She blinked away the echo of her own voice, screaming as Dimitri’s head hit the tile and rolled . . .
Keep it together, don’t lose it now. Answer his questions, smile at him, keep his interest, do whatever she had to do, and maybe, again, she’d survive.
“Two months ago.”
He nodded, and she was glad she’d told the truth. Clearly he’d been asking around, looking for Dimitri, and he may well have spoken to someone who’d seen her husband the night before their lunchtime visit to Bashir’s palace. But no one had seen him after that. At least not alive.
Maybe she was reading too much into one little nod, but she could feel the American’s trust—and his interest in her—increasing.
“He was . . . executed by Padsha Bashir.” That she volunteered. But damn, she hoped he didn’t notice that slight hesitation. She was trying to sound nonchalant. As if she didn’t give a damn.
“Was there a reason or was it a whim?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Sophia answered. “I suspect it had something to do with a business deal gone bad. With money that Dimitri owed him.”
The American nodded again. “You said before that Bashir’s dead, too.”
Sophia also nodded. “He died during the earthquake. Part of his palace collapsed.”
“Who told you this?”
“No one,” she said. “I was there when it happened. I was . . . lucky to get out alive.”
“You were there,” he repeated. “That was just a few days ago.”
“I was living there,” she clarified. “In the palace. I had been—for the past two months.”
He looked at her, at her hair, at her face. At her dress. Yes, that’s right, American, put this dress and those two months together. . . .
She spelled it out for him, allowing her voice to quiver. “I was a prisoner there. Dimitri gave me to Bashir, just before his death.”
“Gave you.”
“He wasn’t the kindest of husbands.” Her voice shook even more. Somewhere, Dimitri’s headless body was spinning in its grave. Good. Let him spin for all eternity. He deserved it, the fool, for trusting Michel Lartet. “Neither was Bashir.”
The American sat very still, just watching her, thinking . . . what? She honestly didn’t have a clue.
Sophia let her eyes fill with tears. It wasn’t hard to do. “I escaped from the palace right after the first earthquake. That’s why I couldn’t tell you my name in front of Lartet’s man. I didn’t know this before last night, but Michel Lartet is working for Bashir. And I’m pretty sure Bashir’s nephews are searching for me. That’s probably why Lartet had you followed. To get to me. I think he figured if you knew Dimitri, you knew me.”
The American actually laughed. He had nice teeth, straight and white. “I don’t mean to imply that you won’t be missed, but if Bashir’s really dead, I think his nephews have other things on their minds right now.”
Sophia let a tear escape, and then another. She knew what she looked like when she cried—tears made her seem younger and more vulnerable. Frightened. Alone. This man would have to have ice water running through his veins to keep from reaching for her.
But he didn’t move.
“Please,” she said, holding out her hand toward him. “They are after me. I know it. I need help.”
“If you want me to help,” he said, still not moving an inch toward her, “you better tell me the truth about why they’re after you.”
She’d intended to tell him. But she’d expected to be in his arms before she did. This would be so much easier if she were clinging to him, her face pressed against his shoulder.
Instead she was forced to sit there, holding his gaze.
“If you tell me what’s going on, Sophia,” he said quietly, “I’ll help you. But I need the truth.”
She nodded, tears streaming down her cheeks, hot rivers of fear and desperation. The truth. What was the truth? The truth was she’d say or do anything to stay alive. Anything.
“I killed him,” she admitted with a sob. “Bashir. During the quake.”
She let herself fall apart and finally—alleluia—the American moved toward her. Finally she was in his arms, her head tucked beneath his chin, her cheek against the soft cotton of his shirt. He smelled like her yearly childhood visits to her grandparents in New Hampshire, like America—the home of the dryer sheet and the land of the deodorant stick.
Even his breath was sweet.
Sophia let herself cry in earnest.
“Hey,” he said. “It’s okay. You’re okay now.”
But she wasn’t. Even if she could believe him, she so wasn’t even close to okay.
“I was with him,” she sobbed. “That morning. In his chamber. And then the quake started, and there was chaos. His back was to me, and I picked up his sword—he always kept it nearby. He got such pleasure from other people’s fear—and I ran him through.” She pulled back to look at him, letting him see the truth of that in her eyes—the horror of taking a life, mixed with the triumphant ferocity of her hatred for Bashir. “I killed him with his own sword.”
The American believed her. At least she hoped he did.
“Okay,” he said. “You’re right. They’re definitely after you.”
“Please help me.” She didn’t let him answer. “I have money,” she lied. “In a Swiss account. Neither Dimitri or Bashir knew about it. If you help me get out of Kazbekistan, I will make it worth your while. Whatever price they’re offering for my return—I’ll double it.”
