6:33 p.m.
Moscow, Russia—still
We realized something was wrong when, while we were both asleep on the bed, a crash sounded from the attached bathroom.
Paulie sat bolt upright. “What was that?”
“Hrn?” It took me a moment to surface from the deepsleep I’d been in. I tugged at my tie, which was partially strangling me. “What?”
“That’s what I asked. I heard a noise.”
“Dreaming,” I said, and groggily sat up to remove my jacket, waistcoat, and blasted strangling tie.
That’s when I saw the movement from the corner of my eye.
Two men emerged from the bathroom, both dressed head to toe in black, with black balaclavas over their faces obscuring their features.
One man held a gun, which was pointed directly at Paulie.
“Holy hellballs!” she said, staring with openmouthed amazement at the men. “Dad was right!”
“About?”
She pointed at the men. “He said I’d be kidnapped if I came to Russia, and I’ll be damned if those aren’t kidnappers. Hello. Are you kidnappers?”
“Yes,” one of the men said in heavily accented English. He gestured toward me with the gun. “You. Get on your knees.”
I thought about my options, and decided I didn’t like any of them. “No,” I said, getting to my feet and moving over to stand in front of Paulie. “I don’t think I will.”
“I shoot you,” the man warned.
“I’d prefer you not,” I said politely, trying to gauge how fast Paulie could make it to the door if I distracted the two men. “I have a race to complete, and for the first time in days, we’re ahead. I’d like to build on that lead, not lie dying on a Moscow hotel floor.”
“Yeah,” she said, getting to her feet, hastily snatching up the discarded blouse and slipping it on. “What he said.”
The man with the gun hesitated, then took three steps forward. I shoved Paulie toward the door, yelling, “Run!”when a reddish black pain burst across my head, sending me tumbling down into a black pit of agony.
“—xon? If you’ve permanently damaged his brain, I’m going to come down like a can of whoop ass on you!” was the first thing I heard when I managed to claw myself out of the pit. I blinked at the lights and realized that my head was cradled in Paulie’s lap. I turned my face into her belly and enjoyed, for a moment, the lightly floral scent of her, wondering how a woman who’d driven for more than twelve hours could still smell so good.
“I say we take a finger from each,” came the low, almost guttural rumble of a man. “That way we have extra.”
“What are they talking about?” I asked Paulie’s delightful belly.
“You’re awake! Oh, thank god.” Her belly moved and soft lips commenced kissing my face. I turned my head to kiss her properly, but what felt like a massive lump on the back of my head brushed her thigh, causing red spiderwebs of pain to crisscross in front of my eyes. When my vision cleared, I found myself sitting upright, leaning against the edge of the bed. To my surprise, we were still in the hotel room.
“What happened?”
“Gun boy hit you on the head when you tried to get me to leave you. As if I’d ever do that.” She brushed a bit of hair carefully from my forehead. The touch of her fingers did a lot to ease the massive headache centered on the back of my head. “I appreciate the attempt to save me, but we’re in this together, Dixon.”
I took her hand in mine. “In what? The race? Our faux marriage? Life?”
“All of them,” she said, her eyes soft with an emotion I didn’t want to examine too much at that moment. I simply relished for a few seconds the corresponding warm glow of happiness that seemed to start in my bellyand radiate outward, and instead turned painfully to look at the two men, now seated at a minuscule table next to the window.
“Are they really kidnappers?”
“Yes, unfortunately.” Paulie made a face. “If I understand their references to a friend who is in Dad’s employ, I gather whoever this dude is ratted me out to his buddies here in the motherland. The buddies work for one of Dad’s old rivals, and thus Rosencrantz and Guildenstern have popped up to hold us for ransom. Or so I assume all that finger talk is leading to.”
“One finger,” the man with the gun said, gesturing with it toward us. “Two is wasteful.”
