“I got you another Coke anyway,” Alexi told her when he returned.
Don’t drink it. He might have put something in it.
“Well, thank you,” Chrissy said. But the smash of shattered glass startled him, and he turned to see what had happened. Chrissy caught his eyes and shook her head. Saks turned back to his drink, relieved Chrissy took care of the problem of a possibly spiked drink.
She’s smart, he thought, feeling relief that she’d make it out of this okay.
“Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m so clumsy.
”
“Not a problem. Staff will clean it up in a minute. We can go to another table.”
“Oh no, really, I don’t want to be a bother. Besides, the table’s fine. So, tell me, we didn’t get to talk much at the party. What do you do here in London?”
A chair scraped the floor, and Saks imagined that Kovel sat across from his woman and was staring into the depths of her beautiful eyes.
Get a hold of yourself.
“I work in import-export.”
Chrissy laughed. “That’s what my boss does, too.”
“Yes. We do business with him.”
“We?” Chrissy asked coquettishly.
“You may have heard of my boss. Sergei Kosikov.”
“Yes,” Chrissy replied. “I’ve placed calls to him for Mr. Pearson.”
“I know.” There was something menacing in the man’s voice, but Saks was left to the images washed in his mind rather than an actual view of what was happening.
Chrissy gasped, the sound of her shock sending Saks’ nerves into overdrive. “Take your hand off my wrist,” she hissed sharply.
“You will get up and walk out of here with me,” Kovel instructed. “Let us not play games. I don’t know why you’ve returned to London, but this presents an excellent opportunity for us—one that we thought we lost.”
“What opportunity is that?”
“A way to deal damage to some business rivals.”
“I won’t go anywhere with you.”
“Under the table I'm pointing a gun at you. I’ll shoot everyone I can just to get you to leave with me. Get the picture, Miss Serafini? Innocents will suffer, and some will die because of you. Their blood will be on your hands.”
“Let me go or I’ll scream.”
“Come now. You want to see your precious Jessica Saunders, do you not? We still have her, until later tonight. Then she goes off to her new life.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Pretty blondes, well, they have value.”
“You’re despicable.”
Kovel sighed. “Get up. Let’s go.”
Saks forced himself to breathe slowly. He couldn’t force his hand, so he waited until they made the door before he stood and wove his way through the pub crowd to follow them. More than anything he wanted to grab the guy and beat the shit out of him for laying a single hand on Chrissy. He couldn’t, though, not in a crowded place like this, and not when she was in potentially life-threatening danger.