Trusting A Stranger
She was pretty in a pale, delicate way. Chin-length black hair. Finely carved features, perhaps sharper than they should have been thanks to what he suspected was an unnatural thinness. Looking closely, he finally noticed the weariness in her eyes. She was young, most likely in her late twenties. Her voice carried a trace of an accent he would have pegged as Eastern European even had he not known where she was from, though her English was impeccable.
“You’re proposing a marriage for green-card purposes?” he said coolly.
“It is the best way to keep Karina in the country,” Viktor said.
“Surely there are less drastic measures available.”
“If there were, we would pursue them. As you said, we have no real evidence that Solokov is responsible for the deaths of Dmitri and my father. And even if we were to pursue other avenues, if we failed and then resorted to marriage it would look suspicious. Better to do it now.”
“So you’re going straight to the nuclear option?”
“As I said, it is the best way.”
“I took an oath to uphold the law. What you’re suggesting is illegal.”
“So is murder,” Viktor shot back. “And the crime is much greater. That is what will happen if Solokov captures her. Once he realizes she knows nothing, he will not hesitate to dispose of her. But that realization will only come after he’s done everything he can to learn what he believes she knows.”
Even without the raw emotion in the man’s voice, there was no missing the implication.
A slight motion at the edge of his vision drew Luke’s eye to the woman. She must have shuddered at Viktor’s words. Even now she clasped her hands in her lap, her grip so tight her knuckles were white, her head bowed slightly. He could still see her eyes, staring straight in front of her, looking slightly glassy.
He would have liked to believe she’d feigned the reaction. He knew how to read people’s expressions well enough to know she had not. The woman was afraid.
Fortunately he’d long since hardened himself against such displays of emotion, whether hers or Viktor’s. He turned his attention back to his supposed friend.
Viktor continued, “Surely a little fraud is minor in comparison to what Solokov intends for her.”
“I’m not certain the United States government will see it that way.”
“There is no reason it has to know.”
“They’ll likely want to investigate the validity of the marriage, especially if you’re right and someone is pushing to have her deported in the first place. Do you really think two people who’ve never met would be able to pull that off?”
“You were always quick to learn and Karina is motivated. She cannot go back to Russia. There is no one left we can trust, not fully. There is no family, and Solokov has enough money to be able to buy anyone. At least here in the United States, there is a chance I can protect her.”
“You mean I can protect her,” Luke said. “To make a marriage believable for immigration purposes, we would have to live together, she and I.” He turned to find Karina staring at him. If possible, she seemed to have gone even paler. “Are you comfortable with that idea?”
She swallowed, a flicker of emotion he couldn’t quite read passing over her eyes. Nervousness? Fear?
But she never blinked, never looked away from his gaze. “I don’t want to die.”
The words were plain, simply stated. They carried more impact than if she’d accompanied them with tears or a choked sob. Such melodramatic embellishments would have been easily dismissed. But voiced without artifice or manipulation, the basic statement of an elemental human desire was harder to ignore.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t try. He turned away from those wide, vulnerable eyes.
“Why me?” he asked Viktor, more a demand than a question.
“Because I trust you. There are few people I could say that about.”
Luke said nothing, simply stared at the man he’d considered a friend and was no longer sure he should. Would a true friend make such an outlandish request knowing the great personal cost to him? Or was it the sign of a friend that the man would trust him to help this woman?
As expected, it didn’t take Viktor long to rush in to fill the silence. “Obviously I know you aren’t married and I doubted you would be involved in any kind of relationship that would prevent you from agreeing to help us.” He raised his brows, as though prompting Luke to prove him wrong.
Luke tipped his head in acknowledgment. It was hardly a secret he hadn’t been involved with anyone seriously since Melanie’s death.
“I also knew you would not be able to stand by and watch an innocent woman die when there is something you can do to prevent it.”
“Even if that were true, this hardly seems like a situation any sane person would get involved in. People who try to help her don’t seem to last long.”
“I know we are asking a great deal—” the woman said.
“Yes,” he returned coolly. “You are.”
