Sands of Time (14 page)

R
oman felt the water close over him. He fought not to open his mouth and gasp. But oh, how he wanted to scream. Every nerve felt filleted, bare to needles of cold that turned his brain to ice. Momentarily.

Then fear kicked in and with it the heat of common sense. The snowmobile had snagged him by the boot, and he kicked to free himself even as he plunged into the depths.

He tore off his gloves, not really feeling his hands, and bent to pull at the laces. His lungs blazed. He grabbed, and the lace tightened into a knot.

The lake sucked him down. He felt his lungs leaking.
Lord, help, please!

His knife. He grabbed for it, just above his boot, and barely felt it in his grip as he sliced at the boot laces.

Free! He yanked his foot out and kicked hard, shedding his coat as he fought his way to the surface.

He hit his head against the ice and nearly blacked out. But light beckoned and he kicked toward it, feeling his remaining air seep out. Two more kicks.

Shadow swept into his brain, clouding it like smoke. Tired. So very tired. He fought through the web of exhaustion pulling at him. Sarai.

Sarai.

The blackness swept over him. He felt heavy. So heavy.

Then, something pulled at him. He gave a feeble kick.

His head broke surface and he gasped. Air. Sweet precious air. Burning his lungs. He sucked it in and his vision cleared.

“Roman!”

Sarai lay on her stomach on the ice, holding the back of his shirt as he tried to tread water. But his arms felt thick. Sluggish.

“Roman, hold on.”

The sun seemed so bright this side of the ice. Bright and spotty in his eyes. He reached out for the edge, but it broke off. “Back up, Sarai. You’ll go in.” His voice sounded strained, and he knew he should be alarmed.

“I’m not letting go of you.” Her eyes found his, and despite his brain-frozen state, he saw something hot, even angry or maybe afraid. “Kick hard.”

“I’m kicking. But the ice isn’t strong enough to hold both of us.”

Behind his words, he heard a low hum. Sarai heard it also and turned to look.

“Snowmobiles,” he said. He willed her to look at him, and winced at the fear in her eyes. “Run, Sar.”

She shook her head.

“Run!”

“I’m not leaving you!”

“You have to leave me. Go. With luck they’ll come out on the ice, and they’ll end up in the drink. You can get away. Go back to Anya’s dacha.”

“No! I don’t want you to die.” Her eyes filled.

“The feeling is very mutual. And if you stay here with me, the minute those snow machines come out on this ice, you’ll go down. Run, Sarai.”

“What if they follow me?”

He nearly cried with relief. “If they catch you, tell them I kidnapped you. Only don’t speak Russian. Please, it’s the only way.”

She stared at him, her face tight, her expression horrified. Then, abruptly, she let him go, backed away and fled across the ice.

He was obviously already frozen because watching her go, his heart felt cold and dead in his chest.

Sarai ran across the ice, careful to veer away from the gaping patch of ice chunks their snowmobile had furrowed. She raised her arms, waving at them.
“Pomagee menye!”
She didn’t look back at Roman, but prayed he stayed above the surface.
“Pomagetye!”

Two red snowmobiles, with warmly dressed mafia thugs
mounted on the back came into view. She ran to the edge of the lake, waving hysterically.

They angled toward her. She glanced back at Roman. His head barely surmounted the surface of the water. He couldn’t have had the strength to yell, because he’d be shouting at her if he’d heard her speaking Russian.

And if he knew her intentions. Get help, even if from the bad guys. Roman would just have to strangle her later.

They came closer and she ran toward them, her arms up.

They stopped their machines, and one raised a pistol. “Stop!”

“Please. Help my friend!” She pointed at Roman. His head bobbed, went under, then bobbed again. “He’s the one who broke into your facility.”

They glanced at her, then at Roman.

“Please! I’ll tell you everything I know if you help him!”

“You’ll tell us anyway.”

“He’s an FSB agent. Just think what
he
could tell you!”

For a moment, those possibilities, and the fact that she’d just handed him over to have information tortured out of him nearly doubled her over. It took all her resolve to stare at them, hard, challenging.

I’m sorry, Roman.
But she didn’t care what lines they had to cross. She wanted Roman alive. And she wasn’t going to let him die if she could do something about it.

