Dmitry was tired and he was pissed off. Who did that stupid bitch Natasha think she was? Not only had she had the audacity to dump him out of the blue, but she’d also waited to do it until he had left the goddamn ballroom with no chance of shagging any of the willing and available pussy there. He had pushed open his bedroom door and started to undo his cufflinks when he felt the cold metal against his throat.
‘Call off your dogs, Alexandrov,’ he heard muttered into his ear in a low female voice. He sucked in a breath to scream but felt the metal press more firmly against his skin, and a trickle of blood run down his neck. ‘Scream and I slit your throat.’ He nodded and the knife eased back but still maintained some pressure.
‘How did you get in here?’ he asked, keeping his voice steady as he felt a droplet of sweat fall from his forehead to collect with the blood on his neck.
‘I can access anywhere I want. Nothing can stop me: no security system, no amount of manpower. You’d best remember that. I know what you’re doing, I know what you’ve set in motion, and I’m telling you that you need to call them off, you need to cancel the order: Chambers and Southern are not to be touched, not if you want to live. The deals are done anyway. Wiping them out now isn’t going to make any difference. You can’t hold back progress. Haven’t you made enough money from your oil already? Give it up.’
Dmitry swallowed. ‘Who are you?’ he asked, his voice hoarse with fear.
‘Your nightmare,’ she whispered, this time in his native tongue. ‘Don’t worry; we’ll meet again and next time you’ll be sure to see my face. He felt the pressure ease from his throat and a gust of breeze behind him. After a moment he spun around to face an empty room.
*****
‘Bertie,’ Katie said, her voice rising uncharacteristically in anger. ‘You let me in to see him, you twp* bugger, or I swear I’ll break that door down.’
‘He said that he wasn’t to be disturbed and I –’
Katie rolled her eyes, pushed Bertie out of the way easily despite his size and the fact she was heavily pregnant, and stormed into Nick’s office with Salem padding along behind her. There were two large men sitting across from Nick: one had a full, greying beard and a potbelly, and the other was younger with more muscle and blonde hair. Nick looked between her and Salem, then pushed his chair back almost violently to stand up.
‘Where is she?’ he asked accusingly, and Katie’s eyebrows went up into her hairline.
‘Don’t take that tone with me, Nick Chambers,’ Katie said, glaring at Nick whilst Salem sat next to her, fixing him with a hard stare and letting out a small growl. ‘You’re the bloody reason she’s buggered off to lands unknown, you great big idiot. Ugh!’ She flopped down on the leather sofa facing the desk and chairs and let out an exasperated breath. ‘As if you give a shit anyway,’ she muttered, and Nick stalked around his desk towards her until he was towering over her, literally vibrating with anger. ‘I shouldn’t have come. Sam told me not to come. He said there was no point. He’ll be furious when he finds out I –’
‘What’s going on?’ Nick snapped, cutting her off. ‘Why do you have Salem?’ Salem was still sitting, staring at Nick with his lip slightly curled to reveal his sharp teeth.
‘Nick, mate,’ the older of the two men said whilst half rising from his chair, ‘maybe we better …?’
‘Sit down,’ Nick barked, and the man fell back into the chair, frowning across at him. Nick didn’t take his eyes off Katie. ‘Where is she?’ he asked her. To her surprise it wasn’t just annoyance she could hear in his tone; there was a hint of desperation there too.
She sighed. ‘I wouldn’t have come here but … well, the guys think they can handle it … I just …’ She trailed off and then to her shock saw Nick drop to a squat in front of her and take her hands in his, giving them a squeeze.
‘Please, Katie,’ he begged, and it was then she noticed the haunted look in his eyes, the dark circles under them and the way his cheekbones stood out more in his face, as if he’d lost weight, ‘please tell me where she is. Tell me she’s okay.’
‘You do care about her,’ Katie said, almost accusingly as she searched his face.
‘Of course I care about her, Katie; I’m in love with her.’
Katie’s mouth fell open and for a moment she lost the power of speech. After a few shocked seconds she narrowed her eyes, pulled her small hands out from under his, balled one into a fist and punched him on the arm.
‘Hey! What was that for?’
‘That’s for being a git and shagging other birds when you’re in love with someone who had to watch you doing it. Jeepers, why are men so bloody twp.’
‘I didn’t shag anyone else, Katie,’ Nick told her, rubbing his arm, which gave Katie a very satisfying feeling of triumph.
‘Well, you –’
‘I didn’t. I just wanted to shake things up. She’d shut me out for a whole goddamn month. It was getting ridiculous.’
