“Yes, that’s exactly what it is.” He turned a page and stared at the French script. Was he translating the words? “An Englishman, Richard Burton, is said to have written the definitive English translation. I was compelled to study it extensively for an assignment once upon a time.”
I laughed. “Oh, don’t stop there. I want to hear about this assignment.”
“I can’t say too much-only that one of our own government operatives had been co-opted by a sex therapist working at a spa somewhere on the coast of Sardinia, who planned to extort certain secrets.”
“Sounds like fun.”
He chuckled. “Elucidating, yes. Fun? Not really.”
“Well, that’s a shame.”
He lifted the book again and perused the ornate red leather cover. “This is really outstanding.”
“I think so, too.” I gave up, took a deep breath, reached over, and stroked the spine. “What does Vatsyayana mean?”
He looked amused as our hands touched. “He’s the author.”
“Oh.” Warmth spread up my neck. My cheeks would be turning pink any second now. Again. “I guess I should’ve known that. And I should probably know what the words Kama Sutra mean, but I don’t.”
“It’s Sanskrit,” he said, moving closer. “Kama is ‘love.’ Sutra, loosely translated, means ‘a lesson’ or ‘a rule.’ So essentially, the Kama Sutra contains the rules of love.”
“Ah, I see.”
He turned to a page in the middle of the book. “Here’s a rule you might be interested in. It refers to pressure points.” He read the text in perfect French, an experience I found insanely erotic.
“Um…”
“In the corresponding illustration”-he pointed to the facing page-“you can see how the woman’s anxiety has been eased.”
“Oh… yes.”
“Let’s try that.” He took my hand and rubbed a spot between my thumb and first finger. At the same time, he pressed his leg against my thigh.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Do you feel that?” he murmured.
“I feel… Oh…”
“Yes, you do.” He moved in and covered my mouth with his. His lips were firm and his intention was clear. My heart thrummed against my ribs as he softened the kiss; then his lips moved along the ridge of my jaw to my ear. It was pure instinct that made me stretch to accommodate his every move. I felt a twisting and turning in the pit of my stomach and I heard myself moan with need. The sound and its unfamiliarity brought me back to reality, if slowly.
Derek stood and pulled my chair back and I slid off it. His mouth hovered within reach of mine and I didn’t hesitate. I stretched up and pressed my lips to his. He enclosed his arms around me and deepened the kiss, just as someone battered their fists against my front door.
The door flew open and a man burst into my house, waving a gun.
I screamed.
“What the-” Derek shouted, then shoved me behind him. “Get back.”
I watched as Derek boldly slapped the man’s gun hand, then grabbed and shook it. The gun went flying as the man fell to his knees.
He was big with a pockmarked face. Big and ugly. Was this Tyler’s bad guy?
“Who do you work for?” Derek yelled as he grabbed the man’s shirt and tie and shook him.
From where I was crouched, I could see blood dripping onto the floor. “Derek, he’s bleeding.”
Derek took hold of the man’s jacket lapels and whipped them apart. A large splotch of blood was seeping through his white shirt.
“Who did this to you?” Derek asked in concern. “Who are you?”
The man blinked up at him. He was heavyset, and his eyes were red rimmed.
“Who sent you?” Derek asked again, then spurted out a flurry of words in a foreign language. Russian? Ukrainian? I didn’t know, but the man nodded quickly and replied in the same language.
Derek barked out one more sentence.
The man sighed deeply, muttered something else, then crumpled to the floor.
Chapter 11
“Call nine-one-one,” Derek said brusquely as he slammed the front door. “Get an ambulance here.”
I scrambled for the phone on the desk as he checked the man’s neck for a pulse, but within seconds, he swore under his breath.
“Never mind the ambulance,” he murmured in resignation. “He’s dead.”
I continued holding for the operator. “We still need to get the police here.”
After reporting the break-in and telling them about the dead guy in my house, I called Inspector Lee. She answered the phone on the first ring.
