Chapter 37

Alexei Estate, North of Moscow, Russia

-

Cesar Faison felt like he held the world in his hands.

Jan was missing. Scorpio was near death and as uncooperative as ever. Yet none of it mattered because, finally, at long last, Anna had found her way into his arms.

She had kissed him with as much pleasure and passion as he had kissed her.

Next to that nothing else mattered.

He smiled at her. Anna was still lying on her back, on the grass, her long, dark hair entwined in its fresh, green blades. Faison's fingers played with it, while he used his free arm to prop himself up alongside her.

"I've loved you for so long, Anna," he said, breathlessly. He wanted to say more, just as he wanted to bend down and kiss her again. But, with a willpower he didn't think he had, he refrained from both. Anna wasn't ready yet. She probably wasn't even ready for the words he'd just spoken.

"I know," was all she said. Her expression was unreadable, yet, thankfully, he saw no traces of regret on her face.

'Of course she didn't regret kissing me,' he thought. She had explored him just as hungrily as he did her. There was no denying her enjoyment of the moment.

'Guilt?' he wondered.

"Do you still love David?" he asked. It was a juvenile question but he had to know.

Anna looked at him, and this time he caught an unmistakeable sadness in her eyes. "No…I don't love him anymore. It was over between us long before Leah was born."

"I'm sorry," he said, tracing her lips with his index finger. Oddly enough he meant it. He couldn't imagine any man ever leaving her. "He didn't deserve you, Anna."

"Mmm…maybe you're right." Her hand reached up to touch his face. "Maybe you were right all along."

Faison took her hand in his and laid down on the grass next to her, his face nearly touching hers.

He didn't need to say anything. Or do anything.

Knowing now that she wanted him too, even if she wouldn't admit it yet, meant that he could take his time. It meant that everything would fall into place.

For now, he could simply stare into the blue sky above while leaves rustled overhead and horses played in the distance. Her breathing was even and steady next to his and slowly his heart started beating to the same rhythm.

It felt like heaven.

Auberge Augustin, Paris, France

-

"Hello, Mr. Holstrom."

Anna's gaze held steady as she searched the thin man's face for a trace of emotion.

"You do know me, don't you?" she said with an icy smile. "All those months ago, on that park bench, when Cesar Faison made you run after me when I was sick with morning sickness."

Jan Holstrom said nothing. Yet his eyes made no attempts to escape her gaze.

"I have a feeling your recollection for details and faces is just as good as mine, Mr. Holstrom."

A pained smile played on his lips. He was visibly uncomfortable and exhausted, his muscles cramped from the handcuffs. "I would like to think my eye for details is better than yours, Ms. Devane."

Anna leaned against the wall. With only a handful of words, he'd broken both his silence and his denial.

Alone with her, Jan Holstrom had decided he wasn't going to play games and Anna couldn't figure out what that meant.

"I had a strange feeling that it wasn't you," he said in English, his diction flawless in spite of an accent that volunteered his Scandinavian background. "There were tiny little clues."

Anna listened to him.

"I knew you were an art expert, and yet there were stunning items in the house that barely registered with your sister."

Jan paused, as though waiting for a reaction from her, knowing she was soaking in every word for clues. "Her accent," he went on. "It's slightly different from yours. It's more… English. And during those rare moments when I spoke to her I noticed that she lacked something…I'm not sure how to describe what it was, but it was something." He paused. "Don't worry," he added. "Cesar does not notice these little details. He is too blinded by his love for her…" He smiled. An ironic, cynical smile. "I meant…for you."

Everything he was saying confirmed what Anna, in her heart, already knew. That this man was close enough to Faison to known his every move.

"Where did he take her?" Anna demanded, hating the way Jan's words had made her skin crawl.

"You know I cannot tell you that."

"If you tell us where she is, we can protect you! We can change your identity, we can guarantee that he'll never find you."

Jan Holstrom laughed at the absurdity of what she was saying. "You cannot run or hide from him. You know that better than anyone else."

Anna knelt down next to him, an eerie foreboding of defeat crawling up her spine. "Cesar Faison is just a man. Nothing more, nothing less. He's not all-powerful."

"If I let you protect me, I spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulders," he said with the same defeat that she felt. "I spend the rest of my life knowing that one day he will find me and kill me."

"No…" Anna shook her head. "That's not true…if you tell us where she is, we end it, for once and for all. We get him and put him behind bars for the rest of his life."

"As if you could," Jan sneered. "Even if you could imprison him, we both know he would not be there for long."

"Please!" Anna begged, "I'm begging you! Please help us! If Faison finds out that he kidnapped the wrong woman… I'm terrified of what he'll do to my sister."

"He will kill her," Jan answered bluntly. "Just as he will kill me if he finds out I led you to her."

Anna felt a warm, unwanted tear roll down her cheek. "Knowing that, how can you protect someone like that?"

