Vision Impossible (31 page)

“It is. But Rick and I both have the password.” I offered him that tidbit so that he’d know Rick and I were truly partners in the deal, and not try to cut me out of the auction.

Grinkov’s eyes squinted and I swore there was a hint of alarm there. “Tell no one that you both have the password,” he whispered.

Eddington appeared at our side and Maks sat back to allow the butler to serve us a plate of assorted cheeses and fruit. Once he’d left us alone again, I leaned in toward Grinkov and asked, “Why shouldn’t we reveal that we both have the password?”

“It’s too dangerous,” Maks said. “The people joining us at Boklovich’s estate are some of the most ruthless, treacherous, and cutthroat men in the world. They will not hesitate to use any means possible to gain what they want, and believe me, Abigail, they are all most anxious to have this technology.”

“You think one of them would try to kidnap me to get Rick to give up the software?”

“No,” Grinkov said, and his answer surprised me. “I think they would kill Rick, steal the software, and torture you to get the password.”

I gasped. I couldn’t help it; the idea of that shocked me to my toes.

Grinkov squeezed my hand. “Don’t look so worried,” he said. “Boklovich has many armed men with orders to keep the peace and everyone safe, and I will be especially concerned with your well-being, but you’ll still be wise to take some precautions. And one of those should be to keep your role as Rick’s partner very subdued. We’ll say that you are his accountant to take the mystery out of things.”

I nodded dully. “Okay.”

“After this is over,” he said, his eyes lingering seductively on mine, “I would like you to consider another partnership altogether.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Oh, really?”

He grinned, and lifted my hand to brush his lips against my fingers. Heat seeped up into my cheeks and I tried in vain to keep my quickening pulse in check. “Rick is a bad choice in business partners,” he said softly, and I was relieved he didn’t look behind him to where I could feel Dutch’s gaze boring a hole into my back.

“He seems to have been a good choice so far,” I told Maks.

My companion’s lips lingered delicately over my fingers again. His breath was warm against the skin of my knuckles. “Yes,” he agreed. “But I’m convinced he is someone with an expiration date, and he may not live long beyond the auction.”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “What do you know?”

Maks laid my hand down gently on the armrest and shrugged his shoulders. “There are rumors,” was all he would say. “And if I were you, Abigail, I would consider, where there is smoke, there’s fire.”

“Someone’s got a hit out on Rick?”

Maks shrugged again, as if we were talking about a sports game he wasn’t especially interested in.

This time I did glance behind me. Dutch was looking pointedly out the window while Mandy snuggled close to him, and although he wasn’t resisting her, his posture was stiff and distant.

I turned back to Grinkov, who was selecting from the assorted cheeses to put on a slice of apple. “Thank you for the warning,” I said. “I’d be happy to discuss this with you further.”

Grinkov must have thought I meant the partnership, because he said, “Excellent. I believe we will be a very good team, Abigail.”

 

 

W
e landed several hours later at the small landing strip on a good-sized island not far from the city of Victoria, B.C. Looking down with rapt attention at the scenery as we approached our destination, I was struck by the beauty of the place. I’d never been to the Pacific Northwest and even from the air it was spectacular. Huge evergreens carpeted steep mountainous terrain, and breathtaking gorges opened to wide beautiful valleys, while snaking rivers twisted their way through the landscape. But gazing at all this beauty was also tempered by the realization that it was incredibly remote. For miles and miles and
miles
around there wasn’t anything but wilderness, and it further clarified how precarious our situation was if things got dicey.

We landed a bit on the bumpy side, which earned our poor pilot a glare from his boss, but otherwise our flight was without incident. Eddington did his duty with the door and the short ladder, standing at the bottom to help me and Mandy climb down in our heels.

Once I was on the grass, I became aware of the chill this close to dusk. I hadn’t brought a coat and was already regretting it. A limousine appeared and stopped in front of our plane. A chauffeur bounded out and hurried to help Eddington with our luggage. While we waited for them to load our gear, another vehicle appeared—an army green Hummer with several men in fatigues and assorted assault weapons.

At the sight of them, Grinkov swore under his breath, and every hair on the back of my neck stood on end. This was about to get ugly; I was sure of it.

