He grins. “Clever, aren’t you?”
“The money speaks for itself. There’s more where that came from if you play ball with us.” I am at once smiling at his compliment and frustrated by his reluctance with words. “Tell me what your organization is planning.”
I move closer toward him, run my fingers up and down his cheek, the black tips of my nails scrapping across his skin like chalk against a blackboard. He shivers. Good. He’s weakening. I snuggle up close to him, wrapping my left leg over his thigh. Biting down on my glossy-red lower lip, I toy with my garter. Tiny biofeedback sensors are hidden in the black leather garter circling my leg. If I can get him to touch the sensors, I’ll know whether or not he’s lying.
“I assure you,” he says, pulling on my nipple and rubbing it between his forefinger and thumb. “After our leader receives the funds he’s been promised, there will be an attack against government officials.”
I wince, but I refuse to show weakness in front of him.
“Where, Ivan, where?” Frustration zaps the breath out of me. He’s so busy playing with my nipples, I can’t get him to move his hand down to my thigh. Damn. I press my bare breasts against his chest and lick the pulse at the side of his neck. “Tell me.”
“No. I want to fuck you.”
“You won’t get any pussy if I don’t get the intel.”
His eyes narrow. He leans over me. His breath smells unpleasantly of vodka and garlic. “I’m meeting up with my connect in Paris. A Chechen. I can arrange for you to meet him.”
I exhale. Sharif? Is he telling me the truth? I’ve got to find out. I’m not about to send him to nirvana with my pink pussy lips for a lie. Besides, I have a personal stake in knowing this information. If Sharif is in Paris, I can’t take the chance he could locate me. I have an apartment on the Right Bank, though I change digs often. In my business, it’s safer that way.
“Touch me, Ivan,” I say, grabbing his hand and placing it on my thigh. “Here.”
I place his index and middle fingers on the two biofeedback sensors disguised as phony rubies. With his fingers on the sensors, I ask him again what their plans are. I get the same answer. A meeting in Paris. With a man I believe is Sharif. Is the converted Muslim getting ready to unload the artifact he stole from me? It has yet to resurface, not even in a private collection when the U.S. government seized Syrian artifacts on loan and auctioned them off to compensate Americans injured in a terror attack sanctioned by Syria and Iran.
I look for other clues—rapid eye movement, a flushed face—then I press the tiny set button on the side. Ivan notices my action and rips open the Velcro fastener and removes the garter.
“What’s this?” he yells, trying to dig out the fake stones with his nails. The LCD screen. My face pales.
I continue to smile, showing none of the rising fear surging inside me. “Give me the garter, Ivan—”
“Why? Did your lover give it to you?” he bellows, his words dripping with sarcasm.
I swallow uneasily. “Yes. It has sentimental value.”
He laughs. “Since when did a woman like you have a heart?”
I close my eyes and will the tears not to come. He’s right. I’ve turned into one of them, the miscreants of the netherworld who prey on the lascivious appetites of those who live for power. I have no heart.
But I can’t turn back. I have a mission to finish. I won’t give up until I kill the bastard who sent me to that prison and retrieve what he stole from me.
I sink back into the darkness, dragged down by my own hatred. Those few moments cost me. I open my eyes to see the Russian pull out a tiny plastic unmarked spray bottle. Holding the nozzle close to my face, he says, “You bitch! I figured you were double-crossing me. Is this a microphone?” He waves the garter in my face. “Is it?”
“No, Ivan, it’s not a microphone. It’s—”
Before I can stop him, he sprays a light mist into my ear, making my head go crazy. Is it nerve gas? I press my fingers to my temple as if to stop the sudden throbbing in my head. I can’t.
I blink, then blink again, trying to clear my blurry vision. Sputtering, I lose my balance when he pushes me facedown on the double bed. I land with a thud on the cedar-brown coverlet, when I feel hot breath on my thigh, his hand pushing aside my skimpy thong, followed by fingers plunging deep inside me. The merest contact with him disgusts me. The touch of his unseen fingers brushing across my clitoris sends a glittering trail of heat through my body as the unwanted sensations spark through me, though they can’t overpower my disgust.
Out of the corner of my eye, I see him holding the vial close to my face. Fighting my revulsion, I try to push him away, but my strength is zapped. He’s about to spray more mist into my ear when I hear—
Knock, knock.
I stiffen, hope surging in me. Is it my backup?
“Go away!” he yells in Russian, moving toward the door with long strides.
“Room service,” I hear someone answer in German. Before Ivan can stop him, the door swings open and a tall man dressed in black bursts into the room. I can’t see him clearly. “Aren’t you going to share?”
“What are you doing here?” Ivan yells. “Leave us alone! I paid for this girl.”
“Yeah? She looks like she can handle two cocks at the same time.”
That voice.
An icy chill slams into the pit of my stomach. Want to have fun, Fräulein? I hear in my head, echoing over and over again in my brain.
That same voice—
—low, sexy…
I put my hand to my ear, shake my head to clear my thoughts. I can’t. I feel like an overpowering wave is pushing me down, threatening to suffocate me. I can’t breathe. I’m going to die. That horror reverberates throughout my body, touching my soul with a feeling I know so well, that moment when my soul is trapped between life and death. I didn’t die then. I can’t die now.
“No!” I cry out, my voice coming from deep inside myself. It touches every part of me, but I can’t stop the darkness from closing me in, I can’t. Someone grabs me, another pair of hands holds me down on the bed, voices yelling. The sounds are muff led, as if someone turned down the volume in my head. I can’t make out what they’re saying…
—ooh…
“Help me!” I call out just before my eyes roll to the top of my head and a maddening dizziness sends me spiraling downward in a free fall. I can’t stop my mind from going into total rewind…going back, back…back to where? Yes, I see it now. The desert…stif ling heat, blazing sun, yet I can’t stop searching, searching for…for what? I don’t know. Can’t remember. The nerve impulses in my brain won’t connect, but I can’t stop…can’t stop—
Two years earlier Syria
I put the unfortunate incident with Dr. Omar out of my mind and get to work. I got my dig permit, and following my hunch and the photos I found in Aleppo, and uninfluenced by the prejudices of others in my field, I set out with my small entourage of local desert wanderers eager for decent pay and a hot meal.
We head toward the dead cities, crumbling in the desert-like landscape, cruising along in a four-wheel drive with questionable brakes and a rickety