I picked up one of the pillows, taking care not to wake her.
Then I positioned it above her face and prepared to push down.
This is right, said a voice inside me. This is what you do. This is all you do. I was a monster, after all. And the monster doesn’t fall for the princess: he kills her.
I lowered the pillow until it was almost touching her nose. I couldn’t see her face, now, just that spray of soft, walnut-colored hair spread out across the sheet. That made it easier.
I prepared to press down, bracing myself for her struggle and panic. It would be over in less than a minute. I took a deep breath—
And smelled her scent. Honeysuckle and strawberries and woman, the first thing I’d noticed about her. I froze, the pillow just brushing her nose.
This is right! The voice inside my head was screaming, now. You can put everything right! You can have it all back!
But I didn’t want to. Didn’t. Want. To.
How many have you killed? What difference does one more make?
But it was her. I imagined her slumbering face beneath the pillow: that soft skin, those perfect lips. The way she’d said Um when I’d grabbed her wrist in the coffee shop.
Do you think she’ll ever love you? You can’t have her! Not a man like you!
I knew that.
But I felt something rise up in myself. A stubbornness, a resistance to following orders. It was something I thought had been beaten out of me a long time ago, back in my army days, but now I realized it was like a block of lead, absorbing each blow, but getting a little harder each time. It had been hammered for years, and now it was hard enough to bore through a planet.
I lifted the pillow up and away, revealing her face.
I was a monster.
But I was going to do this one thing right.
I could never have her. But maybe I could save her.
Very gently, I reached down, lifted her head with one hand, and slipped the pillow underneath so that she was comfortable.
She half-woke, smiled and murmured, “Thank you.”
Gabriella
When I woke, there was a moment of panic as I realized I wasn’t in my own bedroom. Then the weight of everything that had happened the day before slammed down on me and I groaned.
“Good morning.” A low rumble from behind me. I rolled over.
He was still sitting in the same chair. God, had he sat there all night? I sat up, remembered I was still in my underwear and tugged the comforter up as well. “Hi.”
We looked at each other. Then I glanced down at the pillow, frowning as I remembered something. “Did you put a pillow under my head in the night?”
“Yes. You’d rolled off it.” He looked embarrassed.
“Well...thank you.” I nodded at the chair. “Didn’t you sleep?”
“I can sleep sitting up. I take shower now, though.” The slightly mangled grammar, combined with the accent, was a reminder of just how different he was, how far away he came from.
He ambled past the bed to the bathroom, closing the door behind him. He must have been waiting for me to wake up, so that he didn’t wake me.
I slipped out of bed and went over to the window. The curtains were still drawn but the sun was blasting around the edges. I sneaked a peek around the edge….
A street I’d never seen before. Another motel across the street. An utterly new place, without familiar anchor points—
I felt that slip as the panic started. It’s like when you unexpectedly slip on ice, but with your soul and mind instead of your body.
I wasn’t sure I could find my way home.
I quickly pressed the curtain against the wall and turned away. I wanted to shower before I put on fresh clothes so I was sort of stuck until Alexei had finished in the bathroom.
Alexei...just the shape of it felt weird on my tongue. I’d come across plenty of Russian names since Lilywhite put The Sisters of Invidia together and invited me to join, but they’d always been just letters on a screen. I never thought I’d actually meet one of the Russian mafia...let alone be thinking so much about him.
I took a look around at the room—I’d been too freaked out, the night before, to really take it in. A TV, its remote held together with Scotch tape; white walls with a big water stain on the ceiling and a big, creaky bed. One bed. Two people.
How long were we going to be here? Was he going to sleep in the chair every night?
I couldn’t get a handle on this thing between us. He’d seemed into me in the coffee shop, then he’d been ready to kill me, then he’d saved me and now...now I didn’t know.
At that moment, I heard the bathroom door open behind me and spun around. He was done already? I was used to showers taking a half hour, but he’d been in there two minutes! Then I saw him and all conscious thought stopped.
