Oceans of Fire (9 page)

There was a small silence. “If that’s what you want, Abbey,” Hannah said.

“It’s what I need,” she said and turned to look down at Aleksandr.

He lifted his hand to touch her. He knew it was a mistake when he did it, but he couldn’t resist. Her eyes held too much sorrow, too many shadows, and it tugged on his heartstrings. The moonlight spilled across her face, bathing her face and hair in silver and she looked a temptation, a red-haired vision he couldn’t get out of his mind. His hand slid into the mass of silky hair; his thumb caressed her soft skin as he framed her face. “I dream about you every night.”

“I have nightmares about you.” Why couldn’t she pull away? Any other man would be writhing on the floor. Why did he make her so weak? Why did she crave him like some terrible drug? She hadn’t been a weak woman until he came into her life. “You nearly destroyed me. Do you really think I want anything to do with you?”

“Did it occur to you it nearly destroyed me as well? I love you, Abbey. You’re my heart and soul. Did you ever, even
once
, wonder why, wonder what was happening?”

“Of course I did. I loved you.” She deliberately used the past tense. That got his attention. His eyes glittered at her, a warning, but she was beyond caring. “I didn’t want to believe you would betray me and leave me when I needed you the most, but you did. I didn’t want to hear an explanation. Either I was important to you or I wasn’t. Obviously I wasn’t, so I moved on. That’s life, Aleksandr.”

“What is going on between you and your policeman friend, Harrington?” Aleksandr kept his voice mild, but his gut was churning. Abigail was a stubborn woman. If she made up her mind not to give him a chance, it would be nearly impossible to change her decision. His one hope was that she was at last arguing with him. Abigail walked away from confrontations. She once had confided that her temper terrified her and she refused to allow herself to be placed in any position where she would want to retaliate.

She was also very loyal. He had learned that the hard way. In the days of interrogation, she’d refused to betray him, remaining stubbornly silent no matter what was threatened or done to her. He rubbed his hand over his face, chasing away the nightmares of watching the tapes. She had been so alone. So frightened. And she hadn’t known he was working frantically behind the scenes to get her free, to have her deported. She hadn’t known that things had gone so drastically wrong.

“You stay away from Jonas Harrington.”

There was fierce protection in her voice. And affection. He flinched from that realization. “What is he to you?”

“None of your business.”

“I’ve lost my partner, Abbey. I nearly killed you. I just had an encounter with a very dangerous man who tried to kill me outside your house. More than anything I’m worried about you because when he goes hunting, he doesn’t miss.” And it didn’t make sense to him. If Prakenskii had been ordered to kill Abigail Drake he would have done so with no hesitation. What other reason could he have for being there? Aleksandr squashed the urge to go after the man. He had learned a hard lesson about acting without all the facts and he wasn’t about to make another, perhaps fatal mistake.

“Tell me more about him,” Abigail urged.

“His name is Ilya Prakenskii. We were raised in a state-run home together and we watched each other’s back. It had to be that way. Even there, when we were young and they were training us for our work, there were always power plays going on. It’s a way of life where I come from.”

“You know him?”

“Probably better than anyone else,” he confirmed. “If there’s one man I respect and even like, it’s Ilya, but our handlers didn’t encourage friendship. He went one way and I went another. But Ilya doesn’t miss. I don’t know why he’s here, but he said he didn’t know Danilov and I believe him. He’s reputed to work for Sergei Nikitin and Nikitin is mafia, a very violent man who likes to solve his problems in extreme ways.”

Abigail’s heart jumped into her throat. “You said there was a hit out on you. Is he here for you?”

“He says not.”

“But he was here, and he knows you would come here. Why else would he be watching this house and me unless it had something to do with me witnessing your partner’s death or to get at you? It’s the only logical explanation.”

Aleksandr nodded. “That’s true, but I don’t think I’m his target. He warned me I had powerful enemies.“

“Do you?”

“Of course. I wouldn’t be where I am without having made enemies. You have to understand the dynamics going on in my country. There’ve been so many changes over the last twenty years, so many shifts in power, and no one ever wants to give up power.”

