Take Me for a Ride Page 14

  “Why secret?”

  “Are you kidding me? I couldn’t tell any of my buddies that I was minoring in art history! Not cool. Not cool at all.”

  “None of them found out?”

  Eric scowled. “Yeah, they found out. That was a bad day for me. That’s how I ended up with the Mona Lisa tattooed on my ass.”

  She choked. “What?”

  He nodded. “You didn’t notice?” His hands went to his fly. “I’ll show you.”

  “Later,” she said, her face turning pink. “So how did you get into the security business?”

  “Oh, you know, almost by accident.” The phone rang, thank God, saving him from having to manufacture any anecdotes about alarm systems or safes.

  “Yeah, McD here.”

  “Okay, I checked. Your couple is staying at the Metropol in the Kitay-gorod district.”

  “Thanks, Miguel. I owe you one.” Eric ended the call. “All right, Natalie—we now have your nonnie’s hotel. I’m going to get through the shower and then let’s see if we can track her down there.”

  She nodded. “Miguel is your police friend?”

  “My what?” Eric said without thinking.

  “Your buddy who’s a cop. That’s Miguel, right?”

  “Right.” He cursed himself for slipping up.

  “You know he could get into a lot of trouble accessing that kind of information for you.”

  “He’s careful.”

  She looked at Eric steadily, as if she could sense that he wasn’t being straight with her. He met her gaze calmly. Then he started shedding clothing as he headed for the shower, and he knew that she noticed.

  “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, laughing. “That is the Mona Lisa on your—”

  Eric grinned and waggled his eyebrows. “Uh-huh. Eat your heart out, Louvre: no velvet ropes, no glass, and touching not only permitted but encouraged.”

  “Your friends did that to you? How could you let them?”

  “Well, it’s like this. They got me so drunk I passed out. Woke up in a tattoo parlor with a guy named Bruno sticking needles in my ass. By that time, he was half done, and it kinda balanced out the headache.”

  The appetizers were called zakuski and consisted of blinis, salted fish, marinated mushrooms, rye bread, tiny pickles, sour cream, and spiced feta cheese. Eric had also ordered two bowls of borscht and a bottle of Georgian wine.

  Natalie eyed the spread and chuckled. “Just like Nonnie used to serve.”

  “Good,” Eric said, “because I don’t have a clue how to eat this stuff. What do I do, make a mushroom and pickle sandwich?”

  “You can mix some mushrooms with sour cream and spread them on a blini. Or you can spread sour cream on the rye and put fish on top. Or you can eat things however you want to eat them.”

  Eric poured them each some wine and handed Natalie’s glass to her. “Cheers,” he said. “To our arrival in Moscow.”

  Natalie clinked his goblet with her own. “Cheers. Now, why don’t you tell me the truth about why you’re here.”

  Eric froze with a blini halfway to his mouth. “What do you mean, the truth? I thought we went over all of this before we left New York. You don’t speak Russian or read Cyrillic, and there are thugs breaking into your apartment and killing people around you.”

  Natalie took a sip of wine, held it on her tongue, and evaluated him, much as she had earlier. “Eric. Come on. There’s something you’re not telling me.”

  “What do you want to know?” he countered.

  “You’re able, just like that, to take off from your job. You organized our visas faster than I can order Chinese takeout. You have a mysterious friend in the ‘police department’ who feeds you privileged information. Not to be ungrateful for the ticket or your company, but what aren’t you telling me? If there’s one thing I hate, it’s being lied to.”

  “Look, my job is essentially in outside sales. I work purely on commission. I travel internationally all the time on . . . uh . . . consulting jobs. And I really do have weeks of vacation due me. That’s it—I swear.”

  “Eric, if you work for the FBI or CIA or something, it’s okay. You can trust me.”

  He opened his mouth and then closed it again.

  Clearly, she was on to something. Was this his secret? She waited.

  He stood up and took his wine over to the window, where he looked out at the city. “It’s not a matter of me trusting you, Natalie. 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.”

