Fire Bound (Sea Haven Sisters)(136)

“Can you understand how I might think that you helped to set my father up?”



She nodded and then shook her head violently. Vehemently. Denying his charge. Mixed up in how to answer him.



“This man. Ilya Prakenskii. When he found out you were coming here, that we invited you, he forced you to help him, didn’t he? These men, these killers, they do things like that. I understand. I know when you’re coerced into something, you’re really not to blame. He probably threatened you. Did he do that? Did he threaten you?”



Lissa shook her head. “I’ve never really talked to him,” she managed to get out in a small, scared voice. “I was only introduced once. He didn’t know I was going to Europe. How would he? Only my family knew.”



Uri straightened, and she flinched back, ducking. He shook his head at her, reached deliberately to tuck strands of her bright red hair behind her ear. “That’s not the answer I want. You know that, don’t you? It isn’t a good idea to lie to me.”



He struck then, coming at her so fast she didn’t see it coming and had no way to deflect. He caught her arm, yanked her from the chair, spun her around so her back was to him, but her arm was locked very high behind her back. He wrenched it up even farther very, very fast. Hard. Twisting viciously as he did so. There was an audible crack. Lissa screamed as pain radiated up her arm to her shoulder, down through her body to the pit of her heaving stomach. She fell to her knees, catching herself with her good arm.



She tried to breathe away the pain, looking around her to get her bearings, the long sheets of hair protecting her face as she did so. She heard the beep of her watch as her alarm went off and she scrambled forward on her knees. He kicked her with his impeccable dress shoes, the ones he wore so elegantly with his three-piece suit. She sprawled out on the pavers, glanced over her shoulder to see him coming at her again and then dove for the only cover in the room. He had a desk, a very heavy desk set up facing the chair bolted to the floor, so he could work right there while his prisoner watched him. She scuttled beneath the desk, using her left hand to depress the little tiny button built into her watch. The one that looked like it belonged on the watch to wind it.



The explosion was loud in the tunnel, rock and dirt falling with a terrible roar. She heard rocks pelting the desk and she ducked lower still, making herself as small as possible. She heard the yells and grunts of the two guards. Uri’s startled yell. The sound of human voices cut off abruptly, and then someone screamed. That sound too was cut off.



She lay beneath the desk, her legs curled tight under her, cradling her arm, straining to hear anything. When no sound was forthcoming, and all the dirt and debris seemed to have settled, she crawled out from under the desk. The top was cracked nearly in two, and sagging in the middle where the split was, a large rock was resting on it. It was impossible to see the surface, covered as it was in dirt and dust.



The room was nearly filled with various-sized rocks, far more dirt, and steel bars that had been in the concrete used to hold the tunnel in place. Dust swirled in the air, forcing her to cover her nose and mouth.



She picked her way to where Uri lay, half buried under a pile of rocks. His gaze jumped to her face. Bright red blood bubbled around his lips and nose. She could see that his injuries were too severe for him to live. She sat down beside him, careful of her arm.



“All those young children your father took from their parents, the parents he murdered, those children served their country. They took orders and gave up their own lives to carry out your father’s orders. You rewarded them by sending killers after them. You had to have known that sooner or later one or more of them would retaliate.”



She looked around her, taking in the fallen rocks and destroyed tunnel. “You’re so predictable. Kostya always preferred underground for his dirty work. He liked to have escape tunnels and little places to interrogate his prisoners so there was no chance he could be discovered. Every single one of those very skilled assassins your father had trained knew that about him.”



She turned back to him with a little smile. “They study their targets. I study mine. That’s all you ever were, Uri, a target. They’ll work frantically to dig us out of here. You’ll be dead. Your men will be dead. They’ll pull me free, battered and bruised with a broken arm, but alive. I’ll be a heroine for their newspapers. Of course I’ll say what a wonderful man you were and how we were drinking champagne one moment and the next someone was shooting at us. I look quite convincing weeping, don’t I?”