The Silver Fox and the Red-Hot Dove

  He reached the street in time to see her run into a nearby intersection between tall office buildings. A lone pickup truck with a covered bed idled at a red light, unsuspecting. She made a beeline for it, pulled up the canvas flap emblazoned Nilly’s Fine Vegetables, Artemis Island, VA, and climbed inside the truck’s tall, wooden shed.

  Audubon memorized the license plate just as the light changed. He stood in the center of the street, watching the truck pull away, feeling triumphant but sorry for her, because she’d had to resort to such a pitiful avenue for escape. The flap lifted at one corner. She peeked out and froze when she saw him. Then the flap snapped down again.

  Audubon strolled back inside the hotel where security guards were yelling that everything was all right, that someone had pulled the alarm as a prank. Humming under his breath, he went to a phone in the lobby and called his estate. Within fifteen minutes his elite network was preparing to track the flight of the fascinating, mysterious, and possibly dangerous pigeon, whom Audubon intended to capture for himself.

  Two

  “So you really can’t talk?”

  Elena nodded her head again and stared at the sun rising over the ocean to her right. She was exhausted, frightened, and trying hard to think of a plan. Her indecision focused on T. S. Audubon for the hundredth time. What had he been up to last night? Who had he told about her escape route? Bitter sorrow filled her as she considered the possibility that her silver fox might just be a silver rat. Her silver fox. He had made his mark on her imagination forever.

  An hour before, Beckel Nilly had discovered her in the back of his truck during a stop to buy fuel. Elena had been certain her escape attempt was finished. There were so many criminals in America, Sergei had said, that no one trusted strangers. So who would help a Russian found huddled among tomato crates without money, luggage, or identification?

  But the woman had only grunted with mild surprise and peered at her as if she were an interesting new type of vegetable. “If you’re a runnin’ from somebody,” Beckel Nilly had said, “you might as well do it up front in the cab.”

  Shocked, Elena had realized all wasn’t lost. But her voice, her accent—how could she get by without revealing it? She pointed to her-throat and shook her head.

  “Can’t talk? Won’t talk? Here.” Beckel had pulled a grimy notepad from a pocket of her work shirt and thrust it into Elena’s hands. “Can you write?” Elena gave her a fervent nod and quickly put down, I am honest person. Please forgive intrusion. I can hear but cannot talk. Am running away from home.

  A home half a world away, but that was beside the point.

  “Where’s home?”

  Elena searched her knowledge of America for a safe lie. Chevrolet.

  “A car?”

  Elena groaned at her error. A town in the next state, she wrote.

  “What’s your name?”

  She thought furiously, trying to come up with something that sounded very American. Madonna Sinatra.

  “Where’re you headed?”

  Elena shrugged. She had no idea.

  “Need a job? If you can hoe weeds, pick vegetables, and clean house, you can stay with me. I live on an island. You can’t crave company, and work for me, I warn ya. It’s a lonely place. You’ll get about ten dollars a week, plus room and board. You want the job or not?”

  Maybe this woman was a little crazy, but she didn’t seem devious. At least she wasn’t going to turn Elena over to the police. All Elena had to do was act like an American and keep out of sight on Beckel Nilly’s island, then.

  “Ain’t got all day,” Beckel Nilly said. “You want the job or not?”

  She would hide with this odd woman and learn how to act like an American while she decided what to do next. She hoped that T. S. Audubon wouldn’t look for her. She suspected he would. She scribbled out an answer. Okay.

  * * *

  “I’m going in on the south side, where the woods are. Give me that map report again.” Audubon lounged in the captain’s chair, guiding the boat with one hand and holding the radio mike with the other. Artemis Island loomed ahead, looking like any other coastal island, a green-blue mound of forest rimmed with beach. One of his helicopters passed over it lazily like a harmless, oversized bee.

  “Audubon? The house is about a half mile from the south beach. There’s a trail through the woods. And—wait! I see her. She’s walking in from the field. I think I’ve spooked her. She keeps looking up.”

  “Leave. Now. I’ll call you as soon as I get back to the boat with her.”