"Because he is my life," Jan answered simply. "Only a few weeks ago, I thought differently but now I've realized that my entire existence is built around him."

"What about my sister's life? My sister is a doctor, a healer, who spent most her life treating terminal ill patients. She is the last person on Earth who deserves this!"

"I don't care about your sister, " Jan answered brusquely.

Anna stood back up, anger glistening through her tears. "Then what do you care about then, Jan? There has to be something."

"It's too late now, for you to give me what I want. By holding me prisoner here you've already broken the bond of trust between me and him," Jan said sadly before his bruised, swollen face lifted into another smile, as though recalling a fond memory. "Tell me, Anna, have you ever visited the Sistine Chapel?"

His question was answered by a loud pounding on the door, followed by Sandrine's voice.

"Anna, what are you doing in there?"

"If it's already too late for you to regain his trust, then at least help us," Anna pleaded.

Jan shook his head. "I can't."

Her eyes narrowed. "Can't or won't?"

"Anna, open the door!" This time it was another voice, accompanying the pounding on the door. A man's voice. Not Dan but Sean.

"I already betrayed him once," Jan admitted. "I will not do it again."

There was a finality in his words that made Anna's knees go weak. The knowledge that this man held her sister's fate in his hands and chose to throw it away was unfathomable.

"Maybe it will be better for you, when he finds out…maybe after he kills her it will leave a bitter taste in his mouth and he will finally lose interest in you."

"Oh God…" Anna thought her knees would give in. "You bastard!"

There was no emotion in his words. Neither malice nor glee. He was simply stating the facts. Ending a life as vibrant as her sister's was an event no more or less unpleasant than visiting the dentist. It might not be enjoyable but it was for the best.

"If you don't open this door right now, Anna, I'm going to break it in!" Sean yelled through the door. If he wanted to, it would have been quite possible. The doors inside the rooms of the Auberge were made of little more than reinforced, painted plywood.

He wouldn't need to.

Anna fought back her rage. It was obvious that Jan Holstrom wasn't going to help them. He couldn't be bought, because he didn't have a price. Her talk with him was finished. In fact, she could barely bring herself to look at him anymore.

"Maybe it's better that Faison finds out," he added. "Because Alex is so unhappy with him, the alternative may not be so bad."

Anna swallowed. "What did you say?"

"She is tired and hurt and she won't be able to keep up the charade much longer anyway."

His words were like a whip, lashing out at her. "You have it in your power to help her, and yet you won't lift a finger. What kind of a coward are you?"

"I am not the one who asked my sister to fight my battle for me."

At the sting of his comment, Anna reached back and struck his face, sending his head crashing back into the wooden headboard of the bed he was handcuffed to. "You bastard…"

Jan couldn't wipe away the blood on his lips and it dripped down his pinstriped shirt. "This is why you should be there instead of her," he pointed out. "Because you could fight him. Alex can't. "

Anna felt the tears run down her face again. "You said she was hurt! What happened to Alex? Tell me!"

"I don't think so…not after what you just did. You don't deserve another crumb from me."

Anna struck him again and this time the back of his head crashed against the bedpost with a thud. "What the hell is wrong with you?" she demanded through her tears. "How can you not feel anything? What kind of a person lets someone like my sister suffer only because they couldn't care less? Because they couldn't bother to lift a finger!"

"Anna, open the door!" Sean's voice echoed through the room.

Jan's bloodied lips lifted into another pained smile. "It sounds like you might be in trouble, Ms. Devane."

Anna wiped away her tears, moving to undo the lock on the door. "You're a lucky man. Lucky that we won't fight like your boss…"

Jan chuckled, "Right…except for you…" He tried in vain to rub the back of his head. "You would fight dirty, wouldn't you, Ms. Devane? Faison was right. You and him are more alike than I would have imagined."

Anna glared at him and opened the lock with trembling hands. When the door opened Sean Donely, along with Sandrine almost tumbled into the room.

"Anna, what the hell happened?" Sean demanded, shocked when he saw Jan's bloodied lip.

"Nothing," she said icily. "Nothing happened."

"I think you should leave this room right now," he told her calmly. He glanced at Sandrine. "Will you see to it that our guest gets cleaned up?"

Sandrine nodded, staring at Anna with a mixture of anger and disbelief. "I…yes, I will…yes."

-

Sandrine waited until they were out of earshot, then closed the door behind her, noticing that Sean did the same.

She shuddered when she saw the bruises on his face.

'Anna,' she thought incredulously. 'Robert's beloved Anna did that to you.'

Sandrine wondered if Robert knew what his ex-wife was capable of.

"You're the one, aren't you?" she asked Jan softly, in French.

"What?" he answered, groaning. The act of turning his head was a gesture filled with discomfort.

