Page 123 of To Catch a Sub

“He’d give me a statue, painting, or piece of jewelry. I’d photograph it, sketch it, write up a description—as if I were cataloguing. Once I had everything, he’d say, ‘tell me, wife’ and then listen to me talk about it for hours. I’d talk not only about the piece itself, but would provide historical and cultural context, detailing the significance.” Colette’s lips twisted. “Sometimes I had to make up what I was saying, because I didn’t know enough about the piece. I was scared he’d figure out when I was lying, but he never did.”

“Educational lectures…” Andrei repeated as if he couldn’t believe it.

“He sounds insane,” Rolf said.

“He is,” she said fervently. “Absolutely mad, but as long as I was lecturing, he wasn’t touching me.”

Landon closed his eyes, swallowing hard.

“He had me work in his office,” Colette went on. “I slept there, on a mattress in the corner. He chained me to the wall when he left the office for good each evening. Said having me in his bed would tempt him to ‘ruin the wedding.’

“He liked it when other people came in and he could…show me off before or after his meetings. I didn’t know what was happening most of the time because I didn’t have my phone and mic anymore.

“One day a man pissed Damien off. Damien beat him, and during the assault the man’s phone fell out of his pocket and slid across the floor to me.”

Though this was in the past, Landon felt a surge of relief, as if he were in the moment with past Colette, realizing this might be the way out.

“For a day or two, I hid it, waiting for someone to come looking for it. No one did. Maybe Damien killed him.

“By that point I’m sure Damien thought he’d broken me. I didn’t fight or protest when he touched me. On the few occasions I did or said something he didn’t like—usually I was too slow to respond—I’d curl up when it looked like he was going to hit me. He liked that I was afraid of him, that I cowered.”

“Good, love,” Landon murmured. “That’s exactly what you should have done.”

Colette’s gaze snapped to his, and something like relief flashed in her eyes. Had she thought he’d think less of her for protecting herself?

“Once I was sure no one would come looking for the phone, I started taking pictures of documents and maps. Any time Damien wasn’t in the room during the day, I documented everything I could. I gave myself five minutes for pictures, then ten minutes to upload them to my secure cloud server, which I access via an ftp login.”

“Why didn’t you do it at night?” Rolf asked.

“First, I never took the phone with me to the pallet where I slept. I had no way to hide it. Second, the chain wasn’t long enough for me to reach anything, including the private bathroom.” Her lips curved up, but it wasn’t a smile. “He was delighted that every morning I was happy to see him. I wasn’t faking that. I was very happy every time he arrived because it meant he’d unlock me and I could go to the bathroom.”

“There were no cameras in his office?” Andrei asked.

“No, and I know because he said that next time they updated the security system he’d have a camera installed and point it at my little desk so he could watch me work even when he had other things to do.”

“If it was his office, he’d want privacy, even from his own people,” Andrei said.

Colette nodded. “After ten minutes of uploading, I’d stop, even if it wasn’t done, and wiped everything from the phone. A hard restart.”

“Very smart,” Andrei said, smiling at her in a way that vaguely irritated Landon.

“A few times I even recorded what was being said in the office, and when Damien left the room I’d run the recording through a free translation site. I couldn’t do it often, too risky, and the translations were not as accurate as what I’d had, but better than nothing.”

“Smart, but dangerous,” Rolf said.

“If Damien caught me with the phone, he would have…” Colette shrugged fatalistically. “I assume in that situation death would be the best I could hope for.”

“How did you get away?” Landon asked, his voice hoarse from holding his emotions in check.

“I knew from a conversation I’d recorded and translated, he had a meeting in St. Petersburg, but he told his lieutenant that he didn’t want to leave his ‘wife’. I thought if he was angry with me, if I wasn’t entertaining him, he’d go.”

Landon felt sick.

Andrei’s expression was grim. “That’s a dangerous play.”

“It was,” she said, so low it was almost a whisper. “But it worked. The next time we were alone I told him that I wouldn’t wear the waist beads anymore. Made up something about there being no beauty in a piece of jewelry like that, and that it was a waste of good emeralds.”

“What did he do?” Landon asked, keeping his voice soft.