Page 141 of Lethal Obsession

“It’s okay,” I say, subtly shifting my body so I’m positioned to follow her through the door. “It doesn’t matter now. I know you tried to protect me.”

“Shut up,” Ivan snarls, covering his phone.

The light turns red.

Seline stares straight at him. “Fuck you.”

Then she opens the door.

She swings her legs out, spinning around so she hits the asphalt in a crouched run. I feel the horrible drag of Ivan clutching at the zip tie around my hands, but it’s his weaker hand and I’ve caught him by surprise. I manage to wrench myself free, landing clumsily behind Seline, who is already weaving through the paused traffic. Picking myself up, I stumble after her, across the road, to the walkway beside the bridge.

“There!” She nods at a set of stairs about fifty meters away. “We need to get to those, then we can go into the tunnels.”

I glance behind us. The lights have changed, and the traffic is trying to move around the parked black sedan. Ivan has his door open, but between passing cars and scooters, he’s having trouble leaving the vehicle.

We might just make it.

We run to the stairs and down them onto the concrete-lined channel.

“See that opening?” Seline jerks her head at a narrow fissure in the concrete on the other side of the channel, directly beneath the arch of the pedestrian bridge. “That will take us into the tunnels.”

We head into the channel. In the middle of summer, the deepest point is probably only a couple of feet, but the sloping concrete is slippery, with a lot of broken stone underfoot. Having our hands zip-tied doesn’t make it any easier. Worse, we’re fully exposed to view.

“Ah!” Seline trips and falls into the water, then struggles to stand up. “My foot is stuck.”

“Take my hands.” I crouch down with my back to her. “I can pull you up.”

“I can’t,” she gasps. “My foot is wedged in something.”

“Stop!” roars Ivan from above us. He peers over the bridge, then races for the same stairs we took.

“Go.” I turn to find Seline looking up at me, her face set with pain. “Get into the tunnel and turn upstream. Follow it about half a kilometer, then go south again.” I glance over her shoulder and see Ivan already halfway down the stairs.

“Go!” She nudges me with her head. “This is my fault, Ofelia.”

“They’ll hurt you—”

“They’ll hurt me anyway. Go.”

The screech of a siren cuts the air.

Police.

Relief spreads over Seline’s face, and for a moment I debate whether or not to take my chances and stay.

But the reality is that in the world I come from, the police side with whoever happens to be paying them. And that isn’t a chance worth taking—not if it means someone using me in their chess game to trap Alexei.

I duck into the fissure just as Ivan rounds the arch of the bridge and comes into view.

“Where is she?” he yells angrily, splashing through the water toward Seline.

I don’t wait to hear her answer. I just turn into the darkness and start walking.

27

Alexei

“You fucking heard me, Mak.” I pace across the deck of the Quantum Drift. “I want a team on the ground in Granada, right fucking now.”