Susan Downs - Ekaterina

“My grandfather is not related to me by blood. Which means, I have no idea who I am.”

He touched her hair with his hand. “I know who you are. You’re Kat Moore, America. Stubborn. Brave and beautiful distraction in my life who is trying to get herself killed.” She stiffened, fighting the urge to lean into his words.

“Don’t send me home, Vadeem. Please.”

“Kat, I know all about what it feels like to need to belong to something… or someone,” Vadeem said in an achingly gentle voice. “But it’s not worth risking your life.”

She turned, and saw his eyes glistened. It chipped at her fury. “The risk is worth it me. Let me find Magda or at least Anton’s secret. You know it’s important or someone wouldn’t be trying to get his book.” He wove his hands together on his lap, white fists against his black jeans, as if making a point not to touch her. It felt like a slap.

“I can’t be a good cop and let you stay. You… you’ll get hurt. And it’ll be on my conscience.”

“Well, pity you!” She clenched her teeth. “Heaven help you if you have to baby-sit me one day longer.”

“Kat, I didn’t—”

“I never asked you for help, as I recall. You just tackled me, by way of introduction, and you’ve been hounding me ever since.” She didn’t care that the harsh words burned in her throat. Anger pushed her past compassion, past civility.

“I don’t need your help, nor want it, and you’ll have to drag me kicking and screaming to the plane and throw me aboard to get me out of here.”

His voice was deadly calm. “If I have to.”

She closed her eyes. Tears spilled down her cheeks. “No, don’t bother. I don’t ever want to see you again. Tomorrow isn’t soon enough to say good-bye.”

Her chest tightened when he said, “ Ladna . I’ll send Ryslan to pick you up. I won’t bother you any more.” His voice turned ragged, the only indication of the man she’d seen weeping at her bedside the night before. “But you are getting on that plane, and you’re going home. And never coming back.”

“Fine. Good.” Her throat closed. “Give me my book back.”

He played the perfect innocent. “What book?”

She nearly hit him. “Anton’s journal. The one I nearly got killed for while you were supposed to be protecting me.” She stopped short of blurting, “While you were basking in your own pity by the side of the road,” but she couldn’t go that far. She knew, by the way he flinched, that she’d inflicted enough pain. “It’s all I’ve got, Vadeem. Please.”

His face twitched, and he paused just long enough to look as if she’d driven a fist through his heart. Then— “No. Not until you’re on the plane. You’ll get it as soon as you go through customs.”

She thought, at that moment, that she might hate Vadeem Spasonov.

Kat had slammed the door in his face.

He deserved it. He knew what he was doing to her, and it just about ripped his heart out of his chest. ‘Kat, forgive me’, nearly tripped through his lips too many times to count during the agonizing two-hour flight home. But it never cleared, stopped dead by her icy I-can’t-stand-you posture. He’d traced her tightened jaw with his eyes until it he had it memorized. And, the imprint of her wretched expression as she stared at him through the glass doors of the US embassy, her suitcase weighing down her arm, her sodden hair dripping onto the collar of her white shirt, would be with him long after she flew home tomorrow.

Long after. Forever.

He rested his forehead against the wooden bar and covered his head with his arm. Outside, the rain hissed in the streets. Traffic whished through puddles and killed any desire to leave the darkened pub, go home, and face two empty rooms.

“Are you going to drink that, or just stare at it all night?” The bartender, a wide man with arms like timber who did double duty as bouncer in this hovel, leaned on the bar and eyed Vadeem like he was a rabble-rouser. Vadeem had squatted space for roughly two hours without touching a drop.

Vadeem shrugged. He hated vodka. It tasted like kerosene, and turned a man’s body into muddle. So what made him think that sucking down the stuff and crawling into a corner in the local FSB hangout was going to soften the pain in his chest? He took the drink, sniffed it, felt his stomach lurch, and set it back down. Maybe later. He had only worked up to a twelve on the misery scale. Maybe he’d wait until he reached fifteen. Another dance into the not-so-distant past, recalling the taste of Kat’s kiss, the sound of his name on her lips, her heart-crushing story tearing out his heart should do it.

Vadeem groaned.

He picked up his cell phone and dialed. Again. Ryslan wasn’t answering. He left a curt message on his partner’s voice mail. If his current luck held, the man was out collaring Grazovich at the moment, cursing Vadeem’s ineptness. The vodka called with a soft coo.

Kat Moore had to leave Russia. He had no choice. He had a job to do, and he’d conveniently tossed that aside to chase after… what? He could hardly say the word to himself. Love . He’d known the woman for less than a week and she’d tunneled under his skin and turned him inside out. So maybe he was starting to love her. Maybe the feelings that surfaced when he thought of her made him want to cry and scream and dance and laugh and sing. She had to leave. Because, if he never saw her again, if she got killed on his watch, he just might crumble.

He knew that feeling all too well.

I am the Resurrection and the Life, no one comes to the Father but through me. Pyotr’s words hit him like a brick. Vadeem even winced. The problem wasn’t that he didn’t believe… it was that he did. He believed in God so strongly, it hurt. Ate him alive. His faith in God had slipped through his fingers as his father lay dying, as his mother was sentenced to gulag, as he was sent to the orphanage, and his brother to the army. As his family disintegrated.

All because Vadeem had longed to belong to a brotherhood. Because he’d betrayed them to his so-called comrade. Because he trusted the untrustworthy. Faith destroyed. Vadeem put a hand on his chest, pushing against a flash of pain.

Perhaps he understood exactly how Kat felt.

Her journal hung like a brick in his coat pocket. He put a hand on it. Her wretched tone rang in his mind, “It’s all I have.” He’d come dangerously close to cutting out his heart and slapping it down in front of her like a sacrificial offering, wanting to answer, “What about me? Don’t you have me?”

No, she didn’t have him. He’d made that pitifully clear in the way he’d dumped her off like trash at the local embassy, a das vedanya dying on his lips. So what if she’d been the one to slam the door in his face? He knew he’d been the betrayer in their short-lived relationship.

Vadeem reached for the vodka and held it to his lips. The liquid spilled out in his trembling grip, burning his tongue.

“Don’t, Vadeem.”

Vadeem dropped the shot glass onto the counter, like a man who’d been sucker punched. Pyotr slid onto the stool beside him. The man wasn’t smiling. “Thought I might find you here.”

Vadeem struggled for breath, his chest knotted. “What are you doing in town?”

“I accompanied the Watsons to Moscow. They needed some encouragement.”

“How’d you find me?”

“I called your office. They gave me some ideas.” Pyotr obviously had no problem walking into a den of thieves and drunks after a lost man. Vadeem licked his lips, scraping up composure.

“So, you’re just going to let her go?”

Vadeem hung his head, running the shot glass around in the puddle he’d created on the bar. “It’s the best thing. For her. For me.”