Chapter 14

"So, are we going to talk about it?" Hans asked as he and Royce climbed in the back of their hired SUV.

Royce leaned back, resting his head on the headrest as he stared straight ahead. "Talk about what?" Hans had the most amazing way of making him feel like he was a ten-year-old boy and not a man of thirty-three.

"About the fact that you basically told your grad student you want to fuck her brains out. Are you fraternizing with students now?"

"No. There's a fuck ton of paperwork involved, for one thing. And I would have to stop working with her. If it's handled wrong, it could damage the academic integrity of any research we did together."

"Jesus. Why didn't you send her somewhere safe if she's such a temptation to you?" Hans asked. "She would have been fine at Fenn's ranch in Colorado."

Royce watched the streets of Moscow blur as their driver sped up when the street cleared. He didn't want to admit it, but he'd told Kenzie the truth. As a Dom, he had a natural urge to protect his sub. It was hard to fight that kind of pull.

"It's my own fault. I was sure she wasn't going to agree to my terms."

Hans shook his head. "You wouldn't have given her terms at all unless part of you wanted her to say yes. You should have just told her to stay, end of story."

"Well, it's too late for that now. I can't have her out of my sight. Not until this is over."

"Fine, so we find out about these bastards, who they are, what they want from you, and then we take them out. With most enemies you could find a way to convince them to leave you alone, but mobsters don't think like that. It's you or them. No other choice." Hans's succinct solution made Royce grin. It was why he'd made such a good bodyguard for Emery all these years.

"Who are we meeting with for theequipment?" Royce asked more quietly in case their driver was listening. Even though Moscow was a heavily populated city, he didn't want to make the mistake of assuming that the Russian mob didn't have eyes and ears everywhere, even hired cabdrivers.

"Wes thought we should call Dimitri Razin. He is well connected in the right places, and he will have some idea of where to start when we track down those bastards."

Royce stroked his chin. Dimitri was a Russian art lover and no friend to the current political regime. Wes said Razin's family had been a solid supporter of the Imperial family before they were killed in the early twentieth century. Razin was not a member of the mob and never would be. He had his own team of loyal men and women, and he somehow kept himself apart from the reaching fingers of the Mafia. In fact, they stayed well clear of him.

"Dimitri is a good call," Royce agreed.

"I checked with him before we left the hotel. He's bringing a weapons specialist with them, some man named Barinov."

Royce grinned again. If things went south they were going to need some decent firepower, and Razin's connections would be very helpful.

"Where's this meeting going to be?" Royce sat up in his seat as the SUV slowed to a stop against the curb.

Hans pointed to the building just outside. "The Sandunovsky Baths." It was a rather unremarkable structure, probably built in the late eighteen hundreds. Royce paid the driver as they left.

Inside the bathhouse, Royce was impressed by the ornate archway, heavily decorated with sculptures of nymphs on horseback. The nymphs were emerging from the sea and using Triton's shell trumpets. At least some beautiful things hadn't been destroyed when the Bolsheviks took over.

Hans whistled low in appreciation as he followed Royce inside. The interior was a flamboyant mix of baroque, Gothic, and Moorish styles. It looked like something out of a James Bond movie. All that was missing were a bunch of aging tattooed Russians with nothing but towels and smoking cigars.

Royce went to the reception desk and gave his name to the young woman monitoring the guest arrivals.

"Dr. Devereaux, your suite is this way." She waved for them to come with her. The red-and-white diamond floors bore an Iberian influence, but the baroque columns presented a sumptuous counterpoint design. Typical of Dimitri to pick a place like this, he thought. He was one selective bastard.

The woman paused at the door, slipping a brass key from her pocket into the keyhole. Royce marveled at the ornamental mystique of a place like this for a clandestine meeting. The attendant opened the door but didn't enter. She simply inclined her head with a smile.

"The changing rooms are just inside, and beyond that is your pool. The rest of your party is already waiting."

Royce entered into the room, taking a moment to study the dark mahogany lockers and the supply of shoeboxes and hangers. Hans waited until the door closed behind them before he started stripping. Royce followed suit. With towels wrapped around their waists, they followed the signs pointing toward the private pool.

The room here was simple in terms of decoration compared to the rest of the bathhouse. The water was clear, and the blue tiles at the bottom contrasted with the white pillars that loomed around the pool like Athenian sentries. The light from the chandeliers hanging above the pool area was soft and muted, letting the water glow. It looked as though Royce and Hans had stepped into the past, to a place of old-world opulence.

