Page 189 of Mile High Ruin

In the restroom back inside the café, I stare at myself in the mirror. There’s still a faint reddish smear near my hairline.

Camille.

I scrub until it disappears.

When I go back outside, I sit on the low wall beside the café and take out my phone. For several seconds I simply stare at the screen.

Vadim’s name is there.

I could call him. I could tell him everything.

Then I remember Camille falling.

I close the contacts. Then I check my phone and try to buy a ticket, but my account appears to be frozen.

I swear under my breath. I have no doubt who did that. Daniel gave me some money, but it’s not enough. Sooner or later, it’ll run out, and then what? I’m in an unfamiliar country where I don’t even know the fricking language.

That’s when I think about the card Viktor gave me at the club. I had the good sense to throw it away afterward because I had no intention of calling him, but before I did, I took a photograph of it. I’d almost forgotten.

I open my photos and scroll back.

There. The heavy white card sits against the hotel room table where I photographed it weeks ago, Viktor’s name printed across the front with a phone number underneath.

Viktor Petrov. The man Vadim believes wants him dead.

The man who approached me before any of this started.

The man who may know exactly why my bag carried a tracker.

I stare at the number for a long time. Calling him is probably the stupidest thing I have done since pouring wine over Vadim Chernovar.

That thought nearly makes me laugh.

Instead, I type in the number, and call.

The phone begins to ring.

30

SLOANE

My brother’s hospital room has become so familiar that I know which floorboard near the window gives a faint creak when the night nurse steps on it, which fluorescent light above the sink takes three seconds longer than the others to stop flickering, and exactly how far I can pull the visitor’s chair toward Ethan’s bed before one of the nurses tells me I’m blocking the equipment.

I sit there anyway, close enough that my knee touches the side of the mattress, watching my brother sleep beneath a blanket that seems to grow heavier every week while he grows thinner beneath it.

There are mornings when I can still convince myself he looks like himself. If the light falls the right way, if his eyes are closed and I ignore the hollow beneath his cheekbones, I can look at him and remember the brother who used to steal food from my plate because he claimed everything tasted better when somebody else paid for it. The brother who once drove three hours in the middle of the night because my car broke down and I was too embarrassed to call anyone else. The brother who used to complain that I worried too much while quietly letting me worry anyway.

Those mornings are becoming rarer.

His skin has taken on that washed-out hospital pallor that makes every vein at his wrist visible, and even when he’s awake he tires halfway through conversations, his eyelids growing heavy while I’m still trying to pretend we have all the time in the world.

The machines around him make soft, repetitive noises that I barely hear anymore.

A month ago, every alarm made my heart jump. Now I know which ones matter.

I hate that I know.

Ethan stirs. His fingers move against the blanket.