“What did you do that’s so bad someone would put out a hit on you?”

There was a small silence. Abigail’s heart sank. She sat on the edge of the bed. “It was something to do with my leaving Russia, wasn’t it?”

“Yes.” He wasn’t going to lie to her. “I had enemies I didn’t know about and they took their opportunity when they had it after what happened.”

She sucked in her breath sharply, holding up her hand to stop him. “Shut up. Just shut up. Don’t talk about it.”

“If we don’t talk about it, we’ll never get past it,” he said gently.

“There is no getting past it. Not now. Not ever. Do you have
any
idea what you put me through? You tore out my heart and you just let them beat me. Damn you, Sasha, don’t even pretend you didn’t know what they were doing to me. You knew everything going on. You had too many contacts not to know. You
let
them.” She was sick again. Her stomach was protesting, a sickness that never seemed to go away no matter how many antacids she took.

“I didn’t know until it was too late and then I moved heaven and earth to get you out fast. And damn it, you know why.”

She covered her face with her hands. “I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to
ever
think about it. I may as well have pulled the trigger myself. That poor man and his poor wife. I have to live with the responsibility of his death. I know that, but I didn’t deserve what you did to me. If that’s your idea of punishment…”

“Stop!” For the first time he raised his voice in a string of Russian curses. “It wasn’t a punishment. You were never responsible for the death of that man. There were all kinds of things leading up to it, none of which you had a hand in. His death was a terrible tragedy, and one I regret, but it had nothing to do with you.” He forced his body to relax, forced air through his lungs. “Is that what you really think? That I was punishing you?”

“You left me completely alone. I know you deserted me when I needed you most. You turned me over to the authorities and you let them interrogate me. You knew what that meant and you did nothing about it.”

“How do you think you got out of the country? You aren’t rotting in prison. You were deported and out of the country within days of your arrest. Do you think that really happens in Russia? If you believed I deserted you, why didn’t you accuse me? Why didn’t you name me when they were asking for information?”

Abigail sank down onto the edge of the bed. “I don’t know. I didn’t know what would happen to you.” She shook her head again. “I thought I deserved how they treated me after what happened. I should have known he felt guilty because of his daughter’s death, not that he
was
guilty. I shouldn’t have had any preconceived notions when I went into that room. Everyone sounded so certain he’d murdered her, that he was the one who was killing those children, but I shouldn’t have let that influence me. You were asking him so many questions, firing them at him over and over, and the other cops were doing the same. He acted guilty. He wanted to confess something. Anything. When I asked if he was guilty and he said yes, I
felt
it was wrong, but I was so busy listening to the officers, to you.” She broke off and covered her face again. “I betrayed my own gift. I asked the wrong questions and he confessed his guilt, just as I led him to do. And then he reached for the gun that stupid officer had sitting there so conspicuously.”

“If we drove him to commit suicide we were all to blame, not you,” he said.

“
If? If
? There is no if. He was made to believe he was guilty for the loss of his child. No one comforted him. No one counseled him. He felt guilty because he was watching her while his wife was away and he fell asleep. He took a nap.”

“He was drinking. He drank too much and he went to sleep in the afternoon.”

“Does that absolve what we did to him? He wasn’t the killer, but you suspected he wasn’t. You suspected it even when you brought him in for questioning, didn’t you?”

“We always look at the parents first.”

“But you didn’t tell me your suspicions. You already had a suspect.”

“I had no evidence, Abbey. I had to follow procedure. I brought the parents in and questioned him just as I would any other suspect.”

“But you didn’t believe he was guilty. Everyone was hammering away at him and I just joined in.” Abbey bit at her knuckles in agitation. Night after night she saw the man’s face and her own hands covered in his blood. “I helped kill him.”

“Damn it, Abbey. He shot himself. We question suspects all the time. They don’t kill themselves.”

“You can absolve yourself of all responsibility, Aleksandr, but I can’t. And what you did to me afterward is inexcusable, and it isn’t the actions of a man in love. You may want to sleep with me, but I’m not willing to settle for that.”

