home. And none had ever invaded her dreams.
She willed her eyes away from his crotch.

“Is a dream for me, you know.”

She looked up sharply. “What?”

“Just last night I picked up trashy girl, red hair like you.
She sucked my dick—terrible, how you say, method?”

“Technique,” she said automatically.

“And now you are here on your knees ready to give me much
better sucking. Rule number two.”

She stood. “And what’s that?”

“You know but you won’t say, hard-head American tough girl.
You like when I lick your finger, makes your nipples hard. But is weakness,
krahsniy
.
Desire makes you weak. Rule Number Two, show no weakness.”

“Then you’re losing strength by the second,” she said dryly,
glancing at the bulge in his crotch.

He smiled wolfishly. “You, not me. It makes me only
stronger. Let me out of these chains and I will show you the lie of that until
you are raw and screaming.”

Water, she had to have water. She filled a glass in the
kitchen, dug a tablet out of her bag and returned to her victim, who by now was
less pale and had seemed to have regained a little strength.

“Ask me your questions. ‘How hard are you gonna fuck me,
Alexi?’”

She tipped the water into his mouth and slipped in the pill.

“Don’t be an asshole. It’s an antibiotic. And I’d be happy
to shoot you in the other leg just to shut you up.”

“‘You want me to worship your cock with my mouth, Alexi?’”
he teased. “Do it and I answer one question.”

At this, she laughed. “I’ll get my answers the old-fashioned
way. Maybe trading sex for secrets is how they do it in Chechnya, but not in my
country.”

He raised his eyebrows as coolly as if they were in the
middle of a cocktail-party conversation. “Is true? My little red bird trades
her moans for nothing at all last night. Better to let me take care of your wet
pussy, and you make boss happy. Everybody wins.”

“Or better yet, I shoot you in the dick and score a victory
for The US of Fucking A.” She sounded full of bravado, but inwardly, Coco was
perturbed. So he had witnessed her red-hot four-way then gone out to pick up
some slut to satisfy him. What would she have done if he’d stripped off, shoved
the men out of the way and taken over while she was naked, wet and panting?
Opened her legs for him? Let him run his tongue over her nipple, slide his cock
between her breasts, fuck her in the mouth?

You’re thinking crazy thoughts, Coco. It’s the exhaustion
kicking in, and it’s hot in here, or cold, or something.
She shivered. The
pill she’d given him was an OSO special blend—half antibiotic, half hypnotic.
He would be asleep within the hour.

And, dammit, she hadn’t been thinking. She’d strapped him to
the wall as a means of immobilizing him as fast as possible, but she couldn’t
risk his passing out and going limp in the shackles, cutting off circulation,
getting gangrene or sepsis or god knows what. If she killed him now through inattentiveness,
she’d be out of a job, just a scarred single girl who was handy with weapons
but in possession of not one marketable skill in the sunlit world. Her place
was in shadow, and keeping this hunk of deadly muscle alive was the means to
maintaining that place.

Keeping him alive and getting information.

She checked her phone—finally Rod’s questions had come
through, as well as various queries about maps, roadblocks, headquarters,
arsenals, staff and structure. Basically, Western Oops wanted to know everything
there was to know about the most powerful separatist force in Chechnya. Piece
of cake.

Once again Alexi’s head hung forward and he began to sag in
his restraints. Gingerly Coco moved toward the iron circlets, clicking them
open and then swiftly recuffing his wrists in a pair of handcuffs. There was a
bad moment when he began to pitch toward her, but she recovered quickly and
shoved him upright again. He still had some tensile strength but seemed foggy
and out of it. Good. He would know something was being done to him but not be
strong enough to fight her.

She bent down to unlatch the second leg restraint and a
powerful blow caught her in the belly. He’d used his wounded leg to knee her
hard. She fell backward onto the floor with a thump. In one swift motion he
brought his cuffed hands around the back of her neck and pressed the chain
against her tender throat.

“Take off the shirt.” She could feel his warm breath
stirring her hair. “Take off skirt and shoes.”

She toed off the shoes but it wasn’t easy to unzip and
wriggle out of her skirt. The chain’s tension never relaxed while she struggled
out of her clothes. Finally she grasped the hem of her shirt. He gave her a wry
look and increased the pressure on her throat slightly with a tug. Understanding,
she yanked hard and tore the shirt in two pieces. Finally she sat back on the
floor, her knees raised, panting from exertion. All she had on was a pair of
her “work panties”—plain black cotton that were serviceable enough but made her
pale skin glow. Alexi seemed to like what he saw. He stared greedily at the
scrap of fabric, a growl in his throat.

“Rise and walk.”

She stumbled to her feet, a hard nub digging into one heel.
The pill—he’d spit it out when she wasn’t looking. All alone in this secluded
place with a mad warlord, now was not the time to be anything less than on top
of her game. Fiercely she willed herself to focus.

They shuffled toward the bed and he dropped her on it, face
first. She rolled over in order to lunge at him upright, maybe jam her fingers
in his eyes, but before she could sit up he snapped apart the chain between the
handcuffs as easily as if they were made of wax then fell on her, flattening
her body against the bed.

She felt vulnerable and helpless with his hard-muscled body
pressing against her bare skin. Again his scent invaded her nostrils, an
intoxicating blend of autumnal air, leather and sweat.
Fight,
she told
herself,
you’re not beaten yet.
But all her training had drained away,
been pressed out by his weight and his smell and the feel of his wild hair
tickling her forehead. But more than anything, it was his eyes—those weird,
brown-gold eyes—that pinned her in place. They did not look gloating or
triumphant, but stared steadily into her blue ones.

For a long time neither of them moved. She could hear his
breathing and the sound of night creatures stirring as they came awake outside
the windows. Otherwise, the house was silent. He had one hand clamped around
both of her wrists. Coco had never felt so helpless.

His lips touched hers with whisper-lightness. She felt
herself pucker to receive them but he only brushed across her mouth, as if
tasting her. He took her plump top lip between his teeth and sucked gently then
flicked his tongue across her teeth, her bottom lip.

“Alexi
¼
” she
groaned, not knowing what it was she wanted to say next.

“Shhhh.” Again he bent his head to hers, brushing his lips
over her cheek, her forehead, her nose. He kissed her lightly. The sensation of
that one soft touch sent an electrical zap directly to her crotch and she felt
her legs soften as he settled his thighs between them, hard-muscled and erect.
He kissed her again, not experimentally this time, but deeply, his probing
tongue and leather-and-tobacco breath making her delirious.

His mouth became her whole world, a warm, intoxicating place
where each nibble and swirl stoked another leaping flame from the fire inside
her. She met his tongue with eagerness, whimpering. Her arms trapped above her
head had gone limp. He pulled up to put space between them and moved his free
hand to her bare breast. His massive palm covered the soft mound firmly, moving
in slow circles to tease the nipple upward, harder and harder, until the
pleasure turned to an ache. She heard herself moaning, felt her back arch into
his hand as she silently begged for more pressure, or a hard pinch, anything to
intensify his touch. But he continued to palm the needy breast leisurely.