“Why am I not surprised to hear from you?” she said.
I gave her a brief rundown of what had just happened and she assured me she’d be there shortly.
As I spoke on the phone to Inspector Lee, I watched Derek check the dead man’s pockets and clothing labels. I assumed he was looking for identification and any telltale clues as to what Mr. Big had been doing here and why.
In an inside pocket, he found the man’s passport. Taking out his phone, Derek snapped a picture of the open passport, flipped the page, took another picture, then slipped the passport back in the man’s pocket. I figured he would be sending those photos to his pals at Interpol.
In another pocket, he found the passkey to my building as well as a key to my loft. He held them up for me to see, then raised a brow in amusement as I bared my teeth at them. Damn, I was willing to accept that a shady locksmith had been paid to make a copy of my new key, but how had the guy obtained a key to the building? It was aggravating in the extreme.
Derek slipped on a thin rubber glove-where in the world that came from, I had no idea-and picked up the man’s gun, examined it, smelled it, held it at arm’s length, and aimed it at the wall, then lowered his arm. He extracted the thing that held the bullets, then counted the bullets. Placing the gun on the worktable, he snapped another picture. It was as fascinating a routine as anything I’d ever seen him do, and that was saying plenty.
After I ended the call with Inspector Lee, I wrapped the Kama Sutra in its layers of protection and stuck it back in its hiding place at the bottom of the hall closet.
As I walked into my workroom, I noticed that Derek was slipping the man’s shoes off to study the brand.
“What in the world just happened here?” I muttered, rubbing my scalp with both hands. My life just kept getting more and more bizarre. Strangely enough, that wasn’t really a complaint.
I brushed my hair back from my face and went to check my front door, just to make sure there was no damage. I hadn’t locked the dead bolt because I always liked to do it just before I went to bed. But from now on I planned to keep the door bolted at all times.
There was a sudden pounding at the door and I jolted.
Derek grabbed me from behind and held me, calming me as though I were a scared kitten. “It’s okay. It’s someone at the door. Probably a neighbor. You’re fine.”
I breathed in and out, then shook my head in self-disgust. “Thank you. You’re right; I’m fine. I’ll just get the door now.”
I opened the door and saw Suzie. With one strong hand, she clutched the arm of-Minka LaBoeuf? Wearing a black trench coat and a beret? What in the world was going on?
Minka squirmed and tried to pull away, but Suzie was much more powerful. It took some heavy-duty muscles to operate a chain saw every day.
“Suzie?” I said in a daze. “Why… What… Huh?”
“This one was skulking around your door,” Suzie said, jerking her chin toward Minka. “I asked her what she wanted and she said she knew you. I said, ‘So what’re you doing out in the hall?’ and she tells me to go fuck myself.”
“Minka, what the hell are you doing here? And how did you get inside the building?”
“I followed that big guy in,” she said in a huff. “Then this bitch grabbed me.”
Suzie winked at me. “Just watching out for you.”
“Thanks, Suzie.”
“And you thought breaking into my building… Wait a minute. Were you standing outside the other day when that crazy screaming woman attacked Robin?”
Minka’s eyes widened. “Uh, that wasn’t me.”
“You’re such a liar. Why do you think I would ever hand the book over to you?”
“I have powers of persuasion,” she said with a toss of her overprocessed hair. “I’m Russian, you know.”
If I thought my life was bizarre before, it had just become seismically weirder. “Okay, first of all, Minka, the book isn’t Russian. There’s nothing Russian about it. You overheard something completely unrelated to the book.”
“Well, the book is French and I’m French, too.”
“It doesn’t matter.” I closed my eyes and prayed for strength, then said, “Look, I got the book from a client of mine. Ian didn’t give me the book. That day you saw me at the Covington, I was just showing it to him. So there was no way he was going to let you work on this book, because it wasn’t a Covington project. If you’d bothered to ask a question or two instead of assuming the worst, you wouldn’t have wasted your time and mine. And Suzie’s.”
