Take Me for a Ride (11 page)

ARTemis
had
to locate the blasted St. George necklace for him before anyone discovered the key inside it. Litsky would pay anything and everything to keep Weimar von Bruegel—and his war crimes—dead and buried.

He raised the glass to his lips and tossed back a good half inch of Scotch, feeling it burn like desperation down his throat and conflagrate in his sour, turbulent gut.
Mein Gott
, why would the cursed telephone not ring?

Litsky lifted the glass to his mouth again and his prayer was answered, startling him so badly that he poured the rest of his drink down his cashmere sweater.

“Hello?” he managed.

On the other end of the line, he could have sworn he heard someone snapping
chewing gum
, of all things. Then a nasal voice said, “Ahtemis heah. Mr. Litsky? Please hold for Mr. Kelso.”

Natalie’s building was on West Nineteenth, and it seemed to McDougal that they got there far too soon. He put the SUV in park and shot her a smile that was equal parts regret and relief. “Well, I guess this is it.”

She smiled back at him and tucked a strand of dark hair behind her ear as she gathered her fabric together. “I really can’t thank you enough for driving all the way out there, for the moral support—”

Im
moral support?

“—and for the ride home again.”

“You’re very welcome.”

She pulled the strap of her bag over her shoulder, then hesitated. “Would you like to come up for coffee?”

He almost banged his forehead on the steering wheel. “Thank you, but no. I’ve got some things I need to do.”

Disappointment skated over her expression, but she nodded. “Okay, then. Well, see you around. Or not, since Miami’s pretty far away. Call me when you’re in town again.”

“Will do. You take care of yourself, Natalie.” He leaned over and gave her a quick, hard kiss on those soft, delectable lips.

She got out of the car blushing and almost tripped over her scarf, which she’d unwound during the ride. She shut the door and lifted a hand to wave good-bye.

Take care of herself? She wore naïveté like a perfume. And it wasn’t going to keep her warm in Russia.

McDougal watched her until she’d disappeared into the building before he drove away.

As he turned down a side street, a flash of color on the floor of the passenger side caught his eye. When he stopped at a light he leaned down and picked up a small sketchbook. A cursory flip through the pages told him it was full of designs and something that Natalie probably needed back as soon as possible.

With mixed feelings he backtracked to her address and double-parked, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t be ticketed or towed before he got back.
Yeah, right
.

He sprinted toward the entrance, noticing that nobody sat behind the reception desk. How was he going to get in?

Then, lucky break, the elevator opened and a couple got out. They glanced at him briefly; he met their eyes as if he had every right to be there, then caught the edge of the door as they exited. No problem.

Now, which floor? A list of residents’ last names was posted helpfully next to the elevator, and he saw that Natalie was on six. Up he went.

There were six doors to choose from, but only one had a hand-woven, artistic-looking rag welcome mat outside. Natalie’s? As he approached he saw the last name woven into the fabric: Rosen. He didn’t need to knock—the door was open.

The apartment was trashed. Natalie stood looking around her in shock, seeming unable to comprehend what had happened to her home. It was a single room with a divided kitchenette. A narrow hallway probably led to the bathroom. In the living space, a small red sofa had been overturned, its upholstery and pillows slashed. The coffee table in front of it had been stomped into sticks and splinters. The TV screen was smashed, as were all the dishes in the kitchen. Food had been ripped out of the fridge and freezer, packages sliced open. Jars and canisters were overturned and emptied onto the old wooden floor.

A daybed against the far wall had once been partially hidden from view by a torn shoji screen, and the bed had suffered the same fate as the sofa. The pillows and mattress spilled stuffing and coils—they’d been completely disemboweled.

A trunk at the end of the bed that Natalie had stored clothing in lay upside down, garments tossed on top of it and strewn around the floor.

