Page 17 of Locked and Loaded

Nikolai did not look amused. “The dresses were fake.”

“Yes, but good fakes.” Katya took a sip of champagne. “I told you, darling, sometimes the counterfeit is more interesting than the original. At least it has ambition.”

Dragan almost smiled, but Nikolai’s expression cooled another degree. Whatever this marriage was, it did not run on affection. It ran on possession, obligation, and the kind of bargain only one person believed was generous.

“The woman gave the name Callie Witherspoon,” Dragan said. “Her real name is Lennox Crowe.”

Katya went still. It was barely a pause, little more than a hitch in the rhythm of her breathing, but Dragan saw it. So did Nikolai. The maid, who had remained just inside the terrace doors, saw it too. That interested him more than Nikolai’s reaction, because the maid’s attention sharpened not on Katya alone but on all of them, as if the name had struck several different bells at once.

Nikolai turned slowly toward his wife. “You said she was a stylist.”

“She said she was a stylist,” Katya corrected. “I said she had terrible bags and surprisingly good shoes.”

“Did she ask you questions?”

Katya shrugged. “People always ask questions.”

“Katya.” There was warning in Nikolai’s voice, the quiet kind.

Katya heard it and covered her fear with a roll of her eyes. “Oh, don’t start. She asked whether I liked silk, whether I preferred Paris or Milan, whether I wanted champagne. I can’t remember every boring thing a woman says while trying to sell me fake Dior.”

“You remember more than you pretend to,” Nikolai said.

“Only when the conversation is interesting.”

Dragan let the exchange play out while watching the maid. She stepped forward as if to check the champagne, but she did not look at the glasses. She looked at Nikolai first, then Katya, then Dragan, and finally toward the hallway behind her. Her right hand brushed the side of her apron. Not a nervous gesture. She was checking something. Could be a phone, or a transmitter, maybe even something smaller.

Katya glanced at the maid and then back at Nikolai. It was obvious she thought the woman worked for her husband. Nikolai probably thought the same.

Dragan wasn’t so sure.

“I need to know what Lennox asked you,” Dragan said.

Nikolai looked back at him. “Why?”

“Because someone tried to kill her less than an hour after she left here.” It was dangerous to put the truth out there, but he’d found that telling a lie at a time like this usually came back to bite him in the ass. Better to be as truthful as possible.

Katya’s face paled, but she barely faltered as she lifted the champagne to her mouth. However, her hand shook enough that the liquid trembled in the glass.

Nikolai noticed, and his eyes narrowed. “You know this woman.”

“I met her last week at a club,” Katya snapped.

“That is not what I asked.”

“No, you asked nothing. You accused. There is a difference.”

Nikolai set his glass down on the table with deliberate care. “I am trying to understand why a strange man has come into my suite asking about a strange woman who used an alias to gain access to my wife.”

“Maybe because your wife is charming,” Katya said, the smile on her face turning brittle. “It happens. You should know. You bought me because of it.”

The silence that followed was not empty. It was packed tight with things neither of them should have said in front of a stranger.

Dragan kept his expression neutral. Bought. That was an interesting turn of phrase.

Nikolai’s jaw flexed. “You are emotional.”

“I am bored,” she said in a tone that tried to make her statement sound like the truth, but her pinched expression told Dragan that this woman was scared.