“Maybe he’s not here because he’s the one who sent them,” Vicktor said quietly.
What? So much for romance. Gracie yanked her hand away. “How dare you? Without Andrei I would have drowned here. He protected me and listened to me and translated for me. He’s the truest friend I could ever have.” She narrowed her eyes and pointed at Vicktor, ignoring the way his jaw tightened and the warning that flashed in his icy blue eyes. “Back off, Vicktor. Andrei is my Christian brother. I can trust him with my life.”
Vicktor’s voice was harsh. “Tell me, Gracie. If Andrei is the only one besides me who knows where you are, how is it trouble always finds you?”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Vicktor braced himself as he climbed aboard the passenger train. The soupy fog of body odor, the gray-blue haze of old cigarette smoke, and the endless sets of prying eyes that followed him and Gracie as they bumped down the aisle, set his teeth on edge. He wished for his Zhiguli. A car would be easier, and safer. But he wasn’t sure the auto barges were running yet, and a short train ride followed by a little hike was the only way they were going to get to Larissa’s dacha in a hurry.
Vicktor sighed and tried to relax against the molded wooden seat. He glanced at Gracie. Stubborn to the core, she’d refused to change clothes, and had barely spoken two words to him as they hightailed it to the train station.
If only she knew how hard it was for him to focus on the blue-haired babushka in front of him. Gracie’s outfit did everything to accentuate all her formerly hidden features and he knew, by the way she tugged at the hem of her shirt, that she was all too aware of it. He knew better than to offer her his coat, however, despite the fact he’d dearly love to see her hidden inside it. She’d probably take his head off at the mere suggestion, judging by her board-stiff posture and furrowed brow.
Vicktor rested his head against the wooden seat. Gracie sighed in frustration. She stared out into the train yard—a muddy, rutted plaid of tracks and wire—and twirled a tail of golden hair between her fingers.
Vicktor closed his eyes and thought about Andrei. Her precious Andrei, her Russian boyfriend, her closest friend…. A muscle knotted in his neck. The creep hovered between them like a bad odor, even when he was absent. Vicktor shifted in his seat and stretched out his legs, knotting his arms over his chest. The look in the chauffeur’s eyes had been downright conniving when he’d kidnapped Gracie yesterday. Vicktor didn’t doubt, had he not lit out on Andrei’s tail, that her overzealous driver would have her halfway to Moscow or hidden in the wilds of Siberia.
Maybe that wasn’t such a bad idea. He heard Gracie blow another thunderous sigh and he winced.
Drumming his fingers on his arms, he opened his eyes and scrutinized the wood-paneled ceiling. He had to admire her loyalty for her friend, but he couldn’t shake the feeling Andrei couldn’t be trusted. Take Andrei’s so-called communication with his mother in the village…even Vicktor knew villagers didn’t have personal telephones. How then did Andrei so easily know Gracie’s bag had been stolen?
Then again, perhaps his mother had called, or he’d called the stansia—the central phone station—and asked them to fetch her.
But what about the thugs who’d assaulted Nickolai? Had Andrei led them to Nickolai’s flat? Maybe they spent the night on the street, then followed them to that morning. Except, if the attackers had watched Vicktor’s flat in the night, why didn’t they strike sooner?
Vicktor’s head throbbed. The train coughed and lurched into gear, the wheels squealing. “How long to Larissa’s dacha?”
“One hour,” Gracie snapped.
He hazarded a look at her. She seemed tired, her shoulders sagging. His heart twisted in pity. “How’s your elbow?”
She ignored him.
Vicktor stared past her out the window. The train rolled past a dingy, lifeless factory. A few forgotten birch trees dared to show buds and an azure sky hinted at the countryside beauty. Anticipation swept through him. He, not Andrei, was here with Gracie. It was up to him to sweeten the fragrance of the day, especially after he’d so horrendously bumbled her protection that morning. He reached over and pushed the errant strand of hair behind her ear.
“I’m sorry, Gracie. I didn’t mean to upset you.”
Her lips parted, but no words emerged. Her eyes glistened as she ducked her head, but her body relaxed and turned slightly away from the window. He slid a hand over the back of the seat, behind her shoulders. “I just want to keep you safe.”