Katie threw her hands up in the air and rolled her eyes. ‘You impatient sod. So you thought you’d throw a tantrum and bugger everything up? Great plan, just fabulous. And now, I suppose, now that she’s out of the picture you’ve forgotten all about h –’
‘Jesus Christ, just listen to me.’ Nick cut her off, pointing at the men in the chairs across from them. ‘These guys have been searching for Goodie non-stop since she upped and left. I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to find her. Didn’t your great big bastard of a husband tell you that?’
Katie frowned. ‘Oh … I …’ She peered around Nick’s body to look at the two men sitting on the chairs opposite his desk, looking vaguely uncomfortable, and she gave them a small wave and a sheepish grin. ‘Hi there.’ They nodded back at her and Nick pushed up to his feet, stalked back to his desk and sat down heavily in his chair.
‘Right,’ he said, turning his chair towards Katie. ‘Start at the beginning: Where the hell is she?’
‘About two weeks ago she came to the house with Salem and asked me to keep him for her. She said that she had a job that she couldn’t take him on.’ Katie started wringing her hands in her lap and bit her lip. ‘I feel so bad but I didn’t realize that she would normally take Salem with her on all her jobs. I thought maybe she just didn’t want to shell out for a doggy hotel or something. It was only when I spoke to Sam and he went nuts over the fact she’d left the dog that I started to worry. He said … he said it was a bad sign.’ Katie watched as Nick’s jaw clenched and his body went alert.
‘A bad sign of what?’ he asked slowly.
‘Sam thought that if she didn’t take Salem with her then maybe …’ Katie’s eyes filled with tears and she dropped her gaze from his, ‘… maybe she wasn’t expecting to come back,’ she muttered at her hands still twisting in her lap. She jumped at the sound of Nick’s fist crashing down on the desk and looked up to see him pacing in front of his floor-to-ceiling window, staring out of his office.
‘Is she alive?’ He paused in his pacing to face Katie, and she almost flinched at the pain she could hear in his voice.
‘We think yes,’ she rushed to tell him. ‘One of the guys she went into the cartel with escaped. He said she took out almost half of the complex before she was taken down. He … couldn’t get to her. She took too many risks; she even told him before they went in that he was to run when he could, she told him she wouldn’t be leaving unless she’d killed them all. He said it was like …’ A tear escaped to fall down Katie’s cheek and she wiped it away. ‘… he said it was like she had a death wish.’
‘How do you know that she’s not dead?’ Nick’s voice was hollow; his eyes when she looked up at him were haunted.
‘They planted surveillance stuff before they attacked. Very high tech; totally undetectable. They’ve heard her …’ Katie swallowed and looked away, more tears falling down her face. ‘Oh God, they’ve heard her screaming.’
At this Nick just simply crumpled; he fell to his knees on the floor, both his hands going up behind his head as he curled up and let out a roar like some sort of animal in pain. Katie leapt up off the sofa and rushed to him, dropping down to her own knees at his side and putting her arms around his big shaking shoulders. They stayed like that for a moment before suddenly Nick’s head came up, he wiped away the wet from his cheeks and he pushed to his feet.
‘Where is she?’ he barked, loosening his tie and going for his mobile phone.
‘Colombia,’ Katie told him. ‘Sam has the coordinates and everything.’
‘Right, I’m going to get her out.’
‘Nick, it’s not as simple as that. She wasn’t on a sanctioned mission. She didn’t have permission to be there. Sam tried going to the people who sent her but they don’t want to know. It would take a massive amount of firepower, manpower and all sorts of political manoeuvring to get her out.’
‘She’s right, mate,’ the larger gentleman on the chairs cut in. ‘If it was a below-the-table job, then –’
‘I’m not leaving her there, Harry,’ Nick said, his voice laced with steel and his hands bunching into fists. He swiped at his phone and put it to his ear. ‘Sam? Right … no, you listen to me. I want to know what you need to get her out. I want to know which fucking politician I need to intimidate to get us in there and I want to know how soon you can get a team together.’ There was a pause for a moment as Nick’s face flushed red and his eyes flashed at whatever Sam was saying.
‘No,’ he shouted. ‘You listen to me, you prick. I’m going to see that my woman gets out of there alive. You have no idea the resources I have to hand: I’m richer than God and I’m on first name terms with every member of the cabinet and the head of MI6. You should have come to me first.’ He listened for another minute before cutting Sam off again. ‘Jesus, I’ll buy you five fucking helicopters if you need them, you idiot. You source it and I’ll buy it.’
For the first time in two weeks Katie felt something bordering on hope. If anyone could get to Goodie out, this man could, she just prayed that when they found her there was something left to save.
* twp – stupid, simple-minded