He was still just looking at her, and from this up-close vantage point, his eyes were extremely disconcerting.
He gave nothing away. Sophia knew with a frightening flash of clarity that all of her interpretations of his responses, his nods, his eye contact, were just that. Her interpretations.
She had absolutely no clue what this man was thinking.
“Please,” she said, and her voice shook with fear that was not feigned.
And then, because there was nothing else left to say, she kissed him.
Sophia Ghaffari kissed him so sweetly, it completely caught Decker off guard.
He knew he couldn’t trust her. He’d be a fool if he did. Except . . . his instincts were shouting that much of what she’d told him had been the truth. Of course, his instincts were also standing up and cheering about that completely nonhesitant hand she’d already placed upon the fly of his pants.
Sex with a beautiful stranger . . .
It was exactly what he wanted, what he needed.
Except he couldn’t do it. She didn’t want him—she wanted his protection. This was barter, plain and simple, and he wouldn’t play that game. He was better than that.
Wasn’t he?
Yes. Although a very large part of him didn’t want to push her away. It was the same part of him that was mentally checking the contents of his pockets. Condom—right lower front, along with ibuprofen, bandages, and a PowerBar: part of a bare essentials health kit he carried in a plastic pouch.
Not that he was intending to use it.
Except, oh, holy shit, he was actually thinking about using it.
But when she went as far as to unbuckle his belt, he finally pulled back, relegating her to arm’s length before she managed to completely unfasten his pants. “Hey. I said I was going to help you,” he told her. “You don’t need to—”
She reached for him. “I want to—”
Yeah, sure. He caught her hands. “Well, I don’t.”
She actually laughed in his face, tears sparkling on her eyelashes. Jesus, she was sex personified. And impossibly beautiful. Even when she cried. Maybe especially when she cried—and she knew it, too. What had she done to Dimitri to make him willing to pass her off to Padsha Bashir? If that was really what had happened. Decker suspected he wasn’t getting the whole story there.
“Liar,” she said.
Deck shrugged, knowing that his words were undermined by his physical reaction to her—a reaction she’d already wrapp
ed her fingers around once. He tightened his grip on her hands. Smooth, soft hands . . . “Honey, you can believe whatever you want.”
“So you’re just going to help me.” She was genuinely amused as she pulled one hand free and wiped her nose with the back of it. “Out of the goodness of your generous heart. And you want nothing—whatsoever—from me in return.”
Her hair was in her face, a baby-fine blond tangle that would probably slip like silk beneath his fingers. But Decker didn’t let himself reach out to push it behind her perfect ear. He focused instead on the impossible—ignoring the fact that her breasts rose and fell with every breath she took, and that she did indeed have hennaed designs on her perfect body beneath that nearly sheer dress. “That’s right.”
She shook her head. “That doesn’t work for me. How do I know I can trust you?”
Decker laughed. “And you think . . . what? That if we have sex, you’ll be able to trust me?”
“No,” she said. “Bad word choice. Not trust you—I’ll never trust you. I’ve learned the hard way not to trust anyone. But if you come into the other room with me and . . . well, I trust myself to make sure that you’ll want to keep me around. At least long enough to find out whether or not I’m lying about that Swiss bank account.”
She was actually serious. Except there was something in her eyes that Deck couldn’t quite get a read on.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she continued. “You’re thinking, Could she really be that good?” She held his gaze. “The answer is yes. But why take my word for it when I’m willing to show you?”
Things like this didn’t happen to him. A beautiful woman, wanting to . . .
No, he was deep in Nash’s territory. He could hear an echo of his partner’s voice. She begged me to stay. What was I supposed to do? Just walk away . . . ?
“I think—,” Decker started, but Sophia—if that was really her name—leaned forward and kissed him again. He saw it coming, but he didn’t back away. He just sat there and let her lick her way into his mouth.
Jesus, he wanted to . . . wanted her . . . wanted . . .
But shit, it was half past late. Decker had to get back to Rivka’s house. He had a team to lead, a terrorist’s laptop to locate. Tom Paoletti’s additional assignment—to find Dimitri Ghaffari—had been secondary. And Ghaffari was dead.
Allegedly. Sometimes he believed Sophia, and sometimes—like right now—he doubted every word she’d ever uttered in her entire life.
That should have been reason enough to not want her giving him those soul-sucking kisses, her cool hands skimming up beneath his T-shirt along the bare skin of his back, her body soft and warm, pressed against him. . . .
It was entirely possible that she worked for Lartet—or even for Padsha Bashir. That she’d been assigned to follow him and find out why he was here, why he was looking for Dimitri Ghaffari, whom he was working for.
