Wiser Than Serpents (22 page)

The last of the applause died, and the lights flickered on. Yanna stood, aware that Kwan now bent toward his girlfriend, who at the moment was probably informing him of her addition to their party.

Indeed, he turned. Yanna braced herself, smiled, and didn’t see a flicker of anything but interest cross Kwan’s dark face.

Just what, she suddenly wondered, had her new friend gotten her into?

Kwan’s, er—bodyguards? Business associates? pals?—steered her into the hall and down the stairs, protecting Kwan from the press of the crowd as they exited off to the side and down to the front lobby. Yanna glanced around for David, but didn’t spy him in the throng.

And then they were outside. The air, fresh and cool, still damp from the rain, swept over her and she gulped it, more for strength than anything else.

Really, she didn’t care what happened to her. As long as she located Elena.

But she preferred that whatever happened to her be relatively painless.

That would be better than the scenario currently happening in her mind, the one where Kwan used her cute little knife on her throat, just like he’d suggested on the yacht. Good thing David had confiscated it.

“Coming?” Ari asked, and Yanna climbed into the limousine next to her and across from Kwan, who was pouring himself a highball of brandy.

He offered it to Yanna. She glanced at Ari, who raised an eyebrow. Then accepted the glass.

Kwan poured one for himself, and they toasted to a fine performance.

Yanna tried not to gag as her throat sizzled, her stomach convulsing in on itself. See, this was why she didn’t drink.

They pulled away from the concert hall.

Yanna looked out the window to see David standing on the steps, staring out into the parking lot. For a moment, she had a wild urge to wave, open the window, yell his name.

It didn’t help that his worried expression made her think that yes, he had meant everything he’d put into that kiss.

Too little, too late.

Kwan reached across the limo and put his hand on her knee. “So, what is your name?” he asked in English.

David was going to kill her.

Well, once he tracked Yanna down and got her away from Kwan, who at the moment was first in line. Because David knew without a sliver of a doubt that Kwan knew—he
had
to know—that the beauty he’d picked up in his little entourage was none other than Agent Andrevka, the woman who’d slipped out of his hands two days ago.

Nothing else accounted for her easy reception into Kwan’s merry band of terrorists.

David felt sick, watching the limo pull away from the curb, a shiny hearse under the bright lights of the parking lot. He refused to look straight at the car, but saw it in his peripheral vision, memorizing the license plate.

He gave the car about fifteen seconds before he sprinted down the curb, found the scooter Roman had left in the dark shadows of the lot. Plan B.

Again.

He leaned into the ride, into the rain, his anger about all he could feel. He’d known she had something cooking in her sneaky brain. A smart man, a man who knew Yanna like he did, would have kept a better grip on her, at least kept his arm around her waist.

Instead, he’d let her wander out into the crowd.

Never to be seen again.

He gave himself points for not hauling both Yanna and Kwan out of Kwan’s box for some elbow room, and then getting down to business with Kwan.

But like Yanna, who should
trust
him, he also wanted Elena found. And Kwan had too much padding around him for any sort of snatch-and-run to work.

So Yanna, of course, knowing this, apparently decided to employ her own version of hero.

Why couldn’t she trust that David meant what he said? They
would
find Elena, they just needed to do things
his
way.

The thought zeroed in on him and only made him drive faster, spraying a puddle onto himself. His monkey suit clung to him, his face slick and grimy with rainwater. But he had eyes on the limo and Yanna.

Please, God, keep her safe.

They drove through Taipei, past the downtown markets, the bright neon lights. In the distance, Taiwan’s tallest building, Taipei 101, glared down on the wet streets from its glowing, lofty heights on the soggy peons below. David kept three lengths away from the limo, and tried desperately not to let his thoughts wander.

He most definitely didn’t need to imagine what Kwan might be doing right now to the shapely blonde in the clingy dress.

He should have made her wear a parka.

