“I said, don’t.”
“I’m not saying it to be cruel,” I tell him.
“I know.” He drags a hand over his face and blows out hard through his nose. “She loves Vladimir. She loves him so much that she sounds frightened half the time. Like if she takes her eyes off him for one second, something bad will happen.”
I know Cassie well enough to know she isn’t stupid or weak, no matter what half the world probably thinks when it sees a young woman with a baby and a man in uniform writing from miles away. She has steel in her, or she would never have lasted with Niko in the first place. He’s not easy. None of us are. “What do you want to do?” I ask.
“What do you think I want to do?”
“Break several laws and drive down there?”
“Pretty much.”
“It’s reasonable.” He gives me a hard look, waiting for me to mock him. “What can you do?”
“I can write, I can call, I can ask theneighbour to check in, except I don’t trust people I’ve never met properly with anything important, or I can put in for leave and get laughed out of the office.”
“You could still try.”
“I am trying.”
“No, I mean properly.”
“What does that mean?” he asks, his eyes narrowing at me.
“It means you’ve been pretending this might sort itself out if you stare at it hard enough, and it won’t.” He looks ready to argue, but he doesn’t, which tells me I’m right.
“I know. Stop saying it like I’m an idiot,” he says, turning to me fully, his shoulders squared, temper flaring in a way I recognise and trust.
“I didn’t say you were an idiot.”
“Yeah, well, you were heavily implying it.”
“Subtlety is wasted on this family,” I mumble.
He stares at me another second and then, against his will, his mouth twitches. “You’re such a little bastard.”
“And yet here I am helping.”
He exhales through his nose, easing some of the tension. “Helping by talking at me?”
“That’s my best skill.”
“Your best skill is definitely self-obsession.”
“It’s a very close second.”
He looks out across the yard again. “She wrote a few days ago that she sat up half the night because she was sure she heard someone in the hall outside the flat. She said she took Vladimir into the bathroom and lockedthe door,” he says, quieter now. I pause with a concerned look on my face. Niko sees that and nods in agreement. “Exactly.”
“What happened then?”
“As far as I can tell, nothing happened. She said it was probably pipes in the wall or someone coming home late, but she still stayed in there for hours.”
“And this was in a letter? Do you still have it?” He pats his coat pocket and pulls it out. “Let me read it.” He hesitates, gripping the paper tight. “Come on. I’m not asking because I enjoy reading your love letters.”
“They’re not love letters.”
“That’s almost sadder.” He takes a second, then hands it over. I move closer to the barracks wall, where the light from the doorway catches enough to read by. Cassie’s handwriting is neat at first, and then it gets messy, as if she’s rushing to get the words out faster than she can write. It looks almost frantic.
