Take Me for a Ride (15 page)

Natalie stirred and rolled over as he eased the zipper of his bag open and pulled a few things out. He disappeared into his bathroom office again with his laptop and phone, feeling completely crazy but somehow . . . better.

Avy emerged from the Kropotskinskaya metro station and blinked in the sunlight. Across the street, the bright golden domes of the Cathedral of Christ the Redeemer gleamed over the bleached white building. The cathedral was truly spectacular. She’d taken two steps toward it when her fiancé strode up to surprise her.

“My darling!” Liam said expansively, holding his arms wide and breathing something lemony and alcoholic into Avy’s airspace. “How was your flight?” He seized her and kissed her on the lips before she could answer, lifting her off her feet. “You look exhausted, my love.”

She felt the familiar weakening of her knees at his touch and a singing in her blood. However, she hadn’t gotten where she was in life by being stupid. Not only had Liam been drinking during the day, which was unusual, but he was nervous.

Liam was flippant, irreverent, incurably elegant, and inordinately handsome. He possessed a winning personality, buckets of charm, and a colossal set of brass balls. But he was never, ever nervous.

When he set her on her feet again and gave her an affectionate squeeze, she looked up at his aristocratic countenance and narrowed her eyes. “What’s up, Liam?”

“Up? My spirits upon seeing you, gorgeous.” He seized her carry-on, which was all she ever traveled with, and slung it over his shoulder. Then he grabbed her by the hand and towed her along the road by the river, all the way to the Bolshoy Kamennyy Bridge, under it, and past a guarded gate that he explained was Boro vitskaya Tower, the official, presidential entrance to the Kremlin.

The Kremlin itself was a vast and varied complex, not at all what she’d expected. Instead of looking like a Russian version of the Pentagon, it contained all sorts of buildings, from towers to palaces to cathedrals and gardens.

Liam kept up a constant stream of tourism patter, and she almost fell for the distraction. But once they were alone in his sumptuous room at the Metropol, Avy fixed him with a no-nonsense stare. “Liam, why exactly are we here in Moscow?”

“Oh,” he said airily, “you know. The usual.”

“What are we replacing?”

“Well . . .” His tone downshifted into cautious. “It’s not precisely—that is to say, not quite a, ah, um—”

“Liam!” For him to be this stumbling and inarticulate, whatever he was up to was very, very bad.

“Yes, love?”

“Do you remember when you promised that you’d never lie to me?”

He squirmed visibly. “Yes. Which is why, my darling—”

“And do you remember when you promised that you’d go straight, for good?”

“I do indeed, my love. There’s just been a tiny wrinkle in my overall plan to be a properly righteous citizen . . . nothing that can’t be quickly ironed out. I am, I swear, ninety-nine-point-nine percent straight.”

Avy shook her head, her mouth set grimly. “Liam, you’re more bent than a paper clip!”

“Not so,” he protested. “I’m as straight as the edge of a book . . . It’s just that at the moment I have a wee—truly
microscopic
—uh, what you might think of as a rather dog-eared page. Only one!”

Avy kicked off her shoes and lay back flat on the bed, putting her hands over her eyes. Her temples throbbed. “I knew it. You’re back to your old tricks.”

“No, I swear to you, I’m not. I’m up to someone else’s trick. Someone to whom I made a promise.”

“Then break it,” Avy said shortly.

“I can’t do that.”

“Then you can consider our
engagement
broken.”

Suddenly Liam’s big body straddled her own on the bed, and he took hold of her wrists. “Please, Avy. Please just listen to me.”

“No!” she said, struggling.

He didn’t release her wrists. “Please, I beg you. Just hear me out.”

Avy didn’t do helpless well. Anger began to crackle through her; instinctive female panic at being held down flared it into a blaze like burning newspaper set under dry kindling. Without warning, she bucked, pulled her knees through his, and slammed both her feet into his chest. The force of it propelled Liam into the wall, and his head into a framed painting that hung there. He went down hard, the picture joining him.

“Bloody hell!” he said, staring up at her.

“Don’t you ever,
ever
, hold me down like that again,” she told him, panting. “Understand?”