She flinched and clamped her mouth shut.
“You’re asking me to commit an illegal act, place my entire life and career in jeopardy, and for what? What exactly am I supposed to get out of this?”
Her face flushed to a bright red, and he belatedly realized how that might have sounded. Did she think he was demanding full marital rights if he agreed to be her husband? He almost wondered how she would respond if he were that kind of man. Then again, if he were, he doubted Viktor would have brought her here in the first place.
Indeed, his purported friend hardly seemed to have noticed the possible implication. “You can help an old friend save what’s left of his family,” Viktor said fervently. “We may not share blood, but you know better than anyone that blood is not a requirement for family. My father thought so, too. He lost his life protecting hers. I can’t let his sacrifice be for nothing.”
The desperation in the voice of the typically charming, carefree Viktor Yevchenko left no doubt his friend meant every word. For just a moment, Luke felt a small part of himself relent ever so slightly.
The rest of him managed to hold fast. He wasn’t about to buy their story without checking into it. He couldn’t imagine why an old friend he’d known and trusted for years would come to him with this outlandish proposal unless it were true, but then, the whole situation had been thrown into his lap so suddenly and without warning that he hadn’t even had a chance to process it.
“I’ll need some time to think about it.”
“Think quickly,” Viktor said. “Time is one thing we don’t have much of.”
With a terse nod, Luke rose to his feet, more than ready to remove these two from his home and get to dealing with the troublesome issues they raised. If only he hadn’t invited them in to begin with.
Picking up his cue, Viktor and the woman stood, as well.
They made their way back to the door in silence. Luke pulled the door open and waited.
Viktor stopped first before passing through the doorway. “As I said, she is like family to me, Hubbard. You of all people know what it’s like to lose family. That’s another reason I came to you.”
Although he wasn’t about to let Viktor see it, the remark hit home, just like the man must have known it would, damn him. “I’ll be in touch,” Luke said stiffly.
Luke saw Viktor barely manage to tamp down his frustration. With a tight nod, his supposed friend stepped out the door.
And then there was one…
Karina started to follow Viktor, only to stop in front of Luke.
He braced himself for whatever emotional appeal she might offer. The tears. The sobs. None of which would work. He wasn’t about to be manipulated.
Instead, she simply met his eyes, her own bleak and tired. “Thank you for your time,” she said softly. With that, she moved to join Viktor.
Luke remained where he stood and watched them make their way to the vehicle parked in front of his home. The woman walked with her head up, but her shoulders still seemed to sag, her posture defeated. As though she’d given up. As though she already believed he’d made the decision he damn well should, but somehow hadn’t.
Suddenly realizing how long he’d been standing there, he forced himself to close the door. It didn’t rid him of the image of that look in her eyes, nor the slump of her shoulders as she walked away.
Troubled, he moved down the hall toward his office. He needed more information. Like it or not, it appeared he had a decision to make.
Even as part of him suspected he’d never had any choice in the matter at all.
Chapter Two
At 6:58 a.m., Luke placed an order for two coffees with the barista at the counter. Two minutes later, he was seated at a table at the front of the coffee shop, two paper cups in front of him, when Darren Jensen walked through the door, on time as always.
He must have spotted Luke through the front window, as intended, because he headed straight toward him without scanning the room first. Jensen was already reaching for one of the cups even before he started to pull out the open chair. “For me?”
“Of course. Thanks for meeting with me.”
“It’s the least I can do. Anybody who drives in from Baltimore first thing in the morning instead of making do with a phone call is pretty much asking for a face-to-face, don’t you think?”
“I had some business in Washington,” Luke said mildly. It was the truth. He would have business to attend to, one way or another, whatever Jensen told him.
He watched the man take a long swallow from his cup, pushing back a twinge of impatience. As would be expected for someone who worked for the government, Jensen’s suit was less expensive than Luke’s own, but the man was still as immaculately groomed as he’d been when they’d been colleagues at the same law firm years earlier. Pursuing an interest in public service, Jensen had later gone to work for the State Department, making him an excellent source for exactly the kind of answers Luke was looking for. They’d always been on friendly terms, if not outright friends, and remained cordial after Jensen’s career change. If it was a friendship, it was the best kind, one where the only favors asked were professional or informational.