  “Okay, boss. Out.”

  Audubon put the mike aside and straightened in the chair. His heart was pounding with excitement. He tossed a dirty blue baseball cap, with its fish hook decorations, aside, then smiled at his torn sneakers, grimy brown trousers, and sweat-stained shirt. Acting the part of a derelict fisherman had been the perfect way to win Beckel Nilly’s friendship. When he’d helped her load her truck on the mainland docks, she’d told him all about her new worker.

  Audubon threw his head back and laughed. He gave “Madonna Sinatra” points for creativity. His laughter fading, he thought she also deserved points for courage and resourcefulness.

  Not that any of those qualities would help her to elude him. Since Beckel Nilly was on her way to Richmond with a load of vegetables, Ms. Petrovic-Sinatra, alone and unsuspecting on the island coming up close on his starboard, was ripe for picking.

  Elena paced the creaking wooden floor of Beckel Nilly’s living room, her bare feet making worried little squeaks. She took deep breaths of the breeze that curled through every corner of the clapboard house. She wrung the sides of her shapeless, sleeveless dress of brightly flowered cotton. It was made from a seed sack, and Beckel Nilly had given it to her, saying it had become too small for her to wear ten years ago.

  When the helicopter flew over her in the vegetable field, Elena had wanted to duck inside the dress and hide. She was terrified that someone had found her. Now, going to one corner of the ramshackle room, she picked up a deadly little harpoon gun and studied it anxiously. The razor-sharp arrow protruding from the end of the barrel made her flinch at the thought of what it could do. Mrs. Nilly had taught her how to shoot the device, and Elena was convinced then that Americans were, indeed, very worried about crime.

  When she heard steps on the back porch, she moaned under her breath, and, leveling the harpoon gun in front of her, went down a hallway strewn with farm tools.

  Slow footsteps crossed the porch and entered the kitchen through the warped screen door. She halted, trembling, her ears alert to catch the sound of the slightest movement. But there were no more sounds. She squinted in the bright light filling the end of the hallway from a large window that faced the western sky.

  When T. S. Audubon stepped silently into the hall, she jumped. He was barefoot. He stopped, legs apart, hands hanging calmly by his sides, the window’s light turning him into an unnerving masculine silhouette of power and drama. “I’m not here to hurt you, Elena.” He spoke in English, his voice low and coaxing. “I know you’re here alone, but you don’t have to be afraid of me. I’ve come to take you to a safe place.”

  The liquid richness of his voice played on her cold skin, but she was certain now that he worked for his government. What ordinary citizen would have followed her so diligently and known how to spy on Mrs. Nilly’s schedule? “Get out,” she commanded. “I’m not leaving this island.”

  “You speak excellent English, even when you’re upset. I’m glad you can understand me. And I know you can see me, even if you’re not wearing your fake glasses. Now, listen. I can help you.”

  “Why?”

  “I enjoy helping people.”

  “Why?”

  “Explaining would take longer than you’d like. But if you want to stay in the United States, you’re going about it the wrong way. I can change that.”

  “I just want to be free. I don’t need your help.” She clutched the harpoon. “I’m only a secretary. What do
you want with me?”

  “Tell me why you’re so important to Kriloff. He accused me of stealing you. He’s causing an uproar with our State Department. I don’t think the loss of a secretary would be worth an ugly break in diplomacy. Do you?”

  “I will find help on my own. I don’t trust you.”

  “You trusted me the other night. You wanted to be as close to me as you could get.”

  “A dance. The spell of the music. We Russians are warm-blooded and impetuous. It meant nothing.”

  “I’ve danced with a lot of women. The communication between you and me was not nothing.”

  “I won’t go back! I’m hurting no one! Why can’t all of you let me alone?”

  “Why are you so important to Dr. Kriloff? Are you his lover?”

  The breath burst from her in a yelp of disgust. “No! He has a wife and daughter in Moscow! And I would never let him—oh! What a dreadful thing to suspect of me! Do you think I’m so ugly that I’d—oh!”

  “Hmmm. Why does he treat you like a slave?”

