Her stomach quivered again and she swallowed heavily.

The car rolled slowly to a stop outside her house. She had visitors. Her heart beat slow and heavy in her chest.

Whoever was coming, they were not welcome.

In a token attempt at trying to stem her bottomless, dark grief, she’d switched on the living room lights. Unfortunately, they were visible from the street. She couldn’t even pretend nobody was home, as she had done for the past three days.

Her living room window framed the big black limo parked at the curb. She could see everything perfectly.

The driver, dressed in elegant black livery, came around the car and opened a backseat door, extending a hand to the man who emerged. The man’s deeply lined face was sharply handsome. An expensive Borsalino covered his longish, graying blond hair. He was dressed for the cold—a heavy midnight blue overcoat and thick leather gloves covering what she knew were scarred hands. One hand was clutching an ebony walking stick with a polished ivory knob.

He was making his limping way slowly up her walkway, leaning heavily on the arm of his driver, who held Vassily’s arm with one hand and a big black box with another.

Vassily.

He’d come out in the freezing cold, just for her.

Charity winced. Vassily coming out on a cold day was a big deal. A very big deal. He made no secret of the fact that he hated the cold, venturing out only when necessary in winter. Watching him make his slow, laborious way to her, it was painfully clear that this cost him sacrifice.

It was a magnificent gesture. Charity knew she should be grateful, even flattered. This was something Vassily would do for very few people in the world. Maybe she was the only person he’d do this for. But though she was touched, she was in no condition to receive him.

She wanted to be left alone and not have to gather her scattered, grieving self together enough to make conversation. There was no conversation in her, not enough energy left in her to deal with anyone.

But this had to be done. Vassily was an old man. Well, if not old, much older than she. He was a great man who had suffered great tragedy, and he was making an effort to come to offer her comfort in the hour of her own tragedy.

On any possible scale of suffering, Vassily’s suffering far, far exceeded hers. He’d been to hell and back, and for five long years. He’d not only lost loved ones, he’d been injured, tortured, forced to work in mines in subzero temperatures, whipped and beaten.

No, her suffering was a paltry thing in comparison. Shame made her stiffen her spine. Somehow, she had to claw her way up out of the slippery, gory, deep, dark well of mourning she’d fallen into. For the next half hour or hour, or however long Vassily chose to stay, she had to somehow take her suffering and compress it, tuck it away somewhere, just long enough so she could function while he was here.

Afterward, when he’d gone, when she was alone, she could let the grief unravel and swell to monstrous proportions again, until it occupied every cell of her body and mind, as it had for the past three days.

But for now, whatever it took, she had to cling to control.

Vassily’s slow walk up to her front porch allowed her to rush into the bathroom and dash some cold water on her face, pull a comb through her tangled hair. She looked up into the mirror above the sink and shuddered, hardly recognizing herself.

Her eyes were red rimmed and swollen, testimony to her sleepless nights and the endless tears. Dark bruises shadowed her eyes. She’d lost weight, in just these three days. Her cheekbones were sharper, the line of her jaw more pronounced. Her skin was paper white, bloodless. She looked caved in, beaten. She looked ready for the grave herself.

The grave…in a flash she was at the cemetery again. The dark gouge in the earth yawned at her feet, the heavy mahogany coffin’s gleaming brass handles starkly contrasting with the frozen black earth. The smell of unearthed sod rose in her nostrils, churning her stomach. The smell of death and…

She froze on the threshold of her bedroom.

Oh my God.

There was another smell in the room, lingering in the air. Musky, faintly citrusy. Familiar, unmistakable.

Impossible.

Nick’s smell.

How could—

The front doorbell rang and her head whipped around, making her faintly nauseous again.

Every hair on her body rose because together with his scent, she somehow felt…Nick. Felt his presence, felt his aura. Nick’s aura was strong. He was a force of nature. Whenever she’d been near him, it was as if the molecules in the air speeded up. He cast an energy field around him. He punched a six-foot-two Nick-shaped hole in the universe.

The bell rang again, longer this time.

Charity should be rushing to the door, opening it, and welcoming Vassily into her home. It was beyond discourteous letting an elderly man wait outside in the freezing cold. But Charity was frozen herself, with horror.

She was drenched in Nick’s scent, drowning in his aura and it terrified her.

Oh God, this was infinitely worse than smelling charred bones, horrible as that was. The moments by Nick’s poor, ravaged body had been traumatic, the memory seared into her very being. No wonder, in her grief, that she could revisit them. She knew she’d revisit the images until the end of time, in her nightmares.

Still, smelling Nick’s death, however awful, was normal.

But smelling and sensing Nick—the live, vital, sexy Nick, not the sad charred sticks that were all that was left of his mortal body—in her bathroom and bedroom took horror to a new level. This wasn’t a memory, something real, something she could hold on to, however horrible. No, this was her mind playing tricks on her. This was insanity.

That slippery hold she had on reality was starting to fray.

She looked down at herself. Her forearms were covered in goose bumps.

The bell rang again, two long rings.

The idea of feeling Nick in empty rooms for the rest of her life was terrifying. Her stomach rejected the very notion.

She bolted for the toilet where she miserably retched the few remaining molecules of milk left. Her stomach spasmed and spasmed again, bringing up only green bile, until she didn’t have the strength to stand and sank down to her knees.

She rested like that, feverish cheek against the cold porcelain bowl, for a full minute. Vassily was waiting outside, but she simply didn’t have the strength to get up.

Another ring, this time with impatience behind it. Vassily would be feeling the cold. His leg ached when the weather was damp and cold, like today. She simply couldn’t make him wait any longer.

Using the toilet for leverage, she stood slowly, straightening and waiting a second to see if her stomach had settled. It had.

She rinsed her mouth out with water to rid herself of the terrible taste.

Gritting her teeth, Charity forced her feet to move, using sheer willpower to make it to the door. One foot after another. Left, right, left, right. Spooked, trembling.

Fuck, that was close!

Nick’s heart was still pounding as he crouched in the space between the garage and the house. His thermal imager had shown that she was in the living room, so he’d taken the chance to seed the back of her house with bugs. In her purse, in the vase on the sideboard, in the pockets of her jackets. He was fast and he was quiet, but she’d almost caught him.

Checking in with the head office this morning had driven his anxiety levels off the charts. After giving him a scolding Nick barely listened to, the boss provided an update.

Chatter in Sandland was off the charts, spiking yesterday, about an upcoming meeting with “the Russian.” They’d intercepted a call between Hassad al-Banna and Abu Rhabi, who were a little less circumspect with their cell phones than Worontzoff was.