Page 118 of Lethal Abduction

“Well, I’m glad.” He reaches under his shirt and comes up holding a chain threaded through a key. I’d vaguely noticed the chain on the boat ride down the river, but he must have taken it off when we got here, because it’s the first time I’ve clearly seen the old-style key hanging from it.

I’d recognize that key anywhere. It was the first time I’d ever had a key to an apartment of my own.

I swallow hard on the sudden flood of emotion.

Long, sun-filled afternoons, painting Dimitry as he slept.

Darya and me, dancing around half drunk to some dumb eighties song.

The scent of paint and turpentine. Daring to believe I might really be able to paint, despite my crippling self-doubt.

Dimitry making love to me during siesta, bringing me to the edge over and over again...

“You kept it,” I say, my voice not entirely steady.

He nods. “I kept it.” His mouth quirks, but his eyes are still dark and somber on mine. “The lease is paid until the end of the year. Which is lucky, Skip, because if we make it out of this, that apartment is the only place we can still call ours.”

My hand closes around the key, feeling the familiar old bow and barrel, the hard ridges of the long teeth. Dimitry had always wanted to change the lock, to make it more secure. But I’d loved the feeling of that old key in my hand, the way I had to jiggle it around in the wooden door to make the lock catch. “I can’t believe you still have it.” Tears blur my eyes as I look up at him. “Even after I didn’t come back.”

His thumb smooths the tears away from beneath my eyes. “Everything is still just as you left it. Messy as hell, in other words.”

I laugh shakily.

“I went there,” he says quietly. “The day the three months were up. The day Darya had her baby. I lay on that sagging old sofa, staring at the ceiling and praying to a God I don’t believe in for a message that never came.”

I wince. “I’m so sorry, Dimitry.”

“No.” He shakes his head fiercely. “I didn’t mean—that isn’t what I’m trying to say. Look at me.” He tilts my chin up. “What I meant is that even then, when no message came—and during the months afterward, when I knew everyone thought I should just forget you, even if they didn’t say it—I couldn’t let you go. I’m not sure I ever would have, Abby. No matter how many years passed, I think I would have alwayskept that apartment. Gone back there every now and then, just to feel you around me, even if I couldn’t see you or touch you.”

I wrap my arms around his neck, pressing myself against him. “Then you know how I feel,” I say as his arms tighten around me. “You know I’d choose you, Dimitry, even if you were still a broke kid running through those Miami streets. You told me that you’re not Roman.” I shrug. “And like I told you a long time ago, I’m not Darya. I’m not the heiress to some fortune or Russian title. I come from a farm in country Australia where people work hard and eat or not depending on how good a year they’ve had. I don’t give a fuck about money—I never did. I care about you and me. And about getting out of this nightmare we’re in.” I frown. “But I do hope you and Roman can sort out your differences. Not because I want you to work for him again. But because there’s no fucking chance I’m not calling Darya the minute this is over and going to pick up that beautiful baby I still haven’t even seen.”

He nods. “I know that. And no matter how shitty things might be between Roman and me right now, I’ve never been able to stay mad at the prick for long.” He takes a deep breath. “But I’m not calling him now, Skip. Not for this. Not even if half of fucking Thailand comes for us. I—it wouldn’t be right.”

“I don’t want you to.” It’s the truth. “I told you I don’t want Darya anywhere near this, and I meant it. But I’m going to be honest, Dimitry. I also have no fucking idea what we do when we wake up tomorrow morning.”

“Well, I do.” He pulls me hard against him and kisses me, thoroughly enough that I’m breathless at the end of it. “But it won’t be tomorrow morning. We’re leaving tonight. The boat is still there, and I paid the landlady’s kid to go and buy these.” He holds up three plastic containers of fuel.

“Go?” I stare at him in confusion. “Go where?”

Dimitry’s smile has a hard edge. “You said Rodrigo came to SK for an art auction, right?”

I nod. “But it was a van Gogh. As in, the kind of thing that would make headlines anywhere else.”

“That’s exactly how this bastard kingpin of yours operates, right?” His eyes gleam. “He manipulates people. Offers them what nobody else can, whether it’s revenge or a piece of art thought lost forever.”

I look at him quizzically, unsure where he’s going with this.

“I imagine,” Dimitry says shrewdly, “that the van Gogh auction isn’t the first time he’s held something like that?”

I lift a shoulder. “I don’t know for sure, but I do know that part of our scam job was to find out if the clients had any old heirlooms that might be valuable. If so, we’d convince them to photograph the piece, saying we knew someone who could value it. We’d give the photographs to our supervisors. If what they had was deemed valuable, the client would become a high priority and be taken out of our hands. Lucky—the friend I told you about—she handled a lot of the online payment system. She told me that SK always bought the most valuable pieces, usually for next to nothing, since they’d tell the client the piece was worthless.”

“Pieces like the van Gogh,” he says. “Priceless art that can’t be found anywhere else.”

“Sure, I guess.”

Oh, shit. I think I know where he’s going with this.

My eyes narrow. “Wait—”

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