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Adrik runs to his other side with a team of medics. As soon as the gunfire started, someone must have called them. The workers scramble, placing lines in his arm, tubing into his nose, and lifting him onto a cart before disappearing through the kitchen.
The fighting ends, but I won’t feel relief until I know Tatyana is safe. My back straightens into a bolt, and I turn to the kitchen.
Adrik hid her there when the shooting started.
I run and kick the metal service doors open, breaking one off the hinges as the other swings back and forth. I run through the aisles of carts, dish racks, all the way to the back of the kitchen, but I can’t find her.
“Adrik!” I scream.
He appears in the kitchen.
“Where is she!” I yell to him.
“I put her in here!” Adrik yells back as he walks to a door off to the side and tears it open. His hand falls from the handle as the door drifts the rest of the way on its own. He turns to me and shakes his head.
Vadim is clinging to life. I can’t walk up to Tatyana and find the lifeless body of another person I care about.
I run up to him, coming to a screeching halt in the doorway of a pantry. Tatyana isn’t dead as I worried she might be. The duffle bag Boris presented to Vadim is torn open with money scattered across the floor. My mother’s necklace is lying on the floor next to it.
And Tatyana is gone.
Chapter21
TATYANA
An overhead announcement in the airport baggage claim area finishes. It’s probably the tenth time I’ve heard it and at this point I can recite it completely.
Most days I’d find the repetition irritating, but today I welcome the distraction. I sit on a bench, watching overstuffed bags of luggage follow the winding conveyor belt, disappear through a back wall, and reappear at the start of the belt a minute later. There’s a floral bag I’ve become attached to, following it until the owner walks up and scoops it off the belt.
Out of cheap distractions to keep my head occupied, I tap my high-heeled shoe on the tile floor, hoping I won’t need to wait much longer. I cross my arms around me to stay warm. As much as I’m trying to blend into the crowd, I know I’d look suspicious to anyone who bothered to look close enough. A lone girl sitting at an airport in Chicago who just got off an international flight with no luggage or possessions apart from a wool trench coat that’s too large. I’m still wearing the dress I wore at the Bratva party at the restaurant, but I tied the floor-length dress around my thighs to at least hide how conspicuously overdressed I am.
You always hear flowery stories of adventurous people hopping on a plane with little more than a toothbrush to start a new life. I don’t even have a toothbrush with me. And my story isn’t one of adventure. It was a desperate escape from what I know would end in certain death for me had I stayed behind.
If Viktor’s man hadn’t shoved me into the kitchen pantry when the shootout started, I would be dead right now. I wouldn’t have found the bag of money in the pantry and grabbed as much as I could and run out the door with someone’s coat. I wouldn’t have been able to hail a taxi and flee the scene of a bloodbath, or call Ashlynn at the cafe I stopped at.
Sometimes you know you’re out of options, but you try an idea out of pure desperation. You know there’s almost no chance of it succeeding, but it’s all you have left. That’s exactly how I felt when I leaned against the wood-paneled wall of the cafe on to the outskirts of St. Petersburg praying for Ashlyn to pick up my call. The alternative would be to face a life alone, on the run from Viktor, Arkady, and Boris, the man who glared at me when he saw me with Viktor.
The moment I made peace with my failed plan was when Ashlyn picked up.
My desperate plan that was destined for failure actually worked. I told Ashlyn as much as I could and begged her to help me with no idea of how she could. Ashlyn’s response is a testament to how good of a friend she’s always been to me.
Get to the airport and wait for my call. I’m getting you out of there, Taty.
It was all I could do. My last option. I instructed the taxi to take me to the airport, waited for her call and before I knew it, I was being escorted onto a private jet headed for Chicago.
It was only when I reached the airport that I looked at myself in the mirror, cleaning off the splatters of blood and dirt. A man I’d never seen before approached me and told me Ashlynn sent him. He ordered me to come with him, and I had no other option but to trust his words.
My last option was the one that worked. He led me to a private plane that took me to Chicago.
I don’t know how Ashlyn pulled it off, but she did.
My hands wrap around each other as if to wash off the madness that ensued over the last twenty-four hours. I doubt it’s been a full day since I narrowly escaped a shootout. As jet-lagged as I am, I don’t even know how many hours have passed since my escape.
A line of cars parked idling outside make a slow procession around the perimeter of the airport. Some are taxis, others are private cars. I squint, hoping to see Ashlyn’s familiar blonde hair peeking out somewhere.
“Taty,” I hear echoing through the baggage claim. I turn my head toward Ashlyn’s voice, but can’t find her in the crowd of passers-by. I peer past a lady with bright red hair and large sunglasses, trying to see if I can find Ashlyn beyond the thick fur coat the lady with the red hair is wearing, but she keeps coming towards me and blocking my view.
“Tatyana!” the lady with red hair shouts at me. The fluorescent light hits the top of her head, creating a ruby-red circle at the top. It’s cropped in a short bob, but when I take another look, I realize the lady with the red hairisAshlyn. I gasp at how different she looks and bolt out of the bench, running and throwing my arms around her. I feel a little self-conscious about my reaction, but Ashlyn doesn’t seem to mind. She wraps her arms around me just as tight. Before I know it, tears pour out of my eyes, soaking into the sleeve of the enormous wool coat I’m wearing.