The limousine cut north, toward the mountains, and he had to hang back as they wound into the hills. Houses here had broken away from their foundations, sitting in rubble from the last earthquake. The air here smelled fresh, out of the smog of the city, rife with evergreen, umbrella-shaped banyan trees, and the bombax flower, which resembled a lumpy tree.

The road began to bend, the traffic thinning, and he held back even more, finally deciding to drive without his lights. The last thing Yanna needed was Kwan alerted to his presence.

David pictured an ugly repeat of the drama on the boat.

But when he rounded the curve, now high enough up to see the city stretched below him, Kwan’s car had vanished.

David sped up, barely avoiding the edge of a long and ugly careen down the side of the mountain. Turning on the lights, he saw nothing ahead. Another mile and he knew.

Kwan had lost him.

And David had lost Yanna.

S
he could do this. She could. Absolutely. Because Yanna was a superagent, double-oh-seven…

Oh, who was she trying to fool? She was
not
a field agent. Someone needed to write that on a glowing neon sign and hang it over her head.

These moments were exactly why she preferred to sit in her office with all her humming CPUs.

Yanna fabricated a smile for Kwan as she took his slimy, too-smooth hand and stepped out of the limousine. He slipped his arm around her waist, held on. Everything inside her wanted to seize up and hurl at his touch, but she kept her mind on Elena, pasted a smile on her face and giggled.

Maybe she did have some latent undercover skills, because she didn’t recognize the smiling, supposedly drunk woman now flirting with Kwan. But a super-spy would have remembered to bring the transmitter with her, not leave it with her partner, who right now might be sitting outside the concert hall, wanting to wring her neck. Why had she ditched David? She must have been out of her mind, because she’d reconsidered about ten minutes into the trip, and had been sending him silent SOS’s ever since as they drove into the hills toward Kwan’s place.

Kwan might be playing at treating her like an American, but she felt sure, right to her bones, that the little smile Kwan gave her had nothing to do with delight at her presence and everything to do with the fact that she’d walked right back into his clutches. He recognized her, even if he hadn’t said it. Which meant that not only had she been deluding herself, but instead of finding Elena, David would find Yanna’s decapitated, mutilated body.

She wanted to scream and take off in a hard sprint when Kwan opened the door to his digs—a two-story cement-and-stone monstrosity nestled into some Chinese-style gardens with bright lights turning the place into a garish display. Torches on either side of the door, worried by the breeze, gave off an eerie effect, as did the giant red Buddha that stared at her with glassy eyes as she followed the entourage into the house.

Kwan hadn’t quite figured out what world he fit into, evident in the Asian sprays of orchids and a small fountain that was centered in the entryway and separated the main room from the dining room. The European Kwan showed in the animal skins on the floor, the black-and-chrome furniture, the flat-panel television above a gas fireplace. Beyond that, a steel stairway led to a second floor, one that overlooked the main room and hinted at numerous bedrooms.

It reminded her of the yacht, and she pressed her hand against her stomach, which might give way any second.

Kwan motioned them toward the main room, picked up the gas remote and lit the fireplace. Yanna stood at the edge of the sunken living room, frozen as Kwan sat down on the sofa, used the remote to turn on music—
not opera—
and put his arm around his girlfriend. Ari leaned back against Kwan, pulled her legs up on the sofa, kicking off her heels.

“Join us,” she said to Yanna.

“I need to use the bathroom,” Yanna said, serious now about the lurching stomach. In fact, maybe she should run.

Kwan smiled at her—not a nice smile—and motioned down the hall. Near the kitchen.

The kitchen…maybe this might work…

“Shei-shei,”
she said, and walked down the hall, locking herself in the bathroom, flicking on the light and staring at her sorry self in the mirror.

She looked scared. In the wide eyes, the platinum-blond hair, the too-red lips. Flushed skin, all the way down to the edge of her dress, and a heartbeat tattooing at the base of the neck told her that Kwan must be in the next room laughing.

Laughing.

Laughing.
At her fear. At her hopes of finding her sister.

At the fact he’d lured her to his house, to do…who knew what?

Laughing.

