An Uncommon Honeymoon

by Susan Mann

  “You’re welcome.” He laced his fingers together at the small of her back. “I got a movie for us to watch tonight.”

  “Only married a month and we’re already staying home on Saturday nights,” she teased.

  “Okay, Miss Social Butterfly. Do you have another suggestion?”

  “It’s Mrs. Social Butterfly, thank you very much. And to be honest, I was thinking about writing out some more wedding present thank-you cards.”

  His expression turned sour. “That’s no fun.”

  “I know, but that note thanking your Uncle Charlie for the chainsaw isn’t going to write itself.” Her nose wrinkled. “Seriously, what’s the deal with that? I mean, I appreciate the thought, but we live in an apartment. What are we going to do with a chainsaw?”

  He shook his head. “I got nothing. He’s my mom’s brother. Her side of the family tends to be”—he peered up at the ceiling as he searched for the right word—“unconventional.” A devilish smile curled on his lips. “Can I write the thank-you for that black lacy number Nicole gave you? I owe her a tremendous debt of gratitude.”

  Quinn’s eyes sparkled with delight. “I think we should both thank her.” Every time she wore that sheer little nightie, some rafter-rattling sex ensued. “But you’re right. I don’t want to do that on a Saturday night. Besides, I want to keep enjoying my day off from Russian immersion. I’m only hours away from writing everything in Cyrillic.”

  A guilty look crossed his face.

  She cut her eyes up at him. “What?”

  “The movie is in Russian.”

  “Aw, James,” she said, annoyed. “This is the first day all week we’ve spoken English at home.” She shrugged out of his embrace, crossed the kitchen, and spun around. “I’ve been marinating in Russian twenty-four-seven since the day we went back to work. I spend all day, every day in that damn class at the agency. And then when I get home, I have to struggle and fight to come up with every word I want to say to you. I feel like a two-year-old, having to point at stuff and use one or two words at a time.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m sick of it.”

  “I know you are, and I know it’s frustrating. But give yourself a break. You’ve only been at it for a couple of weeks. You’re doing a lot better than you think.”

  Her shoulders lowered, but the scowl remained. “Really?”

  “Yeah, really.” She heard nothing but absolute sincerity in his tone. “Maybe you aren’t quite ready to read War and Peace in the original Russian. But I’m sure you’ll be rock solid when we get to Saint Petersburg.”

  She wasn’t so sure about that.

  He moved a shoulder in a slight shrug. “I thought a movie tonight would be a good compromise since we haven’t spoken it at all today.” He took a tentative step toward her. “It has English subtitles.”

  He was so incredibly sweet and patient. Her defenses began to crumble. “I guess it is important I do something with it every day.”

  He shoved his hands in his pockets and shuffled closer. “I’ll make popcorn,” he said with a smile that made her go all tingly.

  Holy cow, he was sexy. And that smile of his always rendered her completely powerless to resist. Not that she ever wanted to. “Okay.” She grabbed the front of his shirt and hauled him to her. “Ya tebya lyublyu.”

  He stroked her cheek with the back of his fingers and responded to her declaration of love for him. “Ya tozhe tebya lyublyu.”

  After they shared a tender kiss, she asked, “So which masterpiece of Russian cinema will we be watching?”

  He went to the cupboard and removed a bag from the box of microwave popcorn. “You scoff, but it’s considered an artistic tour de force.” He removed the bag’s outer cellophane layer, tossed it in the microwave, and pressed a button on the front panel. The oven began to hum.

  “Artistic. Now I’m really worried.” Quinn picked up her wineglass from the table and took a sip. “They can be hard to follow when you do speak the language.”

  A lone kernel popped in the oven. A few seconds later, several more exploded in rapid succession.

  “I’m sure between the two of us we can get the main points figured out,” he said.

  With James’s wineglass now in her other hand, she carried both into the living room and set them on the coffee table. The second she flopped onto the couch, Rasputin jumped up, sat on the cushion next to her, and began his after-dinner cleaning ritual. “You’re a little more optimistic than I am.” She watched Rasputin lick the back of his front paw and swipe it over his ear and face. “You still haven’t told me the name of this cinematic wonder. From what you’ve said so far, I take it it’s not The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie.”

