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Authors: Blair Bancroft

Limbo Man (6 page)

BOOK: Limbo Man
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Now if he could only find the strength to get off the damn boat, walk up the rise to the house, climb the steps to the porch, and find his way to a bed. Which was probably at least one more flight up.
Govnó!

Nick’s mood improved ever so slightly when he saw Frosty stagger a time or two as they climbed the path to the house. She’d grabbed the bag with the canned goods, leaving him the one with the clothing. Good little bodyguard, a real Girl Scout. But he groaned when she lifted a fake rock at the foot of the steps to the front porch and took out a key. The damn place was about as secure as a public park on Staten Island.

“You have a better idea, I’m listening,” Vee snapped as she stamped up the stairs to the gingerbreaded porch, threw back the screen door, and turned the key in the lock. “Maybe we can hitch a ride to the moon with NASA. Sorry, I forgot. They don’t do that anymore.”

“I didn’t say a word.”

“Your thoughts have been loud and clear ever since we walked up the gangplank.” The canvas bag thudded onto the wooden floor.

Nick dropped his bag beside hers. “Wasn’t walking the plank something pirates did to their prisoners?”

“You can always go back down and jump off the dock.”

“Aren’t you supposed to be nice to me?” Vee caught the note of exasperation behind Nick’s banter. So he was hurting. Too bad.

More than that, she had to admit, after taking a second look. His skin had taken on a gray pallor beneath the stitches, the swelling, and the bruises. No wonder Charlie had offered to help bring the groceries up to the house. And she in her stiff-necked pride had refused the offer, never thinking of Nick who was supposed to have had an easy ride to the airport, followed by a cushy flight on a private jet to some equally cushy safe house. Instead, they’d had a barrage of bullets, an all-out rush for the subway, a winding path through the tunnels under Manhattan, a train ride to Connecticut, a shopping excursion, and a boat ride to what must seem like the end of the earth to a low-life city dweller like Sergei Tokarev.

A fine keeper she was. The way she was going, she’d finish him off before he ever had a chance to regain his memory or consider joining the ranks of the good guys.

Vee turned the dead bolt on the front door. “Okay, come on.” Supporting Nick by one arm, Vee started toward the central staircase. “You’ve got your choice of six bedrooms upstairs, and that’s not counting the servants’ quarters on the third floor.” She placed his left hand on the newel post, resumed her grip on his right arm. “Up we go, big guy. You can make it. Because there’s no way I can carry you.”

Half way up, Nick ground to halt. Patiently, Vee waited, assuming he needed to catch his breath. “Double bed?” he inquired. Hopefully.

“In your dreams.”

“Not good, so many bedrooms,” he muttered.

With Nick’s eyes hidden beneath his floppy hat and his facial muscles still unresponsive, Vee couldn’t tell if that remark was a taunt or a valiant attempt at humor. No way did she want to like this guy, but he was growing on her. She had to give him points for courage.

Vee sat Nick down on one of Aunt Victoria’s guest room beds, a high-standing double, complete with ecru hand-crocheted bedspread and lamps with
genuine
Tiffany shades. She removed his shoes and belt and tucked him in. He was docile as a child. But as she pulled the covers up to his chin, his hand closed over hers. “You chose room with double bed. You join me, no?”

Sergei was back, and Vee was too tired to care. “No,” she repeated gently, disengaging her hand. She paused, waiting for his response, but he was already asleep.

Vee closed the bedroom door, locked it from the outside. She scowled at the length of the hallway, the challenge of the imposing staircase. All she wanted to do was flop on her own bed, but the load of groceries couldn’t be ignored. Food was as essential as sleep, and from Outer Island there was no quick run to the corner store.

She was stowing a pound of ground beef in the refrigerator when the night’s events finally caught up with her. If she’d missed a bug . . . if the bad guys came for them, it was game over. There was no back-up. Just Valentina Frost between Frankenstein’s monster and the bad guys. And she didn’t even know who the bad guys were.