Nyet.
She took another look at herself, and everything inside her went very still. Kwan might think he had lured her here, but here she was, just as she’d planned. And she wasn’t leaving until she had found out where he was hiding Elena.

Even if she had to get messy.

She took off her high heels. Hopefully the music that reverberated through the house would cover her footsteps, but just to be on the safe side…

Flicking off the light, she cracked open the bathroom door, slipping out into the hall and closing the door behind her. She tiptoed into the kitchen. Stainless-steel surfaces around a main island reflected the outside terrace lights. She moved quickly, easing out the drawers until she found a butcher knife.

Footsteps advancing down the hall made her suck in her breath. She shifted toward the alcove that hid a closet or a pantry.

Just as she’d hoped, Kwan appeared, filling up the door. He stood there for a moment, then moved to turn on the light.

Yanna felt an arm snake around her waist and a hand clamp over her mouth. She was yanked into the closet.

“Don’t move,” a voice whispered directly into her ear.

She gasped, but the human gag over her mouth, as well as the raucous music, muffled her noise. Yet, she didn’t even dwell on the how or why, because David had followed her, snuck into Kwan’s house and stopped her from doing what she had come to do.

Because that was what David did.

“Let me go,” she tried to say, but it came out completely unintelligible.

Kwan flicked on the light. It didn’t matter, because David had already closed the pantry door, sealing them inside.

“Don’t…move.”

Yeah, not with his arm clamped around her like a vise. She still had the knife in her right hand, and for a long moment, she debated using it. As if reading her mind, David’s hand closed around her wrist.

She stayed there, pulled tight next to him, smelling the rain and sweat on his skin, his whiskers rough against her cheek, his wide chest solid against her back. His heart thumped against her spine and she knew he’d probably saved her life.

Again.

He caught the knife before she dropped it.

“Shh,” he said, softly so only she could hear it. But his lips brushed against her ear, and a ripple of pure electricity went through her.

Not fair. Didn’t her heart pay any attention to her brain?

Kwan turned off the light—Yanna saw it flick out from under the door. She relaxed, poised to move out, but David held her tighter. “No, he may be waiting.”

“He didn’t see me come in,” she said, but David didn’t let her finish, clamping his big hand over her mouth again.

She pulled it away but stayed quiet. In the pitch darkness, she heard only the swish of her heartbeat.

Then, after what seemed like forever, she turned in his arms, putting her arms around his waist, whispering directly into his ear, trying to keep emotion from leaking from her voice. “Why did you stop me? I could have made him tell—”

“Stop.” His voice was so soft, so urgent, it made her heart skip. “Trust me, please.” She felt his lips move against her neck. He smelled like rain and the dampness from his shirt seeped through her dress.

“He’s right out there,” she whispered. “We could go out there, jump him.”

“I’m not a superhero. There are three guys in there. Let’s be smart about this—”

“But he has my sister!” She bit her lip to keep her voice down, but he held her even tighter.

“I know that, Yanna. C’mon, I haven’t forgotten.” He pulled back and looked at her. Her eyes had adjusted to the light, and she saw his, earnest in hers. He ran his hand down her cheek and it was trembling. “Just trust me. I put a transmitter on his limo. According to the
plan.
He’s not going anywhere without us knowing it.”

They heard voices outside the room, shouting.

“Apparently they’re starting to think that Elvis has left the building.”

Huh? She frowned at him.

“They know you’re missing. We need to lie low for a bit. Then I’m getting you back to Taichung.”

“You’re not listening. I’m not leaving here until I know where Elena is.” She started to turn, but for a nonsuperhero, he sure had superhero arms that were even now tightening around her.

“I know you want to find her, Yanna, but this is the best way. We can’t go charging in there with three armed men. I did some visual reconnaissance during the performance and those boys have enough hardware on them to defend against an attack from China. So we’re going to trust that God has our backs on this one, and pull back to a safe distance.”

God had their backs? “David—”

“Yanna, I know you don’t think this, but I promise, God knows and cares, and He’s going to get both of us, and Elena, home safely. We have to believe that.”