She fished out the keys. He’d given them to her the day he’d moved in. Maybe even then he’d thought this would be their place. It had never felt like it. Moving down the road from the Temple wasn’t far enough.
She unlocked the door. “Ivan?”
The ground floor was open plan, the living room in the front, the dining area in the middle and kitchen at the back. He’d decorated it himself and, like everything about him, it was old world elegance. Dark oak, Persian carpet, an original Matisse and spotlights. The sofa was hand-carved from Rajasthan with a bear skin rug tossed over it. Billi brushed her fingers along the thick pelt. A Cossack sabre hung over the fireplace.
But for all this her eyes darted to the specks of blood at the foot of the stairs.
Her discomfort vanished. She felt her heart-rate settle, despite the danger, despite what it might mean. Blood was never a good sign and yet, perversely, it was her world. She didn’t know words of the heart, of how to swoon and the art of seduction was far beyond her, but she knew all the arts of violence.
Billi unsheathed the sabre. No need to be quiet about this, she’d shouted his name. If anyone was in, they knew she was there.
Stairs. A perfect ambush but she didn’t have any choice. She pulled off her jacket and wrapped it around her left forearm. It would have to do. Leading with the sabre, Billi ascended, one step at a time, attention laser-focused ahead, senses alert for any sudden attack. But she got to the top and the short corridor that led to the bedrooms and bathroom. Ivan’s bedroom was the first. She pushed the door open.
Ivan hadn’t gone quietly. The bed was unmade, the low table smashed and the frosted glass between the bedroom and the en-suite shattered, there was blood on the broken glass. The bookshelf had come down — someone had been thrown against the wall hard — and the Klimt above the headboard torn down.
Someone had burst in on Ivan, they’d fought and Ivan had lost. But looking at the mess of the room he’d not made it easy. His row of designer watches remained lined up on the shelf. The drawers had been emptied, papers shaken out and scattered over the floor.
Dumb. You should have taken the watches and made it look like a robbery.
Billi picked through the papers. Russian, of course, but with a few maps and photos of digs and archaeological sites out in the desert. This was the information Ivan had been talking about last night. Some of the folders were empty. Whoever had come had found, and taken, what they were looking for.
So this wasn’t gangland, though Ivan had plenty of enemies within the Russian mafia. This was her world intruding, again.
Look at you. You come here planning to be happy and you were shaking in your boots. Now he’s been kidnapped you’re icy calm and can’t wait to get started. Face it, SanGreal, you are not ready for a serious relationship. You were not made for snuggles by the fire under a bearskin rug.
Billi tossed the sabre onto the bed. Someone from the Firebird could deal with these domestics. She had to find Ivan.
She needed answers and there was one person who would have them, and she wasn’t in the mood to ask nicely.
CHAPTER 15
The elevator doors slid open onto the Royal Suite at the Ritz.
Billi smiled up at the bodyguard waiting. He looked surprised to see her. “Hello, Tommy. Remember me? I was wondering if you still had my dusters? You took them off me when I was last here.”
To his credit his surprise didn’t last long. His tiny eyes, set deep under a heavy brow, shrunk into suspicious pinholes. “What the —”
“No worries if you haven’t. I got these new ones. See?”
Done right, a punch from a knuckle duster hit harder than a hammer. The trick was to bring the whole body into the blow, pushing up from the balls of your feet right up through the hips, core, shoulders and into the blunt iron spikes nestled on your fist. Anything less than perfect would give Tommy a chance to shake it off and then she would be in trouble. He was bigger, stronger, tougher. It didn’t matter what fancy MMA moves you might have, you could not use any of those to your advantage in a real world fight.
The impact jarred her all the way through, Tommy was massive and there was just too much bulk for her to feel anything other than she’d slammed into a tree trunk. But his legs wobbled. That was a start.
The second was a hook, a whiplash blow sprung from the hips and into the spot just below his ear. His jaw cracked. She was already sweating, and Tommy was still standing, balling up his own fists even as he swayed.
But you watch the eyes. That’s where the intent is and his were rolling. He stepped back to give himself room and time to recover. She wasn’t about to let that happen. So Billi sprang after him, ramming her iron-assisted fist into his elbow, setting all those lovely nerves on fire, and numbing everything from the joint downward.
Go down, you bastard. Why won’t you go down?
Tommy bunched up his shoulders and set his head down, fists up in a classic boxer stance. No way was she getting to his head any more. He knew how to guard it. He was probably the Regimental champion back in his day. A master of the Queensbury rules. No punching below the belt and all that.
So Billi grabbed his belt and delivered two sharp uppercuts right into his balls. Since it was
