“Shouldn’t your waitress be up by now?” the stranger asks.
I lean away from the door as a chair scrapes over the floor.
Before one of them can come looking for me and discover me eavesdropping, I grip the handle and open the door. Barging in on them looks less suspicious.
Ilya and a man who looks vaguely familiar sit at a table in the corner of an open-plan kitchen-lounge. Yan is on his feet. The men pause at my entrance, three sets of eyes trailing over me.
“Well, hello, little waitress,” the stranger says. “Right on time.” There’s nothing friendly about his dark eyes. If anything, they’re malicious. His thick black beard is neatly trimmed, and his shoulder-length hair is tied into a ponytail. He’s dressed in black from head to toe, and is sporting a Glock and some impressive knives in his gun and knife holsters.
Another dangerous man. Handsome, in a vicious sort of way, but very dangerous.
Yan clenches his jaw. “Go back to the room, Mina.”
“I don’t have clothes to wear,” I say in Russian.
Yan narrows his eyes. “Which part of go to the room didn’t you understand? Do you need me to say it in Hungarian?”
The stranger chuckles.
Yan turns on him. “Something funny, Anton?”
“No.” Anton lifts his hands. “Nothing.”
Yan’s voice is icy. “Good.”
Of course. That’s where I recognize him from. Anton Rezov is part of their team. One of the Delta Force men was disguised to look like him.
“Are you hungry?” Ilya asks me.
“Get in there.” Yan points at the door behind me. “Now. We’ll sort out the food when you’re dressed.” His tone takes on a challenge. “Or must I carry you?”
Anton whistles through his teeth. “Territorial much?”
Before my entry can cause a fight, I go back to the room and shut the door. Clutching the towel at my chest, I sit down on the bed. It doesn’t take long for Yan to come find me.
The door bangs in the frame as he shuts it. “You don’t walk around naked in front of the men again. Understood?”
His outburst unsettles me. I give a nervous nod.
He grabs my wrist and pulls me up. “Come.”
The towel drops to the bed. I reach for it, but we’re already at the door. “Wait.”
He looks back at me, his gaze heating as he drags it over my naked body. “You’ll do like this.”
“What? I thought you said—”
“The others are out.”
“Out?”
“Picking up provisions.”
He opens the door and pulls me through it. I’m overly conscious of my unclad body, something new to me. Why does he have this effect on me?
Pushing me down on one of the chairs by the table, he orders, “Stay.”
I don’t move. Instead, I watch with a pounding heart as he takes a container from the fridge and dumps it in the microwave. Then he fills a glass with milk and puts it down in front of me. When the microwave pings, he serves the food onto a plate and hands it to me with a fork.
“Eat.” He stands over me, watching.
“I’m not hungry.”
“It’s the aftereffect of the drugs. You need to eat. Must I feed you?”
At that, I bring the fork to my lips. It’s shepherd’s pie, the commercial kind.
He makes me finish everything on the plate and drink all the milk before he asks, “How’s your head?”
“Fine.”
“Good.” He puts the dirty dishes in the sink and takes my hand. “Come. It’s time we have that chat about why you’re here.”
My throat goes dry.
He leads me to the bedroom where he takes a key from his pocket and unlocks the dresser. Grabbing a T-shirt from a drawer, he throws it at me. I catch it in mid-air. It’s big. It must be his. I pull it hastily over my head.
He comes to stand in front of me, his much taller frame intimidating as his green eyes glint at me coolly. “You were right. I was supposed to kill you.”
The news is cold coffee, as Hanna likes to say, but it still rattles me. “But you didn’t.”
“No.” His lazy smile is filled with familiar frost. “I didn’t. What does that mean?”
That my life is his. This is how it works in our world. “What are you going to do with me?”
“Whatever I please.”
“I’ll only be a burden, a mouth to feed, a prisoner you’ll constantly have to prevent from escaping.”
His eyes tighten. “Do you have a death wish?”
“I’m only stating the facts.”
His cool smile returns. “You won’t be a burden. Far from it. I can think of many ways to make you useful. And you won’t escape.”
There’s more to the last declaration. My stomach tight, I wait for him to continue.
“While you were out cold,” he says, “I planted a tracker in you.”
The strength leaves my legs. I sink down onto the edge of the bed. Lifting my arms, I inspect them for cuts.
“It’s at the back of your neck,” he says, studying me with his frosty eyes.
I lift my fingers to my nape. Sure as hell, there’s a small scab. The bump under my skin is merely the size of a rice grain. It doesn’t hurt. That’s why I didn’t notice it when I took my shower.
“Should you ever be foolish enough to run, you won’t get far,” he says, “but I advise you not to test me.”
“All of this because I framed you?” I ask, breathless with disbelief.
A part of me knows otherwise. Already back in Budapest, before he knew who I was, he was planning this. The fact that he’s capable of taking and keeping a person for no reason other than wanting to says a lot about this man I hardly know.
“What about Sokolov?” I ask when he doesn’t reply. “What if he