Her small bookshelves had been decimated, many of the titles ripped in half. Natalie’s ideals were revealed in her choices: Shakespeare,
Le Mort d’Arthur
,
Romeo and Juliet
,
The Three Musketeers
,
Don Quixote
,
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
,
Jane Eyre
,
The Scarlet Pimpernel
,
The Last of the Mohicans
,
To Kill a Mockingbird
,
A Tale of Two Cities
, and several hardcover romance novels.

In a final insult, her nasty visitors had ripped apart a once-gorgeous quilt that hung on the wall in a simple wood frame.

“Natalie?” McDougal said. “Are you okay?”

She jumped, startled, moving her hand from her mouth to her heart. “Oh, my God,” she said. “Oh, my God.”

“Someone was looking for that necklace,” he said grimly. “And they were not happy that they didn’t find it.” He put an arm around her shoulders and steered her to the corridor. “Let me make sure that they’re not still here.”

She looked horrified.

He’d left the Glock in the car, damn it. But chances were they’d gone. McDougal strode down the hallway that led to the apartment’s minuscule bathroom and threw aside the shower curtain. Nothing.

He took a brief but thorough look around, threw open Natalie’s old oak armoire. Nobody in there. He saw no other place where anyone could hide. There were no cabinets big enough, and he seriously doubted he’d find anyone in the refrigerator.

“Okay,” he called. “Everything’s clear.”

She came back into the room, hugging her arms around her body. She stared at the destruction as if she didn’t know where to start and where to end. Her eyes filled as she looked at the remnants of the big quilt in the frame.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, feeling the uselessness of the words.

“It took me years to finish that,” she said. “I’d been working on it since I was a little girl. Ever since I saw Faith Ringgold’s quilts in a museum exhibition.”

Eric stood silent.

“Why?” she asked nobody in particular. “Why would they do this? Destroy everything I own.”

“Looking for a hiding place, I’d say. They want that necklace.”

She let go of herself, raised her arms, palms up. Shook her head back and forth. Then, wordlessly, she dropped her hands again.

“Listen, Natalie. You can’t stay here.”

She knit her brows and turned to look at him.

“They might come back. When they know you’re here.”

“Oh, God,” she whispered.

“Come on. Let’s get some of your things together. You can stay the night with me at the Waldorf until we get this sorted out.”

“I can’t impose on you like that—”

“You’re coming back to the Waldorf with me,” he said firmly. “No argument. Now, do you want to call the police?”

She hesitated. “No. I’ve already caused enough problems for Luc.”

“Do you want to call someone else? Your parents?”

“No. My parents would just worry.”

“All right. Let’s get your things together, then.”

She kept staring around the room. “I should clean up.”

“Not right now.” He made a mental note to have Sheila send someone over to do the dirty work and salvage anything that could be salvaged. It was the least he could do.

Since Natalie made no move to pack anything, he grabbed a few things for her. A dress, some tights, underwear, socks, a couple of sweaters and some jeans. Comfortable-looking sneakers. Some toiletries out of the bathroom. He threw them all on top of the fabric scraps and sewing supplies in the quilted bag she’d had with her in the car.

“Okay, sweetheart,” he said, putting his arm around her again. “Let’s go.”

There was a fat ticket on his rental car’s windshield, which he’d fully expected. There was also a tow truck turning the corner down the street. Why did he have a feeling that it was headed straight for his vehicle? McDougal bundled Natalie into the passenger side and vaulted into the driver’s seat. He fumbled the keys into the ignition. They peeled away with the tow truck less than fifteen yards back. At least
something
in this miserable day had gone right.

 

Natalie was a little bemused to be back in McDougal’s hotel room at the ritzy Waldorf, a place where she couldn’t even afford the drinks. And had she really only met Eric last night? It seemed impossible.

Then again, it seemed equally unreal that everything she owned had been overturned, slashed, destroyed. The furniture was replaceable. Her work was not.

A hard pulse of outrage, violation, and panic kicked up under her sternum. Her face flushed and her palms dampened as she thought about rough men invading her space, going through her private things, grunting with enjoyment as they kicked over plants she’d nurtured and ripped apart books she’d loved and shredded wall hangings that she’d created in the name of beauty.