Not incredibly personal, he thought, his mind returning to the subject that had occupied his thoughts for nearly twenty-four hours now.
No, he would quite happily do without those kinds of friends.
As soon as Jensen began to lower his cup to the table, Luke spoke. “What do you have for me?”
“Nothing good. Is your firm thinking of doing business with Solokov? Because if you are, I’d think again.”
“He’s that bad?”
“Men in today’s Russia don’t stay as rich as Solokov without help from friends in high places and ones in low ones. And these aren’t the kind of friends you’d want to get on the wrong side of.”
“So he has government connections.”
“And mafia ones. Nothing I can prove concretely, but that’s what the talk around him indicates, and there’s too much there to just be rumors. Like most of the oligarchs who made their fortunes after the fall of the Soviet Union, Solokov knew how to play dirty, and he played to win, with plenty of backing from those friends I mentioned. In today’s economy, especially Russia’s, many of those Russian billionaires who rose up in the past few decades have lost most, if not all, of their fortunes, especially if they fell out of favor with the government. Not Solokov. He might have taken a hit, but he’s still standing.”
And if he had taken a hit financially, he would be even more protective of what he had left, Luke deduced. “Which brings us to Dmitri Fedorov.”
Jensen nodded. “Formerly of Solokov’s employ, currently six feet under. Turned up about a month and a half ago. Murdered.”
“Any word who’s responsible?”
“None officially. But considering how badly he’d been tortured, it definitely wasn’t random. And when a high-level financial manager for a very rich man turns up dead in the condition he was found in, most people are going to be casting a suspicious eye in his boss’s direction.”
“Including the police?”
Jensen smiled wryly. “I said most people. Solokov has those friends I mentioned. Officially no connection has been made between Fedorov and his former employer. I’m sure the man hasn’t even been questioned, not even politely.”
“Are there any other reasonable possibilities for why someone would kill Fedorov?”
“There’s always the chance he was involved in something unrelated to Solokov, some shady side action that got him killed. There doesn’t appear to be any evidence of that, but he could have done that good of a job keeping it under wraps. It’s a pretty distant possibility though. The smart money says it was Solokov.”
“Why would Solokov have him killed?”
“Not just killed. Tortured. The way my contact described the photographs of Fedorov’s body, he had very specifically, very carefully been tortured in a way designed to elicit information, not simply cause pain. Whoever did it to him wanted something from him. Best guess is Fedorov took something he shouldn’t have, like large sums of money, which is the only thing he would likely have access to which would be worth taking, and worth getting that upset about.”
“What about a business competitor of Solokov? Someone trying to get some information about Solokov or his company by any means necessary.”
“From what I gather, they likely would have targeted someone far junior than Fedorov, someone whose death wouldn’t make such a splash. If Solokov wasn’t involved, then taking out someone so high up in his organization would be risking getting on his bad side, which would probably lead to him bringing in all those friends of his to find out who’s responsible. No, whoever did this did so with Solokov’s full knowledge and blessing.”
“So Fedorov probably managed to take a great deal of money, enough to be worth torturing him over, and Solokov wants it back.”
“That’s what it looks like. And there might be more to it than simply being pissed off about being taken by someone he trusted. From what my contact told me, the rumors of Solokov’s close ties with organized crime are no joke. There’s a chance Solokov was working with the mafia’s money.”
“And it could be the Russian mafia’s money that Fedorov stole,” Luke said, his unease growing. “No wonder Solokov wanted it back.”
“Especially because he wouldn’t have been able to tell the mafia he let one of his people steal their money. He would have had to quietly replace it, most likely from his own private fortune, completely separate from the company. That couldn’t have been fun.”
So far everything Viktor and Karina had told him was lining up, Luke thought, dread beginning to pool in his gut. He’d wanted nothing more than to have Jensen tell him otherwise. He didn’t know why Viktor would have lied, especially when the man knew he had the resources to check the story. That hadn’t stopped him from spending much of the past day trying to think of a reason. Anything to make it easier to turn down the ridiculous request made by Viktor.