  She’d known it. He was some kind of government agent. Some kind of spook. “So that business card you showed me—”

  “Is a cover.”

  “Is your name really Eric McDougal?”

  He paused. “Yes.”

  “But that could change? Or does change occasionally?”

  “Yes.” He swallowed a large mouthful of wine.

  “Do you ever wear . . . disguises?”

  “The answer to that question is yes, too.”

  She took a deep breath. “So is Miguel really a cop?”

  “No. And that truly is all I can tell you.”

  “One more question, please.”

  “You can ask,” he said in noncommittal tones.

  “Why are you here? Does it have to do with this Russian smuggling operation?”

  He nodded.

  “Or does it have to do with me?”

  He nodded again.

  She threw up a hand and drank some wine. “Well, thanks. Don’t elaborate or anything. It might kill you. Or is it me you’d have to kill, if you told me?”

  He lifted an eyebrow and his mouth relaxed into that wicked grin of his. “Yeah, slowly. Death by fornication.”

  “Oh, good. I’ve traveled halfway across the world with a wisecracking international man of mystery.”

  “Sure beats traveling halfway across the world with a boring, humorless international man of mystery, right?”

  “I don’t know about that.”

  “C’mon . . . we wisecrackers are so unappreciated. We’re better than animal crackers, Florida crackers, and firecrackers put together.”

  Natalie groaned. Then she said, “You missed Christmas crackers.”

  “Did I? Gross negligence! Report it to the federal government.”

  “Aha. So you do work for the government.”

  “Do I?”

  Natalie curled her fingers into fists. “Can I kill you now, or should I wait until you’re asleep?”

  Eric laughed again and came over to kiss her. “Unfortunately for you, we international men of mystery always sleep with one eye open. Now, if you’re done peppering me with questions, can we eat? Then let’s go find your grandmother.”

  Twenty-one

  The Savoy wasn’t far at all from the Metropol, as both hotels were located in the Red Square/Kitay-gorod area of Moscow, the city center. All Natalie and Eric had to do was walk several blocks down the quiet Ulitsa Rozhdestvenka to the bustling Teatralnyy Proezd and turn left.

  The Savoy was elegant, but the Metropol took interior design to a whole new level. It was stupendously lavish, full of mosaics and stained glass, and gilded to within an inch of its life.

  Eric enjoyed the awe on Natalie’s face.

  “Nonnie’s staying here?” she said in hushed tones.

  “It appears so.”

  But appearances, it seemed, could be deceiving. In terrible, stilted Russian that made Natalie smile even as the hotel staff nodded encouragingly, Eric asked for Mrs. Ciccoli and Colonel Blakely.

  The man behind the registration desk checked his computer, nodded, and then frowned. “I’m sorry,” he said in English, “but madam and the colonel have checked out. Only hours ago.”

  Frustrated, Eric ran a hand over the back of his neck. “Do you know where they’ve gone? Were they leaving town?”

  “I do not know. Though I believe that they were staying in Moscow, because the gentleman carried
a guide book to the city.”

  “Do you have any idea why they changed hotels?”

  “Our service and facilities are impeccable,” said the staffer, his chin rising.

  “Of course, of course.” Eric shot him a winning smile. “The Metropol is one of the best hotels in Moscow. Which is why I’m puzzled as to why they would leave. Did they feel they were being followed? Were they trying to avoid someone?”

  The staffer averted his eyes from Eric’s gaze and looked uncomfortable. Eric realized that he thought the older couple might be trying to avoid them. It did make sense, ironically.

  They wouldn’t get anything more out of the man. “Look,” Eric said, sliding the equivalent of a hundred dollars in rubles to him, “if you happen to see them again, will you have them contact us at the Savoy? We’ll be there for the next couple of days.”

  The money disappeared under the guy’s palm and he nodded.

  “Thank you for your help.”

  When they got outside, Natalie stuffed her hands into her coat pockets and blew out her breath. “What now? How do we find two elderly tourists in a city of ten million people?”

