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an opportunity. I always meant to track you down while I was in Scotland, but when I ran into the police, I decided to let them do it for me.”
    “Why?” she said again, baffled. “What do you want with me?”
    “I thought your dreams might help me find my treasure.”
    She lowered the glass, which had only made it halfway to her mouth. “All right. Now you’re back in airy-fairy weirdo territory.”
    “Like your mother?”
    “Fuck off,” she said dangerously.
    “Did you never ask yourself why she was so open to that shit?”
    She opened her mouth to retort, then shut it again with an angry shrug. The bastard already perceived far more than he should have, as much from what she didn’t say as from what she did.
    “Zavrekestan is a strange country to outsiders. Many of us have odd…abilities. Maybe your mother didn’t have any herself—I don’t know—but I’ll bet you anything she grew up with some people who did.”
    “Oh, that’s such a pile of crap!” Nell exclaimed. “If there really was a country full of supernatural dudes, why does everyone not know about it? It’s not as if people aren’t investigating that kind of stuff all over the planet.”
    “Why would they come to Zavrekestan? There’s nothing much there. It was poor before Stalin got hold of it, and he and the Russian war between them sure as hell didn’t improve it any. It’s much more fun to chase ghosts around Britain or America.”
    She shrugged impatiently, then sipped her whisky, very aware of his continuing attention, and decided to change tack. “So how much danger am I actually in?” she asked. “From this—Gadarin.”
    “I don’t know,” he said with apparent honesty. “Probably, since you drove off with me, he will make an attempt to find out who you are. And if he did, you would not be safe. On the other hand, since no one in the criminal world knows anything about you, he might never find out.”
    She cheered up, very briefly, then frowned. “The police know me now. So does your lawyer.”
    “I’ll take care of Gadarin.”
    She dragged her hand through her hair. “That does not make me feel better! Get this through your overactive brain, Rodion Andreyevich, I am not a thread in your revenge plans. I can’t and won’t help you find your treasure.”
    “Fair enough.”
    Too easy. She eyed him with overt suspicion.
    His eyes twinkled disarmingly. “But since you’re here, you might as well tell me anything you remember from your dreams. Until it’s quite safe for you to go home.”
    Which was when Nell decided to throw her whisky over him.

Chapter Five
    She was fast. She almost succeeded.
    But Rodion was quicker, grabbing her wrist just as it jerked upward. The whisky slopped up the side of the glass but didn’t spill. He lifted one brow in challenge, the spark of laughter just fading from his curiously dark blue eyes. Perhaps that was what caused the butterflies to dance in her stomach. Only the feeling seemed to come from her wrist, grasped firmly in his strong, lean fingers.
    It was another of those moments, like when he took her phone, when the world faded and nothing mattered, not identity or crime or fear, only the electric attraction sizzling between them. Although his warm fingers on her wrist were less obviously erotic than his palm on her breast, this touch was somehow more intimate: deliberate, skin on skin. And irritation melted into utter desire. She could drown in his eyes, blocking everything else except the exciting, insidious music; drag his hands all over her body; feel them on all her skin. She could touch him ; she could lean forward and kiss his not-quite-smiling lips.
    The butterflies plunged lower. How did he kiss?
    I really, really don’t need to know that. Because she had the strangely exciting feeling that his kiss would end the last control she had of this situation. As if he read her thoughts, his gaze dropped to her mouth. One finger stroked her wrist, and she shivered.
    The