  “Because I was a slave! But now I’m free! And I’ll never cooperate with anyone again! I’d rather die!”

  The silhouette’s hands, raised in gentle supplication, struck a deep chord in her. “You don’t have to die,” T. S. Audubon said with a kindness that added to her confusion. “I’ll take you to my home. You’ll be safe there.”

  A new thought chilled her. She had never had much contact with the world outside Kriloff’s institute, and therefore little experience with the motivations of men, either Russian or American. She couldn’t begin to fathom the enigmatic Audubon’s interest in her, but she had been treated to a terrible lesson in men’s motivations by Pavel. “If you’re not with the government, and you don’t want to give me back to my own people, then there is only one reason you came to capture me. For sex!”

  He coughed, caught a sound deep in his throat, and suddenly she realized he was suppressing a laugh. He looked toward heaven. “A dirty, skinny, shaggy-haired, weapon-toting woman in a brightly flowered seed sack is accusing me of lecherous intentions.” His gaze shifted to her again. “I assure you, madame, I prefer my women well-groomed, unarmed, and wearing something that doesn’t have ‘Dutch Girl Alfalfa’ stenciled across the bottom.”

  His teasing made her burn with humiliation. “So you were not telling the truth the other night. I am ugly to you. Good. Then you don’t have any reason to want me. Go away. I’ve never done anything bad to you.”

  “Except refuse my help.” The kindness returned to his voice. “Look, I’m in the import/export business. I consider helping you a work-related challenge. You might say you’re the most interesting import I’ve run across in a long time.”

  “I can’t trust you or anyone else! I’ve waited too long for this chance. All I’m asking you to do is leave and not tell anyone that you know where I am. Please. Please. It means my whole future, my life, because I will die rather than return home with Kriloff.”

  “What has he done to you?” Audubon asked in a grim, low tone.

  “I don’t want to discuss my life with you.”

  “A person as desperate as you are has been tortured in some way—if not physically, then emotionally. Come with me, Elena. I’ll never let that bastard hurt you again. I swear it.”

  The edge in his voice was so new and so lethal, it frightened rather than reassured her. Americans were barbaric and bloodthirsty, Sergei said. The richest among them lived like mobsters, ordering terrible revenges on people who displeased them. What if she did something that upset this supremely powerful and authoritative man?

  Her knees were weak, but she forced herself to move. Backing up by slow degrees, she kept the harpoon gun pointed at the spot where his chest flowed into an athlete’s waist. His shirt hung open down the center, giving her a bold target of masculine hair and muscle.

  Once, as part of her performances for Kriloff’s important friends, she’d healed a famous Lithuanian weight lifter who suffered from liver trouble. His stomach had felt like T. S. Audubon’s looked. She couldn’t picture that wall of hard flesh letting even a harpoon arrow through … and the mere thought of hurting him made her nauseous.

  “Put down the gun,” he coaxed. “I won’t make a move. I promise.”

  “I want you to move. Go back where you came from.”

  “My family came over from France about two hundred and twenty years ago. I think it’s too late to go back. I know you’ll trust me as soon as we have a chance to talk. I have a boat waiting just offshore. Time is precious. I’m very good at what I do, but it’s quite possible your belligerent comrades have managed to follow me.”

  “So that’s your plan. We’ll reach the mainland, and they’ll be there, waiting, and you can say it wasn’t your fault! No!” She started to pivot and run, but she’d backed too close to the side of the hallway, and her elbow slammed into the wall.

  The harpoon gun jerked, recoiled, and released its arrow with an ominous hissing sound. The arrow hit Audubon in the right side, sinking deeply into a spot under his rib cage.

  Elena dropped the gun and covered her horrified scream with both hands. He staggered, clasped a hand around the arrow’s steel shaft, and groaned with pain as he worked it loose. He dropped the arrow and pressed his hand over the wound. Blood poured through his fingers.

  “Wouldn’t happen to have a Band-Aid, would you?” he said with an amazing attempt at a smile through clenched teeth. She took several numb steps forward, gazing at him in anguish. He squinted at her in obvious agony.

  “I didn’t mean to do it,” she whispered.