Instinctively I edged a little closer to Dutch until I caught myself and moved in the other direction, closer to Maks. “What gives?” I whispered to him, lifting my chin in the direction of the armed guards.

“My friend Vasilii has chosen not to trust me,” Grinkov snarled. He then wrapped a protective arm around me and whispered a warning. “Call no unnecessary attention to yourself and if asked, tell them you’re with me.”

I had a terrible feeling about this, but there wasn’t much I could do, and sure enough, the clear leader of the soldiers approached Dutch and stuck a handgun right in his face. He barked something in a foreign language, which I guessed was Russian, and Dutch glowered at him before putting his hands in the air. The soldier never wavered as he held Dutch at gunpoint and another soldier stepped up and began to pat down my fiancé, while Mandy backed away and hid behind Eddington. Another order was barked and Dutch grudgingly spread his legs while growling something at the man with a gun in his face.

“A slight inconvenience, Richard,” Grinkov told Dutch loudly, and I could hear the tone in his voice meant, “Simmer down, dude.”

The soldier patting Dutch removed Des Vries’s gun and held it out for his leader, who looked at it thoughtfully before tucking it into his belt. The soldier then discovered the CD with the Intuit program’s software on it. This he also handed to his leader, who smiled like he knew exactly what he held in his hands before motioning to a man still in the truck.

The guy in the Hummer got out and carried with him a laptop computer. Opening the laptop, the soldier took the CD and inserted it into the disk drive. We all waited tensely while the computer booted up and the program loaded. More words I couldn’t understand were exchanged and Dutch shook his head no.

The soldier with the gun in Dutch’s face moved the muzzle slightly to the right and fired right next to Dutch’s ear. I yelped—I truly couldn’t help it—and Grinkov squeezed my waist and hissed,
“Shhh!”

Next to me, still hiding behind Eddington, Mandy stood completely frozen in terror, but she found her voice the moment the soldier pointed the gun back in Dutch’s face to bark his command again. “Give him the damn password, Rick!” she pleaded.

Several tense seconds passed while Dutch glared hard at the soldier, and then he said something too softly for me to catch. Again another tense moment seemed to pass until Grinkov stepped in. “Allow him to enter the code, Yurik. It’s a reasonable request, after all.”

I held my breath as Yurik glared hard into the eyes of the man I loved. I could tell a lot about this soldier—his energy was especially loud, and I knew he was cold-blooded and ruthless, capable of killing someone and not thinking twice about it.

Finally the soldier lowered the weapon to Dutch’s chest and waved it at the laptop. Dutch cautiously stepped over to the computer and bent down to turn the screen away from prying eyes while quickly typing in the password. He then turned the screen around to show the soldiers. They all leaned in and eyed the screen almost greedily and then Dutch did something completely unexpected. He snatched the laptop and lifted it high before bringing it down with all his might on the ground, smashing it into a dozen pieces. In the seconds that followed and without even looking up at the soldiers, Dutch fished around the parts until he found the CD, and tucked it back into his pocket. He then got to his feet again, his arms back above his head, staring defiantly at Yurik like he was double-dog-daring him to shoot.

The stunned silence that followed was palpable in a god-awful way. I’d stopped breathing and such a terrible foreboding crept over me while I watched the lead soldier raise his gun at Dutch’s head again, his finger already moving to squeeze the trigger.

Maks let go of me and stepped forward very quickly. “Yurik!” he said in a commanding voice. “If you shoot him, Vasilii will not be able to auction off the program. His patrons will demand a demonstration after all, and without Rick, we lose the password.”

I was trembling now as I knew that all Maks had to do was point to me and say, “She knows the password,” and Dutch’s life would be over. But he didn’t, and Yurik’s cold eyes suggested that he was thinking that over very carefully. Finally, he lowered his gun and began to turn away. I sucked in a ragged breath, completely relieved that the moment had passed, when all of a sudden, Yurik whirled back around and swung the gun viciously at Dutch’s face, striking him an awful blow across the cheek.

Dutch’s head snapped sideways and he lost his balance, falling hard on the ground amid the shattered pieces of the laptop.

