Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [74]
“Open the door,” she mouthed. “Let me in.”
Naomi stared at her, unmoving. A moment later, a silver-plated .25 appeared in the woman’s hand. When she tapped on the glass again it was with the muzzle of the handgun.
Naomi calculated the time it would take to draw her gun, or start the car and peel out. The odds were stacked heavily against her. She opened the car doors and the woman slid inside. She gave a little tug on the leash and the toy poodle leaped into her lap. She had square-cut nails, like a man; she wore no jewelry of any kind.
“Are you going to tell McKinsey?” Naomi said.
“Why would I do that?”
She had a voice that hinted at exotic places. Naomi suspected that English was not her native language. Up close, her eyes were an astonishing mineral color, carnelian maybe. She had the kind of wide, sensual mouth Naomi would have killed for. There was a strength about her that caused a warning bell inside Naomi to sound.
“You two work together.”
The woman cocked her head. “Where did you get that idea?”
“Yesterday, you came out of Pete’s building at almost the same moment as him, at a very early hour.”
“Well, it seems as if we’re all up early.”
Naomi stared at her. She tried to ignore the muzzle of the .25 that was pointed at her chest. “Are you claiming you and McKinsey don’t know each other?”
“No, not at all,” the woman said. “But we don’t work together.”
Naomi tipped her head slightly. “How did you know I was here?”
“Peter was foolish to let himself be seen leaving Fortress.”
“So you’ve been following me? Who are you?”
A small smile curved the woman’s lips. “You mean you don’t recognize me?”
“I admit you look familiar.”
“But you don’t know from where.”
Naomi nodded uncertainly. The answer seemed tantalizingly close. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
“No.” The poodle made a small sound and the woman rubbed it behind its ears. Its tiny pink tongue came out and licked her fingers. “We haven’t.”
“Then where—?”
“But you have seen me before, Naomi.” The smile spread. “Where, where, where, you’re wondering? I can see it in your face.” She took a moment to slide the window down and toss her butt into the gutter. “In Moscow. Fourteen months ago. Just before the last snow of winter.”
“Good God!” Memories shifted in Naomi’s head, gears clicked, and all at once her brain seemed to implode. She had been standing behind and just to the left of the FLOTUS in the enormous hall of the Kremlin during the reception that followed the signing of the security pact between the United States and Russia. The atmosphere had been festive, the air thick with hard, cryptic Russian. Jack had walked in with her, and later, after the POTUS was dead and the FLOTUS was in a coma, after they had returned home aboard Air Force One, demoralized and in mourning, Jack had told her … “It can’t be.”
The woman seemed delighted. “But it is.”
“You’re Annika Dementieva.”
FIFTEEN
HE STANDS in the darkness. Alli can’t see him, but she can feel him, which is much worse. He is like a nightmare given life; she has a sense that her life is over. And even though she’s smart enough to know this is precisely what he wants her to feel, she cannot help herself. The situation is beyond her control.
As she feels him approaching, she struggles against the restraints, but she’s held fast by wrists and ankles to the metal chair bolted to the floor. She wears what she had on when he abducted her out of her bed at school—panties and a men’s T-shirt. Whatever semblance of dignity she had when he brought her here is now gone. He has seen every square inch of her body—not merely seen, but observed, as a surgeon will examine his patient, as a thing to be slit open. But this man has no intention of healing her—though that is, of course,