Watch Over Me
Page 1
Watch Over Me
Global Guardians book 1
Susan May Warren
Contents
About Watch Over Me
Before we start…
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What’s Next?
Sneak Peek of Never Say Goodbye
Note from Susie May
Also by Susan May Warren
About Watch Over Me
She's on the run, and the only person she can trust is in the Russian KGB.
* * *
Her best friends are murdered, a serial killer is on her tail, and she’s got a secret that could save millions of lives. The last person Gracie Benson is about to trust is a cynical Russian FSB agent.
Pursued by his own demons, Vicktor isn’t going to let the killer escape, not again. But his plans for payback are suddenly threatened when he has to choose between justice or saving the woman he loves.
For Your glory, Lord.
Before we start…
Thank you so much for diving into Watch Over Me!
This book (and the entire Global Guardians series) was originally published as In Sheep’s Clothing, (and the other two as Sands of Time, and Wiser than Serpents) with Steeple Hill, in my early years of publishing. It was my first Russian thriller, and was the book that launched many many other Russian-based titles. To my joy, it was also up for a Christy award, and hit a number of best-seller lists. But what is the most fun for me is that I drafted this book while living in Khabarovsk, Far East Russia. The sights, smells and people are taken right from my front door, and missionary Gracie Benson is in many ways young me. When I got the rights back, I smoothed over the story to update it and was reminded of how much I loved Vicktor, Roman and Yanna, the Russian friends I created. I hope you enjoy meeting them either again, or for the first time. Thank you for reading!
Blessings!
Susie May
SUSAN MAY WARREN
Prologue
If the train trudged any slower into the station, American missionary Gracie Benson would be dead by sunset. Five minutes. Twenty steps. Then she’d be safely aboard.
God obviously wasn’t on her side. Not today, at least.
Then again, He certainly didn’t owe her any favors. Not after her fruitless two years serving as a missionary in Russia.
Gracie purposely kept her gaze off heaven as she hunched her shoulders and pulled the woolly brown scarf over her forehead. Please, please let this Russian peasant guise work. The train huffed its last, then belched, and Gracie jumped. Hold it together, Grace. Long enough to fool the conductor and find her berth on the train for Vladivostok. Then she could finally slam the compartment door on this horrific day—no, on this entire abysmal chapter of her life. So much for finding redemption as a missionary in Russia. She’d settle for getting out of the country alive.
She tensed, watching an elderly man dressed in the typical Russian garb of worn, fake leather jacket, wool pants, and a fraying beret gather his two canvas duffels and shuffle across the cement platform. Would he recognize her and scream, “Foreigner!” in the tongue that now drove fear into her bones?
Without a glance at her, he joined the throng of other passengers moving toward the forest-green cars. A younger man, dressed mafia-style in a crisp black leather jacket and suit pants, fell in behind the old man. Gracie stiffened. Had he looked her way? Help me, Lord!
Just because God wasn’t listening didn’t mean she couldn’t ask. The irony pricked her eyes with tears. This morning’s events had whittled down her list of trustworthy souls in Russia to a fine point. She’d give all the rubles in her pocket for someone like her cousin, Chet, FBI agent extraordinaire, to yank her out of this nightmare into safety.
Not that she should give any man a chance to introduce himself before decking him. She’d been down that road once. Never was too soon to trust another man within arm’s distance.
Gracie shuffled forward, in keeping with her disguise of tired village maiden. She clutched a worn nylon bag in one hand—her black satchel safely tucked inside—and fisted the folds of her headscarf with the other. As the smell of diesel fuel and dust soured the breathable air and cries of goodbye from well-wishing relatives, grief pooled in Gracie’s chest. Poor Evelyn.
Biting it back, Gracie cast a furtive glance beyond the crowd and caught sight of a militia officer. The soldier, dressed in muddy green fatigues, an AK-47 hung over his shoulder like a fishing basket, leaned lazily against a cement column, paying her no mind.
Hope lit inside her. Freedom beckoned from the open train door.
Stepping up to the conductor, she handed the woman her wadded ticket. The conductor glared at her as she unfolded the slip of paper. Gracie dropped her gaze and acted servile, her heart in her throat. Please, please. The conductor paused only a moment before punching the ticket and moving aside.
The train resonated with age in the smell of hot vinyl and polished wood. The body odor of previous passengers clung to the walls, and grime crusted the edges of a brown linoleum floor. Gracie bumped along the narrow corridor until she found her compartment. She’d purchased a private berth with the intent of slamming the door, locking it from inside, and not cracking it open until she reached Vladivostok. The US Consulate, only ten minutes from the train station, meant safety and escape from the nightmare.
Escape from the memories. Surely Evelyn’s killer wouldn’t follow Gracie to America.
Tossing her bag onto the lower bunk, Gracie untied the headscarf and shook out her shoulder-length damp hair. Blowing out a deep, shuddering breath, she willed her pulse to its regular rhythm.