He had his pants on but was still doing up his shirt. I got a glimpse of his naked chest and holy hell, even my shower fantasy hadn’t done him justice. He wasn’t pumped-up and veiny like a bodybuilder, he was just big, like he’d been born that way. Mighty, like some hero peasant blacksmith who’d won a battle with only his sledgehammer. I hadn’t been ready for the way his pecs stood out: it looked as if you could hurl cinder blocks at those hard slabs of muscle and the blocks would shatter into dust. Or as if you could put your head on them, as you lay next to him, and be very comfortable indeed.
I pressed my palms against my hips. I was getting an almost uncontrollable urge to run my hands over that chest, just to see what it felt like.
The other thing I hadn’t been ready for were the tattoos. I’d almost forgotten about glimpsing the very tip of his ink over his shirt collar. Now, I could see the full thing: a scorpion, its claw open menacingly. And the tattoos continued on his chest: a rose and a snorting, charging bull. I knew they had meaning: it was an entire story, written in a language I couldn’t understand. It should have been terrifying and it was, in a way. But I was drawn to it, as well. This stuff was raw and real and darkly exciting.
“Seen enough?” he asked. And I looked up to see him looking right into my eyes.
Which was when I remembered I was standing there in my underwear.
I wondered how much looking he’d been doing while I stared at his chest. Had he been checking me out? A deep, hot throb went through my body as I looked into his eyes. I could see the traces of lust still fading.
He had been checking me out.
And there was something else there, as well, beyond the coldness and the lust. Something lighter than his ruthless efficiency, more human. Determination.
“Go have a shower,” he said. “Then we eat.”
I grabbed a blouse and my jeans and hurried in there, closing the door behind me before either of us did something we regretted.
***
Twenty minutes later, we were sitting in the diner. I’d been twitchy and nervous on the street, but the inside of the diner wasn’t as bad: maybe because it was stereotypical, with its squeeze-bottles of ketchup and its booths. I hadn’t been to a diner in years but, thanks to movies and TV, I felt right at home.
I knew it was going to be a different matter when we went further from the motel and tried to actually run. The world outside was huge and dangerous. Stepping outside felt like stepping out of the shallow end in a swimming pool, your feet flailing for a floor that’s no longer there.
I tried to think of something, anything else. I looked at his food. “Oatmeal?” I asked. “Seriously?”
He looked down at his bowl. “What’s wrong with oatmeal? In Russia, we have kasha—like this, but with butter.” He spooned some up. “I eat this every day since I come here.”
I blinked. “Every day?”
“Every day.”
I pictured him, hulking over the table at some diner every morning, or in his apartment, eating oatmeal. “You like it that much?”
He looked at me as if I was crazy. “It’s good for you. It gives you energy.”
“So you don�
�t care about the taste?”
He frowned and then shrugged. “It doesn’t have taste. It’s fuel.”
“But don’t you ever want to eat something you enjoy? Don’t you enjoy food?”
He tilted his head slowly to one side as if he was studying a strange new species.
My food arrived then. Juice and coffee, two eggs, bacon, toast and a few hash browns. The hash browns were so fresh off the griddle, they were still hissing. A truly glorious smell wafted up. I felt hungry for the first time since all this had started. It also brought home what I’d been missing out on, cooped up in the apartment. You can cook a big breakfast at home, but it’s not the same as a diner breakfast.
Alexei watched me eat. His eyes went from my plate to my body. Eventually, he blurted, “Is it trick? Are you hiding it under table?” Most of the time, I’d noticed, his English was pretty good, but just occasionally, when he was in a hurry, he’d mangle his grammar.
I swallowed my last mouthful, then looked down at the huge plate and my small form. “I have a lot of nervous energy,” I told him.
And just for a second, I saw a flicker at the corners of his mouth. It was gone again immediately, but I knew what I’d seen.