Vee sighed, her shoulders slumping under a burden that had exploded into far more than she’d bargained for. Wasn’t agreeing to whore for her country a big enough sacrifice? Somehow, when Wade Tingley briefed her, she hadn’t really gotten the message. She’d been so busy absorbing
whore
that she’d missed the nuances of bodyguard duty. The part where she might be called upon to take the bullet for a wiseguy who knew something vital to national security.

So she couldn’t collapse just yet. She had to make a phone call.

 

Chapter 5

 

Vee came awake, knowing instantly she was in trouble. Nick, who was supposed to be locked in his room, was sitting on her bed, tucked into the curve of her waist—green eyes fixed on her face, one large hand wiggling her own damn gun in a ghastly parody of
Naughty-naughty
.

“You need bodyguard,” he informed her kindly. “Not good sleep while strange man wanders your house.”

“You may be strange, Sergei, but you’re not a stranger.”

He cocked his head to one side, transferring his rapt attention from her face to the nine-mil. “I tell you keep it under your pillow, but not good idea with a Glock.”

He was hatless, bandages on full display, his shaved head beginning to show a dusting of dark fuzz. Instead of looking invalid weak, he was a girl’s worst nightmare. He loomed over her, so close she could smell the soap from the shower he’d somehow fitted into his schedule before picking the lock on his room.
Bastard!

“I hate to tell you this,”Vee returned through narrowed lips, “but the experts say your problem is amnesia, not multiple personalities. So can the act, and bring back Nick.”

“Experts, shmeckperts, what do they know?” He shrugged, seemingly unconcerned by the oddity of two personalities occupying his battered body. He leaned even closer, the hand with the gun pressing into the bed. “I must tell you, Valentina Frost, that you are not sufficiently paranoid to make a good bodyguard. You should have put me in a room with a deadbolt and hidden your gun.”

“Maybe it’s all part of my plan to make you think I’m not dangerous,” Vee shot back, before she recalled exactly what her mission was with this man. Back-peddling fast, she added, “I mean, we’re supposed to be working together, right? I’m the girl who’s going to help you get your memory back.” It was a reach, but she managed a come-hither smile, a flash of fluttering eyelashes. “You know—you, me, mutual preservation. Trust.”

The skinhead gargoyle face descended until his swollen lips were a scant two inches from her own. “Sergei will fuck you before he kills you,” he whispered. “Me, maybe I only fuck you. I’m not fool enough to bite the hand that feeds me, so I think I’ll keep you around as long as you’re useful.” Nick sat up. Using the Glock as a pry bar, he pulled the bedcovers down to her waist.

Vee shivered as the cold black metal bit through the flimsy lavender nothing she’d bought to sleep in instead of a sensible cotton tee. At the time she’d told herself it was all part of her job. Now, she questioned her sanity.
She couldn’t do this, she really could . . . not . . . do this.

The man was not only a monster, he was an animal.

“Ah,” he breathed, “maybe not so frosty after all. You give me hope,
dushenka
. Incentive to recover as fast as I possibly can.”

Vee snatched the covers back up to her chin.

Nick’s body language suddenly shifted from taunting but faintly amused to grim. Back to business mode. “So what did your people say? When do we get brought in?”

Vee gazed pointedly at the Glock. Nick laid it on the bedside table where he’d found it.

“We stay put. They’re bringing in watchers, but at the moment this seems as safe a place as any.”

“When on the run, it’s best to keep moving.”

“On the mainland, we’re targets. Here, no one can approach without being seen.”

Nick nodded. “For the moment”—he heaved himself up off the bed—“I accept their judgment. When I change my mind, they get us out of here, or I go on my own.
Konyeshno?

“Understood.”

Nick’s stance lost its belligerence, deflating into a bald, battered thirty-something with two white gauze bandages and weary green eyes. “I was not joking about the hand that feeds me. If I ever knew anything about cooking, it is as gone as all the information you want so badly. I leave you to get dressed, so you can fill our stomachs with some of the food we bought. I’m going to check out the island before the sun sets.”

“Keep to the trees,” Vee snapped. Damn. He was going to find the boat.