So maybe she’d been too hard on God. He had gotten her this far. Perhaps He hadn’t turned His back completely on Gracie Benson, aka foreign-missionary-flop-turned-fugitive.
Gracie grabbed the handle and began to roll the door shut.
A man’s black shoe jammed into the crack.
“No!” Gracie stomped on it with her hiking boot. The assailant grunted and yanked his foot back. She threw all her weight into the door. “Get away!”
An arm snaked through the opening and slammed the door back, nearly ripping off Gracie’s hands. She stumbled back onto the bunk, fumbled for her bag.
How had he found her? “Get out!”
Gracie’s heart lodged in her throat. The man was huge. Dark blue eyes, knotted brow, muscles and menace in a leather jacket, he stomped into her compartment.
She screamed and flung her bag at him with all her five-foot-two-inch, one-hundred-and-twenty-pound strength.
He sidestepped and caught it.
God, help me please, now. Gracie scuttled to the farthest end of the berth. “Get out!”
He reached inside his jacket—for a knife? She kicked at him, panic blurring her vision, and pain stabbed her foot as she connected with his shin.
He winced. “Calm down!”
English? The accent still sounded Russian.
; She jerked. Sucked in a breath. “Get away from me!” She hated the shakiness in her voice. What had happened to six months’ worth of self-defense classes?
“Are you Grace Benson?”
He knew her name. Every muscle turned to liquid. She pushed against the far wall, vowing that this time it would be different. If he touched her, she’d go down bruised and kicking and clawing his eyes out.
“I’ll take your silence as a yes.”
Was that a smile on his face? She calculated the distance to the door. Trample over him. Run!
“I’ve been searching all over for you,” he said with a sigh of exasperation.
I’ll bet you have. Had he taunted Evelyn before he slit her neck too? Her breath left her.
His blue eyes glinted, as if in victory.
Where was the scream that filled her throat? Why, oh why, in times of terror, did she go into lockdown? She shot a glance into the hall.
Where was the conductor?
Her assailant turned and slammed the door closed, cutting off her escape.
Gracie went cold. Oh God, this is it! Please help me!
She watched the man drag a hand through his hair as if contemplating her demise. Would he slit her throat? Or did he have different plans? Not again.
She erupted like a woman possessed and dove at him. “Get away from me!”
He grabbed her forearms in an iron grip. “Stop it! Please. I’m not going to hurt you, trust me!”
She wrenched away from him. Fell back onto the bench seat. Her breath burned her lungs.
“Perestan!” He shook his head as her roaring pulse filled her ears. “My name’s Vicktor. I’m with the FSB and I’m trying to help you!”
1
Twenty-four hours earlier, Khabarovsk, Siberia
* * *
Nickolai Shubnikov knew how to whittle away his son Vicktor’s pride with the skill of Michelangelo—one agonizing chip at a time.
“Whoa, Alfred! Slow down.” Vicktor Shubnikov wound the leather leash twice around his grip and dug in, hoping to slow his father’s Great Dane/Clydesdale. The animal dragged him like a nuisance as he plowed through the row of street vendors, chasing an errant smell.
Two years ago Vicktor might have labeled vet duty sweet revenge. Today he called it atonement.
Vicktor dodged a babushka hawking a bouquet of lilacs, jumped over another peddling sunflower seeds, and skidded to a halt before the metal canister belonging to a wrinkled woman selling peroshke. The fried sandwiches laced the air with the odor of grease and liver. Alfred shoved his wide Dane snout into the sandwich bag.
“Get your beast out of here!” the woman cried. She whacked at Alfred, who didn’t even flinch. Vicktor, however, felt her land a hearty blow on his shoulder.
“C’mon, you mutt.” Vicktor grabbed Alfred’s fraying collar and yanked him away. He thrust the woman a ten-ruble note. She swiped it from his hand.
“Why do you do that to me?” They half trotted down the sidewalk, Vicktor hunched over at the waist and trying to match Alfred’s gait. The dog’s black jowls flopped and his saggy eyes gave no indication of remorse.
Penance. He cursed the impetuousness that had led to this moment. If only he’d been smarter, faster, wiser, he’d be in Lenin Square on this sunny Sunday, slapping shots against Roman, outscoring the former wing. Or maybe he’d be at Yanna’s volleyball game. The Khabarovsk Amur volleyball team didn’t need help from their fans to bury their opponents—he went for the pure joy of watching Yanna’s power spike.
If only David could see her now.
He checked his watch. Noon. Hopefully Evgeny would be in the office. He hadn’t called ahead, but the vet kept normal business hours, and Sunday had been a working day since Stalin outlawed the religious day of rest some eighty years earlier.
He muscled the Dane toward the dirt path that led to Evgeny’s office. Vicktor had to admire his friend for carving out his dreams into a private practice. He and Vicktor had chewed away long hours in high school, concocting ways to free the laboratory mice from Tatiana Ivanovka’s biology classroom. Between the pranks, however, Evgeny had revealed the love of medicine inherent to true physicians. Why he had gone into animal medicine still baffled Vicktor. Then again, Vicktor had sworn he’d never join the militia, and look where he had ended up.
