When I get back, she’s riffled through our things. Looking for her phone. She didn’t find it; it’s in my pocket, along with the wolf keychain.
I cook the fish, and we eat in silence.
The meal is good, and there are roasted hickory nuts and berries, too. “You’re still unhappy,” I say.
“There’s a shocker. You fed me, and I’m not happy. Maybe I’m not a pet hamster.”
I frown. Everything with her hurts.
“Can I have my phone?”
“No.”
“I’m not going to call anybody. It’s not like I can get a signal out here. I just want to see if it still works.”
“Something tells me not to,” I say.
“You can watch me. You’ll see the little bars not firing up.”
I don’t know how the phones work. What if she signals somebody? But the phone would make her happy—I know that. I can’t let her go, but I can give her the phone.
“I promise,” she says.
She’s a reporter, my natural enemy, as much as she says she isn’t. I can’t see how it can be otherwise. She doesn’t trust me—not even enough to tell me the secret of the kitten.
But then she turns her pleading eyes to me and my heart melts.
I want to make her happy.
I force myself to hand the plastic bag to her.
“Thank you.”
My pulse drums in my ears as she takes the parts out of the baggies and fits them together. She moves over on the log and pats it. “Come here. You can see.”
I sit. The thing is just a black rectangle. She presses something. Nothing happens. “Please, please, please,” she whispers to her phone.
A white apple appears. “Yaasssss.” She turns to me. “Thank you. Thank you for trusting me.”
Something warms in my heart.
“I know it wasn’t easy,” she says.
“It was worth it.” I catch a brown curl in my finger. I watch her watch her phone. I enjoy making her happy.
“Look,” she says. “There’s my dog. Bernard.”
I look down at a large black and brown and white dog with a boxy nose. He has a stick in his mouth.
“Bernard?”
“He was a St. Bernard dog. Big. Friendly. He was…such a good dog.”
She flicks the photos by, one by one. She stops on another one with her and Bernard. Bernard’s licking her face. She’s smiling, laughing.
She flips on and stops at an image of her with an older couple. “My mom and dad. That’s our porch. Ten years ago. And here’s me and my sister, Maya.”
She shows me the house where she grew up. She shows me herself standing next to a dusty Jeep in front of a sign that has strange squiggly writing on it. Then her and four smiling men crowded around a table, all holding tall glasses with leaves stuffed into them. “That’s a café in Beirut,” she says. “We drank a lot of mint tea there.” The men are all journalists like her, doing pieces, she says. She shows me a picture of the desert. She stands next to a camel.
I sneak glances at her face as she moves through the photos. She seems so alive when she looks back on this life of hers.
This is how she looks when she’s happy, I think with a start. A way she’s never been with me. A way she might never be again. Because I’ve taken her away from her life.
I bite back the despair.
Chapter Thirty-One
Tanechka
Viktor glances over at me from the front seat of the car. He’s not used to me dressing as a nun. I’m sure he hoped I never would again. But this outfit will help us get close to the man who can give us information on Kiro. We hope.
It is very much like old times in Moscow when we worked as assassins together. Waiting outside a man’s home. Two hours we have been out here, but the man will come now—we both have the sense of that. We share the sense of it.
It feels good.
“Soon,” I say.
He doesn’t smile, but small dimples appear on his cheeks. Something that comes before a smile. A flash of happiness, I suppose you would call it.
I feel it too.
We’re together again. Dangerous like old times. We’ll find his brother.
This man we pursue—this Gregor—is a Russian mob techie who defected to Lazarus, and he’s quite religious. I know how to move like a nun. How to speak like a nun. He’ll be easy to fool.
We have to take him off the street and make him help us get ears on Lazarus—that’s how Viktor’s brother Aleksio likes to put it. Get ears on a man. Hack into his communications.
Somehow, they’re tracking Kiro. We need to know everything.
Lazarus isn’t a stupid man. Kiro beat him once at the insane asylum. The next time Lazarus goes at Kiro, it will be with an army. Aleksio thinks he’s already chasing him.
I feel as fierce about finding Kiro as Viktor does. As Aleksio does. I want to find him as if he’s my own brother. He will be once Viktor and I are married.
Viktor passes me a pear. “If he comes with more than one, I’m going out with you.”
“There will be no killing, pryanichek.” I slice off the fat side of the fruit. “If there are more than one, I’ll handle them all, and if you come out with me when I don’t need you, I’ll put you back in the hospital, perhaps right next to them.”
“I’ve never wanted to fuck you more than right now, Tanechka.”
I hand him over a slice and smile. I will very much like him to fuck me.
“I’m not letting you fight a group,” he says.
“I tire of this discussion.” The plan is for me to separate Gregor from the herd. “This one respects nuns. His friends too.” I slice off another bit of pear. I hold his eyes and slip it into my mouth. With this I make him think many things.
I no longer strive to be a nun. I can’t be true to Jesus in my body like a nun should. And there were my years of being an assassin; it was easier to aspire to be a nun when I didn’t remember those years. But still Jesus is in my heart. Viktor doesn’t understand, but it’s okay.