It took every single fiber of resistance I had in me not to leap to Dutch’s side when he fell, and I can’t even fully describe the awful feeling of watching another woman go to his aid when Mandy dropped down next to him and attempted to stanch the flow of blood now gushing from his cheek.

“You son of a bitch!” I snarled, and Yurik turned to consider me, as if he was noticing me for the first time.

“Who is dis?” he asked Grinkov.

Maks’s eyes shot to me, his look demanding that I say nothing more. “She’s with me, Yurik.”

The soldier sniffed the air, as if smelling my anger and fear. “Tell her to shut her mouth,” he snapped. “Or I’ll do it for her.”

With effort I lowered my eyes. “My apologies,” I said through tight lips. “Maks, I didn’t mean to cause any trouble.”

Maks came back to my side and took me firmly by the hand. “We’ll discuss this later,” he said coldly.

I nodded and did my best to avoid looking at Dutch. It hurt too much to see him on the ground, bleeding and beyond my help. Yurik barked a few more orders to his men, and when I looked up again, I saw that he was handing Maks Des Vries’s gun while the other soldiers moved back to the Hummer. Yurik then got into the vehicle with the other men and took off without a backward glance.

The moment their SUV was in motion, I pulled out of Maks’s grip and raced over to the back of the limo where the chauffeur was standing next to the open trunk. “Do you have a towel or something I can give him to stanch the blood?” I asked desperately.

“Let me look in the front of the car, miss,” he said, and hurried to the front. I then began to dig through the bags to get to my own luggage for something suitable, but I had a hard time of it because several other bags were on top. Mandy’s suitcase was huge and still had the old tags on it. I pulled and tugged it out of the way—it was just like her to pack too many clothes—and then yanked aside another smaller suitcase that was right on top of mine. Pushing it to the side, I saw something that shocked me down to my toes. Sticking out of a side pocket of the other luggage was the top of my wallet. I pulled it free just to make sure, and there on the side was the small tear I’d put in it a year ago. “You son of a beast,” I whispered, eyeing Grinkov angrily while his attention was still on the departing SUV. The remaining bag had to be his, and I thought about what a fool I’d been to believe his story about finding me in the garage already unconscious. He’d been the one that’d struck me and taken my wallet, and I thought I knew why.

“I’ve found a towel,” the driver said, and I jumped with a little squeal. Ramming my wallet back into the pocket where it came from, I turned and forced a smile, then took the towel and raced over to Dutch, who was being helped to his feet by Maks and Mandy. “Here, Rick,” I said, handing over the towel. Dutch placed it on the side of his cheek and winced.

We all waited for him to stop the bleeding, and I ached to reach out and comfort him, but I didn’t dare. Finally he nodded that he was ready to get out of the cold and we moved over to the limo, where the driver had all the doors open.

Inside, Dutch and Mandy took up the seats facing the back of the car while me, Maks, and Eddington took up the seats facing the front. Once the driver had shut all the doors and got in, Maks placed an arm around my shoulders and handed Des Vries’s gun to Dutch.

Dutch stared at it for a moment, his eyes moving angrily from Maks, to the gun, to me . . . and then he lifted it out of Maks’s palm and aimed it right at his face.

I held my breath, but Mandy squeaked and backed away from Dutch to plug her ears and close her eyes. “What the fuck, Maks?” Dutch growled.

Grinkov stiffened slightly next to me, and I looked sideways at him to gauge his reaction. His face revealed nothing but calm, cool, and collected, but next to him I did notice that Eddington had shifted his arm across his middle, and I had no doubt the butler was packing and reaching for his own gun.

“My apologies, Rick,” the Chechen said blithely. “I believe your reputation precedes you.”

“My
reputation
?” Dutch snapped, and the gun in his hand inched closer to Maks’s face.

“Vasilii doesn’t trust you,” Maks said. “And after that stunt you pulled in Palestine, can you blame him?”

I had no idea what Maks was talking about. Dutch was far more familiar with Des Vries’s background than I was, but something caught me off guard and I focused quickly on Maks’s energy. He was bluffing. I wiggled the index finger of my left hand out of Maks’s view to gain Dutch’s attention and his eyes darted to it, then back to Maks. “
What
stunt in Palestine?” he snapped, and I could have sagged with relief that he’d read the warning signal correctly.