  “Is there a radio here?”

  “It’s broken. Mrs. Nilly was supposed to pick up a new transistor today.”

  He looked down at the cascade of blood that now stained the bottom half of his shirt. Then he left the hall and walked swiftly through the kitchen, taking a hand towel from the sink to plaster against the terrible wound, and hunching over with pain. Elena followed him in tormented silence. “Call my people, the first chance you get,” he urged, his voice a rasp. “Use the card … I gave you. May be your only … hope.”

  With impressive strength and determination he left the house and strode between the clumps of saw grass in the sandy backyard. Her conscience on fire, Elena stood on the porch steps and stared after him as he disappeared down the trail under a dense canopy of moss-draped trees.

  Her guilt warred with self-preservation. He’d be all right. He’d go to his boat and call for help. She’d have time to take Mrs. Nilly’s little fishing skiff and leave from the opposite side of the island. She couldn’t risk her future for him. He wasn’t going to die if she didn’t help him.

  She sank to the steps and sat there for several minutes, her hands knotted into fists of emotion against her face. Even from the porch she could see where his blood had spattered the sand. A fierce, unrelenting thought tore at her. The arrow hit an artery. He may bleed to death before his people can reach him.

  Her fingers burned with energy. Every instinct that flowed from her gift urged her to do what she was meant to do, to use the wonderful power that had never been perverted, not even by Kriloff. Crying, she shook her fists and looked toward heaven. “All I wanted was to be free!”

  She leapt from the steps and ran after Audubon.

  He woke with his head in someone’s lap and his legs in the ocean. A shadow made his face feel cooler than his arms. He could feel the sun on them as well as on his bare chest and stomach. He could feel the softness of the thighs beneath his head. He could feel the strange, tingling heat against his side.

  It was all very pleasurable, and suddenly he realized that none of it would have felt so good if he were dead. He opened his eyes quickly and stared up into the faded cotton flowers covering Elena Petrovic’s chest. She was bent over him so deeply that he inhaled the soap-fresh scent of the fabric and the sexual, feminine scent of her body. With ease he could have lifted his head and nuzzled the mounds that pressed downward ag
ainst the thin cloth. Hibiscus had never looked so interesting before.

  He was in a languid mood, as if half-asleep. Slowly he tried to remember how he’d gotten this way. His last memory was of sinking to his knees in the surf, too weak and dizzy to climb into the dinghy he’d left on shore. It had floated away, taking his last bit of consciousness with it.

  Now energy was flowing back into him through the puzzling sensation beneath his rib cage. The wound! He tilted his head up in a hurry to see what was happening, but instead mashed his upper face into the lovely upside-down hills covered in hibiscus.

  Elena leaned back, taking her shadow with her. Sunshine flooded his eyes and he turned his head to one side, blinking, his mind and eyes beginning to focus. He disliked the helpless feeling, which reminded him of the time he’d been wounded in Vietnam. But when Elena ran her hands up his chest, bringing the comforting, energized glow with them, he exhaled with delight.

  Her hands flattened over the center of his chest; his heart seemed to be drawn to them, to her. He was liquid inside, responding to the pull of her elements. It was like nothing he’d felt before, like nothing any other woman had made him feel … or want. “What are you doing to me?” he asked.

  “I applied pressure to your wound.” Her voice sounded drained, hollow. “Nothing mysterious. It stopped the bleeding. Sheer luck.” Her hands fell from his chest, cupped his head, then lowered it to the sand as she slid from under him.

  Audubon raised up on his elbow and looked at himself. The surf ruffled over his lower legs, taking away red clouds of blood that had soaked his trousers on the side beneath his wound. His shirt hung open, the ends trailing red streamers on the sand. His torso’s covering of fine, dark brown hair, which had never turned white like the hair on his head, was crusted with dried blood.

  He’d come much closer to dying than he’d realized. Elena Petrovic had stopped the bleeding with simple pressure techniques? Impossible. Quickly he craned his head so that he could find the wound under his rib cage. Shock poured through him. The gash was dry, and the edges had closed. They were already forming pink ridges of scar tissue.