He’d been out of favor ever since, expecting them to put him down like a rabid dog at any moment. Vaguely surprised every morning that he woke to find himself still alive. They hadn’t gotten around to it yet.
He’d begun to hope that they would simply ignore him for the rest of his life, but no. They had called him to locate Steele—and behold, she had a baby daughter. It was a test he could not afford to fail.
He clicked automatically on the shower footage, thinking to distract himself with that dance of wet female flesh. It did not help, to watch her play with the toddler. It made him squirm, it made him sweat. He could not think straight, could not detach, could not take the three steps. Nothing had ever shaken his self-control to this extent.
Find the weak point. Then exploit it. The rule droned in his head.
Vaffanculo, he responded mentally, banishing it.
The beeper attached to his pants chirped at him. He took a look, and his gut clenched. It was a numeric code, sent by Imre’s housecleaning service in Budapest. They were supposed to inform him of any change in Imre’s health and welfare. They had never beeped him before.
The code informed him that he had an urgent message to retrieve from the computer bulletin board. Something had happened to Imre.
His heart accelerated without his permission. There was a tremor in his hand as he entered passwords, clicked the message, decoded it.
A few terse lines informed him that the woman who was paid to cook, clean, and do Imre’s shopping had come in that day and found the door forced, the apartment ransacked, and Imre unconscious on the floor, badly beaten. He was in the hospital, his condition grave.
Val stared at the text on the screen for approximately three seconds and sprang to his feet, overturning the cup of tea. He groped for his phone, splashed and slipped clumsily in his bare feet through the steaming puddle in his haste to dress, pack, go, go, go.
He was breathless, dizzy. Panicking. Calm down. Three steps. Panic was another luxury that he could not afford.
Find the weak spot. Then exploit it.
His gut churned nastily. It seemed someone had just found his.
Chapter
2
Adrenaline kicked her right across the barrier of sleep.
Tam jerked up in bed, every nerve screaming, and instantly put every mental trick she had into action to block the dream that had provoked it. If the images didn’t sink their claws into her conscious mind, the feelings faded more quickly. Though never quickly enough.
Tonight, she couldn’t block it. The crackle of rifle fire. Hard, clutching hands holding her down under a bruised white sky. Dark silhouettes, mouths screaming, but she could not hear what they said. She was deafened by those rifles popping.
She squeezed her eyes shut and saw their stiff white faces, blank eyes staring up from the trench. Dirt showering into their open eyes. She had tried to close their eyes. Tried, and tried, but she’d had no coins to weigh their eyelids down. They would stay open forever. She could not hide what she’d become from those staring eyes.
And the fear, the shame. Burning, corrosive hatred for that evil leering monster. For what he’d done to them, to her. Stengl.
Her hands itched to kill him, even after sixteen years.
She pressed her hands against her face, and tried to breathe deep, but her lungs seized up halfway through each breath in a painful hiccup that jolted her whole body. Ah, God. She hadn’t dreamed about Stengl and his secret police squad, or the horrors of Sremska Mitrovica for years. She’d deep frozen it, buried it, rolled huge rocks over it.
But something was rolling the rocks away, one after the other. Something like Rachel. Fancy that.
Tam wrapped her arms around her knees. Her body ached, every muscle rigid. Her heart felt like it was going to explode, it raced so fast.
Moonlight streamed in the huge windows of her bedroom. She had chosen every detail of the room to calm, to soothe, having pictured an uncluttered, tranquil haven where she could feel safe and peaceful. What a fantasy. Sleep was a dangerous place for her to go.
The electronically programmed blinds would automatically close shortly before dawn to keep the room dim so Rachel would sleep longer, but the moonlight seemed blinding to her, casting shadows as cold and sharp as knives.
Tam looked down at the lump in the bed beside her. Rachel stirred, fussed in her sleep. Tam laid down alongside her, and stroked the child’s back. She wasn’t sure it was appropriate to take her nightmares into bed with the innocent toddler, but Rachel wouldn’t sleep on her own for love or money.
When she was being honest, though, she recognized that excuse for the cheap justification that it was. She just liked to be close to Rachel. She loved to watch her sleep, see the rise and fall of her little chest, the beatific relaxation in her face. To touch and snuggle that warm body. And she liked to be there when Rachel reached for her in the night. Right at the child’s fingertips. Instant gratification. The least she could offer, considering what Rachel had been robbed of up to now.
Just watching her was restful. Maybe she couldn’t get a decent night’s sleep herself, but watching Rachel get one was the next best thing. Tamara could lie there and feel that miraculous sensation that had taken her hostage in the aftermath of the organ pirate adventure. That hot softness in her chest. The melting.
The problem was, the rest of Tam’s emotional defenses were melting right along with her heart, and she was by no means ready to live without them yet. Scary.
Rachel rolled over and reached out, flinging a skinny but surprisingly strong arm over Tam’s neck, dragging her into a strangling, baby-soap, sour milk, and toothpaste-scented hug.
Tam grabbed the little girl, comforting herself with the warmth of that snuggly, wiry body. Rachel vibrated with life, glowing like a little sun. Being close to her fed something inside Tam that had been starving. Something she had thought was stone dead.
Rachel needed her so badly. Or rather, Rachel needed someone, and it had been the toddler’s questionable luck that Tam had been the one standing there, at the crucial psychological moment. Snap, click, and hey, presto…the kid was stuck to her like glue. And out of nowhere, Tam had suddenly come to crave being needed in return.
So strange. Where did that come from, after a lifetime of deliberately not giving a shit? After making not caring into a high art?
Rachel was barely three years old, and she’d had more crap luck than a lot of people pulled in an entire lifetime. Tossed into a sty of an orphanage at birth, scooped up by rapacious organ pirates to be broken down for parts, locked in a stinking windowless pen with a pack of desperate kids for months—it didn’t get worse than that.
Until you added in the fact that somehow, she’d managed to pull Tam Steele out of a hat for an adoptive mother. Yippee, what a prize.
And if that wasn’t enough, the mother she had chosen was getting twitchy and paranoid. Which was to say, more twitchy and paranoid than usual, which was really saying something, given her impressive list of mortal enemies. It was a strange sensation, but she couldn’t shake it. For weeks, she’d felt her grunting reptile brain looking back over her scaly reptile shoulder, telling her she was being watched.
Paranoia or genuine danger? Impossible to tell. Her instincts were good. But the emotions that had broken ranks and gone nuts inside her might have knocked even that out of whack.
She might never get it all wrenched back obediently into line. Chaos ruled, inside and out. She just had to get used to it.
Tam petted the fleece-covered back of the sleeping toddler, stroking the warm curve of the child’s head. Her fingers marveled at the spider-silk ringlets, the swell of her soft cheek, that