My love of Viktor is deeper than it ever was. My concentration is deeper. Even my aim is better. Things are better now that I have this peace.
Viktor and I have made a new home together. The home Viktor made for us before was very much a museum of our old life. I’m glad it burned. Our new home has things from our new life in America, like a giant painting of a fish from IKEA. We have named it “Guppy.”
They let him out of the hospital four weeks back. Gunshot wounds to his midsection. It was mostly his spleen. He hides his pain. He’s not supposed to move around violently. A difficult thing to enforce.
A car slides by—too slowly. Our intelligence is that Gregor will walk home from his dinner at the restaurant, but the car doesn’t move right. We both mark it. A minute later we both ignore it. Texting.
“I should shoot his phone from his hand,” he says.
I slide my gaze to the side mirror. A group of three men. One of them Gregor. “Hey.”
“Gotcha.”
I shoot Viktor a warning look. “No killing.” He puts up his hands in pretend self-defense as I slide out, prayer rope in one hand, switchblade in the other.
I wander up the street, appearing lost.
Gregor needs to approach me. This is the hard part, what to do if one of the others approaches me instead.
I make eye contact with Gregor, willing him.
He addresses me in Russian. “Sister? Can I help you?”
I clutch my rope, so humble. I move in a way that he recognizes, a way that is deeply familiar to his bones. He reads me as real. This is something the sisters gave me when I had amnesia.
“It’s okay,” he says in Russian to the other guys. He flicks his fingers, an order to stay back. “It’s okay.”
I go to him and show him my map.
“Let’s see now,” he says.
Out comes the blade. “My pika is two inches from your beating heart. It is not good.”
He st
ares at me, mouth agape. He thought I was real.
I am real. Not in the way he thinks, perhaps. “You will tell them to leave you. You’re troubled. You want to talk to the mother alone. You will walk me back alone. Tell them this.”
He complies, telling the men he’d like to walk me to the address I seek. “Go on without me.”
The men amble away. There is no trickery—they really are leaving.
“That is good. Maybe you will live.”
“Did Dmitri send you?”
I smile a small smile. “I’m with Viktor.” My heart swells as I say this.
Gregor, however, goes white. As he should. Viktor Dragusha is crazy—everyone knows it.
“Help us and you won’t die,” I tell him. We walk down the street and around the corner, and then another. Viktor drives up, and I shove Gregor in and get in.
We’ll get a lot out of this one, I can tell. I pray he can lead us to Lazarus, to Kiro.
Kiro has no idea what’s coming at him.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Ann
We share a sleeping bag again. I wake up first and watch him sleep. It’s nice. I feel safe next to his big, warm body and I wish he was awake. I want to talk with him and hang out with him. Joke with him. Fuck him.
Not that I don’t want to get away. I have to get away—there’s no other rational choice, right? But still…
I don’t just feel safe with him, I feel relaxed in a way I haven’t for a long time, and I’m finally caught up on my sleep. Trapped out here with Kiro, exactly where I don’t want to be, I feel…almost human.
And I don’t have nightmares of the kitten anymore. I still have nightmares, but they’re of the collapsed hospital. Which actually was nightmarish. It always seemed suspicious that I freaked about the kitten and not about being trapped in that hospital.
Like maybe my mind has decided it’s strong and safe enough now to freak out about something that was actually scary. Out here in the peace and quiet.
With Kiro.
I reach out and smooth a beard hair, getting it into place alongside the others. He’s a beautiful study in browns. His wasp stings are still visible as lumps along one cheekbone, but they only seem to accentuate his rugged hot-guy looks.
Him giving me the phone was huge. He doesn’t trust technology, but he trusted me. I wish he’d trust me about his story. He needs to know what’s going on out there.
Little furrows appear on the insides of his eyebrows, then they disappear.
Softly I whisper, “Are you awake?”
The side of his mouth quirks.
I press my finger to his lips. “Freak.”
He keeps his eyes closed.
I touch his chin.
He grabs my wrist.
I laugh, surprised, and something softens in his face, as though he likes the sound. Hearing is everything to him. He opens his eyes.
“Take a picture, it might last longer,” I joke.
He furrows his brow, like he does when he doesn’t quite understand something.
Suddenly everything that was soft and beautiful in him goes hard and feral. He tightens his hold on my wrist. His gaze shifts to the side.
He hears something.
All I hear is the wind in the treetops. “What—”
“Shhh.” He sniffs the air.
“Ow.”
“They’re here.”
“Who?”
He glares at me.
“What?”
“You alerted somebody. With your phone.”
“I didn’t alert anybody! There was no signal. We’re not near anything—”
“There’s no way anyone could’ve tracked us. It had to be your phone.”
“I didn’t alert anyone. I swear—”
He sucks in a breath. “They’re the ones from before. They’d kill you as easily as they’d kill me. Why would you signal them?”
“I didn’t! I wouldn’t—I don’t even have anyone to alert.”
He studies my eyes. He wants to believe me. Finally he takes my hand and pulls me up and away from the small encampment. Maybe he half-believes me.
“You won’t call out to them if you know what’s good for you.”
