Multiple Exposure A Sophie Medina Mystery by Ellen Crosby

Vasiliev stood up and I felt the chill emanating from him, and his anger. “But I know your husband does.”
    As he walked by me, heading for the door, he leaned down and said, “Do not underestimate me, Sophie, and don’t fool yourself that I believed your little charade just now, either. I will get those logs by whatever means it takes. Right now, I am willing to do it the easy way, so everyone wins. But I am not a patient man. Remember that.”
    I didn’t look up or acknowledge him. But I did jump, as I suspect he intended me to do, when he slammed the door on his way out. The noise sounded like a gunshot.
    Then silence.

6
    I was still sitting at the conference table when the connecting door to Seth’s office opened a crack. A second later it swung completely open and Ali stood there gripping the doorknob with both hands.
    She’d heard. By the scared look on her face, she’d heard all of it. If Vasiliev found out she’d been eavesdropping, if he even suspected she’d been in the next room . . .
    “Ali,” I said, trying to keep the panic out of my voice, “how long have you been here?”
    “Are you okay, Sophie?” she asked. “What was that all about?”
    “I’m fine,” I said. “Answer my question.”
    “Don’t worry,” she said. “He didn’t know I was here.”
    “How much did you hear?”
    She shrugged. “Everything. The walls between these rooms are pretty thin.”
    I stood up. “You need to forget it, do you understand? Don’t repeat a word of this to anyone. The meeting, the conversation . . . it never happened.”
    “Arkady Vasiliev threatened you, Sophie. And he thinks your husband is alive,” she said. “Is he? Is it true? I knew you thought he was, I just knew it.”
    “Ali, stop!” I clenched my fists. What I really wanted to do was clap them over her mouth. “Stop asking questions. You don’t know what you’re getting into.”
    “What are you going to do?” she asked. “This is like being in a spy movie.”
    “No,” I said, my voice rising. “No, no, no. It is not. It’s the real thing. And I’m not going to do anything except carry on like nothing happened. And you’re going to do the same. But right now we need to get you out of here so Arkady Vasiliev doesn’t put two and two together and realize you were next door when he thought he and I were having a private conversation.”
    Ali gave a little one-shoulder shrug. “That’s easy. I’ll just take the tunnel to the other side of the gallery. I can stop off in the kitchen . . . one of the waiters told me there’s an awful lot of food.”
    “You’d better get back to Luke. He’s going to be wondering what happened to you.”
    “Oh, come on,” she said. “What’s the harm? I’ll just take a quick peek. Sue me for having a little fun at a glam party.”
    I opened the conference room door and listened. All we needed was for Vasiliev to have posted one of his bodyguards there, but the hall was silent. I turned back to Ali and said, “There’s no one there. I’ll see you back in the Rotunda in a few minutes, okay?”
    She grinned, putting her arm over her mouth and nose like she was wearing a veil. “I always wanted to be Mata Hari.”
    I groaned. “Just go.”
    She left, and a moment later, the metal door at the end of the corridor scraped open and then closed. A text message from Luke chirped on my phone.
    Where are you? Hathaway just arrived. Orlov still here.
    This evening couldn’t end soon enough.
    *

    I left through the passageway door to the cloakroom and walked into the Founders’ Room in time to see Scott Hathaway standing in the lobby trailed by half a dozen dark-suited men and women who looked like members of his staff. A group of admirers surged around him—everyone seemed to want to touch him—and he waded into the crowd, laughing and chatting, backslapping the men and kissing the women. I’d run into Hathaway on a couple of occasions when he was overseas with some congressional