The thugs looked at each other and in mutual assent got off their machines. One opened a box behind his seat. He pulled out a webbed tow rope with a hook on the end and flung it at her.

She caught it and jogged back out onto the ice. “Roman, stay with me!”

He didn’t even bother to turn toward her voice. She saw him sink under the water again. No!

She got on all fours, then shimmied out to the edge. He was fighting, kicking hard to stay up. His head broke the surface and she grabbed his shirt.

“Roman, I have help.” She fed the towline into the water, around his shoulders and hooked it onto itself at his chest. He looked chalky white, frost and ice around his mouth.

“Hold on, hero,” she said, her voice shaky, as she backed away. Roman held on to the rope, his gaze in hers. Dark eyes that she couldn’t read.

She backed onto solid ice, sat up and began to pull.

He moved toward the edge. But she couldn’t move him onto the ice.
Lord, please help me!
She dug in her feet, wrapped the webbing around her hands, leaned back.

Roman inched up, then fell back as her strength ebbed.

No. He couldn’t die because she didn’t have the strength to pull him out. No!

“Dye Menye.”
A shadow over her shoulder reached for the webbing. Mafia Man sat next to her and heaved.

Roman slid onto the ice, half in, half out. Sarai got up to go to him.

“Nyet.”
Mafia Man put his hand out to stop her. Then he pulled again and dragged Roman across the snow.

Roman’s eyes were closed, his body unmoving.

Please, Lord, no.
Sarai ran to him, checked his pulse.
Slow. But still alive. “Help me!” She rolled him over, slapped his cheeks. “Stay awake, Roman!”

He blinked, groaned. “Sarai…” His eyes closed again.

He’d die of hypothermia before they got back to the nuclear plant.

She looked at the two mafia boys, now heading in her direction, then behind her at the woods and…the
house!

“Let’s take him there.” She pointed to the pink painted home. Hopefully, it had blankets, or furniture she could use to start a fire.

If she had to, she’d warm him up with her own body heat.

Thankfully, Mafia One and Two didn’t argue with her, a feat she attributed to her doctor tone. So much for their not knowing she spoke Russian.

Unfortunately, she’d have to make good on her promise to tell them everything. That wasn’t much, and if Roman lived, he might not be thanking her.

If Roman lived.

She sandwiched him between herself and Mafia One as they drove around the lake to the home. Then, the two men grabbed Roman’s rag-doll body and dragged him by the armpits into the house. She heard him groan, a sound that had her rejoicing.

The door had a dead bolt lock, but to her shock, one of the two dug out a key.

They opened the door and dropped Roman inside.

“We need to get him someplace warm,” she said.

They looked at each other. Then they picked up Roman
and dragged him through an entryway and into a family room with a stone fireplace.

A
nice
family room. With black leather seating and leopard skin pillows and a thick Kazakhstani rug on the floor. They dropped Roman onto it. Then they turned to Sarai. “Don’t try anything. We’re watching you,” Mafia One said.

She ignored him and dropped to her knees beside Roman. He looked pasty, with gray lips and ice in his hair. And when she removed his only boot, he barely roused.

He did, however, react when she reached for his belt.

“Leave me alone.”

“Not on your life. You need to get out of these wet clothes and dry off.” She unbuckled his belt, but his hands came to life and caught hers. His eyes were still closed, but she heard a heartbeat in his voice. “No, Sarai. Find me something else to put on. A blanket or something.” His hands trembled as he let her go.

Fine. She ran out of the room, brushed past the mafia duo and pounded up the stairs. She heard feet behind her, but didn’t stop.

Three bedrooms. She yanked a bedspread off one of the beds, rolled it into a ball and raced back downstairs, passing the man who’d followed her.

Roman was sitting up, his eyes open but not focusing well because he blinked at her, as if he might not know her.

Yeah, well, he might wish that after she got done with him. Anger felt like an easier emotion to deal with than the relief flooding her veins. “Let me help you!”

“I can take care of myself.” He reached out for the bed
spread and she tucked it around him. “I’m going to take off these clothes, so you’d better turn around.”

“I’m a doctor. I’ve seen men undressed.”