And Karina.
Which brought them to the main topic. “What about Fedorov’s wife?”
“I assume you mean his current wife, Karina, since that’s the name you gave me on the phone. Karina Andreevna Fedorova. Nearly two decades his junior. They’d been married for five years before his death.”
“How old is she now?” Luke asked, the question rising automatically to his tongue. He immediately regretted it. It really wasn’t relevant.
“Twenty-eight.”
Five years, Luke thought. She’d been so young when she’d married, especially a man so much older. Or maybe that wasn’t so unusual in Russia. It was something else he didn’t know, which was why he really had no business getting involved in any of this.
Jensen continued, “She worked for an upscale interior designer in Moscow. She left Russia within days of her husband’s death, the timing of which probably isn’t a coincidence. Most likely she knew what her husband was doing and why he was killed, and knew it was time to get out of dodge. Lucky for her, she had a connection of her own, Sergei Yevchenko, a consul with the Russian embassy in D.C. He arranged to bring her here, and she was staying with him up until his sudden death a week ago.” Jensen stopped, his brows going up in silent question. “Which I’m guessing is what brings us here today.”
Luke nodded.
“I’m still curious about your interest in this. Yevchenko’s murder was certainly highly publicized. A foreign diplomat, especially one from a high-profile country with an always delicate relationship with the U.S., being murdered is big news. But I’m pretty sure neither his goddaughter nor the connection to Solokov was mentioned in the press. Which makes me wonder how you knew about it.”
Luke took a slow, deep breath. And so it began. He’d been prepared for this moment, but had hoped to be able to avoid it. If only Jensen had been able to prove Viktor’s story a lie, or that what Karina Fedorova faced was not so dire. But here they were.
“I’m involved with her.” A lie, the first of many, laying the necessary groundwork if he actually went through with this.
For a moment, Jensen didn’t seem to understand, his brow furrowing. “Fedorov’s wife?” Luke nodded. “How involved?”
“Very.”
Jensen released a low whistle. “You might want to rethink that.”
A whisper of a smile played against Luke’s mouth. “I might. But some things aren’t quite so easy to say no to.”
Jensen frowned and gave a little shake of his head. “You know, in all the years I’ve known you, I don’t remember you ever being ‘very involved’ with a woman.”
That was because he hadn’t been, not as long as Jensen had known him. “What can I say? I was waiting for the right one. Karina’s something special.”
“Can’t argue with you there. I saw a few pictures. She’s quite attractive. But no woman is worth the kind of trouble this one brings with her.”
“Is there any evidence Solokov is coming after her, any proof Yevchenko’s death is connected to all of this?”
The look Jensen gave him was clearly pitying. “It’s not likely to be a coincidence.”
“And yet, they happen sometimes.”
“Not in this case, they don’t. A high-ranking Russian diplomat falling victim to a drive-by shooting is not something that simply happens. No, he was taken out. It takes a lot of hubris to pull something like that, and from what I hear, that’s one thing Solokov isn’t lacking.”
“So what will happen to her?”
“The way I hear it, she’s due to be sent back to Russia ASAP.”
“Which is what Solokov wants.”
“I imagine. He wouldn’t have gone to this much trouble if he didn’t. He must think she was involved with her husband’s theft, and either has the money or knows where it is. It makes sense, considering she knew to run.”
Or she was there when Solokov’s men came for her husband and barely managed to escape herself, Luke thought. But of course, there was no way for Jensen or anyone else to know that.
“Is there any chance she’ll be able to protect herself from Solokov if she’s sent back?”
A hint of sympathy flashed across Jensen’s face. “Doesn’t look like it. She may be a thief like her husband, but we’re not talking about someone with the background or the connections to go head-to-head with Solokov. She’s an interior decorator. She finds pretty things to fill the homes of rich people. Some of those rich people might be able to help her, but even if they could, what happened to her godfather would probably give them second thoughts.”