“I’m sorry. I meant nothing by it, Ave—you must know that. All I wanted was for you to listen. I still need you to listen.”

Adrenaline wasn’t finished pulsing through her, but she got her breathing under control.

“Christ, love, remind me never to meet you in a dark alley,” Liam muttered, putting the painting aside and getting to his feet. He flexed his shoulders and winced. “I do believe you’ve imprinted my spine into the Sheet-rock, you vixen.”

“Talk,” she said without sympathy.

“Oh, you’re all ears now? There’s female logic for you—”

“Liam, I’m giving you one shot to explain before I walk out of this hotel and out of your life. I will not marry a career criminal. I won’t do it, understand?”

“Perfectly.” Liam sighed and sank down on the bed. “This is not an ordinary theft, by any means. But you could actually look at it as a recovery, Ave.”

“Oh, I could, could I? And why would I do that?”

“Because it involves bringing the . . . er . . . item back for a trial.”

Avy folded her arms across her chest. “A trial as in test run?”

“No, no, no—a courtroom trial.” He beamed as if that explained everything.

“Go on,” Avy ordered.

“It’s a long story,” Liam said, dropping into a wing chair.

“I have plenty of time to hear it.”

“All right, then. You are aware, my love, of international efforts to locate and prosecute Nazi war criminals for their heinous acts during the Second World War, correct?”

“The Nuremburg Trials?”

“Those took place immediately after the war. I’m talking about current efforts.”

“Aren’t the Nazis all dead by now?”

“Sadly, no. And many of them fled prosecution to live under assumed identities in foreign countries.”

“Okay,” Avy said. “So what is it that you need to steal, and for whom? Evidence of some kind? Photographs? Tape recordings?”

Liam worried at his upper lip with his teeth and squinted at her. “Something rather larger than that.”

“Liam, stop being so mysterious and just tell me already!”

“Avy, my darling, what I’m here to repossess is a man.”

She stared at him, unblinking. “That’s funny, Liam.”

“Really. I must steal a live human being, a former Nazi war criminal whom Russia is refusing to extradite.”

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me, Liam!”

He shook his impeccably groomed head.

“Let me explain something to you: What you’re talking about is not theft. It’s called
kidnapping
.”

He shrugged. “Terminology, love.”

“No, no, no. This is a human being. A person. Not a sculpture or a painting or a diamond.”

He winked at her. “Your powers of deductive reasoning are impressive.”

“Are you out of your mind?!”

“I’m quite sane, I assure you.”

“How—what . . .” Words failed her. How could he just sit there so calmly, hands loosely clasped between his knees? “Okay, Liam. Let’s pretend, just for shits and giggles, that you somehow manage to overpower this man and kidnap him. How are you going to get him out of the country?”

“By air,” he said as if that were all there was to it.

“By air,” she repeated scathingly. “What, you’re going to shoot him out of a potato gun and over the border?”

“No, my darling.” His voice held infinite patience. “We’ll have a small aircraft waiting. It’s all arranged.”

“Oh, it is, is it?” she asked, her wrath rising.

“Yes, but I need your help.”

“I’m not helping you kidnap someone. No way.”

“But it’s a matter of honor, love.”

“Since when do thieves have honor?”

“Aha . . . but I’m no longer a thief. I’m working terribly hard to get my honor out of layaway, you see.”

Avy rolled her eyes heavenward. “I think we should just go sightseeing, tour a vodka factory, and go the hell home.”

Liam shook his head sadly. “I can’t do that. I’ve been asked to help.”

“Asked by whom?” Avy had a bad, squishy feeling in the pit of her stomach.

“People in a position to give me another get-out-of-jail-free card, this time for Eastern Europe, Russia, and several former Soviet territories.”

Oh, great. “And how badly do you need that get-out-of-jail-free card?”

Liam shrugged. “That all depends on where you’d like to honeymoon, my love.”

Avy drew in as much air as she could, and then let it out in a long-suffering groan.

“Avy, in all seriousness, I do feel honor bound to help prosecute these criminals in any way I can. They tortured, starved, and executed millions of people. This is about justice. This is about doing what’s right.”

