I don’t know him. I don’t know where I am.
The sky is pale above us. The river wall is slick under his boots. He curses as he pulls me over the edge and onto wet concrete. My shoulder hits the ground first, then my hip, and pain explodes through me so brightly that the world goes white.
I scream. Or I think I do. The sound comes out broken.
The man rolls me onto my side, and more water pours from my mouth. I cough until my throat feels raw, until I can breathe in small, jagged pieces.
“Oh God,” he says. His voice changes.
I blink up at him. He’s middle-aged, maybe. Bearded. Wearing an old brown jacket. His face is wet, eyes wide with horror as he looks down at me.
Then I see why.
There’s blood on my coat. Too much. Dark, spreading from my side, turning black fabric darker. My hand moves there before I can stop it, and when my fingers touch the wound, pain rips through me again.
A memory flashes.
Dmitri’s voice.
Run, baby. Run.
My feet slipping on gravel.
A shout behind me.
The river ahead.
The crack of a gun.
I gasp. “No.”
The man pulls out his phone with shaking hands. “Stay still. I’m calling.”
My head turns weakly. “No. No, I have to?—”
“You’re bleeding.”
“I have to go.”
“You’re not going anywhere.” He presses the phone to his ear. “I need an ambulance. A woman’s been shot. She was in the water. Yes, shot. She’s breathing.”
Shot.
The word reaches me slowly.
I look down at myself again. The pain in my side has a center now. A place. A wound.
Dmitri shot me.
The memory comes in fragments, each one worse than the last.
I’m running. My scarf tears on the wire.
Someone shouts my name.
I turn for half a second because I hear anger and disbelief in Dmitri’s voice, as if even while chasing me, he can’t believe I’m still choosing to run from him.
“You don’t get to leave me twice,” he says.