The story she’d told him could well be completely fictional, designed to make him say, “Don’t worry, I’ll help you. I’m with the U.S. Government. Your troubles are over—I’m one of the good guys.”
And then, after promising to figure out a way to smuggle her safely out of K-stan, he would tell her to stay here, to stay hidden, to wait for him to contact her. But instead of following his instructions, she would wrap herself in that burka and slip out into the streets. She’d take all the information he’d revealed about himself to Lartet or Bashir, and then this entire mission would be in jeopardy. And the lives of his entire team would be in peril.
Decker caught her hands again as she unfastened the top button of his pants—she was persistent, wasn’t she?—and pulled back to look at her.
She was as short of breath as he was, her mouth wet from kissing him. The look in her eyes was one of pure arousal, but Decker didn’t doubt for one second that that was something she’d had a lot of practice faking.
She was a pro, there was no doubt about it.
“Please . . .” She moved to kiss him again, but this time he held her off.
“I can’t do this,” he said, but even to his own ears, his voice lacked conviction.
“Are you married?” she asked him. “Is that why you don’t want to . . . ?”
His cover included a fictional wife in Virginia, but he found himself saying, “No.”
“I’m not either. Not anymore.” Sophia’s eyes welled suddenly with fresh tears that seemed to surprise her more than they surprised him.
As Decker watched, she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand, as if these were private tears, ones she didn’t want him to see.
If this were part of her act, she was damn good.
But then she smiled at him, a smile that was forced and rueful—Sophia the brave, dauntlessly going on despite life’s tragedies. “Sorry,” she said. He almost applauded her performance.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” she asked, wiping her nose again. “Linda Sue back in Kalamazoo? Trust me, she’ll never know.”
Even though he had no right to, Deck thought briefly of Tess, who was probably sound asleep not back in Michigan, but in Rivka’s pantry. Tess, who really was brave—and honest and true. Tess, who was everything a man could want in a woman, both sweet and sexy, the kind of woman you could take home to Sunday dinner, to meet your parents—after she’d totally rocked your world on Saturday night.
Tess, who couldn’t look at James Nash without her heart showing in her eyes.
Decker shook his head. “Look, Sophia, I know you think I’m going to deliver you to Bashir—”
“Yeah, right, but of course you’re not. Money means nothing to you.” She didn’t believe him.
This was where he should stand up and prove it by walking out of there.
Instead he said, “So okay. Say we . . . go into the other room and get to know each other better. Then what? How do you propose I get you out of Kazabek without any papers, without a passport?”
She blinked at that, as if she hadn’t really thought too much about that. And wasn’t that interesting? It surely meant something, but he just couldn’t wrap his mind around what, as she shifted and her gown shimmered.
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Don’t you have, I don’t know, connections?”
He didn’t answer that. He just sat and looked at her, hoping she would keep talking.
Maybe some information he could make use of would come out of her mouth.
Yeah, sure. That’s why he was still sitting here. It had nothing whatsoever to do with the fact that she’d offered herself to him on a plate.
It had nothing to do with the fact that he wanted—desperately—to take her up on that offer.
No, want wasn’t the right word for it. What he was feeling was bigger than want, more powerful than need. It was . . .
It was bullshit. That was his dick talking. Bigger than want, his ass.
He was beyond horny, she was nearly naked, and he wanted to accept her offer because he was human, he was male, and he had been celibate for too fucking long.
And even though she wasn’t a streetwalker as he’d first thought, she obviously saw sex as little more than an intimate handshake. A deal sealer. A way to control her environment and the people around her.
She reached up to touch his face, tracing his lips with her thumb. And again he didn’t back away when she leaned in to kiss him.
It felt too damn good.
She was winning and she knew it.
“I need this,” she told him, and if he squinted at this entire situation really hard, he could almost talk himself into believing her.
She kissed him again, sliding back onto his lap. And he let her. And he let her and let her, glad he didn’t have to worry about her going for that little revolver he’d taken from her at the factory—he’d left it outside—and wondering just how far she was going to take this before she made a break for that door.
Because surely that was her goal here.
Wasn’t it?
She’d glanced o
ver at it often enough when they’d first started talking.
“We’re both alone in this world,” she said, her mouth soft against his throat, her body warm in his hands. “I want to, and I know you want to—”
“You want to, because if I do sleep with you,” Deck said, “I’m less likely to return you to Bashir’s palace for a lot of reasons, the most compelling being that there’s a solid chance they’ll stick my head on a pike—” She actually flinched at that—interesting. “—for messing with Bashir’s property—never mind the fact that he’s dead and they have a date on the execution schedule already reserved for you.”
Troubleshooters 08 Flashpoint Page 19
