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Still, I don’t want to bother her if she’s not feeling well.
I decide to begin by setting up the computer itself. It’s a sleek, high-end MacBook Pro, and as I unpack it from the box, I realize I’ve never had a laptop this expensive. It’s hard to believe Nikolai just had it sitting in his desk drawer like a spare pen.
Then again, why am I surprised? This family clearly has money to burn.
I boot up the laptop and go through the new computer setup routine. But when I try to get on Wi-Fi, I can’t—it’s password protected. I need Alina for this too. I suppose I can ask Lyudmila, but she’s putting Slava to bed right now, and there’s no guarantee she’d know the password, given how paranoid the Molotovs are about security, digital and otherwise.
Blowing out a frustrated breath, I close the laptop. Without internet, it’s pretty much useless.
I guess tonight I get to laze around and watch TV.
I change out of my evening gown and into a pair of butter-soft leggings and a long-sleeved cotton tee—both new acquisitions—and make myself comfortable on the bed. Turning on the TV, I locate a nature show and spend the next hour learning about the plains of the Serengeti. The David Attenborough narration is as magnificent as always, and I find myself completely absorbed by the story unfolding on the screen, my mind calm for the first time in weeks. It’s only when I’m watching a lion stalk a gazelle that my thoughts turn to the killers hunting me, and my disquiet returns.
I still don’t know who those men are or what they wanted with my mom—why they killed her and made it look like a suicide. The most logical possibility is that she walked in on them while they were burglarizing the apartment, but then why was she wearing her robe like she was relaxing at home? And why didn’t the police notice signs of forced entry or things missing?
At least I assume they didn’t notice it. If they did and ruled her death a suicide anyway… well, that raises all kinds of other questions.
The other possibility, a likelier and much more disturbing one, is that they came specifically to kill her.
Turning off the TV, I get up and walk over to the window to stare out at the rapidly darkening landscape. My chest is tight, my mind churning anew. I’ve racked my brain ever since it happened, trying to think of reasons why someone might want to kill my mom, and I can’t come up with a single one. Mom wasn’t perfect—she could be sharp-tongued when tired, and she was prone to bouts of depression—but I’d never seen her be deliberately mean or unkind to anyone. For as long as I can remember, she’d worked two or more jobs to support us, leaving her with little time and energy to socialize and make friends—or enemies. To the best of my knowledge, she didn’t even date, though men hit on her all the time.
She was beautiful… and barely forty when she died.
My throat cinches tight, a stinging pressure building behind my eyes. Not only have I lost the only person in the world who loved me unconditionally, but her murderers are out there, free. The police didn’t believe a single word I told them, the reporters I contacted didn’t reply to my emails, and nobody is looking for my mom’s killers. Nobody is hunting them like the rabid animals they are.
Instead, the killers are hunting me.
Fuck this shit.
Pivoting on my heel, I stride to the bed and grab the laptop. I can’t sit around, watching TV like my world didn’t crumble a month ago. Not when I’m finally safe and have a computer on which I can do research at my leisure. For weeks, I’ve lurched from one crisis to another, all my energy focused on survival, on escape, but things are different now. I have a full belly, a safe place to rest my head, and—if I can only get that Wi-Fi password—an internet-connected laptop. No more sneaking into a library in some small town to huddle over their slow, ancient desktops while looking over my shoulder every minute; no more dashing off hastily composed emails before running to my car.
Here, in the privacy of my room, I can take my time and look for evidence to back up my claims, for some kind of proof to take to the police.
I can try to solve the mystery of Mom’s murder and turn the tables on her killers, make them be the ones who have to run.
29
Chloe
I don’t know which room is Alina’s, but it has to be close to mine for her to have heard me both nights. Holding the laptop against my chest, I knock on the door closest to my bedroom, and when I don’t get an answer, I move on to the next one.
