ONCE CASSIE REACHED his feet, Kasanov jerked his head in a nod and one of his minions leapt forward, knife in hand, and cut her wrists free. She stretched for the bottle of water Kasanov held out to her. Finally, she grasped it with both hands, fearful that she might drop it, her fingers were so numb.
Greedily, she drank it all before he could change his mind. She would have tried to maintain her dignity, but she couldn’t survive without water. Besides, what did she care about humiliation? Didn’t matter one wit what Kasanov and his men thought of her as long as it got her what she wanted: her and Muriel safe and free.
Was this how Rosa felt when the Gestapo held her prisoner? Paddy had dropped hints of that time, but Cassie never heard Rosa say a word about it, had to fill in any details from her imagination colored by horrors described in the history books.
But, just like Paddy had come for Rosa, she knew Drake would rally every law enforcement agency and use all their resources to find her and Muriel.
She scanned her environment. The window behind Kasanov, the one leading to the office area, was now crowded with faces pressed against the glass. Children of all ages—the pickpockets she’d seen last night at the museum. She didn’t see the woman, Natasha, or the boy, Vincent, but then the door from the office slid open silently, just far enough to allow a reedy-thin boy to slip through. Vincent. He sidled into the shadows behind Kasanov and his men to stand, waiting, watching.
Good to know she had one ally here. The thought brought with it strength.
As she tilted the bottle back to suck out the final drops, she glanced at Kasanov. He lounged in his chair, watching her with an indulgent smile, not hurried at all.
Didn’t he know he’d already lost? There was no way he could escape. What good was any story of Rosa’s past when he’d be spending the rest of his life in prison? If Drake didn’t kill him first.
The thought made her want to smile, but she forced it back. Kasanov couldn’t have come as far as he had without being smart enough to have an exit strategy. Which meant her job would be to stall him as long as possible, give Drake the time he needed to find her and Muriel.
She glanced at the men with guns. Only four of them, none old enough to drink legally; one of them didn’t even look like he’d started shaving yet. Why so young? Wouldn’t a man like Kasanov have more experienced thugs at his command? Maybe the younger men were more pliable, willing to do violence for no good reason?
Or maybe they were expendable? Probably both. She wondered if there was some way she could use that against them.
She set the bottle down. Kasanov said nothing. Okay, she’d play his game, act the supplicant. “Thank you,” she said, her voice raspy.
He inclined his head as if granting a royal boon. And waited.
“May I see Muriel?” she asked. “I’d like to make sure she’s okay.”
“You doubt my word?” he boomed, but his frown was fake. All part of the damn game.
“No. Of course not.” Right. Like she trusted the word of a man who’d threatened to kill a child in front of his mother. “May I please see her?”
“I think not. Not until I’ve received some cooperation for my efforts.”
“I don’t understand.” Cassie shifted her weight as her legs began to come alive with pain. Her ankles were still bound so she had no choice but to sit like a child, legs curled up to one side or the other.
“Rosa never told you about the treasure she stole?”
“No. She never talked about her past.”
He made a skeptical noise. “What about that gaje she married? Padraic Hart. What did he tell you?”
“He used to tell me stories about the people they helped escape from the Nazis, about some of the things they did during the war. Nothing about any treasure.”
He said nothing, glaring at her with mistrust. She took a chance, tried to keep him talking. “You’re Lowara, right? Weren’t your people there when Rosa’s kumpania was attacked in 1936?” According to Paddy, the Lowara betrayed Rosa’s family to the Germans, but she held that back. “Is that when the treasure was lost? Because Rosa barely escaped with her life—she had nothing when the Germans took her.”
“Not then. Later. During the war. She and Padraic Hart stole something so immense, so valuable that they killed my grandfather to protect their secret. It’s taken me all this time to piece together the clues that led me to you—all I had was Rosa’s name and the fact she murdered my father in Paris on Christmas Eve, 1940.”
Cassie remained silent, unsure what to say that wouldn’t provoke him. He was a muscular man, trim, in good shape, but when he spoke of Rosa, his color flushed and the veins in his neck swelled. High blood pressure, she diagnosed. Would it be too much to ask for a stroke sometime soon? Didn’t have to kill him, just incapacitate him long enough for her to escape.
No one answered her prayer and he continued. “You may think Rosa Costello was a hero, but she was nothing more than a thief and an assassin, betraying one of her own for the sake of her gaje lover.” He spat, the wad of mucus hitting Cassie’s chest, sliding along the bodice of Muriel’s once-beautiful dress. To mix with gaje, outsiders, was the worst sin a Rom woman could commit, leaving her forever marhime, unclean, shunned.
Cassie thought hard. She had to stall, but she did not have the answers Kasanov sought. “I think Rosa killed many men during the war,” she said softly. “I’m not sure which was your father. But I will tell you what I know.”
“Tell me all of it. The truth. Any lies or deception and Mrs. Drake suffers.”
She nodded her agreement. Playing Scheherazade with a psychopath, Muriel’s life in the balance—and her only weapons the tall tales her grandfather had spun when she was a child.
Drake had better find them. Fast.