“That I didn’t need to know.” Still, his voice felt stronger. “Just turn around.”

She shook her head, turned and decided to build a fire before she clocked him. She ignored his groans as she layered the logs, the kindling, and found the matches. In moments she had fire chewing up the pine logs.

“Where are the guys who brought us here?”

Apparently he hadn’t been completely out of it.

She turned around. Roman had the blanket clutched around him, shivering violently. “I’ll get you another blanket.” She ran back upstairs, past the guards, found the same bedroom and stripped the blanket from the bed.

As she turned, a picture caught her eye. A painting of a woman. A beautiful woman with mink-colored hair and piercing dark eyes. Eyes she’d seen before.

Eyes she’d seen broken with grief.

Julia Bednova.

Sarai went back downstairs and passed one of their guards-rescuers. He stood at the entrance, arms folded. The other stood in the kitchen, his ear to a cell phone.

They reminded her of her brother, David, when he’d served temporary detail in the Secret Service.

Roman leaned back against the sofa, his eyes closed. He shook violently. “Wow, I have to admit, I never thought it would hurt this much to be warm.”

Sarai draped another blanket around him. “The pain is a good thing. It means you’re alive.”

He kept his eyes closed. “That’s a new way to look at it.”

She suppressed the urge to put her arms around him and merely sat back, pulling her knees to herself. The fire crackled, and she wondered how long the men outside the door would wait before they demanded answers.

Hopefully, until Roman stopped shivering. And until she stopped shaking.

He looked terrible. She couldn’t hold in her emotions for another moment and tears filled her eyes, spilling down her cheeks.

Roman had nearly died.

Her sobs leaked out and she put a hand over her mouth to squelch the sound. Roman opened his eyes.

“Sarai…” His voice softened. “Sarai, come here.”

He held one arm open. He still wore his jeans and she wanted to yell at him for that, but how could she when he looked so sweetly gallant?

She scooted over next to him before she let her brain engage.

He pulled the blanket around them and she sank close. His skin felt clammy, and she took the edge of the blanket, pulling it closer, wrapping her arm across him.

“Roman, I’m scared. I had to get help, but now the two men who helped pull you out are standing guard, right outside the door. They’re going to question you.”

Roman’s teeth chattered as he nodded, and pulled her tighter.

“And you almost died.” She put her hands over her face, trying to wipe out the image of him sliding under the ice.

See, he was going to get killed and it would shatter her.

I was shattered when you left,
he’d said at Anya’s dacha.

So he knew the feeling. Only, that made her feel worse, and more tears filled her eyes. She clenched her jaw, but a whimper shuddered out.

“Sar..” he groaned. “Don’t…c-c-cry.” He cupped her face with his hand, still wrinkled from the water. It felt like ice on her face. She didn’t recoil, instead met his hazel eyes, seeing something inside them she’d seen long ago.

Something that had reached right through her layers, to the fears inside and calmed them. The look that told her that they could be soaking wet and in the clutches of a couple of Russian thugs, with her life spiraling out of control, and he’d do anything to keep her safe.

Run through gunfire, or maybe go AWOL and follow her to Siberia.

And, while she probably wouldn’t be in this mess if he hadn’t talked her into an unauthorized visit to a nuclear reactor, she also wouldn’t feel the one-hundred-percent certainty that she wasn’t alone. Maybe she
did
need a hero. Someone who would die for her. Despite Roman’s charisma, his antics, even the way he drove her to her last nerve, Roman was precisely that hero.

So, why, exactly, had she left him?

His thumb caressed her cheek, and his gaze traced her face, her eyes, her nose.

Her mouth.

He moved slowly, as if caught in time, or slowed by fear, and she helped by meeting him halfway.

Roman.

He kissed her softly, his hand holding her jaw, then moving around behind her neck. Strong. Purposed. He pulled her closer and deepened the kiss.

Sarai let him. Roman.
Her
Roman. She felt something inside breaking free, something she’d kept locked for so very, very long.

She could admit that her rejection of him might be less about her disappointment about his career choice and more about sheer fear—after all, he did show up bloodied, the materialization of her worst nightmares, in Red Square, and he hadn’t flinched at risking his neck, ever, in the ten-plus years since.