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Blood from the wound had dried across her breasts but was still wet where it had soaked into the mattress. He slid his gun into the back of his pants and stood motionless in the doorway, staring down at her.
Olga Smolin had been a gift for a particularly difficult job he’d completed in Ukraine. A runway model from Tomsk, she’d been beautiful, reasonably good in bed, and a passably competent administrator of his household affairs. On a more basic level, she had been a deeply unhappy young woman. She didn’t like the remoteness of Costa Rica, but even in the world’s great cities, she seemed to feel nothing was good enough. It made taking pleasure in the simple things impossible for her.
Or maybe she just felt trapped. Like he did.
Azarov freed her and covered her body with a bloodstained sheet. Though she wasn’t a woman he would have chosen, he would miss her. But that was the point, wasn’t it? Krupin once again demonstrated his skill. Azarov had been punished in a way that was extremely visceral but not sufficient to start a war between them.
He heard the crunch of gravel out front but didn’t reach for his gun. His punishment had been meted out. There was nothing more to fear.
“Hello?” he heard a familiar voice call. “Is anyone here?”
Azarov came out of the hallway just as a young woman with a cooler in her hands took a hesitant step into his living room. She was an American surf instructor who provided home management services for some of the wealthier foreign owners.
“How are you, Cara?”
She jumped at the sound of his voice, but managed to keep from dropping the cooler. “Oh, hi, Grisha. I’m fine, thanks. What about you? What happened to your face?”
“A car accident. The window shattered.”
“Oh, man. I guess you should consider yourself lucky that nothing hit you in the eye, huh?”
“Very lucky.”
Cara Hansen was in many ways the complete opposite of the woman Azarov had spent the last two years living with. She was just as beautiful, but in a natural, perpetually disheveled way that contrasted with Olga’s icy perfection. She always had a smile on her face, and seemed to think neither of the past nor the future. While Olga had everything and appreciated nothing, Cara had very little and loved all of it.
Azarov had known her in a peripheral way for years, but paid no attention to her. He’d never looked into her background or had a conversation with her that didn’t involve some problem with his house or meaningless small talk about waves or the weather. He couldn’t. If Krupin knew how he felt about this twenty-nine-year-old Californian expat, it would have been her, and not Olga, bleeding into his mattress.
Azarov pointed to the cooler. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”
“Oh. Yeah. Sorry. They told me you needed a bunch of ice. Party or broken fridge?”
“The latter.”
“I could take a look at it.”
“That’s not necessary.”
“It’s not problem,” she said, pushing past him into the kitchen. She put the cooler on the island and opened the refrigerator, crouching down to get a closer look.
He watched with calculated indifference as she poked her head inside.
“Seems fine. The light’s on and it feels cold.”
“It comes and goes.”
“Well, I wouldn’t eat any of this stuff, then,” she said, standing and turning toward him.
He made sure not to look at the way her shirt clung to her or the tantalizing strip of skin between the bottom of it and the top of her shorts.
“That’s good advice, Cara. Thank you.”
“Where’s Olga?”
“Russia.”
“Cool trip. When’s she coming back?”
“Probably never.”