“I thought only friendly eyes watched,” Nick remarked with a false innocence that almost provoked a pillow in his face.

“Out!”

He turned at the door. “Spaghetti, yes? With meat sauce?”

Vee tossed the pillow, which fell woefully short. Nick glanced at it. His lips twisted into something that was almost a smile. He wiggled his fingers in an infuriating bye-bye gesture and went out, gently closing the door behind him.

 

Aunt Victoria’s pots and pans rattled as Vee rummaged for one big enough to boil spaghetti.
Dammit! Hell! Son of a bitch! Fuckit!
If only her grandmother had taught her a few of those nasty Russian-mother profanities. Then again, Gramma probably hadn’t known them. Vee slammed the pot onto the stove, stalked into the walk-in pantry and retrieved the package of spaghetti, a large onion, and the jar of sauce she’d bought early that morning. The refrigerator popped open with a groan, yielding the pound of hamburger. Frying pan, frying pan . . . where was the blasted frying pan?

Bent double over a low cupboard next to the stove, Vee started to shake. She clutched the top of the open cupboard door and held on, eyes squeezed shut as her head whirled and her lungs gasped for air. Shot at, chased, her triumph in a job well done humiliated out of her by a Russian wiseass who had reduced her to nothing more than a frippery female wrapped in Aunt Victoria’s hand-embroidered ruffled apron, cooking dinner for a demon from hell.

Vee gulped. The tears refused to obey her desperate command to stay put. She hadn’t cried since she couldn’t remember when, but huge drops were welling up, running down her cheeks, dripping off her chin. Still holding tight to the cupboard door, she sank to her knees on the cold tile floor. Her tears escalated into a flat-out bawl nothing could stop, not even years of training and the Frost family’s elevated sense of pride.

No way. Vee Frost didn’t do crying jags. She was a professional, good at her job.
Sob
. She’d just never had to whore before.
Sob
. Never been charged with keeping a bad guy alive—and if she didn’t, a national disaster threatened.
Sob
. Never had to admit the bad guy was bigger, tougher, and maybe smarter—certainly more experienced.
Sob
. That her career-making assignment was going to be the death of her.
Sob
. That Nick or Sergei—whatever the hell his name was—was going to use her, then toss her away. Preferably dead.
Sob

Vee white-knuckled the top edge of the cupboard door and hauled herself to her feet, still crying, gulping for air. Shame. Cold, mortifying shame gripped her hard. She tried to fight back. Kept telling herself she was stronger than this. Better than this. She’d saved the wiseguy’s life and her own. She’d gotten them to a safe haven. She’d not gone maverick. Not quite. Her call had been to her father; the watchers, personal friends from his days in the CIA. She never doubted Wade Tingley was the patriotic fanatic he seemed to be, but he was a stranger, his staff an unknown quantity. The bad guys shouldn’t have been camped outside Bellvue waiting for Nick to come out. So she’d gone straight to the top. Deputy Chief James Frost could decide how much Tingley should know.

But at the moment all the I’m-a-professional logic in the world wasn’t stopping her meltdown. Still on her knees, Vee made her way to an old wooden chair at a kitchen table that was probably new somewhere around 1910. She hauled herself up. With elbows propped on a wood surface whitened by nearly a century of scrubbing, she dropped her head into her hands. Basically, she was on her own—responsible for the safety of a human greed machine who sold arms to Third World countries engaged in genocide. A man far more experienced and ruthless than she would ever be. The only good thing that could be said about Nick was that he might suffer a fleeting regret as his hands closed around her throat.

Vee gasped as strong fingers pressed down on her shoulders. Was this it? The moment he killed her and ran? Or—almost as bad—had he witnessed her breakdown? The ultimate humiliation.

It didn’t get much worse than this.

The hands began a slow massage. Shoulders, neck. Would those fingers move that fraction of an inch to the place that shut off life? Should she make a grab for the Glock that was weighing down Aunt Vicky’s apron pocket?

Nonsense. He still needed her.

BOOK: Limbo Man
9.26Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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