Alexei had nearly smiled.
***
I felt better when we’d eaten, pleasantly buzzing from caffeine and glowing from the carb rush. Alexei walked me back to the room, then said he was going out. “I need to call my boss,” he told me. “I need to find a payphone.”
“There’s one in the office,” I said, pointing.
“One that’s not here. But close.”
“Why?”
“I want to see how much trouble we’re in.”
Alexei
There was another motel across the street, which was perfect. First, I walked down the street to a bank and emptied my bank account—it wasn’t much, but it would cover us for a while if we lived cheap. Then I walked to the motel across the street from ours, picked a room that had its curtains closed, and hammered on the door until I was sure it was empty. Like our motel, there was a payphone in the office. I dialed Nikolai and he picked up on the second ring.
“It’s me,” I said. “I’m alive.”
“What the fuck is going on?” yelled Nikolai “I sent people to the hacker’s apartment. Lev’s dead.”
I wanted to gauge how much he knew. “The hacker stabbed me and then shot Lev and escaped. I had to get to a doctor, but I’m okay. I’m tracking him down.”
Nikolai’s tone changed. “Bullshit. We searched the place. We know it’s a girl.”
Shit.
“She’s with you, isn’t she? Why are you protecting her?”
“We can use her, Nikolai. She could hack our rivals—”
“Jesus Christ, Alexei, just kill the bitch!” Then he managed to calm himself a little. “Just...finish the job.”
I took a deep breath. “I can’t do that, Nikolai. Not this time.”
“You killed Lev, didn’t you? That wed’ma sucked your cock and made you turn on your own.”
“I had to kill him. I didn’t want to.” It was important that he knew it was me. If they caught us, I didn’t want Gabriella taking the blame.
I could almost hear Nikolai shaking his head. “You pathetic, traitorous bastard.”
“Look, I just want to walk away. Both of us. I leave and she never bothers you again.”
There was a long pause. I could hear him sucking in air through his nostrils, fuming, trying not to scream at me. Finally, he said, “I want her questioned. I want men I can trust”—he emphasized the word—”to talk to her. I want to know that she gets the message.”
“I won’t let her be hurt.”
“We won’t hurt her. We’ll talk to her. And then the two of you can fuck off to Mexico for all I fucking care.” I could hear something else in his voice, now. Worry. This whole situation had Nikolai scared and nothing scared my boss.
“We’re in a motel,” I told him. And I gave him the number of the empty room. Then I walked back to our motel, my stomach churning. I was sure, now, that Nikolai wanted both of us dead. In minutes, we’d find out how badly.
Gabriella
Alexei told me to grab my stuff. I threw everything into my bag and then joined him at the window.
No more than five minutes after Alexei had returned, a car pulled up across the street and four men approached the other motel. They went straight to one particular room—
I stifled a scream as all four of them pulled out guns and started firing through the window and door. It wasn’t just bangs, it was a continuous roar. Machine guns. They were absolutely guaranteeing that anyone inside was dead.
“Oh Jesus,” I whispered, looking at our own room’s flimsy door.
The men didn’t stop until the window, door and the room beyond were utterly destroyed. Then they kicked in the remains of the door and checked inside. They were out in moments, one of them already putting a cell phone to his ear.
I looked at Alexei. From the expression on his face, it was even worse than he’d thought.
“We have to go,” he said. “Right now.”
My stomach tightened at the thought of the world outside the door. But this place wasn’t safe anymore. I felt like a mouse, scurrying between hidey holes.
As soon as the men had driven away, Alexei led me down to the parking lot. I leaned against a wall, trying not to panic breathe, as he looked at the cars. It was only when I saw him draw back his elbow, ready to smash a car window, that I came alive. “Wait!” I said quickly.
He hesitated. “What?”
“That’s how you steal a car? Smash the window and then...what, twist some wires together?”
For a second, he looked abashed. Then he lifted his chin. “So?”
