“Yeah, I believe that,” Spencer said sarcastically. “Looked good and filthy to me.”
Richard felt himself chewing on the insides of his cheeks and stopped himself. The fact was, Spencer was right. It looked incriminating. Certainly it would appear that way to Kristin. He’d already lied to her about the kiss. This video? It would destroy the little credibility he had left.
“How much do you want?” he asked.
“I have a feeling you take home some mighty righteous bucks. I was thinking twenty-five thousand to start.”
“To start?”
“Not a lot of money to a guy like you. But it is to a guy like me. And I don’t know where this is going.”
“What makes you think I won’t go to the police? I met a lot of them on Friday and Saturday.”
“Because the last thing you want is more publicity. It can’t be good at home—or at work. You don’t want your wife to see what I have. Or your boss. Besides…”
“Besides what?”
“Five words: sexual assault on a minor. They’re dangling that one over me. Well, I have video evidence of you with the girl. The police would have way more on you than they have on me.”
“She wasn’t a minor!”
“I sure hope not. But we just don’t know, do we?”
He feared if he didn’t leave Spencer now, he might punch him—which, perhaps, was just what Spencer wanted. “Let me think about it.”
“I think that’s best.”
“What’s your number?”
“Oh, just call me at the Cravat. I have nothing to hide.” Then, much to Richard’s absolute disbelief, he extended his hand, expecting Richard to shake it.
Alexandra
I was fifteen years old when I was abducted.
I turned sixteen at the cottage.
When I was seventeen, they brought me back to Moscow and started having me work with Western men: men from the United States and England and France. They brought Sonja and Crystal, too. These men were more refined than the black and whites. I thought they were more interesting. More educated. More perverse. Most nights, things took longer.
My skin wasn’t scratched by their stubble.
I was almost eighteen when my grandmother stopped trying to visit. When she stopped asking for photos of me at the dance studio. When she stopped asking questions about my progress and when I might return to Yerevan for a visit. She died on January 6, the day we celebrate Christmas in Armenia, when she was killed by a hit-and-run driver. She was crossing the street just outside her apartment. There was a witness, but the car—the long black sedan of an oligarch—was moving so quickly that he never got the license plate. She was dead even before an ambulance got there. Inga pretended to be so sad when she told me the news, but she wasn’t a good actress. I have a feeling that my grandmother had started giving Vasily hard time, asking too many questions about where I was and what really was going on. He got sick of her.
They didn’t let me go home to Yerevan for the funeral.
I was nineteen when I reached what they told me was the summit: New York City. They promised us all there would be special freedoms when we got there because, by then, there was no going back. Besides, what was there for me to go back to? My mother and grandmother were dead. I had spent nearly four years on my back.
They told us we were going to get Internet access without a chaperone. Shopping without an escort. Maybe even a phone. That was how much they said they trusted us.
And, of course, there was the deal: freedom in two or three years.
Chapter Eight