Those words lifted her gaze to his. Searching his eyes, she finally gave a small nod. “Okay. I forgive you.” Then one corner of her mouth curved in a smile, and for a second he wondered what it might be like to kiss that sweet mouth. The one that could send his pulse rate into overdrive just seeing a quirk at the corner.
He swallowed the impulse and let his hand settle on her shoulder. And when she didn’t flinch, but turned into the pocket of his embrace, he decided it was enough.
Maybe, just maybe, he’d work up to a kiss later. At the dacha. With the sweet breeze off the river and the moon lighting her pretty face.
Think, buddy. She’s wasn’t just an American woman, she was a missionary. There was no way she was going back to his flat. Roman’s words thundered behind his thoughts. The impropriety alone would send her into fits.
Except, that was yesterday. And she didn’t seem to be throwing fits, did she? Or…he scrolled back to the way she’d gone white at the table, when he’d suggested he accompany her to the dacha, and suddenly he felt sick.
Maybe he wouldn’t be kissing her in the moonlight.
Still, she was here, with him, without her chauffeur, and Vicktor would use the time to rekindle her trust. Vicktor indulged himself in the scent of Gracie’s hair. Maybe, in fact, he’d jumped to conclusions about Andrei. Crabbiness didn’t indict a person. Somehow, over the last twenty-four hours, the killer had become a sullen Russian chauffeur who knew English.
Vicktor was losing his focus. Gracie’s easy laughter, and the magnetism of her beautiful green eyes had snarled his investigator’s sixth sense into hard knots. He spent more time ridiculing her outfits than he did devising her escape plan. That had to tell him something…what, he didn’t want to explore. But if he didn’t pull himself together, the Wolf would walk right up to them and tap him on the shoulder.
And then he’d not only scuttle his career, but he’d lose Gracie.
He wouldn’t admit to himself which was worse.
The train settled into a rhythmic harmony and Gracie’s head bobbed onto his shoulder. Perhaps a day in the country was just the escape they both needed—blooming lilac sprinkled the air and the birds sang from budding plum and mountain ash trees.
Maybe at Larissa’s dacha he could gather his wits and figure out a way to save Gracie’s life. Maybe even earn her trust.
And then what?
Vicktor caught sight of the conductor swaying toward them, asking for tickets. He let go of Gracie and reached inside his coat. Pulling out two passes, he leaned close to Gracie. “Don’t say anything,” he breathed. She nodded.
So she’d been listening when he’d briefed her. Without a passport, no conductor worth her salt would allow an American out of city limits. Worst-case scenario would be an ugly scene with him flashing his ID and sabotaging their disguise.
Gracie turned toward the window.
Vicktor stared ahead, face blank, eyes on the conductor. Dressed in a gray polyester dress that just barely contained her folds and wrinkles, she looked as if she had eaten a few of the passengers for dinner—and enjoyed it. She ripped off the stubs of the couple in front of them, then approached him. Weariness draped her dark eyes. Vicktor kept his face bored and handed her the tickets. She raked a gaze over him, then glanced at Gracie. A smirk flickered on her pudgy face.
Vicktor kept his face stoic, didn’t meet her eyes.
She ripped the tickets and handed Vicktor the stubs. Vicktor reined in his sigh of relief until she was two rows past
them.
He glanced at Gracie, then grimaced. Shrugging out of his jacket, he tucked it over her.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
Vicktor curled an arm around her and pulled her close. He couldn’t bear to tell her she’d just been mistaken for a prostitute.
The Wolf paced the room. The clock on the wall ticked out the minutes, seconds he had left to produce an excuse—and a good one. He rubbed a hand over his head. It came away wet.
The door opened and a large man—too large for the Wolf’s comfort level, with a shaved head and hard eyes—beckoned him in.
The Wolf entered the adjoining hotel room, feeling for the first time as if it might have been better to run when he’d had the chance.
