Liars' Paradox (A Jack and Jill Thriller Book 1) by Taylor Stevens

Author:Taylor Stevens [Stevens, Taylor]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Pinnacle Books
Published: 2019-08-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 26

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AGE: 25

LOCATION: MOSCOW, USSR

PASSPORT COUNTRY: ECUADOR

NAMES: MARIA CATALINA MOLINA NIEVES

THERE WEREN’T WORDS TO DESCRIBE THE MOSCOW WINTER IN A way one who’d never lived it could understand. This cold had to be felt to be known. Bitter and biting, it blew through wool and goose down, stole body heat out from between synthetic fibers, and turned fur into a necessity that even the poorest found ways to possess. The Russian winter had defeated the armies of Napoleon and Hitler when horses and cannons, then rifles and tanks had failed to do the same, and it felt like it would defeat her now as she trudged along the icy street, collar turned up, hat swallowing her ears, fingers encased in lined gloves, maneuvering within the bleak pedestrian crowd, because Boris had called to let her know he was in town and had invited her to visit.

Eyes were on her, they were always on her. From the hallowed prestige within Moscow’s music conservatory to the endless lines in which she waited for bread and eggs and milk—toilet paper, if she could find it—colorless, humorless lines for every basic necessity, they watched her.

Suspicion ruled daily life, for her, for her friends, for most of the population, because if the intelligence agents or the police weren’t spying, nosy neighbors were quick to make reports. Even at home, in the narrow one-room khrushchyovka apartment four flights above the neighborhood post office, she had no privacy. Not that she had proof her apartment was wired—because to look would arouse suspicion—but she was a foreigner, and all foreigners were suspect, and her friendship with Dmitry made her especially suspect, so she lived and behaved as if it was.

Teeth chattering from the cold, she reached the corner in time for the bus.

She rode to the center of the Yakimanka District and walked into the wind for a series of grim five-story concrete apartment blocks. She let herself into the nearest of them through the middle entry and took the stairs up, unwinding her scarf as she climbed past broken lights and peeling paint in a stairwell nearly as derelict as her own, though here the stairwell was wider. The flats were bigger, too, with only two doors to a floor instead of four.

She stopped on the second landing, at the apartment on the left, and knocked.

Hinges creaked, and the door opened to a familiar face with milky-tan skin and light brown eyes beneath a mop of lush black hair. He was in his late forties, if she had to guess, trim and tall and wide shouldered, exuding the good looks and charisma to which even stonehearted commissars weren’t entirely immune.

Her stomach churned with nausea and disgust at the sight of him.

He hugged her, and she hugged him back with formal politeness for the sake of the listeners and watchers.

Her mouth smiled, but not her eyes. She said, “You look well.”

“Come, come,” he said and invited her in.

He knew her as Catherine, as Maria Catalina. She knew him as Boris, though surely, he had other names, just as she did.

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