SATISH
Satish gave AnnaSophia and Maverick a few minutes lead. He wanted time to observe Alexandra. The tilt of her dark head and the regular twitches around her mouth reminded him so much of her father he had to lock his jaw to maintain eye contact.
She thinks she’s sophisticated enough to stare me down.
Her father had tried the same tactic—with Satish, with his three children, with his wife. His fifteen-year-old daughter—like her father—was mistaken about her powers.
“Tell me what Maverick said about me.” Her voice carried the imperious high note Satish often heard the rich use. He’d heard it often enough in his mother’s orders to him and various servants to recognize the iciness in his sleep.
“Why should I do that?”
“I have a right to know what my accuser said about me.”
“Accuser?”
“He’s not very smart, you know.” She glanced at Satish as if they shared a secret. “If he had any sense, he’d have knocked the gun out of AnnaSophia’s hand and run like hell.”
“On the contrary. Knocking the gun out of someone’s hands works on TV. Trying the stunt in real life generally gets someone killed.”
“What. Ev. Er.” Oh-so bored, she patted an exaggerated yawn, raised one shoulder, and curled her top lip.
“When you brought Maverick into your house, what was your plan?” Whatever she’d ingested, imbibed, or shot up was wearing off. Her pupils appeared near normal, but Satish stared without blinking. Let her accuse him of voyeurism. He didn’t give a damn. “What if your mother had been awake?”
“You jest. She’s an emergency room doctor. The woman can sleep on her feet.”
The fast tap, tap, tap of her foot revealed a hint of her—what? Impatience? Nervousness? Bravado? Her theatrics reignited Satish’s suspicions. Suspicions he’d held in check entering her bedroom earlier. Suspicions warred with the desire to protect AnnaSophia. He was damned near certain her kid’s ’tude stemmed from drugs—prescription meds or street junk.
Or she could simply be annoyingly adolescent.
“Once we’re all gathered in the pool house, what happens next?” She slapped a hand on her waist and cocked a hip at Satish. “You lead us in a round of Kumbaya?”
When he didn’t react to her bait, she gave a little sniff and shook her head again, telegraphing, What an idiot.
He knocked her hand off her waist. Her jaw dropped, he laughed.
“When people sing Kumbaya,” he said, “they hold hands. I’d rather kiss a cobra than hold your hand.”
“Good thing AnnaSophia can’t hear you. She believes in showing her children respect—something we never got from dear ol’ Dad.”
The brittle edge to her comment stirred the acid in his gut. He despised her pseudo-sophistication. At the same time, he felt as if he’d just channeled her bastard-father.
“So having a toxic father gives you free reign to act like a brat.” He laughed, adding, “Well, getting suckered by your ’tude doesn’t give me the right to dis you.”
She clapped—a slow, hand-over-hand gesture. “Hope that wasn’t an apology.”
“It wasn’t, but I don’t intend to take any more of your shit.” His words sounded so melodramatic—the stuff of TV—he swallowed a constipated snicker.
She went with the tried-and-true teenage response for all situations—a shrug.
“Okay.” He kept his hands at his sides. “Let’s go join your mother and Maverick.”
She repeated the clapping routine. “Oooo, goody.”
Still wanting to needle her because he’d bet her druggie brain was weaving new ways to manipulate AnnaSophia, he said, “Here’s the thing—in case you’re tempted to get mouthy. Your mother has an excellent case for having you declared incorrigible. Should she win—and I’m pretty sure she would—your chances of being emancipated drop to zero.”
Eyes mocking, hands fisted, she stared at him. “In which case, I can always run away.”
“You can. You can also be found.” This, of course, was a lie. Police files across the state, across the nation, across the world, bulged with runaway or kidnapped kids—the stats made recovery of the Elizabeth Smarts and Jaycee Lee Dugards undeniable anomalies.
Something—some sense of her shrinking, going inside herself—stopped him from embroidering the lie he doubted she believed any more than he did. She didn’t live in a cave. She had access to the Internet. Twitter. Facebook. YouTube. She probably texted more every day than she talked—though in her case, he wouldn’t take the odds.
She regarded him with a kind of passivity he found confusing. Did she—heir to the most advanced technology in history—long to believe she could run away, beat the probabilities, and be found?
He motioned her toward the door. She was too skinny for her height. Too classically pretty to go unnoticed. Despite vestiges of makeup and that mouth, she looked young. Innocent.
Lips pressed together, she opened the door and stepped into the hall. No head-turn to see if he followed. He pulled the door shut and dogged her through the kitchen. He’d have to warn AnnaSophia. Recommend she hire a PI. A good private one. With plenty of good partners.
It would take a helluva lot of resources to keep tabs on Alexandra Romanov.
He exhaled and stepped onto the patio, into the pre-dawn coolness. A crescent moon hung high in the sky and bathed the pool and backyard in a haunting luminescence. The loveliness shimmered even as he thought about the million-plus kids in the U.S. who would run away this year.
Goddammit. Why had he answered AnnaSophia’s summons?