“Far more was going on in that room than either of us knew.” He pushed a hand through the dark waves of his hair. “I had risen through the ranks fast and solved cases and had come to the attention of my superiors quickly. I had a background in…” He hesitated. “I was a very successful operative before I was a police officer. I became a detective when others had worked many years to get there. I also had people in high places owing me favors. I knew how to get through red tape and move around power struggles. When that happens, you step on toes and make enemies you aren’t always aware of.”

Abigail struggled to breathe, to think beyond that traumatic moment when the young father had reached for the gun. She hadn’t been able to stop time or slow it down or relive the minutes before he had pulled the trigger.

“That officer, the one who let him near his gun, was waiting for his opportunity. He worked for a man named Leonid Ignatev. My career had surpassed Ignatev’s and he took advantage of every mistake I made and every vulnerability I had to sabotage my career. I knew he was dirty. I suppose we all are to some extent, we have to work deals all the time to get anywhere, but Ignatev was in bed with the mafia. He had his plant on my team and when things were chaotic, as they often are in an interrogation, his man allowed the suspect to take his gun. I should have known what was going on when he wasn’t arrested immediately too, but I was focused on you. I was certain my name would keep you safe, but Ignatev had his men working on you.”

Abigail took a deep breath and looked at him. “And then it stopped, very abruptly after two days, and the new men were very subdued and I could smell their fear. That was even more frightening. You did that, didn’t you?” Her heart was pounding now, so hard her chest hurt. She didn’t want the truth because she couldn’t face that part of him. She knew he was ruthless, but she didn’t know if she could look at how deep that trait ran in him. The men interrogating her had whispered among themselves, casting glances her way, obviously very frightened of even talking with her. She had been afraid, at first, that she was going to be shot “accidentally,” but then she heard Aleksandr’s name whispered and the things they said had terrified her.

“I did what I had to do to protect you and get you safely out of the country. In doing so, I made a bitter, relentless enemy and he retaliated by putting out a hit on me.”

Abigail shook her head. She didn’t want to know what he’d done to get her out of the country. She’d been glad to go and was grateful she had gotten out, but she was very much afraid it had cost lives and she already had enough blood on her hands.

“Aleksandr, how can you be so calm about it? How can you sit there calmly and tell me someone is going to try to kill you?”

“It’s a way of life, Abbey. It’s the only way I know.”

“Well, it sucks.”

“Quite possibly.”

He was looking at her with his heart in his eyes. Not pleading. Aleksandr never pleaded, but all the same, he looked at her as if she belonged to him. She shook her head fiercely. “It isn’t my world. I can’t live like that and you can’t take back everything that happened. You just can’t.”

“I’m not trying to take it back. There were mistakes, I’ll admit that, but we have to find our way back to one another. I know you don’t love Jonas Harrington. And I can’t look at other women. What are we doing apart?”

Abigail shook her head, her hand going defensively to her heart. “There is no way back. I’m not willing to risk who and what I am again. I don’t trust you enough to hand either my life or my magic over to you again.”

“Damn it, Abbey. You had to have understood I couldn’t be implicated in any way. In my country there is always a scapegoat. I was so close to catching the killer. If I were removed from the case, he would have had months, maybe years to continue. It took me so long to even get close to him.”

“Whatever you did afterward to get me out of the country, I’m grateful for, but you
gave
me to them. You sacrificed me.”

“There was no other choice. You would be detained and interrogated, but I knew with my contacts I could get you free and out of the country immediately. It never occurred to me that Ignatev would choose that opportunity to strike at me. It should have, but it didn’t.” Aleksandr could see the hurt on her face. It ran deep and he hated that he’d been the one to put it there. “I was so close, Abbey, to catching that child killer. I could reach out and touch him, I was that close. If I had come forward everything would have been lost and I would have been responsible for any children he killed after that. My every instinct was to protect you first, to protect
you
, my heart and soul, but it would have been selfish.”