"You are Robert's informant, aren't you?" Sandrine thought of the connections Anna had made, of the transactions involving conflict diamonds. Transactions that she couldn't trace back to Faison. It all made sense now. Of course, Anna couldn't trace them back to Faison because Jan Holstrom would have made sure his boss never had a clue about them.

"I don't know what you're…" he started, his emotionless face showing its first hint of surprise.

"I know you are," she repeated softly. "And I think…I think, Mr. Holstrom that you and I can help each other."

The room next door

-

Anna felt Sean's hand on her shoulder, pushing her into the bedroom adjacent to the room where they held Jan Holstrom.

Silently, he gave her another push, this time onto the bed that was covered in a mess of paperwork, forcing her to sit down.

Sean closed the door behind them and sat down next to her. His expression was devoid of its earlier hostility and Anna wondered if, back in the other room, his anger had been for Sandrine's benefit. "I'm going to ask you again…what the hell got into you?"

Away from Jan's unreadable face, Anna suddenly felt drained. Empty. Her head pounded and she was oddly gratefully that the pain stopped her from feeling anything else.

"He knows, Sean," she said, in little more than a whisper. "He knows exactly where Alex is. He was there with them."

Sean's expression softened. "You're saying he admitted it?"

Anna nodded. "He didn't even try to deny it."

"What did you get out of him?"

"Nothing."

"But he admitted to having seen her?"

"Yes," Anna whispered. "He said she was hurt."

Sean cringed. "He could have been playing you…"

"No," Anna shook her head. "He doesn't play games, Sean. I'm not sure he's capable of it."

"Sweetheart, that doesn't mean he couldn't have lied," Sean suggested softly. "What exactly did he say?"

"He said that…" Anna heard her voice breaking. "He said that if Faison found out he'd kill her. That it might be for the best because Alex was tired and hurt and that she couldn't keep up the game much longer…" The tears came again, against her will and Anna cupped her face in her hands.

Sean draped an arms around her shoulder. "Jan's not with them now. He hasn't been in Russia the last few days. He has no idea what's going with them right now." His voice was calm. Reassuring.

"You're right," Anna admitted, wiping the tears from her cheeks. Forcing herself to regain a measure of composure. "I lost it in there…I'm sorry, Sean. I shouldn't have…"

Sean didn't let her finish, squeezing her shoulders tighter. "Stop. Don't apologize. You did what I've wanted to do since we got the bastard. What you did was…"

"It was unacceptable," she cut him off. "I was a Chief of Police less than a year ago, and today I almost beat up a suspect…I don't know what came over me."

"Stop it," Sean said harshly. "Don't you beat yourself up over this."

"Dan was right," she cut him off. "We're officers of the law. If we fight them the way they fight us, we're no better than the Faisons of this world."

Sean's eyes flashed with anger. Anger for the guilt that was etched on Anna's face. "Sometimes," he corrected her. "Sometimes you need to fight fire with fire and doing that takes just as much guts as taking the high road."

"It's what's always made us different from Robert, isn't it?" she asked him bitterly. "When push comes to shove we never hesitated to cross the line. But Robert would never have crossed the line. Not for anything. Or anyone."

She cupped her face in her hands, crying.

"Sweetheart, you're exhausted," he said gently, his hand rubbing her back. "It's been three weeks since Alex was taken. You haven't been feeling well…so you slapped that bastard a couple of times. So what? You've got to cut yourself break here, Anna."

He pulled her towards him. "I'm going to help, Sandrine. I want you to stay here and rest for a while."

"I can't…"

"Alright," He moved her hands from her face. "Then go out for some air. Take a long walk. But don't sit here and blame yourself for doing what each of us might have done."

"You wouldn't have…"

"Yeah, right." Sean smirked. "All you did was save me the trouble."

She looked up at him, her eyes wet. "Sean, I…I'm glad…" He watched her fumble for the words. "I'm really glad you're here."

He nodded, "Me too, sweetheart." He ran a hand through his hair. "I think you're wrong about one thing though. I think you're wrong about Robert. If it meant breaking the law for you or Robin, I don't think he would have hesitated."

Anna nodded, listening to his words even as she couldn't bring herself to believe them. Now that the adrenaline surge had worn off, she felt an exhaustion so profound she wanted to sink into the bed she sat on. Wanted to close her eyes and push every single thought from her mind. Alex. Faison. What she had just happened in the room next door. Everything. If only she could erase it all for a few hours of dreamless sleep.

As though sensing her weariness, Sean bent down to search for the pillows amidst their paper mess. "I really think you should get some rest."

"Maybe you're…"

Anna didn't have a chance to finish when they heard Dan's voice yelling through the suite.

"Anna! Sean! Where the hell are you?!"

Sean jumped out of the bedroom and Anna followed him. They ran into the room where they had kept Jan Holstrom.

What Anna saw made her gasp.

Dan O'Toole was kneeling on the floor next to a barely conscious Sandrine. A trickle of blood ran down the side of her face.

And Jan Holstrom was gone.