  Eric shook his head. Miguel would shoot him if he asked the poor guy to hack into the databases of every hotel in Moscow. And rightly so. Miguel had his contacts and shortcuts in the States, but Eric doubted that he had many buddies in Russia.

  “What kind of place would your grandmother want to stay in? And where, besides this mystery cathedral, would she go? What would she want to see? Does she still have friends here that she’d want to visit?”

  “Nonnie’s not fancy. She’s cultured, but she’s not a luxury lover. That’s why I was surprised that she’d stay at the Metropol. My guess is that the colonel chose that. Nonnie would be more comfortable in a two- or three-star hotel.” Natalie paused, thinking.

  “She’d want to see her old neighborhood. She’d want to visit any important sites that have to do with St. George. And there is an old friend that she talks to every month or two. He’s a retired professor at Moscow State University. She would definitely go to see him. If only I could remember his name.”

  “Does she call him, or does he call her?” Eric asked.

  “He calls—she has a hard time dialing the phone because of her eyesight. And I think he calls on the university’s dime. He still has a small office there, for research purposes. They let him keep it in exchange for the occasional lecture.”

  “If he calls her, I can have Miguel check the phone records and get us the number. From that we may be able to get a name—though the number will be registered to the university itself.”

  Natalie gave him an enigmatic look. “You know, sometimes it’s very convenient to be traveling with an international man of mystery. One with sinister connections.”

  Eric snorted. “Nothing sinister about Miguel. He’s a young Republican with designer pecs and flashy taste in watches, cars, and women. His girlfriend, Maribel? She’s the type that makes men walk into telephone poles just trying to get a good look.”

  “I pictured Miguel as a frizzy-haired, four-eyed nerd in floodwater pants, high-tops, and an old Rush T-shirt.”

  “Not in Miami. Very fashion conscious, is Miami.”

  “Oh. Well, they probably would deny me a license to live there, then. Especially right now.” She looked ruefully down at her mismatched clothing.

  “I promised to take you shopping, didn’t I?”

  “You don’t need to take me shopping.”

  “Yeah, I do. This street-vagrant chic you got going, it’s bad for my image.” He ducked, smirking, as she swung at him.

  The March day was sunny and clear, the sky turquoise and naked of clouds. The temperature was in the mid-forties, cold but not achingly so.

  It was an absolutely gorgeous day to be walking around. Natalie looked beautiful and utterly dorky at the same time, in the running shoes, the too-long jeans she’d rolled at the ankles, and the three-quarter-length coat. He grinned, then pictured her in the coat and the track shoes and nothing else. The grin segued into a deep chuckle, and he impulsively took her hand.

  They’d gone three blocks before he realized that (a) they hadn’t decided on a destination and (b) he, McDougal, did not hold women’s hands. He patted their asses. He nibbled on their necks, among other things. He pleasured them while they flopped around like orgasmic fish in his bed.

  But holding hands? That was for old, sappy Beatles songs. He might as well move into a yellow submarine, for chrissakes.

  Yet Natalie looked delighted and had woven her fingers into his. It seemed a little rude to pull away now and—what? Give her a friendly punch on the shoulder?

  “So where the hell are we going, Natalie?” Eric asked, actively plotting now to disengage his hand. He could point at something. Or sneeze, which required covering his mouth. Or smooth some hair out of her face.

  He opted for the last choice, which seemed the gen tlest. He pulled his hand away and used three fingers to comb a few strands of her hair back. Then he tucked them behind her ear.

  She leaned into the gesture like a cat and tilted her head back so that he fell into those navy eyes of hers. He stumbled over the tiny freckles on her nose and the way her lower lip got puffier right in the center, like a provocative little bolster pillow.

  He kissed her, and a passing woman put a hand to her heart and sighed.

  Yeah, that’s me, lady. Poster child for romance.

  But he lost his cynical edge in the sweetness of Natalie’s mouth and the surprising tenderness that crept over her expression. He loved that it was for him. But it also scared the piss out of him.

  He raised his head and tried to get his bearings again. That was when he saw the photographer, who immediately turned and ducked into the crowd when he realized that he’d been seen.

