Air Bound

by Christine Feehan

  She glanced behind her and saw the bloody trail of her footprints on the carpet. Let’s just get these men taken care of and then you can pull the glass out of my feet.

  Maxim swore in Russian, a blistering attack on just what he thought of her diversion. She ignored him and used the zip ties on the three men.

  “Pick up their weapons and step away from them,” Maxim instructed next. Clearly he didn’t want her walking around on her cut feet, but he kept the others thinking she was as much a prisoner as they were.

  Maxim stalked across the room and slammed his gun into each man’s head, sending him slumping to the floor. He wasn’t gentle about it. Bending down, he patted down each man and removed several other weapons before taping their mouths closed. He turned his attention to Theodotus.

  The physicist trembled visibly as Maxim approached him. “Don’t hit my head. I’m not going to give you any trouble.”

  “I need to know how many soldiers you have on board. How large of a security force did you bring with you? Don’t be stupid and lie. I’ll come back and kill. You know me. You know my brother. When I say something I mean it.”

  “I had no choice,” Theodotus blurted out. “I’m telling the truth.”

  “How many, Solovyov?” Maxim was relentless.

  “Eight altogether. But I’m telling you, I had no choice. You have to believe me. Uri Sorbacov approached me and told me he knew I was in touch with Gavriil Prakenskii. He wants Gavriil dead. He lent me this yacht. The men are under his orders. I’m as much a prisoner as you are.”

  Uri Sorbacov is the son of Kostya Sorbacov, the man who murdered my parents and forced us into the schools, Maxim told her.

  “Who knew Gavriil passed on the tip that your daughter was in danger?” Maxim persisted. He lifted Airiana to the desktop and set her there, right in front of her father. Grasping her ankle, he lifted her left foot in order to see the sole.

  Damn it, honey, this is a big chunk of glass and several small ones. Did you have to be so thorough?

  It wasn’t like I had time to figure out the best place to step.

  “No one. The message came in by my phone. A text message. In code.”

  “So your phone is being monitored,” Maxim said.

  “They wouldn’t dare.” Theodotus scowled at him. “No one would dare.”

  “It’s either that or you’re lying to me. And if the message was in code, who wrote the code?”

  “I did, of course. I use it for my work. No one knows it.”

  “Someone does. My guess would be Uri Sorbacov. He’s having your phone monitored, and he knows your code. Is he the one that told you about the terrorist threat?”

  Theodotus nodded his head slowly. “I knew Gavriil would send someone, but I didn’t know it would be his brother. I thought I could have whoever he sent get my daughter for me, and then if he was killed and his body buried at sea, Sorbacov would be satisfied that Gavriil was dead and Gavriil could slip away and live out his life somewhere. That’s the truth.”

  “You were going to have the man who helped you killed?” Airiana asked.

  Maxim extracted the largest chunk of glass from the bottom of her foot. She gasped and clutched at his shoulder.

  Ouch. A very big ouch.

  Serves you right. There will be no more of this. With bloody fingers he put the chunk of glass on the table and turned her foot up to the light to get the rest of the smaller pieces.

  “You don’t understand the politics in my country, Airiana. Uri Sorbacov wields a tremendous amount of power. It’s rumored his father did some disgraceful, shameful things, and those rumors are true. Uri wants the presidency, and he has to clean up his father’s image.

  “I don’t understand how this person wanting the presidency could possibly be a threat to a man of your stature, Theodotus,” Airiana said and jerked her foot away from Maxim—or tried to. His fingers shackled her ankle, refusing to budge. That hurts, you cretin, she hissed at him.

  “Those of us who remember such things about his father have to prove our loyalty to him. No matter how important we are, we could disappear just as easily as anyone else. He has assassins at his fingertips, men trained in schools . . .” He trailed off, looking at Maxim, his eyes going wide. “Of course. That’s why he wants Gavriil dead. Gavriil was part of that program.”

