“Please,” said Alina, squeezing my hand. “Give Mr. Malakov our regards.” Her eyes were wide with fear when she said his name.
I felt bad about the store assistant. She’d been rude, but she didn’t deserve to lose her job. “Please...you don’t need to fire that woman. Could you...get her back?”
From Alina’s astonished face, compassion wasn’t high on the list of traits when it came to Luka’s previous women. Maybe, when you were that powerful, people started to look like bugs to be stepped on. And now everyone thought I was one of those women.
“Of course,” said Alina. “Whatever you wish.”
The scary thing was, I sensed that I could have asked her to fire the woman, or get her back, or cut off one of her fingers and she would have done it, without question. And it was Luka who had instilled this fear in them.
The man who wanted to corrupt me.
Back at the hotel, I dumped the shopping bags and then called Adam, telling my “dad” excitedly about how the guy I’d met wanted to take me on his yacht. He was silent for a moment. Then he told me he had a surprise for me. “I’m here,” he said.
“Where?”
“Here. Let’s meet. Gorky Park.”
What?!
I got a cab there and waited on a bench, watching couples laugh and cling to each other on the ice as I sipped a coffee. When a man sat down on the bench next to me, I had to study him for a few seconds before I really believed it. “You’re here?!”#p#分页标题#e#
“I flew in last night,” said Adam. He pulled his winter coat tighter around himself. “Goddamn, I forgot how cold it gets here.”
My head was spinning. Someone as senior as Adam didn’t normally leave Langley, except to go to Washington. They certainly didn’t jet off to Moscow to meet up with field agents. Not for the first time, I had that twinge of unease. This was my first mission, so I had nothing to compare it with...but still, nothing about it seemed normal. What if Roberta and Nancy had been right? “Why—Why are you here?”
“We followed Luka’s car to the nightclub, then back to his penthouse. You stayed the night. I assume you...hit it off?”
Deep, hot embarrassment rose up in me. Only the icy wind stopped me turning beet-red. “Yes.”
“That’s when I thought I should come out here. Things may move very quickly, now, and I want to be on site, where I can help. You’ve done well, Arianna.”
Despite my unease, the praise triggered a deep, warm glow inside me. It was almost scary, how much I’d needed to hear it. “What are we going to do about the yacht?” I asked. “I don’t even know where we’re going.”
“Go with him,” said Adam without hesitation. “We think this trip is tied in with the arms deal. Stick to him like glue and see if you can find out who the buyer is.”
“But I’ll be...alone with him. Out at sea.” There’d be no way anyone could tail us, out there, without being seen. I’d be totally without backup.
Adam put a fatherly hand on my back and leaned close. “You can do this, Arianna. I wouldn’t have sent you here if I didn’t believe you could.”
Again, his words sent a wave of pride flooding through me and that helped to counter my fear. I tried to look at it rationally. If I wanted to bail, this was the time. Adam would be able to get me on the next plane out of the country. Luka would be pissed, but would think his new girlfriend had gotten cold feet and run home. I could go back to listening to his phone calls from a safe, cozy office.
And I’d never see him again.
He’ll kill you if he finds out. Roberta’s words. I didn’t doubt they were true. I thought I’d seen glimpses of warmth in him—vulnerability, even. But that didn’t change who he was. And whatever lust, whatever affection he held for Arianna Ross, American tourist, it didn’t extend to Arianna Scott, CIA spy.
But Adam believed in me, in a way that Roberta didn’t seem to. He’d seen something in me that she hadn’t seen in years. I wanted to prove something—to him, to Roberta, to myself.
Mainly, though, what was going through my head was the feel of Luka’s hands in my hair. The things he’d whispered in my ear as we stood by the door of his penthouse. He had to have me. No man had ever wanted me with that intensity and it sat like a burning coal at my very center, glowing through the layers of ice. Maybe even melting it.
He’s going to end my innocence. In every conceivable way. Was it worse that he wanted to do it, or that part of me wanted him to?