“Well, why didn’t you just say so in the first place?” she said with a sneer, as though this were all my fault. I’d once likened her curly-lipped sneer to that of a snarling dingo, and the description still fit her.
She wasn’t finished. “You’ve got to be the biggest pain in the-Oh, my God! Is he dead?”
She pushed me out of the way and pulled Suzie along as she charged into my house, then stopped and stared at the big Russian sprawled on my floor.
“Okay, time to go,” I said. I grabbed Minka’s other arm and turned. Suzie helped me yank her out the door. We didn’t bother waiting for the elevator but pulled her down six flights of stairs and out the front door of the building.
She screamed the entire way down, the general theme being that I was either a serial killer or a magnet for murder or just plain cursed.
“Bye-bye,” Suzie said as she pushed her out the door. “Nice meeting you. Not.”
We watched Minka stomp down the sidewalk and get into her funky old rattletrap of a car. As soon as she drove away, I hugged Suzie. “Thank you. I couldn’t have handled that alone.”
“No problemo. Let’s take the elevator up,” she said.
“Good idea,” I said with a laugh.
She left me at my door and ambled back to her place.
I walked inside and stared at Derek, who was holding a bullet up to the light and examining its surface.
“She seems to be back to her old feisty self,” Derek said mildly. “I would’ve stepped in to help, but Suzie appeared to have the situation well in hand.”
“Yeah, she was a rock,” I muttered, then frowned at the man on the floor. “Minka said she followed this guy inside. So how do you think he got a key to my place?”
“Bribed the locksmith?” Derek suggested.
“That’s unacceptable. Aren’t they supposed to be bonded or something? What is wrong with people? I’m going to report him to the police.”
“Good idea.” He put the bullet back in the clip thing and looked at me. “At least your door wasn’t shattered again.”
“You’re right. I’m really happy about that.” Then to prove it, I burst into tears. I wasn’t thrilled to be crying in front of Derek, but I guessed it was better than fainting from the blood that was smeared on my floor.
He hugged me tightly and rubbed my back and said all the right things. I could’ve stayed there in his arms for another few hours or so. Silly, I know. But he was strong and sure of himself and I was so glad he was there. Besides, he smelled so damn good and his cashmere sweater was soft against my cheek. It was as close to nirvana as I was going to get anytime soon.
“I’m just tired,” I explained once my eyes were dry.
“Of course you are,” he said, leading me through the short hall to my living room. “We’ll sit in here and wait for the police.”
I curled up next to him and rested my head on his shoulder. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Everything. I’m starting a list.”
He chuckled and squeezed me closer.
“What did the guy say?” I asked finally. “What language were you speaking?”
“Russian. He wanted the flash drive. I said we didn’t have it, and even if we did, we wouldn’t hand it over to a murderer.”
“Oh, good one.” Sitting up, I tucked my legs up on the couch. “What’d he say to that?”
“He insisted he didn’t kill anyone who didn’t deserve it.”
“Whatever that means.”
“My thoughts exactly.” Derek rubbed his knuckles along his clenched jaw. “He told me he was Russian, working for his government. He knows about the Ukrainian woman, Galina. He thinks she killed Alex.”
I pursed my lips in thought. “I’m not sure I’d agree with that one.”
“No, I have my doubts that she killed him,” Derek said. “From the way you’ve described her, she seems too unbalanced to have pulled off an execution of that precision.”
I grimaced at the unforgettable image of that perfect round bullet hole in Alex’s forehead. What truly concerned me was the audacity of someone who would kill a man right next to a living, sleeping woman. “Did you believe anything he said?”
Derek thought about it. “I believe he was Russian. Other than that, his answers were feeble and confusing. But he did say something odd that makes me wonder what we’re dealing with.”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘It’s not what you think. I’m one of the good guys.’ ”
“ ‘One of the good guys’?” I didn’t know what to think of that, so I just shut up and let it sink in for a few minutes.