  “In case you’re wondering, and you’re thinking of double-crossing me, so was I,” Maxim said. “Trained in those schools. You don’t want me coming after you.” He picked two more small pieces of glass out of Airiana’s foot.

  “Ow.” She glared at him. “Is that the last piece?”

  “I hope so. I have to take a look at your other foot.”

  “I was trying to save your brother’s life,” Theodotus said. “You didn’t introduce yourself as a Prakenskii. You said your name was Maxim Kamenev. I had no idea you were Gavriil’s brother. Not,” he added truthfully, “that I could have done anything to save you. Uri Sorbacov wanted a body and I had to give him one. If I didn’t, I would be dead and so would my daughter.”

  “Not if the terrorist threat is real,” Maxim said mildly, inspecting Airiana’s right foot. “There’s two more shards of glass that I can see,” he added.

  “No, he wouldn’t have killed us outright, but we’d be imprisoned, still working for him, and we’d never see the light of day again. You know how ruthless his father was. Uri is every bit as much or more. He’s as brutal behind closed doors as he is charming in his television interviews.”

  Is he telling the truth? Airiana asked.

  Sadly, yes. Both Kostya and Uri Sorbacov can make people disappear. We’re certain Uri’s the one putting out the hits on our family and all the others his father created in those schools. In spite of the fact that we’ve always been assets to our country, they don’t want the existence of the schools and the way the children who were taken there were orphaned to come to light. That would pretty much guarantee no presidency for him, and his father would be brought up on criminal charges.

  Airiana sighed. I can understand Theodotus trying to survive. It seems like every step could be the wrong one. Clearly these men want you dead as well.

  Clearly. He extracted the last two pieces of glass and drew a medical kit from the belt around his waist. “Hold still. I have to clean those wounds.”

  “Still, Theodotus,” Airiana said, “you might have at least warned Maxim. He did save my life.”

  “I wanted to keep you alive,” Theodotus insisted. “Both of us alive. And we have to have a decent place to work. If I can find the way to counter this threat and get the defense system up and running, Uri will think twice before he tries to make either of us disappear. It’s possible even that I can align myself with his opponent, and we can get rid of the threat to us altogether.”

  “I’m not the least interested in political intrigue,” Airiana said. “I don’t want to live that way, or work that way. I want to go home and just work my farm and be with people I can trust. I can’t live like you.”

  “You have no choice,” Theodotus snapped, his brows drawing together in a black line. “You’re part of this whether you like it or not. You started this all those years ago.”

  “I was a child, playing. Nothing more. I saw patterns in weather and duplicated them on a computer. The computer generated most of the data.”

  “And the computer-generated data was incorrect,” Theodotus insisted. “You did something else, something you didn’t tell anyone. That’s why I need you in order to complete this weapon.” His face had gone red and his voice had raised, as if she was still a child and did not understand the importance of his work.

  “You just told the absolute truth,” Airiana said. “You developed a weapon, not a defense, and certainly not what I had envisioned—something that would predict terrible storms and help calm those storms. Something that could stop global wa
rming and keep our planet safe.”

  “A child’s dream,” Theodotus sneered. “Impractical.”

  “Maybe, but it was my goal. Not a weapon to cause drought and hunger in countries a government doesn’t care for. Not to use as a threat. In any case, I can’t reproduce material that I randomly put together so many years ago when I was a child playing with a computer program. If you can’t remember what you did, why would you think I could?”

  Maxim washed both of her feet while she was arguing with her father. He could have told her it was useless to quarrel with Solovyov. When it came to his work he was single-minded. Quite frankly, he didn’t care who he worked for as long as they provided him with the materials he needed and the space to be comfortable. Theodotus needed to work, and he needed the admiration of the world around him.

  “I know you can help me with this project, Airi,” Theodotus insisted. He scowled at Maxim. “Get me out of these ties. This is ridiculous. We can find a way out of this without you dying.”