Smoke hung in the stale air. The odor of vodka told him business had already been conducted. He hoped favorably. He sat down on a fraying armchair the color of old blood, and pinned on a face that he’d learned aeons ago. No fear. The pero strapped to his shin helped, but it suddenly burned, and he crossed his legs, hiding the blade.
“Minksy is waiting. He says he has a potential buyer for you.” The man in the opposite chair was ten years younger, but had the eyes of age. He rolled a Marlboro between his fingers, staring at the glowing red embers. “Don’t let him down. He’s not a man who enjoys embarrassment.”
The Wolf rubbed his hands on his pants legs, fighting the urge to carve a line across the man’s neck. How dare he threaten him? The man had forgotten who he was.
They all had.
He nearly had, for that matter.
Still, this was a new age, and that meant new tactics. He smiled. “I’m having some difficulty obtaining the package.”
The crackle of burning cigarette paper was all that broke the silence.
“But I’ll get it.” His heart thumped and he cursed this sudden show of cowardice. Yeltsin and Gorbachev had done this to him. He hated himself for becoming the kind of man he despised. After thirty years, he’d expected something more.
A medal, maybe.
Weakness had led him to this moment. Weakness of the people. Weakness of his leaders.
But strength would lead him to the future. “I’ll get it,” he repeated.
A deep indigo sky streaked with fading cirrus canopied them as Vicktor and Gracie strolled down the pebbled dirt road toward Larissa’s dacha. Gracie swung a bulging plastic bag filled with bread and canned items they had purchased in a nearby village. She breathed the scented air, letting it fill her lungs. There was peace here. She could feel it. Outside the city, spring had already revived the wild plants and kissed the trees. Pollen hung heavy in the air. A melody of twilight crickets began to sing, a welcome replacement to the symphony of honking cars, screaming children and hissing trains from the city.
Gracie exhaled, feeling fear rush out with her breath. The road behind them was empty, clear for at least a mile before it fell over the horizon. God, please make this a safe place. She shot a look at Vicktor. In every way. She’d spent the last hour tucked under the safety of his arm. And, despite the fact common sense occasionally rose up to knock her upside the head, she had loved it.
But a train loaded with onlookers was one thing—a secluded dacha in the country a completely different story. She licked her dry lips and set a smile on her face.
Beside her, Vicktor also carried a plastic bag, stretched thin with bottled water and a jar of mayonnaise. Gracie couldn’t help but notice his rigid jaw and pensive expression. His dark mood had surfaced right after they’d disembarked from the train and had been slowly seeping out of him as they distanced themselves from the village.
She didn’t want to guess at its meaning.
They crossed a side road and startled a pheasant. Gracie glanced down the road at the dacha houses lined up, one after another, a quiet audience to their journey. One-room huts, sometimes equipped with a bed, or a stove and sink, and painted sky blue, or jade green, they seemed grim and cold, waiting with dark eyes for summertime activity. Some already evidenced life, in the spaded soil and green potato shoots peeking from black earth.
“I’ve never been here in the spring,” Gracie said, hoping for conversation. She pictured the flowering lilac trees, the current and Saskatoon bushes climbing into the sky, peering over fences. “It seems dead.”
Vicktor stared straight ahead. Gracie bit her lip. The guy was in knots.
“Do you have a dacha, Vicktor?” It suddenly occurred to her that they could have gone to his place so he could protect her on his home turf.
“No. My pop didn’t like gardens and Ma was too busy with her job.”
“What did your mother do?” Gracie asked, thankful to see a spark of life in his stony face.
“She was a nurse. She worked for thirty years in the Khabarovsk hospital. Retired three years ago.” His tone warped with bitterness. “She died of cancer a year later.”
Gracie heart wrenched. “I’m so sorry, Vicktor.”
He shrugged.
The breeze shifted as they drew closer to the river. It lifted the hair from her neck and chilled her ears. Gracie shivered slightly, wishing for a jacket. At least she had decent shoes—she’d traded in Larissa’s horrendous sandals for her ankle boots when she left Nickolai’s.
“So, do you think there’s a heaven?”
Gracie stopped and stared at him. He dodged her gaze.
“Yes, absolutely, Vicktor.”
“How can you be so sure?”