Two men stood at the far end of the pool, fully dressed. Dimitri Razin wore an expensive suit, looking intimidating as fuck. A man in a leather jacket with dark-brown hair had to be Razin's contact, Barinov. Royce was a little pissed that he and Hans were practically naked while the Russians weren't, but perhaps that was by design. He saw Hans's eyes dart between the shadows into the nooks and crannies behind the pillars.

"Devereaux," Dimitri said with a chuckle, his gaze moving between Royce and Hans. "A little underdressed for an arms deal, aren't we?"

Royce rolled his eyes. "You said to meet at the bathhouse. You didn't warn us not to strip naked." He waved at the towel.

Dimitri grinned. "When Russians ask you meet them at the bathhouse, never undress."

"Duly noted," Hans said, his voice dry with sarcasm. "Although I'm not totally naked. Got my Barretta."

Royce glanced at the bodyguard, unable to see where the man kept the gun. "Aside from the fact that I don't know how you got that through customs, I don't want to know where you're hiding it," he whispered.

Hans chuckled. "You're right. You don't."

"Let's get straight to business then, shall we?" Dimitri said. "This is Rurik Barinov, a friend of mine. He has a decent grasp on mob activities in the city. More importantly, he's brought you just the right amount of firepower to comfortably protect yourselves."

Rurik grinned, and Royce noticed a thin scar on his face that stretched from his forehead down to his cheek turned a pale white. He bent to retrieve two black briefcases and handed them over to Hans.

"This should take care of your little smuggler problem," Rurik said with a dark chuckle.

"Much obliged," the bodyguard replied.

Royce turned back to Dimitri. "So what's the word on Vadym? He's based in Moscow, but he sent his cronies after me all the way on Long Island. That's an awful lot of trouble for one guy."

Dimitri crossed his arms. "From what I know of him, he's looking for new lucrative money streams. Fossil smuggling and raiding archaeological sites is his latest hobby for cash. He's been trying to get fossils out of Mongolia, and he needs a paleontologist to authenticate them as Russian fossils instead of Mongolian."

"But he can't use a Russian paleontologist," Rurik added. "It would only raise suspicions later on."

Dimitri nodded. "Once he gets them cleared, he could sell them to American and European museums or private buyers for a vast amount of money."

"Fuck, it's simple, but it makes sense," said Royce. "Get someone like me to verify the country of origin on fossils, and it's hard to challenge later unless the original country knows about the thefts and can prove it." He suddenly felt bone-weary. This was the kind of shit he hated dealing with: people who used the unique and rare bits of Earth's history to pad their own pockets. It wasn't just fossils, either. Ancient Russian burial mounds had been bulldozed to get at the treasures inside, not only robbing the world of those items, but of any chance of understanding the history surrounding them. Usually the authorities were three steps behind them at every turn. There was a war going on in the shadows, one that few even knew existed.

"So the bastard picked Royce," Hans mused. "Because of his high profile, no doubt."

Dimitri nodded. "It seems so. I heard he's watching for you, and he knows you're in Moscow. You threw yourself into the belly of the beast, my friend."

Rurik chuckled as though his comment was amusing and not damning.

Royce knew it would be impossible to protect the Mongolian fossils. The best he could hope for would be for the man to look elsewhere for his paleontologist. "So what can I do to stop this guy and get him to leave me alone?"

Dimitri and Rurik exchanged a long glance before Dimitri spoke grimly.

"He knows you know about him and his plan. He won't let go, and he won't let you expose him." Dimitri's tone was soft and deadly. "There's only one way to put an end to this."

"You mean put an end to him," Royce said. He wasn't a killerhe didn't just take lives. He glanced at Hans. The bodyguard had killed men before to protect Royce's best friends, Emery and Fenn, but that had been in the heat of battle with bullets flying.

But you almost killed someone, the voice inside reminded him. You stood over Monte and almost shot him to protect Kenzie. Would this be so different?

"I can get you in the club he frequents and get you close. Then you can take him out," Dimitri said.

Royce shook his head, balking at the idea. "I can't shoot a man in the club." He stared at the ceiling and the mosaic pattern.

"I've already thought of that." Dimitri held out a small vial of a dark crushed substance. Royce took the vial, wondering what was inside.

"It's ricin. Get it in his drink and he's done." Dimitri's deathly calm voice chilled Royce to the bone.

"Ricin is what killed Georgi Markov, that Bulgarian dissident writer," Hans cut in in a soft voice. "That's dangerous stuff."

Royce almost handed the vial back to Dimitri.

"It is," Dimitri agreed. "But Vadym is a dangerous man. He doesn't just deal in fossils. He deals in people."