Take Me for a Ride (27 page)

No, it wasn’t possible. She could sense Eric’s decency, his sincerity. But . . .

Okay, he’d admitted that he was here with her partially because of something to do with the Russians who were after them. He’d hinted at government work. So maybe he was trying to bust an international smuggling ring. That made sense.

She forced herself to take three deep breaths, exhaling slowly.

It made total sense. Didn’t it?

Yes, it did.

Her grandmother began to shiver uncontrollably, and Nat took off her coat and slipped it over Nonnie’s shoulders. Then she got to her feet, slipped off her boots, and tiptoed out of the alcove in her stocking feet. She went down the corridor and stopped at the arch that led back out to the main nave of the cathedral.

The chandeliers were still lit, casting a warm glow over the deep, rich, multihued murals, and a solitary woman knelt in prayer toward the front of the nave.

There were no signs of gunmen.

Natalie padded back to the alcove. “I think we can leave now.” The colonel helped her shivering grandmother up from the floor. “Are you all right?”

“Just a bit creaky,” Colonel Blakely assured her.

“Nonnie?”

“Holding together, my dear.”

“I think we should all go back to the Savoy to wait for Eric,” Natalie said. “Please God, let nothing have happened to him.”

“St. George—,” Nonnie began.

“Yes, I know. St. George will protect him,” Natalie finished for her. “Forgive me if I’m still anxious about his welfare.”

“I don’t like guns,” Nonnie announced.

“That makes two of us.” Natalie kissed her grandmother’s cheek and took her hand. The colonel had her arm on the other side. “Come on, let’s go.”

Ted frowned and said slowly, “You don’t think that Eric fellow was telling the truth back there?”

“Of
course
not,” said Natalie. “He was bluffing. Scary how good he is at it, too. But I trust him. Don’t worry.”

They found that the temperature had dropped a good fifteen degrees as they exited the church and walked the few blocks back to the Savoy. Natalie’s whole body broke out in gooseflesh, and she had to clench her teeth to prevent them from chattering. The colonel tried to give her his coat, but she refused it. At his age, he needed it more than she did.

Their appearance garnered a discreetly raised eyebrow from the registration clerk, but he made no comment until she asked whether Eric had come in yet.

“Mr. McDougal? No, we haven’t seen him yet this evening. There is a message for him, however.”

“For him or from him?”

“For him.”

“I’ll take it up,” Natalie said. She took the folded message from the clerk. “Thank you. I’ll make sure he gets it.”

The three of them went upstairs to the room, and Natalie left the message on the nightstand, under the telephone. She was tempted to peek at it, but it wasn’t for her, so she left it alone.

They all needed a drink and a hot meal, so Natalie fixed Nonnie’s hair and straightened her clothes. The colonel borrowed a comb. Natalie threw on a different sweater and said a silent thank-you that her blind grandmother couldn’t see the sloppy way she was dressed, thanks to Eric’s odd choices from her wardrobe.

Then they went down to have a somewhat strained, exhausted dinner in the Savoy’s elegant, white-tablecloth restaurant.

Where was Eric? Natalie could barely contain her rising worry throughout the appetizer and soup courses. Was he unconscious or bleeding to death somewhere? Had the thugs outright killed him and disposed of his body in the Moskva River? Should she call the American embassy and beg for help to find him?

By the time the main course arrived, a lovely chicken dish with a Georgian walnut sauce, she couldn’t eat more than a bite. Instead she downed more wine in an attempt to soothe her nerves.

Eric McDougal had entered her life less than a week ago, and she refused to believe that he could exit so quickly. Still, her fear mounted with every passing minute.

Colonel Blakely picked up the dinner tab, over her protests, and with a shrewd glance at her face suggested that he take Nonnie back to their hotel. She was fatigued.

“Do you feel safe here alone, after the incident in your room?” he asked Natalie.

“Yes. They’ve doubled, if not tripled security since then. Hotel management have fallen over themselves to make us comfortable and have even comped part of our stay.”

“All right. Let us know when Eric returns, will you? I’m going to take advantage of your grandmother’s fatigue and keep asking her to marry me until she says yes.”

Nonnie flapped a hand at him. “Stop it, Ted. I’m
blind
.”

“And clearly I’m deaf . . . We’ll make a wonderful pair.”

Natalie shook her head at them. “Just say yes, Nonnie. I couldn’t pick a nicer man for you myself.” She bundled them into a cab.

Then, left to herself, she wandered into the Savoy’s Hermitage Bar and ordered a third glass of wine, telling herself it would be the last.

The minutes ticked by like passing eons. Halfway through her drink, she couldn’t take it anymore. She got up and left, riding the elevator back up to the room.

The silence and tastefulness of the furnishings were meant to be relaxing, but instead they screamed at her. The walls closed in, suffocating her in a welter of polished wood, cream brocade, and pastel paintings.

Natalie glanced at the phone, willing it to ring. The message she’d brought up earlier still sat on the nightstand. She wondered whether it might contain any clue about where Eric could be and when he’d return. It was doubtful, but possible.

She tugged the paper out from under the phone and unfolded it, feeling guilty.

McDougal
, it read.

Natalie read the message, reeling, and then read it again. ARTemis? The St. George piece?

ARTemis, she knew, was a company that tracked down and recovered stolen art. The “St. George piece” could only refer to the necklace.

She covered her mouth with a shaking hand.“No . . . ,” she whispered. “No, no, no.”

Eric didn’t work for the government?

She tried to process this as her legs began to tremble and refused to support her. She sat down hard on the bed and stared at the note. Her stomach pitched, hurling bile up her throat, but her heart was there already and blocked it.

She was going to choke on her own heart.

She couldn’t get any air.

