Wiser Than Serpents

by Susan May Warren

  Another closet. Supplies lined the walls, from towels to silverware and dishes. Frustration shot through her as she turned to leave.

  Voices entering the hallway stopped her and she shut the door, leaving it ajar only a crack.

  Two attendants came down the hall, waitresses carrying tea to the private rooms. They knocked on the doors before they entered. Yanna didn’t want to guess at the activities in those rooms.

  “What’s going on, Yanna?”

  David’s voice in her head shot a tremor right down to her toes. “Nothing. I’m coming out—wait.”

  As she’d turned to open the door, she saw that the closet shelves didn’t extend to the edge of the wall. She closed the door behind her, flicking on the light. Yes, the shelves had stopped, leaving room for a small door. “I found something. A door.”

  “Be careful.”

  She moved to the door and found that it locked from her side. She unlocked it and, checking to make sure it wouldn’t lock behind her, she opened it.

  It led to a cement hallway, a loading zone, really, but cement stairs ran up the back, to another landing.

  “I’m going upstairs.”

  “Be careful.”

  “Will you stop saying that? I’m being careful.”

  “I can’t help it. I don’t like this, and I don’t want you—”

  “Shh!”

  She knew in her brain somewhere that no one could hear him—in fact, she’d tested that fact in Trish’s house, with the earpiece in Trish’s ear and Roman nearly shouting. However, it felt exposing and she didn’t need any distractions as she crept up the back stairs and into another cement hallway. It contained a door, parallel with the one below. She tried the knob, but it was locked.

  “I need to pick this,” she said, wishing David, for once, could see her. This was why she’d had field training, for moments like this. And for when she was handcuffed in the middle of the ocean on a rubber dinghy. As she pulled out the lock-pick kit she’d taken from Roman, that old adrenaline, that idealism she’d had when she first joined the FSB, rushed through her. Too many years with buzzing florescence in the dungeons of FSB HQ had made her forget that she had other skills than just how to write computer programs and create surveillance devices.

  She worked the lock and opened it easily. “Going in.”

  “Be careful.”

  “There’s a hallway, like before. I can smell rice, or something cooking. There’s a door at the end of the hall.” She moved toward it, her heart thundering, and she resisted the urge to hold her breath to listen.

  “What?”

  She also resisted the urge to rip the earpiece from her ear. She put a hand on the door, eased the handle open.

  Swung it in.

  Her breath caught. It was a house, or a dorm or something, because whoever had been here had slept on the uncarpeted floor, on pads. And in the center of the room, a rice cooker, with bowls stacked up, the rice in the cooker half-eaten.

  “What? Talk to me, Yanna!”

  “There’s a room. It’s empty. But someone was here, not long ago.” She moved around the room, lifting the pads, the silky bedspreads perhaps used as blankets. “Whoever was here, they’re gone.”

  She stopped, her heart cold inside her. “Oh, no. Oh, no—”

  “Yanna, what is it? What is—forget it, I’m coming in there.” Somewhere in the back of her head, she heard muffling, Roman’s voice yelling, the sound of the van door opening.

  But that was all drowned out by the increasing siren going off in her head, the one making her sink to her knees, reach out and pick up the silver locket, lying smashed on the floor. She curled it in her hand. “Oh, no—”

  Somewhere deep inside, she’d hoped this might all be some sort of nightmarish misunderstanding, that Elena would call and say, Hey, sorry, sis, my plane took a detour to Bali. But it’s all good, and I’m in the States. Better even would be, I decided not to marry Bob, and I’m on my way home. Throw a party.

  But as Yanna opened the locket, peeling up the cutaway picture of her taken only a year ago, something inside Yanna gave way. Something huge and holding back the last layers of hope and self-control.

  Which was right about the time David rushed in, finding her there, crumpled on the floor. She looked up at him, at the expression he wore, his don’t-get-in-my-way face, and she didn’t even want to imagine the scene he’d made downstairs and who might be behind him. But it didn’t matter. All she knew was that he was there and she needed him, oh, how she needed him.

