“Are you ready?” I asked her after she stood for a moment staring at the door. I was afraid I was going to lose her. “Take a moment to compose yourself, because when you enter that room, I want you to be one hundred percent professional for me. Do not let him see any distress.”
She took a shaky breath. “Got it.” Her body seemed to relax suddenly. “Let’s get this over with before I lose my nerve.”
She took a step towards the door, her back straight, shoulders squared, and head held high. Her heels echoed each time they hit the floor as she walked across the pit to the steel door of our basement.
I couldn’t help but watch her walk. She wasn’t what I had expected at all, not even after I’d seen her for the first time. I walked into her office expecting to see a frumpy college professor who lived most of her life in her head or inside a small apartment filled with books and cats. Most of the teachers I’d known in school had forgotten that they were women, but not Julia. As petite and mousy as she was, she knew how to take a powerful, commanding posture when she needed to.
As a woman travelling the world and talking to other historians, digging for her own information, and convincing people to give it to her, it seemed necessary for her to be able to put on a strong front when she needed to. I was definitely impressed by her ability to command my attention the way she did. The woman I saw crossing the pit in confident strides was not the same woman who’d been on the verge of tears when we first came downstairs.
“Are you coming?” she asked me, turning back at the door, waiting on me to cross the room behind her and join her for her session with Dimitri.
She seemed to have grown a few inches taller as she crossed the room as well. I chalked it up to her straight-backed posture and her boost of confidence. She crossed her arms and leaned against the wall as I walked over to her.
I’d always avoided women like Julia Danvers, the prim and proper, uptight types. They always seemed too snobby, as if they looked down their noses at everyone. But now that someone like that was right here in front of me, I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
Chapter 3
Julia
Somehow, Gage had managed to calm and steady my nerves, though I wasn’t sure if it was anything he’d done or just my fear of what would happen if I didn’t play along. Straightening my back and mustering up my resolve, I walked across the lower level of the garage to the steel door of the room where he said he was holding the man he needed me to talk to for him, Dimitri.
As I watched him walk over to me from the opposite end of the room, I realized I’d never met a man quite like Gage Noll before. Most of the men I’d known were academic types—quiet, mild-mannered, studious, and the antithesis of everything Gage seemed to be. Gage was commanding and authoritative. He took charge, and he didn’t take no for an answer once an order was barked.
The men I knew would have killed for his body, but only after calculating the risk of getting caught for the crime. Then, only if they felt the risk was worth the payoff would they have gone through with it. Needless to say, none of them ever seemed to really work on their bodies, not to the point that this man had.
When he walked over and opened the door into the concrete interrogation room in the basement, I was tempted to refuse to go in. I wanted him to grab me again. I couldn’t shake the desire to have his arms around my waist one more time and have him forcefully take charge of me. There was something so sexy about that. It made no sense to want him to manhandle me, but I did want him to, and I thought I saw the desire in his dark, mysterious eyes as he opened the door and let me walk into the room.
“Dimitri,” he said loudly as he closed the door and locked it behind us, “I’ve got Dr. Danvers from the university to help us talk.” He spoke slowly, and his voice boomed in the little room, as if that would help break through the language barrier. Unfortunately, that tactic never seemed to work as well as people thought it should.
“I don’t think that helps,” I told Gage as I looked around the room. The room was essentially a concrete cube with one dim light bulb hanging down from the ceiling over a small wooden table. Other than a small pool of light directly under the hanging bulb, the rest of the room was almost completely dark.
The man he called Dimitri sat in what looked like a metal chair. It was hard to see in the dim light, but it looked like he was tied to the chair. He was also a thick, muscular man a little smaller than Gage. His features were distinctly Russian. He wore his hair cropped closely, almost a buzz cut. He looked up at me as I took my seat across the table from him, and I saw blue eyes that were probably once beautiful, but now they looked tired, defeated.