She went into the elegant marble bathroom and stared at her face in the mirror, expecting a drastic change that reflected how she felt. But the same old Natalie gazed back, albeit one with circles under her eyes and a hunted look in them.

She turned on the taps at the sink full blast and splashed water onto her face until the heat receded, and her emotions with it. She commandeered Eric’s Aquafresh toothpaste tube, hoping the minty gel would take the bad taste out of her mouth.

Finally she emerged from the bathroom to find him sprawled shirtless on the bed, looking like the poster child for hedonism.

She just looked—and felt—bedraggled. He must have agreed with that assessment, because he eyed her with clear sympathy. “C’mere, sweetheart,” he said, patting the spot next to him.

She went because her mind was empty of any alternatives, and he was sexy and warm and she needed his body heat, his energy, and his arms around her. The arms of a stranger . . . It didn’t make sense.

But she went anyway and lay down next to him. He encircled her with his arms, and for the first time that day she felt safe. As if she could breathe normally again. Her world was still off its axis, but at least she could stop hyperventilating.

They lay there like that until she was drowsy, almost asleep. Then he said something odd. “Am I doing this right?”

She rolled to face him. “Doing what right?”

He seemed uncomfortable. “Never mind.”

“Doing what right, Eric?”

He fidgeted. “Uh . . . holding you?”

Was that an actual blush seeping around the freckles on his face?

“Because, well, it’s not really . . . my thing.”

She just blinked at him. “Your thing,” she repeated.

He actually squirmed. “You know. Holding women.”

Natalie bit her lip at his discomfort. “You’re doing fine,” she assured him. Then she rolled so that her back was to him again and made a wry face at the wall.

Emotionally handicapped, just like her father. And mother, for that matter—both of them related to books better than people.

Well, at least Eric was honest about it, unlike her last boyfriend. Nels, the liar, had told her that he was in a PhD program for physics—when all he did was work in the university library.

He was the latest in a long string of disappointments—men who didn’t remotely live up to her ideals. Still, she refused to give up. Somewhere out there was a hero with her name on his lips. Somewhere. But probably not here.

Yet Eric put his arms around her again, even though his body was stiff behind her.

She waited a minute or two, but he didn’t relax. This was sweet but almost comical. “Eric?”

“Hmm?”

“Are you going into rigor mortis?”

He chuckled weakly. “Wow, I really am bad at this.”

“No, but it’s clear that you’re outside your comfort zone.”

“What can I say? I’m a better smart-ass than a teddy bear.”

Natalie rolled to face him once more. She reached out gently and touched his cheek. Then she shook her head and said gravely, “I don’t want to ruin your image of yourself, big guy, but you’ve got some hidden teddy tendencies.”

He assumed an expression of mock horror. “Latent teddy-bearism? No! Impossible.”

She nodded. “You’ll have to come out of the closet eventually, so you may as well practice.”

Eric eyed her quizzically. “I’ve never had a woman phrase it quite like that. Usually they just call me an asshole and storm out. Or do worse.” His expression darkened for a moment. “Like spray paint my Ninja pink.”

She drew her brows together. “Ninja? As in warrior?”

“Ninja as in bike. Motorcycle. Pink.”

He looked so agonized about the color that she couldn’t help laughing.

“It’s not funny,” he growled.

“Sorry,” she said, trying to regain gravitas.

“That woman ruined a three-thousand-dollar custom paint job,” he said bitterly.

“Wow. What did you do to make her so angry?”

“Hell if I know.” He truly seemed perplexed.

Despite her situation, Nat almost got the giggles again. Macho men were alien to her, since her father was a scholar and her brother was a chess champion. They weren’t exactly rough-and-tumble types.

“Did you call the police on this Spray-Paint Sally?”

“Yeah, just like you’re calling them about your apartment.”

“Did you confront her?”

He shook his head.

“Why not?”

“Partly because I wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction of a reaction. Mostly because I was afraid I’d strangle her if I saw her again.”