Extreme Danger (McClouds & Friends #5)(85)

“Yeah. That was the plan,” he said. “It’s just that I can’t make it tonight, and I can’t reach her cell. Have her call me if you see her, OK?”

“Will do. Bye, Josh.”

That was weird. He stared down at the phone, startled out of his horny daze. Carrie was hypervigilant about being reachable, and making sure her brother and sister were too. Being out of touch, even for a short time, really freaked her out. Abandonment issues, because of how they’d lost Mom, he and Becca believed. They both made a big point of keeping phones charged up, providing contact numbers, yada yada.

Damn. That worried him. But when he stepped out of the store, Nadia was waiting for him, and the blinding force of her beauty hit him again, canceling every other thought in his head. Wow.

She walked towards him, a slow, seductive, hip-swaying walk. She wore high-heeled boots over her jeans. Those legs just went on and on.

In fact, there was nothing about her that was not perfect.

She slid her arm through his. “Shall we go? Where is your car?”

Her accent was gorgeous. The skin on the inside of her elbow was so soft where it touched his arm. The softest thing he’d ever felt.

“Aren’t you, uh, scared?” he blurted. He was abruptly horrified at himself for saying it. Screwing his own chances. Dickbrain chump.

But her eyes just opened wider, limpid and glowing. “Scared? Why? Of who?”

He gestured, helplessly. “Oh, I don’t know. Of, uh, me, I guess. Of letting a strange guy come to your house. I mean, I could be anyone.”

Her smile widened, shone, dazzled him. “But you are not anyone, Josh,” she said, her voice low and caressing. “You are you.”

A helium balloon in his chest expanded, puffing out his chest and stretching his spine to its utmost length. It lifted him up. He floated down the mall, suspended a couple inches from the ground.

Anchored to the earth only by the tender contact with Nadia’s baby-soft arm, as she towed him smoothly along to an unknown fate.

Chapter

19

P avel Cherchenko took one freaking long time to get off.

Maybe it was all the vodka Ludmilla had poured down his throat, although you would think a madam wouldn’t serve up dick-killer on the rocks. She’d had a few herself.

He forced himself to watch the screen, jaw clenched. He was as uncomfortable as hell about this, and he had no doubt that Ludmilla was too. But it was Nick’s luckless job to monitor them, just to make sure things didn’t take an ugly turn.

Though watching Pavel’s naked, hairy ass rise and fall, he couldn’t help but reflect upon the fact that ugly was a relative term.

None of them had anticipated when they installed the hidden vid cams that they were going to have to watch her f*ck anyone, least of all one of Zhoglo’s men. But there they were, in Milla’s big, lavish bed, grimly going at it. Yikes. Who knew.

They’d gone on screaming red alert as soon as Nick had spotted Pavel getting out of the black Beemer in the parking garage. But so far, Pavel hadn’t made any move to hurt Milla. In fact, he’d made no threats at all. That alone made Nick itchy and nervous.

It seemed more like the guy was in need of a confidante. He’d started out talking about a business deal, a damn lucrative one, from what Nick could tell. Beautiful girls to service the Vor. Lots of them. He liked youth, freshness, variety. He had an unlimited budget. Ludmilla had gotten much more relaxed when they started talking big money.

But as the guy drank, he’d gotten sloppy and sad. Whining about how angry his boss was over the Solokov debacle. Ludmilla crooned her sympathy, plied him with still more vodka, and soon Pavel was weeping boozily in her arms, grabbing at her surgically enhanced tits. One thing led to another and forty minutes later, the guy was still jerking and straining on top of her, a look of pain on his haggard face. Ludmilla murmured encouragement, massaging his ass, trying to help him along. Nick cringed, prayed for the guy to come already. Jesus. Nobody was having any fun, least of all Pavel.

Finally, Pavel threw his head back, jerking and grimacing as if he were being electrocuted. Thank God. His face sagged down over Milla’s shoulder. Milla turned her face squarely towards the vid cam that was hidden in a piece of hideous modern art.

She gave Nick a blood-chilling look.

Pavel rolled off and sat up on the side of the bed with his back to her, shoulders slumped.

Then, slowly, he got up and dressed with the stiff movements of a very old man. Milla rose and pulled on a frilly robe. She followed him into her spacious dining room.

Pavel popped open the briefcase he had carried in, and pulled out two thick wads of cash. He tossed them on the table and shuffled toward the door, like a guy zonked out on anti-psychotic drugs.

Ludmilla waited about a minute after he left before she opened her own apartment door and peered out to make sure he was gone. She swept to the mosaic framed mirror on her dining room wall, behind which another vid cam was hidden, and glared into the lens. She yanked open her robe. Gestured at her large, extremely round bare breasts.

“You liked this?” she demanded, in Ukrainian. “Did you enjoy the show? Did you have a good time? How about your men? Voyeur pigs.”

Nick sighed and dialed the scrambled line they had established for this purpose.

She snatched the cell up from the table. “What?” she spat. “Pig.”

“You didn’t use the code word, Milla,” he said patiently. “I was listening for it, and you never said it. The guys were ready to storm in, if you’d needed them, but he wasn’t attacking you. If we’d intervened, Zhoglo would know for sure that you’d double-crossed him, which would mean going into hiding right now. Taking a new identity. Starting a new life. You didn’t want that, right?”