“Darling.” Derek rubbed my cheek gently. “We must drive back to Dharma tomorrow and talk to Robin.”
My shoulders sagged a bit, but I’d already reached the same conclusion. “I’m afraid you’re right. She’s in this up to her hip bones.”
“It appears she is.” He touched my leg in a comforting gesture. “Now, that doesn’t mean she’s guilty of anything, but I’m convinced she has more knowledge of this affair than she may even realize.”
“I agree,” I said. “I’d like to know more about Shiva’s friend Rajiv, too.”
Derek tapped his fingers on the arm of the couch. “I hate to suggest it, but this Rajiv might’ve cultivated Shiva’s friendship precisely to use her daughter as an unwitting courier.”
The thought made me angry all over again. “If that’s true, I hope your Interpol friends can track him down and make him pay.”
“If it’s true, I’ll be happy to arrange it.”
“Good.” I sighed and leaned back into the pillows of the couch. “The sooner we can resolve all this, the sooner I can go back to a life free of Ukrainians and Russians knocking down my door every other day.”
“The American dream.”
“Yeah.” I laughed dolefully. “I guess I should call Robin and let her know we’re coming.”
Derek jumped up, found my cell on the table, and brought it back to me. With a smile for him, I pressed Robin’s number and waited. There was no answer, so I left a message, then called Austin’s house. His voice mail picked up and I left another message.
“I guess they’re out tonight.” Or maybe they weren’t picking up the phone. After all, they were still under the dubious influence of Mom’s enchantment spell. “I should call my mom, too,” I mused. “Let her know we’re coming.”
There was no answer at my parents’ house either.
“What’s going on in Dharma tonight?” I wondered aloud. “Why isn’t everyone home and in their jammies?”
“Perhaps there’s a community event.”
“Probably so.” But I had to rub my arms against a sud
den chill. “Are you sure Gabriel’s healed enough to keep watch on Robin?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“You’re not convincing me.”
“I’m not convincing myself,” he grumbled, and pulled out his cell to check in with Gabriel. Pushing himself up from the couch, he said, “I’ll let him know the latest and make sure he stays alert to any unusual activity.”
I smiled and mentally added one more item to my list of reasons to thank Derek Stone.
It was another late night of police procedure. Happily, no fingerprint dust was involved. However, our two intrepid inspectors, Lee and Jaglom, were unable to shed much light on who the dead man was, beyond what Derek had gleaned from his own search of the man’s passport and belongings.
Derek had already sent the information off to his contacts at Interpol.
Meanwhile, Inspector Lee warned that the FBI or some obscure Homeland Security agency still might step in, now that it seemed even more likely that the threatened turf war between the Russians and the Ukrainians was heating up. Apparently, it was all heating up inside my apartment.
Derek said nothing to contradict the police take on the situation, but I knew he didn’t agree with the cops’ assessment. At least, not as it pertained to Robin and her problems, which had nothing to do with a turf war and everything to do with a missing flash drive that some people were willing to kill for.
But unfortunately, Derek was not in a position to divulge the full story to the inspectors. It was turning into a highly sensitive international situation, and something Derek was not at liberty to turn over to the local police. I assumed that officials at the highest levels of government would eventually step in and take over. Meanwhile, my two main concerns were that Robin was safe in Dharma and that she’d told me everything she knew about Alex and Rajiv and the Kama Sutra.
It was a relief when the investigator got all the blood he needed from those few drops spilled by the Russian and gave me the okay to clean and sanitize my workroom floor right then and there. The thought of having to put off cleaning for days while the blood was analyzed was too depressing to think about.
The police traced my intruder’s bloody footprints from the curb outside my building, across the sidewalk, up the interior stairwell, and down the hall to my place. The same way he’d escaped the night Tyler had seen him.
Murder Under Cover Page 15