  “Oh, Yanna,” he said.

  She held out the locket, and he took it from her. He stared at it, and the agony on his face told her that he got it. “She was here. Your sister. She was here.”

  Yanna didn’t answer. Just, for the second time in twenty-four hours, let herself buckle into his embrace.

  And friend that he was, he held her without saying another word.

  If anything, the discovery of Elena’s locket only fueled David, solidified the panic that had been a sort of radioactive buzz in his chest into a nuclear ball of rage, of purpose.

  If he had ever needed a reason why he did his job, he found it written on Yanna’s face as she sat on Trish’s sofa, running her thumb over the broken, crushed locket. They’d found Yanna’s destroyed cell phone parts in the alley behind the teahouse. Yanna had scrounged up the parts, hoping to figure out why Kwan might have used it.

  But apparently, the cell phone was the last thing on her mind at the moment.

  “She’s alive, I know it, deep inside.”

  He wanted to touch her, to hold her hand, to wrap his arms around her. Instead he kept working on her computer, trying to access his online files about Kwan and his contacts. “We’re going to find her, Yanna. I promise.”

  Her face changed at that, her expression hardening. She looked up at him, nodded. “I believe you.”

  With everything inside him, he wanted to stand up and shout, Hoo-yah! But it only sent off explosions of fear inside him. What if they didn’t find Elena? What if Elena had already been gobbled up, swallowed by Kwan’s organization?

  Where would that leave his promises?

  Sometimes, he just wanted to live outside his body so he could wave himself off from making stupid statements. What he should have said was, While I have breath left in my body, I’ll help you find Elena. That promise he could keep.

  Yanna reached up and wiped her cheek with the heel of her hand. He couldn’t take it anymore. David got up and came over to sit beside her. She didn’t look at him.

  “Elena used to be the homeliest thing I’d ever seen, all big eyes and greasy hair. When we were little girls, I never let her forget that she was annoying. When she was three, I made her sit in the bathroom when my friends were over, just because she couldn’t stop talking and annoying us.”

  David could almost see Yanna like that, eighteen and just as gorgeous as today, only perhaps less jaded because of her job, with more laughter in her eyes, hungry for life to begin. He wished he could have known her then, but perhaps that would have only started his agony four years sooner.

  “She was about nine when she came to live with me. I was just out of university—”

  “I remember. You were heading into the academy. You wrote to me.”

  Yanna lifted her gaze to his. Smiled, only it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yeah, I did. I guess you remember then how Elena and I fought over the years. When she became a teenager, she always had boyfriends, as if she were desperate for a man.”

  “And you hated that.” He reached out and took the locket from her.

  Yanna looked up at him. “It made me angry. Because out of both of us, she was the one who should have been happy. She had a father who loved her, doted on her…”

  He lifted his hand to touch her hair, then settled it behind her on the sofa.

  “Yanna, could it be possible that you, uh, might have been…jealous? I mean, your sister had all these boyfriends….”

 
Yanna recoiled as if she’d been slapped. “Are you suggesting that I couldn’t get a man?”

  “What? No—”

  “Because I have news for you, David Curtiss, there are men who come to see me play volleyball from across Russia, I have men flocking outside the locker room and—”

  “Calm down, that isn’t what I’m saying.” And no, he didn’t need to hear about other men; in fact, he had a sudden sick acid in his chest. “It’s just that your sister has a different outlook on life, and like you said, she had this good relationship with her father, and maybe that let her trust men a little more, and…”

  David didn’t know whether to flinch, maybe duck, and he certainly didn’t know why he’d said that—it just came out. But it was suddenly so clear to him what this was about all along.

  Yanna was still jealous. Her sister had clearly made abysmal choices. But at least she’d tried. At least she’d made room for love, or the hope of it, something Yanna would never do. And probably wouldn’t now.

  He ran his hand down his face. “I’m sorry I said that. I just thought that maybe that was why you never dated any…other…”

  But Yanna looked up at him, the strangest look on her face, and in a blinding second of pain he realized why she’d never made room in her life for any other men.

