the hotel bed, mouth duct-taped shut. Slit open, his guts pulled out and heaped onto his chest. Conscious.
Whoa. He usually managed to block that memory from slicing into him unawares. He averted his eyes as the men filed past. The only one he knew personally was Pavel. The man looked like shit, grayish and thin. He’d aged ten years since Nick had seen him.
Zhoglo went by. He didn’t appear to see Nick at all.
He let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding and fell into step behind the last man, an obedient dog who knew his place.
“Welcome, Vor,” he said, in Ukrainian. “I hope the voyage went well—”
“Shut up, cretin,” barked the last man in the line, a big, hulking blond. “You’re not here to make noise.”
Nick shut up and followed them up the walkway. The buzzer at his belt vibrated.
His stomach tightened with a chill premonition.
It could be an animal, blundering past one of the sensors. The men were ahead of him, spread out widely, almost to the house.
“The Vor’s hungry,” the last guy said over his shoulder. “Prepare a meal for him. And don’t fuck it up. Bad food makes him irritable.”
Nick froze for a second, letting the distance between them lengthen. Prepare a meal? Him? Pavel hadn’t said anything about cooking.
“What does he want to eat?” he asked.
The blond guy shot a contemptuous glance over his shoulder. “Ask him, asshole,” he said. “Your problem, not mine.”
What did he have in the kitchen, anyhow? His appetite was for shit these days. He choked down the occasional frozen dinner when the feeling of emptiness inside him became physically debilitating. He couldn’t cook worth a damn. He could barely use the microwave.
Maybe this was it. The stupid detail that would get his throat slit.
There was a chorus of rough, barking exclamations. Several guns jerked up simultaneously. Clickity-click, rounds were chambered.
“Who the fuck is she?” one of the guys snarled.
She? Oh, fuck. No, no, no. His artificial calm evaporated in an instant. He lunged through the clot of men to see…
Yes. Becca. Fuck.
Clothed this time, but she might as well have been naked, for all the diaphanous blue peasant blouse and the skintight jeans revealed.
Dead silence. The men stared at her, hungry-eyed.
She looked even prettier than last night. Her hair, dried, was a mass of brown curls. The color of the blouse made her skin look luminous. Her full, gleaming pink lips trembled. Unlike last night, she had good reason to be scared now.
Transfixed with dismay, he didn’t track the movement of the guy next to him before a hard clout to his face with the man’s pistol knocked him back. “What the fuck is she doing here?” the guy hissed.
Zhoglo turned to Nick, a smile curving his mouth. “Nice touch,” he said. “I appreciate initiative in an employee. A welcome gift? How kind.”
The bottom fell out of his gut, and tumbled down, down. He scrolled through the possible responses he could make, calculating how quickly—or, worse, how slowly, they would get her killed.
He swabbed the blood streaming out of his nose with his hand.
“Ah, actually…no,” he forced out, voice froggy.
Zhoglo’s smile froze. “No?”
Nick swallowed. Hot blood trickled down his throat. “She’s the, ah, cook.”
Becca stared at the guns. Feeling faint, she stared at the blood streaming from Mr. Big’s nose.
One of the men stepped forward. A short, fat man, in expensive clothes. He spoke, his voice low and cultured, in a language she didn’t know. Mr. Big replied in the same tongue. The fat man’s smile disappeared. He had not liked the response.
The temperature dropped. So did her stomach.
These were people from another world, a world she did not want to visit. Oh, was this ever a mistake, and oh, was she sorry. Forget keys, glasses, pride, self-esteem. All she wanted was to curl up on her couch, pig out on Oreos and watch Jane Austen movies on DVD.
Her eyes focused on Mr. Big. He looked unconcerned by the blood coursing down his chin, but he stared at her with a burning intensity.
She didn’t dare look away from him, with those guns pointing at her, those men staring at her body. He was her only point of reference.
It had taken her that whole night to work up the nerve to come back, and the whole morning to get ready. She hadn’t had much to choose from, just what she found in Marla’s closet, and the cosmetics rattling around in her purse. Her houndstooth power suit and stale white silk blouse and heels weren’t an option. Marla’s clothes were snug, though, and Becca hadn’t wanted to seem like she was looking for masculine attention. The jeans were tight, and she had to cover up the chubby bit of belly that hung over the waistband with something loose. The blue peasant blouse was the only thing that fit the bill. The low-cut neck was sort of provocative, but she figured he had seen everything she had last night anyway, so what the hell.
These men stared at her. As if she were stark naked all over again.
The fat man stepped closer to her. She shrank back, opened her mouth to say, excuse me, gentlemen, but I see that this is a very bad time, sorry to have intruded, now I’ll just disappear, OK? Bye!
Her mouth worked. A papery squeak came out. Not a word, or even part of one.
The fat man approaching her did not carry a gun. He was shorter, heavier and older than all the rest of them, but when his light gray eyes fixed on her, she shrank away. His lips curved into a nasty smile.
She stared back, a fuzzy little animal hypnotized by a snake.
His eyes were strange. Opaque, like tinted windows on a car. He laid his damp, heavy hand on her shoulder. Ran it up underneath her hair, and gripped the back of her neck. His long nails cut into her skin.
Goose bumps popped out over her body. He said something incomprehensible, in a questioning tone. Tilted up her chin. She felt horribly vulnerable, with her throat exposed, as if he were going to bite her. She sucked in air, tried to speak. Tried again. “I’m, ah, sorry?”
“You are American?”
Uh, what else? She nodded as best she could with her neck hyper-extended.
Mr. Big spoke up, from the back of the room. “I was just telling him how I hired you to cook for him.”
Her eyes flicked toward his. Mr. Big’s face was expressionless, but she caught the urgent flash in his eyes. She tried to nod again. “Yes,” she said in a strangled voice. “Cook. Yes. Of course. I’m a very good cook.”
“Really?”