Still, she tried to deny the evidence in front of her. Working for ARTemis could be his cover, right?

But that didn’t explain the direct reference to the necklace. It didn’t come close to explaining it.

She finally got some air down into her lungs; she didn’t know how. But slowly the truth seeped through the blinders over her eyes.

Eric wasn’t some secret agent. How could she have been so stupid? So blind?

It’s not a matter of me trusting you, Natalie
, he’d said.
Please understand that, okay? Let’s just say that you have good instincts. But I am not at liberty to tell you who I work for.

He’d picked her up in Reif’s deliberately, and she’d gotten tipsy and made it easy for him. Her face flamed as she remembered begging him to make love to her, to give her a happy ending. He’d never been attracted to her in the slightest. She’d been part of a job to him.

A
job
.

No wonder he’d “dropped everything” to drive to her grandmother’s house in Connecticut! No wonder he’d conveniently been there when she’d found her apartment trashed. He’d probably done that himself, the bastard . . .

He’d told her he was a security expert, for God’s sake. And he was—he knew exactly how to get around security.

How convenient that he had the urge and the vacation time to accompany her to Moscow! Of
course
he’d paid her way—it was the least he could do, while he was using her to get to her grandmother and the necklace.

Mortification beat a mocking tattoo in her bloodstream and pulsed fiercely at her neck.

Natalie, Natalie. You pathetic, impulsive, naive little product of ivory-tower professors. Believer in honor and chivalry and fairy-tale romance—all the ideals of world literature
.

She’d believed in Eric McDougal. Been dazzled by him. She’d trusted him. Worse, she’d declared her heart to him.

I fell in love with you that night in Reif’s
.

And he’d tried to shut her up, but she clearly wouldn’t know a clue if it stabbed her with a spear.

Oh, Natalie. Ya
think
?

He must have had a hard time containing his laughter.

Natalie cringed, even as her anger and sense of violation swelled to volcanic proportions. She’d been in agony for hours now, worried whether Eric was injured or dead. Waiting for him to come back to her.

And she had given him the St. George necklace with her own hands!
Nonnie, you can trust this man . . .

Sounds emerged from her throat that she didn’t recognize. Little rusty gasps of appalled amusement at her own expense. She should be crying, but she was far, far too enraged.

She’d done intimate, uninhibited things with Eric sexually because she’d trusted him so completely. He’d been so generous and tender—when all the while he’d been planning to use, betray, and steal from her.

He was, for all intents and purposes, a thief. And he’d not only stolen the St. George necklace; he’d stolen her heart and all her faith in humankind.

 

McDougal waited an hour and a half before moving. He lay on his back, looking up at the stars over Moscow. Inside his jacket pocket his fingers toyed with the St. George necklace. Ten percent of $2 million was a nice chunk of change, enough to put a down payment on that Bertram 540 he wanted so badly that he could taste it.

Easy enough to smuggle the piece back into the U.S. and walk it into the executive offices at Hiscox.The necklace would go back to the thugs who’d insured it, even if he dropped a hint to Hiscox about the fraudulent provenance. The insurer would void the policy but couldn’t, under the law, keep the necklace. And Natalie?

Hell. Natalie could still be prosecuted and go to jail, even with Luc Ricard dead and his business presumably defunct. But Natalie was a grown woman and should have considered the consequences of her actions before she “borrowed” the necklace.

“Natalie,” he groaned aloud. What to do? He liked her. He cared for her. He hated deceiving her. But it was part of his job—which was to recover the necklace.

Nobody was in the right here. They were all thieves: the Nazi who’d stolen the St. George piece to begin with; the Russian thugs who’d stolen it from the Nazi; Natalie, who’d stolen it from her place of employment; her grandmother, who’d stolen it from Natalie; and now he himself, who’d repossessed it from Nonnie with a lie, by promising to give it back. Who was in the right here? Who among them hadn’t broken the law? And to whom did the necklace really belong?

To Nonnie, of course, if he were to throw all legalities out the window. But Eric worked for ARTemis, which had been contracted by an insurance company, which had written a policy in good faith.

Eric broke the law in small ways on a regular basis, simply to do his job. He was a B-and-E specialist, a trained con artist. But his loyalty? No matter what his conscience or his heart told him, his loyalty had to be to ARTemis.

Curiously enough, loyalty was important to him. It was, in fact, sacrosanct. And that was the very reason he never promised it to a woman—he refused to swear a loyalty that he couldn’t maintain.

His thoughts returned to Natalie as he fingered the contours of the necklace in his pocket. He’d be a fool to give it back to the old lady. A fool.

What purpose would it serve? The family treasures she spoke of gaining in return for it had to be long gone. The items would never have survived the war or the greed of their caretakers over the years. Even priests succumbed to temptation.

If he gave back the necklace, it would be for nothing but redemption in Natalie’s eyes. And even that hope was tenuous at best. Once she found out how he’d deceived her, she’d never forgive him. She’d never trust him again.

How to explain? There was no explaining. How to make it up to her? He couldn’t.

So if she was going to hate him anyway, why not give her a damned good reason?

The bottom line was that she and her grandmother were safer without the necklace in their possession. If he kept the necklace, they’d be protected. Unharmed.

Wasn’t that worth something? Didn’t saving their lives make him less of a shit?

He did his best to shut down his brain and its labyrinth of twisted logic and deal with his current situation.

Focus, you bonehead
. But he couldn’t.

He had to find a way to completely neutralize the Russians so that Natalie and her grandmother would be safe. And so, as a last resort, he sent a text message to Kelso himself.

If anyone could find out that kind of info, Kelso could. Miguel was phenomenal at digging up information. But Kelso was the master of interpersonal relationships—who knew whom and how and why on a global scale. McDougal hoped he could help.