Free Flight of the Raven by REBECCA YORK

looking for something.”
    “That was it?” Fitz prompted. He sounded relieved, as though he’d expected her to admit going off into a corner with the man and exchanging secret documents.
    Cal continued the interrogation. “What did you think of Rozonov?”
    “Intelligent. Polished. Dangerous.” Darkly handsome. Devastatingly sexy. Too confident. Her response to the Russian had been powerful and disturbing. That put her in an even more precarious position than merely using Dan’s theater ticket. But she wasn’t about to share the insight with Cal.
    They had reached a little circle called the Plaza de Nicaragua. In the center was a fountain decorated with dolphins and cherubs. A sudden shift in the wind sent the spray in their direction. Cal put his arm up to shade his face but Julie welcomed the cool mist of water. When she turned to face the fountain, he grasped her forearm and steered them back in the direction of the lake. Fitz wheeled with them as though they were in military formation.
    “We’ve got to find out what Eisenberg was up to and why the Russian is interested,” Cal said.
    “Maybe Dan was doing some sort of government undercover work,” Fitz suggested.
    “If that were true, I’d know about it,” Cal snapped. “Get it into your head that the man was involved in something unsavory. And I’m going to find out what it was.” He was silent as they skirted the crowd at the edge of the lake, where street vendors were selling trinkets and candy. When they’d gained one of the less traveled jogging paths, he turned to Julie.
    “Aleksei Rozonov thinks you know something.”
    “But I don’t.”
    “That’s beside the point.”
    “Cal, I don’t want to get involved in whatever this is.”
    Fitz sighed. “I’m afraid you got involved when you used that ticket.”
    She’d been worrying about that since Friday night. Now it was out in the open. “Can’t someone else handle it from here on out?”
    “I’d like nothing better than to put a professional on the case. But it would tip our hand to switch dancers in mid-waltz, so to speak,” Cal pointed out.
    “And it’s vital that we find out what’s going on,” Fitz added.
    Julie took a deep breath. “Then, what am I going to have to do?”
    “Get to know Rozonov a little better.”
    An image of a sacrificial goat tethered to a stake leaped into her mind. Her heart started to pound. From the moment the Russian’s icy blue eyes had locked with hers, she had known the man was a threat. She had sensed danger and intrigue swirling around him like demons in a mist. But her apprehension had been on a personal level as well. Even though their encounter had been brief, she had felt a dark attraction pulling her toward the man. It had made her want to run the other way. Now—my God!—Cal Dixon was practically throwing her at him.
    * * *
    I T HAD BEEN a long time since he had prowled the marble galleries of the Prado, the former palace that housed Spain’s national art collection. Now, as so often in the past, the Raven’s footsteps brought him to the paintings of Hieronymus Bosch, the fifteenth-century Dutch master whose works had been collected by Philip II.
    Bosch had been obsessed with retribution for sin—like some of the great Russian novelists. But his artistic expression was so startlingly different. His huge canvases were often divided into several parts, some depicting in intricate detail throngs of men and women enjoying the pleasures of the flesh. Other equally elaborate sections illustrated their eternal tortures in hell. Bosch liked to make the punishment fit the crime. The Raven’s eyes were drawn particularly to the men falling under the blade of a long, phallic looking knife and the woman whose naked ivory skin was being fondled by the spidery claws of a green monster.
    He could easily picture Bosch exchanging creative ideas with the twentieth-century torture masters who ran the Gulag Archipelago, the chain of prison camps where