  “Thanks.” Maxim couldn’t help the sarcastic note creeping in. He covered the soles of Airiana’s feet with an antibiotic cream.

  “What are you going to do?” Theodotus asked, fear creeping into his voice, replacing some of the arrogance.

  “I’m going to bandage your daughter’s feet, and then put a muzzle on you.” Maxim glanced over his shoulder at the physicist. “I know where you live. I can get to you anytime, anywhere. It won’t matter what kind of guard you have. I’m a ghost. I’ve taken out heads of state, toppled governments and killed drug lords surrounded by their private armies. You won’t be much trouble.”

  “I’m not a threat to you. It’s Uri and his father,” Theodotus hastened to explain. “I told you, I didn’t know Gavriil would send his brother.”

  Airiana sighed as Maxim began to bandage her feet. “The point that you don’t seem to be getting is, whoever Gavriil sent was helping you. They risked their own life to infiltrate a criminal group so they could keep me alive for you. Knowing they were doing that, you still were planning to repay them by having them murdered.”

  “It wasn’t me. I didn’t want that to happen, but I had no choice.”

  “You had a choice. There’s always a choice,” Airiana said, exasperated. “You can’t shift all responsibility to someone else. You could have warned Maxim before you ever sent him after me.”

  “Then I would be dead,” Theodotus said. “Uri or his father would have had me killed.”

  There is no point in arguing with him, Airiana, Maxim said. He will not take responsibility for his own actions. I doubt he ever has. He certainly took no responsibility for you and your mother. I’m rather ashamed I brought you to him at all. I should have killed the extraction team and left you on the farm.

  Airiana wanted to agree, but she’d learned too much in the last couple of days. He would have sent another team after me. And those children would be dead. Let’s get out of here. I want to make certain the kids are all right. They must be so frightened and feel all alone.

  Maxim taped Theodotus’s mouth closed. He leaned down to put his mouth close to the physicist’s ear. “You won’t have to worry about Uri coming after you. You know Gavriil better than nearly anyone. When he finds out you were going to have his brother murdered after he sent me to help you, no one is going to be able to stop him.”

  Theodotus’s eyes went wide. Fear crept in. He began to kick the bar with his shoes, drumming out his alarm in hopes the other agents on board would hear him. Maxim knocked him out with the butt of his weapon.

  Airiana winced at the casual way he took care of business, but she didn’t protest. “What are we going to do? He said there were eight members of a security team on board.” She gestured toward the three on the floor. “That means there are five more, just waiting outside that door.”

  He shrugged. He wasn’t worried about the five agents on board, only about what waited for them when they reached their destination. He lifted her off the table and put her in a much more comfortable chair. “You’re not going to be walking for a few days. Your feet will be tender.”

  “I can walk,” she protested. “I’ll use air to keep me from putting too much weight on the soles of my feet. But seawater is probably really bad for cuts,” she added, giving him a quick look from under the sweep of long lashes.

  Maxim laughed as he retrieved his war bag from the corner of the room where he’d stashed it when they first entered. He set it on the bar and poured himself a tall glass of water, taking his time drinking it while he figured out their next move. “It might be time to get creative, especially if you’re not terribly keen on swimming.”

  She regarded him with suspicion. “What do you have in mind?”

  “The yacht is headed to a harbor, someplace where they’ve got another form of transportation. Theodotus wasn’t going to sail to Russia. He had a plane waiting.”

  “You aren’t going to confiscate the plane?”

  She didn’t sound convinced that he wouldn’t, and he found himself wanting to laugh again. Airiana sat in the luxury yacht, surrounded by men who had plotted to kill him, and she managed to look ready for adventure.

  Her platinum hair was carelessly tousled and fell around her face, giving him far too many fantasies when he needed to keep his mind on business. The bruise around her eye, marring her soft skin, bothered him, but her eyes were as blue as ever, those eyes that seemed to look right into him. Her mouth curved into a smile.