“Why would I? What’s happening?”
He regards me warily. “We have to get off the island.” He pulls me across to the far, swampy edge. We’re surrounded by cattails and scrubby willows.
He listens. I still don’t hear anything, but from the way he moves his head, I can tell he hears and smells things. Maybe he’s even zeroing in on the location. Because Kiro is fucking magic.
“Take off your boots.”
“Excuse me? Should we get the canoe?”
“So they can see where we are?” He points across the channel to the woods.
He wants us to muck out there and swim for it.
“No,” I say. “Fuck no.”
He turns to me, glowering. “Do I need to drag you?”
I swallow, knowing he would. I gather myself. If he says they’re here, they’re here. I untie my boots and step out of them, sinking even deeper into the freezing muck. “Let’s go.”
He points. “My footsteps.”
I follow him out, sinking knee-deep in the cold, slimy muck, holding my boots above my head until we hit clear water. Kiro’s in bare feet, of course. He’s been going more and more without his boots, like he’s reverting back to his wild self the deeper we go.
I swim quietly after him through the painfully freezing water, copying his movements, staying quiet, aware. There’s more muck on the other side. I’m chattering my teeth off.
We trudge up to the shore. I follow him in. The terrain hurts my feet. “Wait. Let me put on my boots.”
“No time.” He picks me up, carrying me through the woods—fast. He doesn’t quite follow a straight line; he seems to choose his course by the terrain, and he gets some serious loft as he goes, his movements more animal than human.
He slows at the base of a huge pine tree, looks up, then goes to another and another, and then he stops.
“What the hell, Kiro?”
He puts me down. “You’ll climb.”
“What?”
“There’s no time.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. He senses danger. Whether he trusts me or no, he senses that the danger extends to me.
“Maybe I can help you.”
“I’ll fight better if I know you’re safe. I won’t have to listen for you.”
“How do you know I can’t help?”
“I know. Please,” he grates.
It’s so unusual for him not to simply issue a command that I’m taken off guard.
“Let me see you get up there. High up. You’re safe up there—nobody will look up there, nobody will shoot up there. Wait for me to call to you. If I don’t call…don’t trust the silence. Stay. Wait it out.”
I rest my palm on his beard. “Okay.” I mean the touch as a comforting gesture, but there’s a tightness in his brow; it seems almost to hurt him more than anything. Like my kindness hurts him.
And I realize something about him: This is a man who doesn’t know what to do with kindness.
Kiro knows what do when people hate him. He knows about being hunted and trapped and confined and beaten. But he’s never known kindness.
He’s never thought to expect anything like that from me. Why should he?
It makes me want to put my arms around him and pull him to me. I want to tell him he’s amazing and fierce and brave, and surprising all the time. I want to tell him he deserves kindness. That he’s worthy of love.
Very worthy of love. My heart pounds. “Kiro.”
“Please.” He hoists me up to the lowest branch. Kiro needs me to do this now. I catch the branch and scramble up, shivering, channeling my inner monkey, making sure not to look at the ground.
Up, up I climb. My hand slips at one point, but I catch myself on my arm and keep going. I find a place that’s good and high. I cling to
a branch, waiting, hoping he doesn’t think it’s me who alerted them.
I peer down through the branches. My vision of the forest floor is mostly obstructed by tree limbs, but I can see stretches here and there. I don’t see Kiro. But I’m thinking he’s made himself invisible, hunting in the shadows.
Kiro. Caring for me. Feeding me. Protecting me. I tell him that’s not how it works, but it’s more than anyone else has done for me for a long time.
He suspects I signalled for them to come, but he protects me anyway. He made a vow.
I wait for forever, thinking about what it must have been like for him, a boy, really and truly alone. Maybe hiding in trees just like this, frightened of what roamed below. Trying to make sense of the world. Always on the outside looking in.
Kind of like me—alone, always watching. Peering in from the outside at other people’s stories, but never a part of them. Living life, really, in service to other people’s stories.
And when you fall apart, nobody is there.
I try to think how anybody could track us so deep into the forest. Kiro thinks the phone is the only way, but…
A sick feeling comes over me. My editor, Murray, sent over that phone.
Fuck.
Did he put something in there? He’d know I’d disable the GPS if I didn’t want to be found, but could there be a tracker? Fuck. Of course. Activated by firing up the battery, I’m guessing. It would have to be, way out here. A small enough one to fit into the phone, anyway.
Fuck!
How could I be so stupid? Murray’s motivated by money. Once I took control of the story, it was less scintillating. Less exploitative. Much less valuable to him. The Albanian mob would pay way better.
Kiro’s right—I alerted them. He knows it was me, and still he tries to keep me safe.
I need to explain, but not now.
I track the shadows of the branches on the forest floor, watching them move. I suppose it would be a way of marking time if I knew anything whatsoever.
The shadows move a good long while before I hear the vehicle. No—two vehicles. Maybe more. ATVs? How did they get them here—choppers? Motorized boats? Motorized vehicles aren’t legal in this wilderness area, but then again, neither is the hunting of humans.
Savage Mafia Prince: a Dangerous Royals romance Page 23