  The explosions coming from the kitchen slowed until Quinn heard only an occasional staccato pop. James opened the microwave door, retrieved the now expanded bag, and pulled it open. He dumped the contents into a bowl and said, “That movie is a masterpiece of another kind. Tonight, our senses will be feasting on the black-and-white glory that is the 1938 classic Alexander Nevsky.” Bowl in hand, he walked toward her. “And of course you’re already searching the Internet about it.”

  She looked up from her phone and arched an eyebrow. “And this surprises you because . . .”

  He set the popcorn next to the wineglasses. “I’m only surprised by the fact you don’t already know about it, oh Great Trivia Master.”

  She stuck her tongue out at him, garnering her a laugh. “I’m a librarian. I don’t know everything. I just know how to find out about everything.”

  “Ah, your secret is out,” he said and went to the DVD player.

  While he pressed buttons on various remote controls and slid the disc into the machine, she skimmed the summary of the movie. “It says Alexander Nevsky was a thirteenth century prince who, among other things, waged war with an invading German army. Apparently it’s a parallel to the Nazi threat to the Soviets.” Her eyes followed James as he turned off the overhead lights and switched on a lamp. The room was illumined by a soft, yellow glow. “Sounds like a feelgood romp,” she said, poker-faced.

  He lowered himself onto the sofa next to her, lifted the bowl of popcorn, and settled back against the cushions. His feet propped on the table, he set the munchies between them, pointed the remote, and pressed play.

  She burrowed into his side and tucked her feet under her when his arm curled around her back. “Oh, cool,” she said, consulting her phone again. “The score was written by Sergei Prokofiev.” They watched the opening credits, which featured no sound other than a hum and the occasional crackle of the original eighty-year-old recording. “Sergei must have had a no-opening-credits clause in his contract.”

  “Yeah, because the Soviets were all about fair compensation,” James said before munching on a handful of popcorn.

  Quinn clicked off her phone and dropped it on the cushion next to Rasputin. With front paws folded under his chest and tail wrapped around one side, the cat was the epitome of chill. He stared Zen-like through eyelids lowered to thin slits.

  The movie opened with a shot of a battlefield strewn with shields and swords. A bleached-white skull still wearing its helmet lay on a bleak, barren landscape.

  “Cheery,” James deadpanned.

  At first, Quinn followed the story pretty well. Ragingly propagandist, noble, salt-of-the-earth Russians were forced to repel an invasion by the sinister, papist Germans who wore metal bucket-like helmets on their heads reminiscent of the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Admittedly, she was more than a little excited when she understood random words here and there. Of course, the subtitles helped.

  Eventually, though, her attention began to wane about the time the Germans who looked like the “Knights Who Say, ‘Ni! ’” sent their men to battle the Russian peasant army. It wasn’t for lack of her trying to stay focused. The culprit was James. As they sat together—relaxed, easy, intimate—her body reacted to him. She throbbed. Her breathing grew shallow. Her mouth went dry. Her
mind was hijacked by thoughts of jumping on him and kissing him senseless. And that was only for starters.

  She wondered if James was afflicted by the same urges when he began to draw circles on her upper arm with his fingertips. Either way, it made her go utterly cross-eyed.

  She shifted closer to him and drew in a deep breath. She was so fully consumed by him—his touch, his scent, the warmth his body emitted—she couldn’t contain her desire any longer.

  Fire burning in her belly, she twisted toward him and gently pressed her lips to his jaw.

  He didn’t react, at least overtly. She knew she had his attention, though, by the way the muscles in his abdomen quivered under her hand.

  His eyelids fluttered as she continued to cover his jaw with delicate kisses. The more labored his breathing became, the higher her core temperature climbed.

  Quinn picked up the popcorn bowl and blindly set it on the table. It clanked against a wine goblet that narrowly escaped tipping over. She rose up on her knees, straddled him, and settled on his lap.