  “Hey!” McDougal shouted. He started after the guy, crossing the street and leaving Natalie standing on the sidewalk, staring. “Hey!” But the portly little man was fast on his feet. Eric started pushing through the crowd, but the man had disappeared.

  He looked back to see Natalie stepping into the street to follow him. Then a motor gunned and an old Volvo veered sharply around the corner. It screeched to a halt, and a burly man with blond hair erupted from the passenger seat to grab Natalie.

  As the guy opened the rear door and shoved her inside the vehicle, Eric sprang into action, but he had no hope of reaching her side of the car before it sped away. So instead he focused on the driver, whose attention was on the rearview mirror. He wrenched open the door and grabbed him around the throat with his left arm. In the next instant, he had his perfectly ordinary, stainless-steel pen gripped in his right fist, poised to stab it into the man’s jugular.

  “Let her go, or you’re dead,” Eric said. He shouted it again at the second man. “I will kill him.” The driver struggled, tried to break the grip at his neck, but McDougal hadn’t sweated his guts out with Cato, ARTEMIS’S trainer, for nothing.

  The driver tried stepping on the gas, but the car was a standard and it wasn’t in gear.

  In the meantime, passersby had started to gather and stare. Natalie screamed, kicked, and fought to get free from the other man. A couple of tall, athletic-looking guys exchanged glances and then stepped in to help.

  The driver said something that Eric didn’t understand, but it must have been the equivalent of “we have to get out of here; let her go.” Because the burly man suddenly ejected Natalie, feet first, from the car. She stumbled forward, into one of the athletic guys, who caught her and stopped her from falling to the pavement.

  Satisfied that she was safe, Eric released the driver, who spat curses at him while slamming the car into gear. The Volvo shot forward like a four-doored rocket.

  Eric stood robotic in the street for a moment, gripping his pen as if it were a spear. Then he ran to Natalie.

  “Are you okay? Jesus, Joseph, and Mary, that was close.”

  The athletic guy had set her on her feet and
was asking the same question in Russian.

  “I’m fine,” she said shakily. But the pulse at her throat throbbed as if someone was in there with a sledgehammer.

  The Russian’s friend said in English, “You are very lucky that those men didn’t have guns.”

  True. But McDougal didn’t want Natalie any more scared than she already was. He shot the guy a meaningful stare and said, “Thank you for helping.”

  He caught on fast. “Eh,” he said to Natalie, chuckling, “you are also lucky that Mikhail did not head-butt you back into car. He is not used to using hands, you see. He is professional soccer player.”

  Natalie gave him a weak smile. “Thank you so much,” she said to Mikhail, who nodded.

  “I am Ivan,” the English-speaking one said.

  Mikhail said something in Russian.

  “No, not Ivan the Terrible,” Ivan retorted. “He is comedian as well as soccer player. He refers to sixteenth-century Russian czar who killed his own son.”

  Eric stuck out his hand. “Eric McDougal. And this is Natalie Rosen. Really, we can’t thank you enough. Who do you think those guys were?”

  The two Russians exchanged another significant glance. Then Ivan shrugged. “Mob. You may have heard—it is very bad here. You want to call militsya? The police?”

  “No,” Natalie said quickly.

  “We can give license plate numbers. You want to go to American embassy?”

  Eric shook his head. “We’ll be fine. Thank you.”

  Ivan eyed him shrewdly, then pulled a scrap of paper out of his pocket. “You will allow me to borrow your very, ah, how you say, dangerous pen?”

  Eric gave it to him, and he wrote down two numbers. Then he gave the paper and the pen back to Eric.

  “The first is license plate of car, yes? The second is my telephone. You need witness or help—or good Mongolian barbecue—you call. I have restaurant.”

  “You’re very kind.” Natalie took a step forward and kissed him on the cheek.

  “Ah, for this, you eat my restaurant for free!” He enthusiastically kissed both her cheeks, and she blushed, to McDougal’s unaccountable annoyance.