Chapter One

      The Russian ambassador, Nikolai Kozlov, stormed out of the room, his face a mottled red, his black eyes blazing.

      Perched on the edge of her seat, Emily Chastain looped the strap of her purse over her shoulder and glanced across the conference table at Viktor Sokolov, the Russian ambassador’s executive assistant. She reminded herself that she’d only been the interpreter. The ambassador wasn’t mad at her but at the information she’d translated.

      Jay Phillips, the private investigator, shoved his notes into a folder and started to slip them into the briefcase he’d carried into the conference room at the Russian embassy.

      Sokolov held up his hand. “Nyet,” he said in a commanding voice. In Russian he continued. “You will leave your papers and data with me.”

      Emily translated. “He wants you to leave the documents.”

      Phillips shrugged and laid the folder on the table. “The papers aren’t going to change anything. I signed a nondisclosure, and it pays for me to keep what I know to myself. I don’t share the information I compile with anyone other than my client. Otherwise, I would have no business.”

      Emily gave Sokolov a shorter version of what Phillips had said.

      Nevertheless the assistant’s heavy black brows veed over his nose and he gathered the stack of papers and photographs into a pile in front of him.

      Phillips closed his briefcase and pushed to his feet. “Now that the meeting is over, I have an appointment across town in less than an hour.”

      “If you no longer require my services, I should be going, too,” Emily said in Russian.

      Sokolov’s intense stare turned on Emily. “You will keep the information you have translated private?”

      Emily nodded. “I am very discreet. And I signed a nondisclosure agreement when I took this assignment. If we are done here,” she said, “I need to use the ladies’ room and then I need to leave before the traffic gets too hard to make it back to my apartment before rush-hour traffic gets bad.” She spoke the words in Russian. She started to pick up the notebook in front of her.

      A hand came down on the notebook and the ambassador’s assistant said, “The notes stay.” He, too, spoke in Russian. The hard look on his face brooked no argument.

      Phillips stiffened, his eyes widened, but he didn’t move from his position by the table.

      Her heart beating fast, Emily secured her purse strap on her shoulder and stood. Still shaking from the force of anger the ambassador had displayed, Emily’s knees wobbled as she was escorted to the door, alone, without the investigator.

      The Russian ambassador had stormed out of the room yelling so loud and fast, Emily couldn’t keep up with his Russian. In his wake, the remaining occupants of the small conference room had sat in stunned silence for moments afterward.

      Emily couldn’t shake a bad feeling about this particular translation gig. The urge to exit the Russian embassy overwhelmed her. As she crossed the threshold of the room she made a quick glance over her shoulder at the investigator. He attempted to leave but the guard behind him pressed a hand to his shoulder and forced him to sit. The American investigator shot a worried glance at Emily. Again, in Russian, she said, “Perhaps Mr. Phillips would like to share a cab with me?”

      The guard behind the investigator shook his head. “Nyet.”

      Phillips looked at her again and nodded, as if to say she should go while she could. When she didn’t move forward, her hovering guard gave her a slight shove that sent her into the hallway. There wasn’t much else she could do for the investigator but hope and pray that nobody stood in his way of leaving the embassy.

      The guard gripped her elbow and escorted her down the hall. If she hadn’t dug her heels into the tile when she passed the restroom he would have marched her all the way to the exit.

      Emily pulled free of the hand holding her arm and ducked into the bathroom. For a moment she thought the guard would follow her. When he didn’t, she breathed a sigh as the door closed behind her.

      What she had translated that day left her shaken.

      The investigator had been hired to follow the ambassador’s daughter and to find out where she had been going in Washington, DC. Apparently she’d had a number of unescorted clandestine assignations with a young man her father considered dangerous to his position as the Russian ambassador to the US. The investigator had stopped short of naming names but the look he’d exchanged with the ambassador had been clear. The ambassador knew who she was seeing.

      The anger Emily had heard in the ambassador’s voice led her to believe that he was livid enough to kill the young man and possibly even his daughter, Sachi.

      Emily hadn’t been altogether sure that she would make it out of the embassy alive. Though she’d never felt threatened before when she’d come to do translations within the Russian embassy, the anger in the ambassador’s demeanor left her feeling anything but comfortable.

      She quickly splashed water on her face and dried it with a paper towel. Then she straightened her shoulders and pushed through the door to exit the bathroom. As she emerged into the hallway a man wearing a press badge was being escorted into the embassy by two guards, each gripping one of the journalist’s arms.

      Emily