Free Last Snow by Eric Van Lustbader

hotel room something bad
will
happen to me. I’m not kidding, no bullshit.”
    Jack hesitated, which was when Annika made a tactical mistake.
    “Surely you don’t believe her, Mr. McClure,” she said. “You’re not seriously considering letting her stay on board.”
    Alli remained silent, which was the smartest thing she could have done. In fact, thinking about it afterward, Jack suspected that she had played him and Annika perfectly. She knew how to get what she wanted in all kinds of weather, the heavier the better. At the moment, however, he was otherwise occupied. He knew her well, better than her parents and certainly better than her doctors, whom she delighted in tricking. The desperation in her eyes was genuine. He’d seen it before when he’d rescued her from the house where Morgan Herr had kept her imprisoned.
    That look—the desperation—was utterly naked, unbridled, elemental, a world unto itself, and as such it had the ability to stop time, or, in a less fanciful description, to make the past manifest itself in the present. With that look she and Jack were hurtled back in time to the moment when he’d rescued her, when danger was as palpable a presence as a hand on the throat or the plucking of a sleeve from out of a nighttime crowd. There was an understanding between them that at that moment nothing was safe, nothing was certain, that all around them lay peril and the gaping unknown. There is no more powerful situation in which to forge true intimacy, a bond that cannot, or perhaps more accurately will not, be broken.
    Which was why Jack now turned to the waiting aide and said, “Close the door and let’s get under way.”
    Alli didn’t look at Annika, she didn’t gloat as she might well have done. Instead, she kissed Jack chastely on the cheek and murmured, “Thank you,” in his ear, before returning to her seat and strapping herself in.
    “Don’t make me regret what I’ve done,” he said in return, but in truth part of him was already regretting it. He was ready to ignore his promise to the First Lady. Even as they began to taxi out onto the runway he felt the urge to call the aide over, tell him to stop the plane. As he took a seat, he told himself that Wilde must have already departed in the limo, but whether this thought was a form of consolation in order to lessen the burden of guilt that was already beginning to weigh on him or an actual fact he never found out because he quite deliberately kept himself from looking out the window to see if, in fact, the limo had left and, with it, his other option. He’d made his choice, now he’d have to live with it.

S IX
     
     
     
     
    “W HAT’S UP with you?” Jack said.
    “What’s up with the psycho-bitch?”
    “Please don’t call her that.”
    “I’ll stop calling her a psycho-bitch when she stops acting like one,” Alli said. “Which will be never.”
    Jack had taken Alli to the rear of the aircraft as soon as it had taken off and reached cruising altitude.
    “Jack, what is she doing here? I mean, who is she, anyway?”
    Jack glanced over her head, checking to see that Annika was still in her seat. “She and I got into some trouble, which is why she’s here. She can’t go back to Moscow, to her old life.”
    “You mean she fucked up her life, now she’s going to fuck up yours.”
    “It’s not that simple, Alli.”
    “Okay, then explain it to me.”
    “The less you know about this, the better, believe me.”
    “Now you sound like my father.”
    “Low blow,” Jack said, and they both laughed at the same time. “Still,” he said, sobering quickly, “two men were killed tonight, two criminals.”
    “So what’s the problem? The police—”
    “This is Russia, Alli. The police aren’t to be trusted. They’re in the pocket of either the Russian mafia or elements of the federal government, both of which are as corrupt as they come.” He looked at her. “In any case, one of the criminals was so highly connected that