  “No. That might draw a little too much attention to us. But we definitely have to take over the yacht.”

  He was watching her eyes, trying not to fall into them, but waiting for that answering brightness, the storm clearing away to give him blue skies. She’d slept on the submersible, something he hadn’t thought she would do, but she’d curled into him and managed to sleep with him holding her in his arms. He treasured those few hours, knowing it was ridiculous, but he would always remember her like that.

  “We spent nineteen hours on the cargo ship and another twenty-four on the sub. The cargo ship had been heading to South America. The submersible rendezvoused with this yacht just off the coast of Cabo and we’re somewhere near there. Theodotus supposedly has a plane waiting in Colombia to take you to Russia. He had planned to go up the coast to his waiting plane, using the time to persuade you to join him voluntarily. We’re not that far from the United States. If we take over the yacht, we can pull into any number of harbors and hire a plane to take us back to Sea Haven.”

  “The big airports like San Francisco and Oakland are a good four hours’ drive from Sea Haven. Santa Rosa about two, but the airport is small in comparison to San Francisco. There’s a tiny airport, Little River, very close to Sea Haven, but we’d have to have a small, private plane,” Airiana said.

  He sent her a small grin. “I wasn’t planning on confiscating a jumbo jet. I don’t want to steal one, just hire a private plane.”

  Airiana curled up in the chair again. “I’m exhausted. You must be too. I did get some sleep on the sub, but honestly, I was scared, and you didn’t get any.”

  He sent her a sharp glance. “You don’t need to be afraid when you’re with me. I told you I wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”

  “It was more the thought of meeting my father—if he really was my father.”

  “He is. I’m an excellent forger. I can put together a complete history for a new identity that will pass any investigation, so I know how complicated it is to do it. Those letters from Marinochka were very real. It was her handwriting, and the letters and photographs of you had begun when you were under a year.”

  “Please call her Marina. I know you love your country, but my country is the United States. I don’t care if I was born in Russia. As far as I know, I’ve never been there. I don’t remember anything but my childhood with my mother in the U.S.” Airiana pressed her fingers to her eyes as if
she had the beginnings of a headache. “I will accept that Theodotus Solovyov is my father. I will even accept that my mother lovingly sent my projects to him, unaware he would use them for anything. But that’s the end of it. I live in Sea Haven with my sisters on a farm, and that’s where I belong. Please just take me home.”

  He crossed the room to crouch down in front of her, still looking into her sky blue eyes. “I’m taking you home, honey. I’ll get you there, but we may have a little more work to do before we’re finished here.”

  “You can’t kill my father. I want to kick him for being such a sorry excuse for a human being, but I don’t want you to kill him—maybe dunk him in the ocean, but you just can’t kill him.”

  “I hadn’t planned on it. Russia needs his mind, although in all honesty, when he returns without you, Uri may try to dispose of him.”

  She took a breath and leaned her forehead into his. “I figured as much, but that’s his choice, returning to Russia and facing this despicable man, knowing Uri is ordering the deaths of men and women his own father took from their homes and trained to be agents. Most of those people defended their country, and for his own gain, Uri wants them eliminated. How can Theodotus work for a man like that?”

  He had to smile at the fierce tone. She was a little warrior at heart. In the back of his mind he’d been a little worried about the four children making their home with Airiana. She had said she’d take them in, but they would have problems and she was such a little thing. Now he knew better. She would fight for them, give them rules and standards and make them stick to them. She would see to it that they got any help they needed, and she was capable of loving them.

  He tipped her chin up and kissed her, just because he had to. He didn’t let himself think about why he had to, he just kissed her. She melted into him, sliding her slender arms around his neck and turning her mouth up to his. Her lips were soft and firm, her mouth the same paradise he’d remembered. He could lose himself so easily in her, but one of the agents was stirring and they had work to do. Regretfully he pulled back. Her blue eyes had gone midnight dark. Just for that he kissed her again, tenderness creeping in, shocking him.