She’d never seen a body such as his. Dressed, you only noticed that he had unusually broad shoulders. But now that he was naked from the waist up, she could see what she’d only sensed before when he’d been lying on top of her on the sidewalk outside the gallery.

The man was raw, naked male power. He didn’t have the bulked-up muscles of gym rats or wrestlers. His muscles were lean, so stripped of fat she could actually see the striations of muscle tissue under the skin. She knew her anatomy and could see the muscles, one by one, how they fit over one another, worked together. He must put himself through incredible workouts to have muscles like this, deep and toned.

He was almost frighteningly powerful. She’d seen how fast he could move, how deadly he was in a fight, how proficient with a gun. This man would make a formidable enemy.

He wasn’t her enemy, though. Certainly not now. Now he was a wounded man, holding her hand for whatever comfort she could provide.

Ben snipped the last thread and started applying gauze to cover the wound.

She squeezed Drake’s hand lightly. “It’s going to be okay,” she murmured. “The wound looks so much better now that Ben’s stitched it up. Don’t worry, you’ll be fine.”

She felt like a fool, talking to a man who couldn’t hear her. And yet…his grip tightened slightly on her hand, a warm pressure, so slight she might have imagined it, but she didn’t. She sat quietly, her hand in his, hoping she was providing some comfort.

By the time Ben straightened, Grace’s head was nodding. God, she was tired. She felt like resting her head on the cot and going to sleep, simply letting herself black out, but she couldn’t afford to rest yet. There was still the trip home to negotiate. How could she get home? Her purse was gone. She had no money for either a bus or a taxi. Maybe she could convince someone here to drive her.

Home. She wanted to go home. To seek comfort in her familiar surroundings. Fix herself a cup of tea, step into a hot tub of water. Try to wipe out the sight of Harold’s head exploding.

Mourn him, in private. Nurse her wounds.

Her eyes hurt, her face hurt, her head hurt.

Her heart hurt.

It felt like some huge hole had been ripped in the universe and monsters had come rushing through it. Monsters who could attack a woman, use her to get to a man and, above all, blow a man’s head off.

Every time she closed her eyes she could see Harold’s death, as graphically as when it happened. And every time, her heart gave a huge kick in her chest. She’d been conditioned from childhood to understand that there was no justice in the world. The fact that Harold was kindhearted and had a wonderful eye for art was no shield in this world, none at all. But his violent passing was hard to grasp. It was so difficult to contemplate a world without Harold in it.

Grace had so few things in her life, really. They could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Her art, Harold, her few other friends, her apartment. Her life revolved around these few elements, and now one of them—hugely important to her in every way—was gone, wiped out in a bloodbath.

Her eyes stung but she refused to let any tears fall. They would be saved for later, for when she got home. All through her childhood, she’d learned to control her tears, learned the hard way that they were for private moments only.

She yearned for the safety of her home. It wasn’t luxurious, certainly nothing like the few glimpses she’d had of this penthouse apartment, with its eighteen-foot ceilings and plush carpets and antiques and artwork. Her home was modest, the most extravagant thing about it the skylight in her studio, which let in as much light as Manhattan ever offered. It was simply, even sparely, decorated, filled with works in progress.

She yearned for it the way a thirsty man yearns for water.

She felt exposed, naked here. Though she tried to control it, her hands were shaking, even the one in Drake’s warm clasp. She was shaking all over.

Ben administered a syringe of what she assumed was an antibiotic. It was done. She was patched up, Drake was stitched up, she could go.

She stood. “Uh, Ben?”

He had pulled off the gloves with a snap and was putting his surgical instruments in an autoclave. “Yeah?”

“I wonder if—if it wouldn’t be too much trouble…”

He turned, bright blue eyes direct. “Do you need something?”

Grace hated asking for favors, hated it. There hadn’t been anyone to ask things of growing up and now, as an adult, she found she’d much rather do without than ask. That way she was never disappointed. But now she was forced into asking for help.

She could feel her face becoming warm. “I, um, I need to ask a favor. Could you perhaps lend me the money for a cab to get home? Or have someone here drive me? My purse was—” blown up, she almost said, but didn’t. “Lost. I need to get home somehow.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “I’m sure Drake will—”

Drake’s eyes popped open. “Absolutely not,” he said in a low, deep voice.

Five

Shit shit shit!

Rutskoi closed his cell phone with a snap and hurled it against the wall of the apartment he’d rented under an assumed name in the Bowery.

It shattered into a thousand bits that fell to the floor with a clatter. At the Waldorf, it would have fallen to the lush rose-patterned carpet and there would have been maids to vacuum the mess up. But he’d had to leave the Waldorf. Going into the operational part of the mission, he’d left the soft world of luxurious living behind and entered the iron world of warfare.

Drake’s driver had picked him up at the Waldorf, so Drake knew where Rutskoi was. If Rutskoi was foolish enough to continue staying there, his life wouldn’t be worth shit.

Drake’s revenge was always swift and lethal.

Rutskoi had realized it would come to this the instant the big street door of Drake’s skyscraper had closed behind him with an audible click. He’d been so sure Drake would say yes to him—goddamnit, the man needed a lieutenant—that he hadn’t really thought through the consequences of a no.

He had just made an enemy of one of the most deadly men on the planet. He needed help. He couldn’t take on Drake alone, it would be suicide. And if there was one thing Rutskoi knew, it was that he wanted to live.

Large.

So he’d called in Enrique Cordero. Cordero had essentially run the Central and South American arms trade B.D. Before Drake. Cordero was smart—though undisciplined—and had avoided drugs and women, the markets the cops zeroed in on. He’d had a neat little business supplying Central and South America with arms before Drake came and sucked up all the oxygen.

Enrique would be up for payback, oh yeah. Up for getting his market back. Rutskoi could share. Hell, there was enough in Drake’s business to keep ten men, a hundred. Word on the street was that Drake’s deals raked in a cool billion a year in profit. Not to mention the value of the fleet of planes and ships and helos he used to transport them. Yeah, there was enough for two. He and Cordero could split up the markets, like one of those Renaissance Popes splitting up the New World.

Rutskoi would take North America, Europe and Asia. Cordero could take Central and South America and Africa, and be welcome to them. Rutskoi had had enough of third-world countries to last him the rest of his life. He wanted to do business where there were toilets and beds and sidewalks.

He’d had it planned down to the finest detail, with Cordero’s sniper in an empty apartment across the street. The sniper had been lying in wait, prone, on sandbags on the little terrace, with orders to shoot everyone who could interfere with the kidnapping of Drake and the woman, this Grace Larsen.