  His head dropped back against the wall. She lowered her mouth onto his awaiting lips. As they kissed, long and deep and sensual, his hands slithered under her top and caressed her back.

  In the background, Prokofiev’s stirring score played as an epic battle waged. Quinn sat back and peeled off her top. “You know? I’m enjoying this movie a lot more than I thought I would.” She tossed it aside, sending Rasputin racing for the safety of the bedroom.

  Captivated, James’s eyes lingered on her, drinking her in. He threaded his fingers through her loose hair and drew her face toward his. Just before their lips met again, he rumbled, “Best. Movie. Ever.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The small air-conditioning unit mounted in the window rattled and wheezed as it pumped moderately cool air into a cramped hotel room in Saint Petersburg, Russia. It wasn’t that the June weather was particularly unpleasant. Well north in latitude and perched on the eastern edge of the Baltic Sea, Saint Petersburg, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, was known to be humid but rarely oppressively hot. At that moment, had James and Quinn been the sole occupants of the room, the unit would have been more than adequate. But with the four additional members of Operation Bear Trap crowded into the tiny room, it couldn’t overcome the stuffiness.

  Two weeks had passed since James and Quinn had watched—and not watched—Alexander Nevsky. They’d learned exactly where in Russia’s former imperial capital Quinn’s phone had settled a few days later. Since then, the pieces of Operation Bear Trap had been put into place. Now, the team had assembled. It was time to execute.

  Quinn stood in one corner of the room and watched Dave tap his fingertip on the screen of an iPad. The faces of two men in side-by-side photos appeared on a monitor. She recognized them immediately.

  “These men are Anatoly Volodin and Viktor Rykov. They work for this man.” Dave tapped the screen again and called up a surveillance photo. “Grigori Yefimov. He uses trafficked teens and younger kids to run drugs—cocaine for sure and likely heroin as well—here in Saint Petersburg. His legitimate business front is a strip club called the Bronze Monkey. It’s located off Nevsky Prospekt, the city’s main drag. The kids are in a different building a short distance away.”

  “And you didn’t want to watch Alexander Nevsky,” James whispered in her ear.

  She poked him in the ribs with her elbow and bit her lip to suppress the smile.

  “Yefimov operates the strip club and sells drugs on behalf of shadowy crime boss Konstantin Borovsky.” Dave looked over to James and wordlessly asked him to pick up the narration.

  James pushed away from the wall he’d been leaning against and straightened to his full height. “Very little is known about Borovsky other than he loves beautiful women and lives a life of luxury. He stays in the background and runs his empire through surrogates like Yefimov. It’s safer for him that way. We don’t know where he lives or where his base of operation is located. There aren’t any decent photos of him, either. So it looks like the biggest fish of all is going to be outside this op’s net.”

  That hadn’t stopped Meyers from tasking James and Quinn to keep their eyes and ears open for any and all intel about Borovsky’s person and location, though.

  “What we do know,” James said, “is that in addition to his human and drug trafficking, he has enterprises scattered throughout Russia featuring the mob’s greatest hits: gambling, extortion, weapons smuggling, kidnapping, blackmail, money laundering, counterfeiting, fraud, murder. You get the picture.”

  All heads in the room nodded.

  James continued. “Selling cocaine here in Russia is extremely lucrative. Since it’s produced in South America, the distance to Russia makes it a scarcer, and therefore pricier, commodity. Gibson Honeycutt and Rhys Townsend in the Caribbean is a critical link in Borovsky’s chain of distribution. Saint Petersburg’s location on the Baltic allows for access to Scandinavia, as well as northern and eastern Europe.”

  The basso profundo voice of Larry Taylor, also known as LT, rumbled from the other side of the room. “How do the drugs fit in to our plan?” The former Navy Seal had the build of a linebacker and was handsome, with more than a passing resemblance to Idris Elba. He came off as the tough, no-nonsense sort. But when Quinn had asked him if he had kids when they’d first met, his face had lit up like a Christmas tree. By the time the conversation ended, Quinn had learned Kayla, age eight, was an orange belt in karate and Trey had won second prize at his middle school’s science fair.

