Worse, it makes her vulnerable. A wounded human instead of a weapon, a victim of Roman Kozlov’s inhumanity.
“Max!” Nika’s voice carries from the bedroom where she went to clean up. The sharp, high-pitched panic drives ice through my veins.
I whip around, ignoring the jolt of pain in my ankle as the room behind me fills with smoke.
Chapter 25
Nika
Shit.
Max meets my gaze from across the smoggy living room. “The snow on the roof must have blocked off the chimney.” I spin toward my closet and start grabbing clean clothes, pulling on socks, long johns, leggings, a tank top, a cashmere sweater, and then a wool coat.
Once finished, I pivot to find Max and face off with the expanding wall of black that’s begun creeping from the living room into other areas of the house.
The taste of mildew and musk coats my mouth and throat, growing thicker with each passing second.
Ducking down, I try to squint through the haze. I spot a pair of ambulatory snow pants near the front door, where the smoke swirls and thins.
Crawling seems the safest way through, though I can’t remember if CO2 is heavier or lighter than air. Am I just trading an obvious threat for an invisible one? The alarms should go off at any moment. I’m not excited about that loud, blaring confusion.
Covering my mouth, I hold my breath until I reach the door and discover Max pulling a boot over his wonky ankle.
“What are you doing?” The cleaner air helps to clear the fog that started building in my head. Either that or the slap of cold.
Max finishes snapping the hood flap over his mouth, which hides everything but his eyes. Compared to their icy blue, outside is practically balmy. “I’m going up on the roof. There?—”
“You don’t know anything about chimneys.” At least, I can’t imagine Roman includes Basic Chimney Sweeping 101 in his murderer training. I try to push Max away from the door so I can get to the snow gear I store in the coat closet.
“And you don’t know anything about me.” He glares, forcing the door out of my hands.
The declaration gives me pause. Despite everything we’ve been through the last few nights and the dossier I have on him, he’s right. I’ve no idea how skilled he is at home maintenance. I guess he did manage to fix the electricity.
We’re strangers hellbent on destroying each other without understanding who the other really is.
“I don’t suppose you have a flamethrower?”
My train of thought skitters, slides off the rails, and crashes into the woods where it ignites. “What?”
Did he say flamethrower?
He skirts past me into the gale. “I guess I’ll do it the hard way then.”
The wind tries to slam the door shut, but I catch it automatically. The room still needs the smoke cleared and the air refreshed, no matter the temperature or how long it takes to warm the house afterward.
While I’m struggling with that, Max trudges over to the side of the house, a dark shape against white chaos. Despite the way the wind whips at him, he plods forward, breaking a line in waist-high snow.
With every step, he gets taller, then shorter. Then he disappears altogether.
For a few moments, I listen to the shrieking wind. Then I glance up. Is that the groan of pine trees or the moan of an overloaded roof?
Could heavy snow piles actually cause the house to cry out?
Long minutes pass.
With afwump, a pile of snow shifts off the roof and plummets to the driveway. Another clump follows.
Sure signs of Max making his way across the house.