  Oh, no. His chest tightened with a strange but frightening explosion of joy.

  She’d been waiting for him. All this time, him.

  Oh, Yanna.

  He swallowed, as the truth whammed him right in the chest and took away his breath.

  “Yanna,” he said, lifting his hand to her cheek. She stared at him, all her emotions suddenly right there, in her beautiful eyes, the eyes that haunted him, that never left his dreams, his memories.

  He could hear the voices in his head starting to warn him off, even feel some ethereal force pulling back, reining him in, but she was so beautiful, and he didn’t even realize he was putting his arms around her until they already were, and then, just like that, before he could stop himself, and just like he always feared, and always hoped, he was kissing her.

  It was like fireworks and confetti, a flood of emotions that knocked him off his feet. She melded right into him, as if she belonged there, as if they had been made for each other. She was so beautiful and strong, and he was so proud of her, and scared at the same time, knowing that she’d do anything for the people she loved. So he kissed her, wove his fingers into her silky hair, letting his heart right off its leash.

  And like before, she kissed him back, as if she, too, had been waiting for this moment—please let it be true—for over ten years. She tasted like tears, so sweet and gentle, so willing.

  He pulled her close, put his other hand to her cheek, and she made a little noise in the back of her throat, like she might be crying.

  It was that sound that snapped him out of it, made him take a breath and pull away, his heart thumping. She stared at him, all wide-eyed, blinking, and he knew…

  He was a jerk. A huge jerk. He had no business kissing Yanna when he had no intention—despite the desires of his heart—to tell her how he felt, maybe make anything permanent.

  And he hadn’t a clue how she might feel. Hadn’t even asked.

  “Yanna, oh, I’m sorry. I’m so—”

  Her face instantly hardened. “Oh, my—I can’t believe this.” She shook her head. “I am not going through this again.” She put up her hand. “Stop speaking. Right now.”

  Right before him, as if she might be some sort of shape-shifter, she morphed back into that tough FSB agent. Clearly, he wouldn’t have to ask how she felt about him. She backed away and lifted her chin. “I know you think I’m upset—”

  “That’s not it—”

  “And I know I’ve been a little needy and emotional lately, but it’s only because I’m a little tired—”

  “Yanna—”

  “And I know that you’re still pretty freaked out, and I might have given you the wrong impression when I collapsed into your arms back at the teahouse, but the thing is, I’m good now.” She smiled up at him. “I don’t need any more…uh, comfort.”

  David raised an eyebrow, even though he felt skewered straight through. “Comfort?”

  She patted his knee. “It was nice. Thanks.”

  Thanks? Nice? His heart was still trying to reboot and she was getting up, going to the computer, logging on, as if they’d had a nice chat?

  David stared at her.

  “I have an idea about Kwan. Didn’t you say that you had a file on him? Why is he here in Taichung? Just to pick up his girls? And why did he hang on to my cell phone, then ditch it at the teahouse?”

  “Wait—Yanna, I just kissed you.”

  “Yeah, I know.” She turned to him. “It was nice, but I won’t tell anyone.”

  Just like that, he was back at the resort, seeing her face as he walked out on her.

  She met his gaze. Didn’t even blink.

  His throat burned. So much for her believing in him. Trusting him. Way to go, champ.

  He nodded in response to her words.

  “So, while I try and read the SMIM card on this cell, tell me everything you know about Kwan. I want to see if I can figure out what he’s got next on his agenda.”

  It took him a second to regroup. Especially since, while she might have ice in her veins, and be able to hop up after that rather steamy—from his point of view—kiss, he was still trying to figure out how to take a full breath.

  He could hear voices outside. Roman and Trish were returning with Cho after they parked the van in the garage down the alley. He got up, sat next to Yanna at the desk, all smiles and lies when Roman walked in.

  “Hey,” Yanna said, looking up. Roman glanced at David, then back at Yanna.

  “So, what have you found out?”

