A car that was about to run her down.
She sensed the vicious strength of his madness. She saw it in his eyes, his smile. It had started before she met him, and it had ripened to fullness since then. Her skin crawled. Her mouth was dry.
“Georg,” she said warmly. “What an unexpected pleasure. I had no idea you were still alive.”
Right. Such a delightful surprise. As if she hadn’t been dragged at gunpoint to his door. Whatever.
“I almost wasn’t,” he said. “I was confined to a prison hospital for almost a year. Old Novak got me out.”
“That was good of him,” she said. “And I never knew.”
His smile widened. “You couldn’t have known. You would have found a way to come to me. After what we shared, I was sure of that.”
She funneled her shudder of disgust expertly into another burst of projected warmth. “And how did you know that?”
“Because of what you did for me.” He said the words as if it should be obvious.
Hmm. This was a puzzle. As far as Tam knew, she had tried with every effort at her disposal to kill his scrawny, milk white ass. Under the circumstances, however, it seemed unwise to say so. Bursting his mad fantasy bubble would seal her doom. She was in no rush for that.
“And what exactly did I do?” She ventured a secret smile, as if they were playing a flirtatious game.
Georg smiled back. “You did for me what I was too weak to do for myself. Kurt was so strong, I could not see past his strength to realize my own. But you saw it. You saw my potential.”
“Yes,” she said obediently. “Yes, I did.”
“It was meant for me!” Georg waved his arm around. “The money, the power, the whole empire! But I would never have been anything but Kurt’s servant if you had not freed me.”
A deep breath. She took the plunge. “It was a huge risk,” she said slowly. “But in the end, it was worth it. Look what you have become.”
“I am grateful,” he said solemnly. “I nearly died for it, but thanks to you, it was Kurt that died. And you are like his widow. You were born to rule at the emperor’s side, but instead of being Kurt’s consort, you were meant to be mine, Tamara. Do you see? Do you feel it?”
She widened her eyes, as if in wondering realization. Her destiny revealed. “Ah. Yes. Now I understand.”
He got up and walked slowly toward her, circling her. “You did not know, but I have been protecting you for years,” he said.
Her knees weakened as she thought of Rachel. “Me? Really?”
“I told old Novak you died. That I had seen your bleeding body.”
She let her jaw drop in theatrical amazement. That would explain why she had survived for so long. It had always seemed improbable to her. Too good to be true that the old man had ignored her for so long.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I thought no one knew where I was. But I might have known I could never hide from you.”
“I hear you have an adopted child,” he said. “This is of some concern to me. I hope you understand what a commitment of time and energy it will be to stand at my side and help run the global organization that I have in hand. To say nothing of how much it is about to expand.”
Tam gave him a supremely casual shrug. “Don’t worry about my priorities,” she assured him. “I’ll make arrangements for the child. There will be no conflicts at all.”
Georg’s smile widened. “I knew you would understand. And now, Tamara…give me what I have been waiting for…for years now.”
“And, ah, what is that?” She braced herself.
His pale lips thinned over those big fake teeth. “You.”
Her stomach twisted unpleasantly. She put down her briefcase, smiling, shining, glowing at him while a rapid-fire situation analysis crunched in her mind. She was alone with him, and that was a plus, but he was certainly armed to the teeth. He was a lethally quick fighter. Thin though he was, he had to outweigh her by over a third, and he had a much longer reach. He was a tall man, over six two. Insane, perhaps, but not stupid. He would be on his guard.
Her best bet were the earrings, but not until he was writhing on top of her, distracted by sexual pleasure. Then, once he was safely knocked out, she could kill him at her leisure in any of a dozen ways.
The trick would be to keep from vomiting or passing out while being intimate with him. She had lost her professional cool, and she had Val Janos and his manly mojo to thank for it. It was much easier to calmly contemplate the pits of hell when one didn’t have a shining paradise to compare it to. Damn him.
She shoved the thoughts away. This was all about survival now. She would deal with the mess later.
Georg held out his hand imperiously. “Well? Come here.”
She lurched toward him as if she’d been shoved from behind. His hand clamped her wrist. It was damp. Clammy and horribly strong, like the strangling coils of a snake.
“What, ah, do you want?” she asked faintly.
He grinned like a carnivorous dinosaur. “Take off your clothes.”
“Interesting footage you’ve got there.” Hegel let out an oily chuckle. “I see why you’ve been dragging your heels. Didn’t want to stop fucking her, hmm? And immortalizing the experience, too. Run back that last bit. I love the shape of her ass when she bends over you. And I go wild for a shaved pussy. Silky soft. Mmm. Run it back.”
“Fuck you,” Val said.
The gun dug harder into his neck. “Run it back,” Hegel repeated.
Val snapped the screen closed. “No,” he said.
Hegel leaned forward until Val could feel the moist heat of the man’s breath. “Don’t fuck with me, Janos. Do you know how bad your behavior made me look? Do you have the faintest idea how pissed I am with you? Because you’re just about to find out.”
Val started to turn. The gun dug deeper. “One false move, Janos,” Hegel muttered. “Pulling this trigger would be a pleasure.”
Three steps back. Val set the mechanism in operation, let the matrix start to turn in his mind, and floated apart from it. Or rather, he tried to, but the anxious question flew out of him without his permission. “Where is she? What is happening to her?”
“I expect she’s at the hotel with Georg. Although that twisted freak needs lots of help to get it on. You know, I bet she’ll thank me in the end for forcing the issue.”
Val could imagine exactly what Tamar would say if she heard those words. “You think so?” he said distantly.
“Oh, yes. There are worse things than being pounded by one of the richest guys in the world, even if he is out of his fucking gourd. And that kind of woman is sure to realize it real fast. You’ve done all right for yourself, Janos, but you can’t compete with hundreds of millions in drug, prostitution, and gun-running money. And if the moves he’s about to make pan out, his empire is going to expand. I’ll do everything I can to see that happen. This is the ass to kiss, Janos. Too bad you dipped your wick in the sacred well, you bad boy. Georg won’t like that. In spite of his sexual quirks.”
He hated to give Hegel the satisfaction, but fear prevailed, and the question burst out. “What sexual quirks?”
“Oh, nothing really that dirty,” Hegel said lightly. “He likes being watched, that’s all. No matter what he does, even if it’s just a blow job, someone has to be standing there watching, or else his dick goes south.