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“Be quiet, man,” he snapped. “I wish to hear this conversation.”
Mikhail sucked in a breath and got his response down to a high-pitched keening sound, like a dog’s whine.
Kristoff and Pavel watched, enthralled, as Mikhail’s penis slid in and out of the girl’s pink mouth, but Zhoglo soon grew bored. Rebecca and her brother were now arguing heatedly about whether or not Nadia should accompany them on their trip to look for their sister Carrie. Which was, of course, a non-issue.
He got up, leaving the grunting, wheezing Mikhail and his captive audience behind, and walked down to the end of the hall, to the smallest bedroom, more a cell than anything else. He walked in, with a friendly smile for the wretched creature tied to the bed.
Ah, how he loved the sight of a lovely girl, tied and gagged.
Her pale green eyes were wide with terror. Remarkably similar to Rebecca, although her hair was straighter, and her face more narrow. Her slender body strained against her bonds, bucking and heaving. She wore only the gray string tank top and underwear she’d been wearing when his men collected her from her dorm room bed.
He put his hand on her cool, silken thigh, just for the pleasure of feeling her muscles jerk and recoil. “I imagine you are wondering why you are here,” he said. “It’s your sister, you see. She’s been playing dangerous games. She cost me money and time. She must be punished.” He shrugged almost apologetically. “Your family is small, so my choices were limited. But watching you and your brother die should be enough.”
Her body seized up in a shuddering paroxysm. He stroked her rigid body and realized that he had an erection. He massaged it idly.
“You may be interested to know that your brother and sister are in this very house right now,” he informed her. “Last I heard, they were arguing about going to look for you. They are so worried that you have not called. How good of them to care, no?”
Another jerk. She mewled desperately behind her gag, her horrified eyes dropping to where he massaged his crotch.
The impulse was strong, but the girl lay on her back, strapped to the bed. Face-up, feet fastened together with tight, complicated knots. He was irritated at the thought of picking them apart, or fetching a knife to sever them. He was even more irritated with the idiot who had tied her. A little foresight from this pack of fools who served him—was it too much to ask? Then he heard water running in the bathroom on the other side of the wall. He left the room just in time to intercept Nadia, who was patting her face dry, presumably after rinsing out her mouth.
Nadia would do to soothe his itch. Her fear was just as powerful.
“I hoped to catch you before you went downstairs,” he purred.
Nadia pulled back before she could stop herself. She tried to smile to cover the gaffe, but her lips trembled.
He took her by the arm, and guided her to the door of his own master bedroom. He pushed open the door and gestured with a smiling flourish for her to precede him inside.
She stared at him, frozen in place. “I…I…but he will be expecting me downstairs…” Her voice trailed off into a trembling thread. She sucked in air, tried again. “And I must be, ah…”
“Fresh?” His smile widened. Her fear honed his desire to razor-sharp intensity, and this was only the beginning. “Not a problem, my dear. There is a bathroom. Wash afterwards. Make yourself as clean and sweet as a new blown rose.” He shoved her before him, making her stumble, and followed her in. “Your little friend will never know.”
“Run it back. Play it again.”
“Nick.” Davy’s voice was heavy. “You’ve seen it ten times since I unscrambled it.”
“Run the fucking thing back and play it again,” Nick snarled.
Davy sighed, and obliged him. The recorded digital image of the woman on the monitor went back out the door of Zhoglo’s house, put her suitcase back into the trunk of the yellow cab, was sucked backwards into the rear seat. The cab began to move.
Freeze frame. Davy hit play. And Nick watched it again.
He guessed he kept hoping it would be different, that it would be some other woman who would get out, collect her suitcase, pay the driver, shoulder her purse—and walk right into Zhoglo’s lair.
As if it were no big deal. Something she did all the time.
But no. It was Becca who disappeared into the maw of that door. The door shut. The house seemed to stare at him with blank insolence.
His whole self was screaming and struggling against the blunt, inescapable conclusion. He didn’t want to give into it, but it was winning. Full realization was dawning, without his help, without his consent. The taste in his mouth was bitter as gall.
He’d been had.
His brain stretched like a tortured body on the rack around this new piece of information. Joints wrenching loose, muscles and tendons tearing as he tried to accommodate it. His breakfast had turned to a lump of jagged ice. The coffee sloshing around was corrosive acid.
Seth sat in the swivel chair on the other side of Nick, his face a mask. Connor was there, too, his arms folded tightly across his chest. All three men looked grim. And embarrassed as hell.
No one would look him in the face. Just as well. Nick didn’t want to look into anybody’s face, for the rest of what passed for his life.