“There’s no chance our government will grant her some kind of asylum?”
“On what grounds? She’s not a target of political persecution, at least not in any way that would qualify. Besides, a Russian diplomat was murdered on American soil. The U.S. government is not about to interfere with anything the Russians want at the moment, and right now, they want her shipped back to Moscow.”
“Where she’ll be completely at Solokov’s mercy.”
Jensen’s eyes grew shrewd. “No doubt. Something I’m sure she knows, too. Which may be why she became involved with you. Maybe she’s looking for someone to marry her so she can stay in the country.”
“She’s not like that,” Luke said automatically, somehow managing to keep the irony out of his tone.
“She’s not, huh? Then why do I get the feeling you knew most of this before I told you? Was it because she told you? Maybe she already asked you to marry her to save her. Or is that an idea you came up with on your own because you want to save her since you’re so ‘very involved’?”
With practiced ease, Luke let the words bounce off him, not letting a single muscle twitch or blink of the eye give the slightest indication Jensen’s comments had hit home. Odd to think that Jensen was right, and yet hadn’t even managed to come up with the real way this had all come about. That was how outlandish it was.
Luke shot the man a wry smile. “Does that sound like something I would do?”
He waited to see how the man would respond, a test run of how someone who knew him would react to the idea.
For a long moment, Jensen simply looked at him, his eyes assessing, his expression considering.
Luke simply stared back.
Then Jensen’s expression eased, his lips working into a smile of his own. “No, I guess not. But that doesn’t mean she hasn’t thought of it.”
“I told you, she’s not like that.”
“Uh-huh,” Jensen said into his coffee cup, his disbelief coming across loud and clear despite the muffled sound. “But seriously, you need to rethink your involvement with this woman. No good can come of it. Trust me, you do not want to be involved in this.”
No, Luke agreed silently, his heart sinking, he didn’t. Unfortunately, he already was.
The biggest question was why. The world was full of sad stories and people in desperate situations. All he had to do was watch five minutes of the news to see them every day. He’d never been remotely inspired to come to the aid of any of them. But now he was faced with this woman, asking something that wasn’t in any way reasonable for one person to ask of another.
And the “no” that should rise to his tongue so easily failed to come.
Perhaps it was because the problem had been so directly laid at his feet. There wasn’t a question of what might happen or the possibility that someone else might pick up the ball and run with it if he failed to. Viktor had brought the situation to him and laid it out in a way that left him little choice.
If you don’t do this, she will die.
It shouldn’t matter. He shouldn’t care about her. He still didn’t really. But that didn’t mean he could live with this woman’s death on his hands. Didn’t mean he could stand by and essentially kill the last member of Viktor’s family.
“You know better than anyone that blood is not a requirement for family.”
As much as he didn’t want to be involved, as much as he wanted to say no, as much as it would surprise anyone who thought they knew him, it seemed he wasn’t quite cold enough to allow that to happen.
THE SOUND OF THE DOORBELL came out of nowhere, the noise loud and jarring, scraping against Karina’s already-raw nerves. Seated on the couch in Viktor’s living room, she sent a nervous glance toward the hall to the entryway. She knew there was little chance Solokov’s people would come right up to the front door and ring the bell, but there were other threats that might. Threats that seemed even more imminent at the moment. Government officials. Immigration officers there to send her home.
To Russia.
To Solokov.
She waited nervously as Viktor made his way to the door, waited for his reaction to whatever he found there.
“It’s Luke,” he said, no doubt for her benefit, before she heard him open the door.
The announcement did nothing to reassure her. Instead, it only served to intensify the tension gripping her insides. She’d barely slept last night, the cold, unyielding face of a stranger looming too large in her mind. She and Viktor had both been waiting for a telephone call, expecting Luke Hubbard to deliver his answer that way. She didn’t know what it meant that he’d instead chosen to come here himself, a mere day after hearing their request. Did it mean he’d decided to do it, or that he’d simply come to deliver the bad news himself, having the courtesy of telling them in person? What did it mean that he’d chosen so fast? And what answer did she really want to hear?