Free The Romanov Legacy by Jenni Wiltz Page A

as he closed her
door softly behind him.
    “I love you,” she said thickly.
    Beth lay back and listened for the click of Seth’s door
latching shut.  It came just as the phone rang again.  She snatched
it up, eager to tell her sister how brave her son was in the face of her
absence.  “Nat?” she said.  “Is that you?”
    But no one answered.  All she heard was slow, gentle
breathing.  “Who is this?” she asked.  “If you don’t stop harassing
me, I’ll call the police.”
    In the background, she heard something familiar—a foghorn,
blaring out into the night.  One, two, three blows.  She held the
phone away from her ear and realized she heard the same noise outside her
window.  The caller was watching the house. 
    She slammed the phone down and ran to her bedroom
window.  She threw aside the curtains and looked down at the street. 
It was empty—no cars, no pedestrians.  “I know what I heard,” she
said.  “I know you’re there.”
    The next number she dialed was 911.

Chapter Twelve
    July 2012
    San Francisco, California
     
    Constantine watched Natalie sleep, curled in a fetal
position on one of the grimy beds.  Her lips were rosy and softly
swollen.  After one frantic embrace she’d drifted off in his arms, lulled
to sleep as his fingertips traced the Cyrillic alphabet on her skin.  Part
of him felt relieved.  No matter how beautiful she was or how hypnotic her
stories, she couldn’t separate fact from fiction.  He had no business
sleeping with her, even if she thought it was what she wanted. 
  
    His eyes drifted down to the puffy silver scars on her
arms.  It can’t be true , he thought, remembering her story about
Dante and the German forger.  But why invent such a lavish story to
explain a suicide attempt?  Lana never explained anything—she just kept
trying. 
    He remembered the day his sister came home from the hospital
after Lazovsky’s attack.  She smiled, went into her room, and closed the
door behind her.  Without a sound, she calmly sliced the flesh from her
cheeks and fed it to her tiny dog.  It was morning before they found out
what she’d done. 
    Constantine understood certain kinds of death—the
star-bright explosion of pain delivered so well by bullets, bombs, and
knives—but he didn’t understand it when it came from the inside out, attacking
the mind before it attacked the body.  How did these women silence the
scream of their own flesh, the cry for life when confronted with death? 
Obeying that cry was all that had kept him alive in Chechnya.
    He shook his head to clear away the images of blood and
death.  It was time to do his job.  He picked up his phone and dialed
Vadim.  He needed to check in and find out what the hell had gone
wrong.  “We have problems,” he said as soon as his boss picked up the
phone.
    “Greetings to you, too, Constantine Alexandrovich.” 
    “Vadim, are you alone?
    “What happened?”
    “You’re not going to like anything I have to say.”
    “Then let me pour a drink.  Start with the least
objectionable item on your list.”
    “Make it a double.”
    “Is it that bad?”
    “I didn’t get Elizabeth Brandon.”
    “Jesus, boy, I thought I told you to start slowly.”
    “I did.”
    Vadim paused.  “Go on.”
    “I want you to find the analyst who did the intelligence
work for that file.”
    “Why?”
    “He didn’t do his homework.  He sent me to Natalie Brandon,
not Elizabeth.”
    “Are you telling me you kidnapped the wrong woman? 
Constantine, we’re not even supposed to be in that goddamn country!  How
the hell can I keep this a secret if you’re kidnapping people everywhere you
go?”
    “That’s the other thing.  It’s not a secret. 
Someone followed me here.”
    “That’s impossible.  No one knows about this but the
two of us and the ambassador.”
    “Then the leak came from inside.  Whoever gave us that
address is on Starinov’s payroll.  They followed me straight to the