Her heart thumped in her chest. “Because I believe the Bible. And the Bible tells me that it is so.”
He turned his incredible blue eyes on her and the intensity of his gaze speared her. “And how do you know the Bible is true?”
God picked now to let her witness? She dug through her memories, and prayed for the right answer. “A part of it is faith, Vicktor. Faith says there is a God and that He made us, and gave us His Word so that we can know Him. The Bible is the record of His activities with the kingdom of Israel, and of who He is, in the personage of Jesus Christ. But consider this—if the Bible isn’t true, or only parts of it are, how are we to know which parts are accurate and which aren’t? You either believe it in one gulp, or dismiss it outright. It can’t be pieced out.”
Vicktor wrapped a hand around his neck. She had the urge to massage that tense muscle for him. “So, why does it matter if the Bible is true, or not?”
Gracie felt his question more than heard it. Why did it matter? So what, there is a God. Why did it matter to anyone what God thought?
“I guess it only matters, Vicktor, if you consider life beyond this earth. The Bible talks about heaven. It also mentions an unimaginable, eternal hell. Two forevers. One incredible, the other horrifying.”
Vicktor began to walk, speaking into the breeze. “Why would a God who says He loves us send someone to hell?”
“He doesn’t send people to hell. He gives us a choice. But if we do nothing with that choice, we’re making a decision. We’re choosing indifference. For the present, without thought for our eternal tomorrow. We have to take the step to ask to be saved.”
“I thought he was God. Can’t he just save us? I mean, what’s an all-powerful God for if He can’t just do it?”
Okay, it was conversations like these that made her feel like a failure. The words always felt stilted, even desperate. “He did. That’s the point. Listen, God is a Holy God, which means that, while He is merciful, He is also just. He can’t just absolve us of the punishment for sin. Someone has to pay. Which is why Jesus died, in our place. Our sin is what keeps us from God, not God’s choice. On the contrary, he chose to make a way to save us, through Jesus Christ. Now we just have to accept it. But God demonstrates His own love for us in this—while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. It’s a verse in Romans, but it pretty much sums up the Bible.”
Vicktor went silent. Then, said starkly, “I have a few sins.”
Something gave way inside her at his words. “Oh, Vicktor, we all do.” She reached out,
wanting to stop him, her heart already halfway there, longing for him to understand—
He whirled, fury in his eyes. “But my mother didn’t have any sins. She was good. Kind. She spent her life taking care of sick, worthless people, and in the end she died their deaths.”
Gracie tried not to wince at his grief.
“Is she in heaven, Gracie? Did God save her? Or did her sins send her to hell?”
Gracie’s mouth went dry. Why, oh why, did she always find herself feeling like she had to defend God?
Psalm 22 flashed through her mind. “For He hath not despised or disdained the suffering of the afflicted; neither hath He hid His face from him; when he cried unto Him, He heard.”
God didn’t ignore the sufferings of people—that much she’d learned over the past two days. And this hope she could offer Vicktor, without knowing the answer. “Vicktor, I can’t judge your mother. I didn’t know her, and I’m not God. Only God sees the heart, sees the soul. But I believe God hears the mourning of our hearts. And maybe He met your mother in her darkest place.” Her answer registered on his face in a scowl. “I do know, however, that for you, if you don’t ask forgiveness for your sins, the Bible is painfully clear about the consequences.”
Vicktor stared at her for a long moment, then stalked off.
Gracie’s heart plummeted, and all she felt was the ache of emptiness where it had once rested. She had failed God. Again. Why couldn’t she get it right?
Ten minutes of silence unfurled as they trudged down the road. It narrowed, then turned along the riverbank, becoming a two-lane rut of dried tire tracks. Larissa’s dacha appeared at the end of a long row: a yellow two-story cottage surrounded by a thicket of lilac trees and wild roses. The gate was closed, but as they walked closer, Gracie saw that the vegetable beds in the back had been worked and black soil waited for its seeds.
It was a forlorn, barren place without the greenery of infant plants, but Gracie had seen the fruit, knew its potential, and in her memory she saw the paunchy red tomatoes, the emerald cucumbers, the violet eggplants.
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