  “The Russian government has done little to combat human trafficking and forced labor, so we’ll try to get convictions on the drug angle,” Reem Tabsh, the team’s lawyer, responded. “They have a huge heroin/HIV problem here, and they take the infiltration of drugs a lot more seriously. The problem is, a number of local magistrates and police are paid off by Borovsky via Yefimov.”

  Dave nodded. “Reem will do everything she can to have Yefimov and crew arrested, tried, and convicted. But with the rampant corruption, it’s not a slam dunk. Either way, our primary objective is getting the kids out of there. We can’t just roll in blind with guns blazing. We have to get some intel and do this right.

  “So here’s the plan. James, you’ll meet with Yefimov and tell him you want to buy some coke, but you insist you have to check out his product first and see his operation. Wave enough cash around until he has no choice but to agree. Once you’re inside, you recon the building, scope out how many guards there are, entrances and exits and so forth. Then we’ll come back here and develop a specific plan. One thing we already know is once we get the kids out, we’ll take them to a safe house Yonatan has already secured.” Dave tapped the tablet, and a map of the area popped up on the monitor.

  Yonatan Litman, the team’s tech and logistics wizard, pushed his wire-rimmed glasses up the bridge of his nose and peered at the map. He was a former member of the Israeli Defense Forces and likely former or current Mossad. Quinn wasn’t about to ask. “The house is in Olgino, about eighteen kilometers from here. I checked it out yesterday. It’s a big place with a lot of bedrooms. It will accommodate as many kids as we can spring. James, once you know how many work inside that building, I’ll get the right number of vans lined up to drive them out there.”

  “Roger that,” James said.

  “We’ll hammer out all the specifics when it gets closer,” Dave said. “Reem’s working on sniffing out non-corrupt local police to help with the raid.”

  LT rubbed his thumb over the goatee covering his chin. “Rehabilitation?”

  “I’ve been in touch with a trafficking victims’ assistance center here in Saint Petersburg. They’ll have a counselor waiting at the house,” Dave said. “They have a network of shelters throughout the region. We’ll hand the kids off to them.”

  Quinn’s nostrils flared. “Except for Mila and her siblings. They’re American citizens.”

  A look passed between Dave and Reem. “We’ll see what we can
do,” Reem said.

  Quinn wasn’t happy with the idea of the Semenov kids having to stay in Russia for any longer than necessary. She was already trying to figure out which strings she needed to pull to get them safely back to the United States at the end of the op. Her grandfather came to mind. If anyone could make it happen, he could.

  “Any questions?” Dave’s gaze moved from face to face. “No? Okay then. Let’s take a half-hour break before we go over the strategy for James’s meet-up with Yefimov.”

  Reem made a beeline for Quinn. “Would you like to get some coffee with me? There’s a cool, funky little place down the street from here.”

  “Sure,” Quinn said with a cautious smile. She turned to James. “We’ll be back in a little while. You want anything?”

  “No, I’m good.” He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. “Have fun.”

  During the walk to the coffee shop, the conversation remained superficial as they discussed the weather and their flights to Saint Petersburg.

  The moment she stepped into the shop, Quinn was surrounded with the divine aroma of coffee. While she was a lover of all things coffee flavored, she had been, and always would be, a tea drinker.

  Quinn gave the place a once-over, first scanning the faces of chatting customers and then locating exits. Once she and Reem had their drinks and had settled in at a small table near a window, she took a moment to check out the décor. The furniture and knickknacks were an eclectic mélange that looked like they’d been picked up at various yard sales and antique shops. The effect was utterly charming. “You’re right. This place is funky. I like it.”

  “Right?” Reem stirred her coffee and set the spoon on the saucer with a clank. “I found it a couple of days ago. I can’t function without caffeine.”

  “That pretty much sums it up for all of us.” Reem had been the one to instigate this little confab, so Quinn would let her take the lead. She sipped her tea, which had a heavenly smoky flavor, and waited.