Evgeny’s office, a tiny green log house, sat lopsided and forlorn in the shadowy cover of three nine-story concrete high-rises. Vicktor turned up the dirt path and shivered as the sun passed behind a building. He shoved his free hand into his leather jacket pocket, wishing he hadn’t taken out the lining. That morning, during his run, the wink of the sun against a cloudless sky and the fresh breeze smelling of lilac had lulled him into believing winter had finally surrendered to spring in Siberia. He’d jogged home, unzipped the wool lining from his jacket, thrown his shopka on the top shelf, and kissed winter goodbye. Now, as he approached the office, his lips felt parched from the cold, and a faint musty odor curled his nose, like the smell of moldy clothes sitting in old snow.
The Dane jerked out of Vicktor’s grip and he tripped, glared at the animal and picked up his pace. Of course Alfred would be anxious to see Evgeny. The vet had treated him for nearly ten years.
Two paces before the door, Alfred skidded to a halt, sat on his haunches and growled.
“It’s just a checkup, pal. Cool it.” He patted the dog’s head. Still, the way the door hung ajar raised the fine hairs on the back of Vicktor’s neck. “What do you see?”
Alfred growled again, a threatening rattle in his ancient throat, and curled his lips, showing canines.
“Tiha. Quiet, boy,” Vicktor commanded. He paused, took a step toward the door and pushed. The door groaned, as if in warning.
Vicktor recoiled as the smell of rotting flesh hit him. He covered his nose.
Alfred whined.
“Stay,” Vicktor rasped, and looped the leash around the door handle. Gulping a breath, he stepped across the threshold. It took all his military training not to gag at the odor that poured from the room.
“Evgeny?” Vicktor surveyed the reception area. Broken glass from the smashed display case crunched under his feet, a cash register lay overturned on a ripped vinyl chair. Whipping out a handkerchief, Vicktor cupped it over his nose and tiptoed around broken vials of animal narcotics on his way to the examination room.
“Evgeny? It’s Vicktor.”
Silence.
In the examination room, the leather bench where Evgeny examined Alfred on occasion had been slashed, the stuffing pushing through the cut like a festering wound. A jumble of medical utensils gleamed like weapons of war where the sun licked the wooden floor.
He backed out, a sick feeling welling in his gut. He crept toward Evgeny’s office, ruing the creak of floorboards. When he swung the door open, Vicktor’s blood ran cold.
Shards from the ruined glass cabinet littered the carpet. An emptied drawer lay upturned over its contents, a foot-sized crater in the middle. Notebooks and ledgers, slashed into pieces, were strewn like stripped leaves. The squash-yellow area rug bled with the black and red dye of crushed pens.
Vicktor ducked back into the hall. “Evgeny?” He heard panic in his voice. He purposely kept few friends, but Chief Veterinarian Evgeny Lakarstin was one of them. With the exception of Roman and Yanna, and two Americans he didn’t acknowledge to his coworkers, he depended on Evgeny. He counted him as the type of paren with whom he could share a sauna and shed a few secrets while he sweated.
And in Vicktor’s world, trust wasn’t an easily acquired commodity.
Vicktor headed for the back door leading to the kennels. Even from the hall, the eerie silence gave him chills—no dogs barking, no plaintive mewing.
Two steps before the back entrance, he spied another door to his left. He’d thought it a closet before, had even asked Evgeny about it once. The tall vet had shrugged and said, “Supplies.”
Vicktor’s eyes narrowed, instincts firing. He grabbed the handle. W
ith a squeak the door opened.
He grabbed the door frame and hung on with a white fist as he tore his gaze away, wincing.
Etched in his mind, however, was the image of Evgeny lying in a pool of his own russet-colored blood.
Three hundred people clapping, cheering, for her, Gracie Benson. It just might have been the worst moment of her life.
How she longed to find a safe place and hide from tomorrow.
Gracie stood on the platform in front of the church, listening to the congregation applaud her for two years of missionary work, and felt like a sham. She was a joke, an embarrassment, a failure, and no amount of applause or kind words from Pastor Yuri Mikhailovich could erase that fact. She swallowed hard. She just hoped God wasn’t watching.
She’d had her second chance. And had blown it.
Maybe she could get her job back at Starbucks. She made a mean mocha latte. Her unfinished English degree felt light-years away. She probably couldn’t recite a Robert Frost poem even if the KGB—no, the FSB, wasn’t that their new name?—put her under the bright lights and stuck needles under her toes.
Pastor Yuri shook her hand, his meaty grip slightly sweaty in hers. “Thank you, Gracie, for your hard work. We won’t soon forget it.” His brown eyes, deep and holding a lifetime of spiritual wisdom, settled on her.