He did not care. If she wanted to kill him, she was welcome to do so. He deserved it. He braced himself, waited.
No crushing death blow came down, though. No needle’s burning sting. Her hands slid into his hair, gripping handfuls of it and yanking, hard. Her nails dug into his scalp.
“You’ve fucked a lot of people you didn’t necessarily want to sleep with in your career, Janos, right?”
He tensed, sensing a tarpit. “Yes,” he admitted cautiously.
“Was it difficult?” Her voice was hard. “To drug me up, make me come? Did it hurt? Did you have to grit your teeth, hold your breath?”
It took a minute to gather the courage to answer her, with the stark truth—even though he knew that she would not believe him.
“No.” His voice hoarse, raw. “This is the part that hurts. The rest of it was incredible. I’ve never wanted anything the way I wanted you.”
She laughed through her tears. “Me? No, it’s not me you wanted. You wanted a piece of me. That’s all anyone wants. The pretty part, the smart part, the mean part. The part between my legs. The rest is a pile of broken pieces. No use to anyone.”
He tightened his hands on her hips, fingers digging into her curves, feeling the smooth heat of her, the play of sleek, strong muscle.
“The rest of you is beautiful,” he whispered. “Broken to pieces or not. All of it is beautiful.”
She covered her face, shoulders shaking with bitter laughter. “Oh, shut up,” she muttered. “There’s no point in bullshit sweet talk. It hurts to listen to it, OK? Let me be, Janos. I will never do what you want me to do. Nothing will convince me, understand? So stop torturing me. Just disappear. I am begging you.”
He took his hands off her body, and stood up. “You will not be better off without me. You will have no more peace, Steele. If it is not me shoving you around, it will be someone else.” He laid it out for her, his voice flat. “Someone much worse.”
“Worse than you?” Her eyes shimmered with furious tears. She dabbed beneath them to wipe up her mascara. “Not possible.”
“It is very possible,” he said stonily. “When PSS catches up with you, they will take Rachel and lock her in a room somewhere to control you, as they ordered me to do. And you do not want to imagine what will happen when Novak catches up with you…and Rachel.”
She flinched, and tried to twist up her thick, glossy hair with trembling hands. “And you think that calling the cops on me, messing with Rosalia, fucking with the adoption agency, isn’t controlling me with Rachel?”
He dismissed that with a wave of his hand. “Don’t be stupid,” he snapped. “There is no comparison. I have done my best to protect her.”
“Oh, my. I am overwhelmed.” She stopped trying to put her hair up, and gathered the bristling array of hair ornaments into her hands as she shook it loose. She unlocked the door, yanked it open, and flung her parting shot at him. “What a fucking hero you are.”
He grabbed her wrist. “There’s one more reason why you should reconsider,” he said. “I have one final thing to offer you.”
“Oh, really?” She flung her head back, tear-blurred eyes blazing up at him. “Spit it out.”
“Drago Stengl,” he said.
The handful of hair ornaments clattered to the ground, bouncing and scattering. Her face was white to the lips.
“No one knows that. How…?” Her voice was a dry whisper.
The change in her eyes unnerved him. He felt as if he had just driven a knife into her chest.
“There was a photograph of you in Novak’s files,” he admitted. “It was taken at the memorial service some years ago, for the massacre in Zetrinja. I did some research and found out who gave the orders. I thought that you might be interested in, ah…news of him.”
“News? Of the man who murdered my father? I want more than news.” Her voice was colorless, dead. “I want his heart’s blood. I want him stretched on the rack. I want him screaming in hell.”
He had won, he realized. He had hooked her, but the realization gave him no satisfaction. On the contrary. It made him feel like a piece of shit to use her in this way. Turning a knife in old wounds.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“I don’t have his location yet, but I have a solid lead,” he hedged. “I will help you follow it. In exchange for your support on my project.”
She laughed. “Project? What a word for it. What do you mean by a lead? If you are fucking with me, I swear to God I will kill you.”
“I know where his daughter is,” he said.
Her soft white throat worked. “Ana,” she whispered.
“Yes, Ana. She lives in Italy. She is married to an Italian businessman with connections to the Camorra. I have someone following her right now. A client of mine can introduce us, the wife of a Camorra boss. I can exploit the connection. If you like.”
“If…I…like,” she echoed, her voice hollow. She stared at him, or through him. She had forgotten that he was there. She was looking back through the years at something he could not see and did not want to. From her haunted eyes, he understood that it was as vivid as if it were happening here and now.
He understood that. There were moments in his life as well that had burned their indelible afterimage onto every day that followed.
He steeled himself. “So?” he prodded her. “Do we have a bargain?”
She made a choked sound, put her hand over her mouth, and lurched out the door. Her rapid, clicking footsteps receded down the hall.
Val gripped the door frame with his fist. Was that a yes? Nothing was ever obvious with that woman.
Three steps back, he reminded himself, but it was no use. The emotions he’d learned to step back from had never been like these. They had no place, no right to exist. Inconvenient desire and guilt. And grief.
Imre. He gathered up the hair ornaments, retrieved the video camera, and headed out a door at the end of the corridor that led out onto the grounds. He cut through the forest on his way to the parking lot. It was freezing cold. He had not bothered to retrieve his coat, but he was still in a near molten state, from the encounter with Tamara Steele.
He could melt the polar ice caps in this condition.
He loped through frozen leaves and twigs crunching beneath his slippery dress shoes and slid into the car. Hoping desperately that there would be wireless coverage. He did not want to have to drive away from her and Rachel. He hated to let them out of his sight at all.
He booted up the laptop. Ah, joy. There was coverage. He established a connection, activated the tiny videocamera embedded in the screen. Downloaded the digital video footage.
Editing it made his heart pound. The footage was too good, the angle paradoxically perfect, showing every detail of Steele’s flushed face, eyes closed, head thrown back, her perfect thighs clamped around his.
His chest ached. This experience was private, precious. And he had to throw it to that fiend, Novak. A chunk of meat to quiet the beast.
He edited out her tears, their conversation. A meaningless attempt to protect what he could of her privacy. He encrypted it, attached it. His finger lingered for minutes over the button. He closed his eyes and thought of Imre’s hands.
He clicked “send.”
He sat in the dark with his hands clamped over his face for over ten minutes until he could trust himself to link up to the videophone.
András’s grinning