This whole time, he’d been looking after me and that left me with nothing to focus on but my fear. The chance to do something was exactly what I needed. “Oh, for God’s sake. Move out of the twentieth century!” I pulled out my laptop and looked around. “There. See that car?” I hunkered down beside it. “Wireless everything. Including door locks and ignition.” I started keying in commands. “But it’s one of the early models and the security was weak, so unless the owner’s updated it—which they never, ever do….”
Alexei gave a sort of grunt of disapproval. But after a few seconds, he came to stand behind me, looking over my shoulder at my screen. “I don’t trust this stuff,” he muttered.
“Hacking was how I found out your boss was up to no good,” I said without turning around.
“And how you got caught.”
I typed in a final command and looked at the car. There was a very satisfying click as the doors unlocked and then a roar as the engine started up. I climbed into the passenger seat and waited, trying not to smirk.
“My way is faster,” Alexei muttered. But he walked around the car and got in beside me. As we drove off, we could hear police sirens coming down the street.
We passed the other motel, where people were already congregating to look at the ruins of the motel room. My stomach churned as I saw the hundreds of bullet holes. “We can’t just run, can we?” I asked.
Alexei shook his head. “Nikolai wants you dead...but it’s more than that. I thought he just wanted to kill the hacker, to send a message. But he sounded worried. He’s scared of what you know and scared you’ve told me. He’s not going to let us go, ever.” He turned into an alley and parked, then turned to me.
“Do you think he’s doing something with that trafficking guy, Carl?” I asked. “Some deal the big boss—Luka, right?”—Alexei nodded—”Some deal Luka wouldn’t approve of?”
Alexei shook his head. “Anything big and Luka would find out. If it was small, it wouldn’t be worth the risk. But he is doing something, or planning something.” He stared at me with new respect. “I think you stumbled on it when you hacked him. Now he’s worried I’ll find out what he’s doing and stop him.”
“Can’t we just go to Luk
a and tell him something’s going on?”
“No one in the Bratva will even talk to me now. They’ll shoot me on sight. Word will have passed round that I’m a traitor.” He almost spat the word. “They will not listen to accusations.”
“So what do we do?”
He thought. “Work out what Nikolai is plotting. And then stop him. If he really is doing something against the family’s code, we would be heroes, not outlaws. All this would be over.” He nodded at my laptop. “Can you find out what he was doing? A name, somewhere we can start looking?”
I stretched my fingers and went to work. I had Nikolai’s email archive on the portable hard drive, plus some of his bank records. All of it was in Russian but, with a lot of backtracking and cross-referencing, I started to piece things together.
We went to a drive-thru and got fried chicken for lunch, eating in the car. I wrinkled my nose at Alexei’s choice. “Chicken?” I asked. “Just chicken? No bread, no fries, no slaw or beans or salad? Just chicken?”
“Protein,” he grunted.
I shook my head and focused on my own food. It was some mom and pop place and the fries were amazing, crispy on the outside and meltingly fluffy on the inside. I munched through half a bagful of salty goodness and then took a long pull on my soda—
And noticed something in the reflection in the windshield: he was looking sideways, watching me.
I pretended I hadn’t seen. Eating takeout food had to be the least sexy thing to do in the world, right? So why would he be watching me?
When we’d wiped our sticky fingers, I went back to work while Alexei kept watch, sitting still as a statue. I got the impression he could do it for days at a time, if need be.
Eventually, I sat back, stretched my aching shoulders and pointed at the screen. “There.” It was an email sent from Nikolai to Carl, one of the most biggest human traffickers we knew of. Lilywhite had been after him ever since she’d set the Sisters of Invidia up, but so far we hadn’t been able to track him down. The email said simply, “Payment sent to Semnadtsat.” That same day, $150,000 had left Nikolai’s private bank account, destined for a numbered Swiss account. “What’s semnadtsat?”
Kissing My Killer Page 6