She sat silently, reflecting unwillingly on the truth of his words.

“So you see, don’t you, my darling, that this isn’t strictly a theft. I’ve simply made a commitment—as you do every day—to
recover
something for a perfectly legitimate organization.”

She dragged her hands down her face and peered at him through her splayed fingers. “Which one?”

“Essentially the World Court.”

“And they have enough evidence?”

“They say so.”

“Then why won’t Russia extradite the man? The Nazis were responsible for the deaths of more than twenty million Russians during World War Two.”

“Avy, I don’t know. From what I understand, there’s no documentation right now that Russia’s still attempting to investigate or prosecute Nazi war criminals. But in this case it could simply be a case of bad relations with the U.S.”

She sighed, straightened, and looked him directly in the eyes. “What’s this man’s name?”

“Weimar von Bruegel.”

“Okay. And where does he live?”

“In the Zamoskvoreche section of the city, quite close to the Tretyakov Gallery.”

She was silent for several moments. Then she said in resigned tones, “All right. When do we go in and get him?”

He shot her a brilliant smile. “I
knew
you’d come ’round to my way of thinking on this.”

She just shook her head and again looked heavenward. “Why, God?” she asked. “Why me? Why couldn’t someone else have fallen for Liam James?”

He bounded out of his chair, took her into his arms, and pulled her hands away from her face. Then he kissed her soundly. “Nobody else would do for me,” he murmured. “Only you, my Ava Brigitte.”

She melted against him despite her many apparent misgivings.

He raised his head. “Please note,” he said, “that I have released your hands.”

“So noted,” she said huskily.

“Excellent. Now I have every intention of putting
my
hands up your skirt, love . . . with your permission, of course.”

“Then do it already,” she said, busily unbuttoning his shirt.

“You won’t kick my bollocks into my tonsils?”

“Maybe tomorrow . . .”

“That’s my girl,” Liam said.

And then they got busy.

Natalie woke unwillingly, and only because someone was gently shaking her shoulder. She opened her eyes, and Eric’s face swam into focus. “Wha’?” She closed them again and tried to slip back into inky unconsciousness.

But Eric’s voice said, “Wake up. We have a flight to catch.”

Flight?

The smell of strong coffee wafted to her nostrils and she struggled to a sitting position, but her eyelids felt as if they were made of iron. Whatever he’d given her to sleep last night hadn’t worn off.

Eric put a cup of coffee into her hands and she automatically raised it to her lips and drank, burning her tongue. That finally brought her the rest of the way awake.

He’d already showered and was walking around in nothing but a towel, knotted at his waist. A couple of water droplets still clung to his neck and those powerful shoulders. Sunlight caught the reddish mat of his chest hair and transformed it to burnished copper.

He looked as if he belonged in one of those men’s razor commercials, with a stunning woman stroking his jaw to prove the closeness of his shave. Or perhaps on a great white yacht, selling high-end liquor with his eyes reflecting the hue of the Caribbean in the background.

He didn’t look as if he belonged in the same reality as normal, average people like her. What was he doing in the same hotel room?

Well, for one thing, he was packing, throwing his clothes into a handsome, dark leather duffel bag.

Natalie said, “What do you mean, we have a flight?”

“Large tin can with wings that transports people from one country to another.” Eric winked at her and gestured to the coffee. “Drink up and then get through the shower. Plane leaves in three hours and we have to be at La Guardia in one. We’ll fly overnight to London and from there to Moscow.”

Natalie just blinked. Then she said slowly, “You booked us tickets to
Russia
?”

“No, Disneyland.” He ran a comb through his wet hair. The dampness turned it a dark auburn color.

“Do me a favor and hold off on the sarcasm until you’re making sense.”

“Sorry.” He shot her a sheepish grin. “Yes, Natalie, I booked us flights to Russia.”

She finally absorbed it. “Why?”

“Because . . . because you need to go. I thought it was a matter of some urgency.”

“Yes, Eric. I need to go. But why are
you
going? We barely know each other.”