  That David wasn’t at all the hero Roman made him out to be? That deep inside, he was still that creep who’d made Yanna feel cheap and unwanted? Worse, he had done it this time when she felt vulnerable and broken.

  Yeah, a real man of integrity.

  He cleared his throat. “There’s something that’s been bothering me since I met Kwan. He just doesn’t fit the part. Kwan’s reputation precedes the birth of the man I met on the boat by about twenty years. The Twin Serpents is an organization that is passed from father to son, and the torch passed to Kwan two decades ago, at least. My gut says that the man we saw was a decoy.”

  “Or an heir. Maybe you met Kwan-in-training.” Roman sat down on the sofa while Trish went to the kitchen.

  “Tea?”

  Roman lifted his hand in response. Yanna, too.

  What David wouldn’t give for an espresso. Something to wake up his brain, maybe keep him out of trouble.

  “So you think the real Kwan is grooming his son for the job?”

  “The Twin Serpents is an international operation. To run a tight ship, they keep family in all the top slots. If Kwan has a son, or more than one son, they’re being groomed for leadership.”

  “So, we find Mini-Kwan, we find Kwan,” Yanna said, taking the tea Trish offered her. “Thanks.”

  Trish delivered Roman his tea.

  “Why is this Kwan in town?” Roman asked.

  “We know he has a house here. He also has a house in Taipei, only that one is for his mistress, and when he goes to the symphony.”

  “The symphony? Kwan doesn’t seem like the symphony type,” Yanna said, not looking up from her keyboard.

  “I think his mistress likes it—maybe. Or maybe he’s just a man of hidden tastes. But according to our sources, he’s been to the symphony and the opera a number of times.”

  “Did you say opera?” Yanna put down her tea, punching in addresses. “The Taipei opera is playing tomorrow night in Taipei. You don’t suppose…”

  She looked at David. “I’ve never been to a Taiwanese opera. And I look great in an evening gown.” She smiled, as if he hadn’t just had her in a clinch, as if he didn’t have the foggiest ide
a that she’d look downright breathtaking in an evening gown. “Anyone want to take me to the opera?”

  Roman glanced at David. “You’re going to look great in a tux.”

  Chapter Twelve

  G racie felt like a spy, a supersleuth, just like Vicktor. Only, with her heart beating in her throat and her hands slick against the rubber handle of the housekeeping trolley, it was a wonder that everyone who passed her didn’t stop, point their finger and scream, Imposter!

  Maybe Mae was horribly right—she was only making things worse. And she’d dragged Mae right into trouble with her.

  Of course, once they got Ina’s parents to the hospital, sat with them all night, long enough to know that Mr. Gromenko would live, and finally had a coherent conversation with Ina’s mother, Mae had all but led the charge to track down Ina.

  “Jorge has a cousin, Kostov. He’s Mafia, and runs the Hotel Ryss, where Ina worked. There are people who saw that Kosta takes girls and kidnaps them.” Luba’s voice had lowered to a wisp. “Sells them.”

  Luba’s words had chilled Gracie clear through, and it had been Mae’s tight voice that had responded. “Is it possible that the men who hurt Yakov weren’t doing it because Ina wanted them to, but to scare her? To remind her of what she could lose if she didn’t obey them?”

  Luba’s expression told Gracie she’d already gone there, already worked that scenario through her head, because although tears ran down her face, off her chin, she looked at Mae and nodded.

  That was all it took for Mae to join league with Gracie and even concoct this harebrained idea to track the girl down in the suspicious Room 68, on the sixth floor of the Hotel Ryss.

  Gracie felt as if a thousand tiny bugs crawled over her skin as she pushed the housekeeping trolley down the halls. The hotel, outfitted with lime-green wallpaper, a smelly shag carpet and a radiator at the end of the hall that clicked on and rattled, smelled like it hadn’t been updated since the seventies and should offer hourly rates.

  But no one, not even the men who walked past her dressed in Mafia black—where was she, Moscow?—even gave her a second look.

  Mae had obviously gone overboard with the padding, the wig, the makeup that made her look about fifteen years older than her current age of twenty-six.