excellent way to get killed.
Undercover work is like proctology. You poke and prod around assholes, looking for something bad, and then you zap the bad things you find. His line of work required utter concentration, day and night.
If Nicholas Ames made a big mistake, he lost money. Nick Ireland paid for his mistakes in blood.
Time to get back on track, fast.
“I haven’t read anything by him, sorry. How long has this guy—what’s his name? Worontzoff?”
Charity nodded.
“How long has this guy Worontzoff lived here in Parker’s Ridge? It seems a strange place for a Russian exile to settle down in.”
“Well, maybe not so strange. I’m told upstate Vermont is much like the area around Moscow, only our beech trees have larger leaves. And Vassily isn’t a Russian exile. He got out of prison camp more or less in the same period the Soviet Union fell. In Moscow, he was greeted like a king when he was released. I remember it still. I’d just read Dry Your Tears in Moscow and I followed what happened to him in the newspapers.”
Nick did some fast calculating. “Good God, you must have been—”
“Twelve.” She shrugged, more of that fairy dust coming his way. “A very precocious twelve. And…that summer I had…a lot of time to read.”
Damn straight. In the summer of 1993, when Worontzoff was released to return like a conquering hero to Moscow, Charity Prewitt had been in the hospital. Her father had thrown her out of a third-story hotel bedroom window in a desperate attempt to save her life during a hotel fire. The two Prewitts, man and wife, perished, and Charity suffered a T12 fracture. She’d had three operations and spent that summer and most of the winter in a full body cast.
Nick waited for her to tell her story, but she didn’t.
Interesting.
In Nick’s experience, people who have been through trauma are almost always eager to talk about it. It was like a badge of honor— look what I went through, look at what I survived.
Charity’s story was particularly dramatic. Fire started by a disgruntled employee breaking out on the fifth floor of the five-star hotel in Boston where she was staying with her parents. Her father wrapping her in blankets and throwing her off the balcony in a desperate attempt to save her, then rushing back into the room to try to save his wife. It took two days for the room to cool down enough to collect the charred bones for a funeral. Charity never got to attend the funeral. By that time, she’d already had two operations and was sedated.
Why wasn’t she telling him all about it?
But she wasn’t, and she wasn’t uncomfortable with silence, either, like most women were. She sipped her wine and watched him calmly.
Nick finally broke the silence.
“So he leaves Russia and moves to the States? Why? I mean the Soviet system fell, after all. Why didn’t he just stay? Particularly since apparently he was a big shot there.”
This was bullshit. Nick knew exactly why Worontzoff was here and he was looking at it right now. Charity Prewitt. A dead ringer for a woman long dead, Worontzoff’s lover, Katya Amartova, who had perished in the labor camp.
Nick had seen the photos of Amartova, and the resemblance to Charity was uncanny. A normal man wouldn’t ever expect that a woman who merely looked like the woman he’d once loved could be her, but Worontzoff had gone well beyond normal years ago.
She was silent another moment, then rested her chin on her fist. “I don’t really know why Vassily moved here. He’s never actually talked about it. I just assumed he wanted a clean slate and immigrated here to wipe out the past.”
Well, to set up a criminal empire here, too. There was that.
“We don’t really talk about these things,” she continued in her soft voice. “Mainly we talk about books. Vassily has a great mind. It’s a privilege to spend time in his presence.”
Fuckhead , Nick thought sourly, then caught himself again, appalled. The secret to
Undercover work is like proctology. You poke and prod around assholes, looking for something bad, and then you zap the bad things you find. His line of work required utter concentration, day and night.
If Nicholas Ames made a big mistake, he lost money. Nick Ireland paid for his mistakes in blood.
Time to get back on track, fast.
“I haven’t read anything by him, sorry. How long has this guy—what’s his name? Worontzoff?”
Charity nodded.
“How long has this guy Worontzoff lived here in Parker’s Ridge? It seems a strange place for a Russian exile to settle down in.”
“Well, maybe not so strange. I’m told upstate Vermont is much like the area around Moscow, only our beech trees have larger leaves. And Vassily isn’t a Russian exile. He got out of prison camp more or less in the same period the Soviet Union fell. In Moscow, he was greeted like a king when he was released. I remember it still. I’d just read Dry Your Tears in Moscow and I followed what happened to him in the newspapers.”
Nick did some fast calculating. “Good God, you must have been—”
“Twelve.” She shrugged, more of that fairy dust coming his way. “A very precocious twelve. And…that summer I had…a lot of time to read.”
Damn straight. In the summer of 1993, when Worontzoff was released to return like a conquering hero to Moscow, Charity Prewitt had been in the hospital. Her father had thrown her out of a third-story hotel bedroom window in a desperate attempt to save her life during a hotel fire. The two Prewitts, man and wife, perished, and Charity suffered a T12 fracture. She’d had three operations and spent that summer and most of the winter in a full body cast.
Nick waited for her to tell her story, but she didn’t.
Interesting.
In Nick’s experience, people who have been through trauma are almost always eager to talk about it. It was like a badge of honor— look what I went through, look at what I survived.
Charity’s story was particularly dramatic. Fire started by a disgruntled employee breaking out on the fifth floor of the five-star hotel in Boston where she was staying with her parents. Her father wrapping her in blankets and throwing her off the balcony in a desperate attempt to save her, then rushing back into the room to try to save his wife. It took two days for the room to cool down enough to collect the charred bones for a funeral. Charity never got to attend the funeral. By that time, she’d already had two operations and was sedated.
Why wasn’t she telling him all about it?
But she wasn’t, and she wasn’t uncomfortable with silence, either, like most women were. She sipped her wine and watched him calmly.
Nick finally broke the silence.
“So he leaves Russia and moves to the States? Why? I mean the Soviet system fell, after all. Why didn’t he just stay? Particularly since apparently he was a big shot there.”
This was bullshit. Nick knew exactly why Worontzoff was here and he was looking at it right now. Charity Prewitt. A dead ringer for a woman long dead, Worontzoff’s lover, Katya Amartova, who had perished in the labor camp.
Nick had seen the photos of Amartova, and the resemblance to Charity was uncanny. A normal man wouldn’t ever expect that a woman who merely looked like the woman he’d once loved could be her, but Worontzoff had gone well beyond normal years ago.
She was silent another moment, then rested her chin on her fist. “I don’t really know why Vassily moved here. He’s never actually talked about it. I just assumed he wanted a clean slate and immigrated here to wipe out the past.”
Well, to set up a criminal empire here, too. There was that.
“We don’t really talk about these things,” she continued in her soft voice. “Mainly we talk about books. Vassily has a great mind. It’s a privilege to spend time in his presence.”
Fuckhead , Nick thought sourly, then caught himself again, appalled. The secret to
Similar Books
