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Yan sighs, releasing the last few laughs before returning to his stone-cold, unaffected demeanor. “We need to get more information from Johan. Most importantly, we need to find out who else he’s dealing with so that we can track them down. I doubt he’d be messy enough to do this himself.”
I briefly recall my conversation with Johan after we’d escaped to the barn. I already know in my gut that he’s probably gone into hiding to avoid being apprehended for this.
“How are we supposed to get ahold of him? If you think he’s smart enough to make someone else do this for him, we’re better off looking for someone who is sloppy and malleable. The actual shooter will be a lot easier to catch than the person who set them up to do it.”
Yan leans back against the wall, taking a deep breath in as he considers the long road ahead of us. “You’re not wrong. Finding Johan and getting him to confess would take a lot of guesswork out of the equation, though. The most common theme with mass shooters is their obsession with notoriety, so any jackoff on the internet could be claiming it for the glory,” he replies.
It’s fucked up but he’s right. If the police were any good at their jobs, they would have caught the person responsible by now and I’d at least have a name to start with. But I have nothing, and the cops had combed those fairgrounds for an entire day without finding that bullet casing.
There’s no way they’ll find him.
“Alright, that’s true. It would make more sense to go straight for the source, but it’s going to be a real bitch to solve until we have more information,” I say, doing my best to conceal the hopelessness taking over my voice.
“Do you think that you could have a conversation with Johan without bashing his brains in?” Yan asks, a knowing glimmer flashing through his eyes.
I think about it for a moment, trying to mentally place myself in a room with the man who might have had my brother killed.
The visual of Johan’s smug face alone is enough to get my blood boiling. Trying to reason with him, working an angle that would benefit his interests, would crush me.
I don’t think I could hold back if he provoked me, and we’d have another body on our hands.
“I think you might have to do this one for me,” I confess. “I don’t think I could do it alone.”
Yan’s expression is understanding, but there’s a grave darkness beneath the deep wrinkles that have settled into his face. He knows what I’m capable of, and Johan’s end would be far less merciful than a shot to the abdomen.
“We really don’t need the mess,” he agrees.
Vera has been doing the best she can to maintain her composure throughout the conversation, but it’s clear that the mounting tension is getting to her.
“What are we going to do about the girl?” Yan asks. “Long-term, I mean. If she’s here in your house, someone has definitely spotted her with you already.”
Vera’s head snaps in my direction, her eyes silently begging me to come to her defense.
“She’s a lot stronger than other civilians, Yan. She knows what’s going on, and she’s chosen to stay anyway. I have full confidence in her ability to stay calm,” I reply.
“It’s not that, Ruslan. I don’t doubt that this girl has shown you a resilience that you don’t often encounter in common people. But her safety is on the line. You need a plan in place to keep her out of danger. She doesn’t deserve to die just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
I can hear Vera’s breathing growing unsteady as the weight of her future hangs in the balance. Only a few days ago, she was a bored, underwhelmed college student with no friends. The shift into being a hostage and then a trusted ally must be dizzying.
“I assure you, all I want for Vera is to keep her safe,” I say. “I wouldn’t have allowed her to come back with me if I thought I couldn’t protect her. You know me better than that.”
Yan sighs heavily, resigning himself to an unexpected and grueling new mission. “You know, we’re arranging a funeral for Misha out of state. It should be happening in the next two weeks. I needed you to know before the details were set in stone. I didn’t think it would be right to spring it on you once everything was already in place.”
We’ve been talking about Misha throughout this whole conversation, so I shouldn’t be feeling such an intense reaction to his name. It’s the reminder of his bitter, undeserved end that’s shaken me unexpectedly.
I don’t want to talk about Misha’s funeral. I don’t want to talk about him being dead at all. It feels like a betrayal of his memory to focus on anything short of avenging his death.
“Why out of state? Do you feel like that’s really necessary?” I ask.
“I do. There will be quite a lot of high-profile types there, and we already have enough to worry about with the shooting at the fair. If the people who killed him find out where the funeral is, they’ll wipe us all out just to prove that they can.”
I know he’s right. We’ve seen it before, even with people we considered brothers.
One of our men died when I was overseas, and his funeral was shot up by the man who killed him. The only reason I wasn’t gunned down in that massacre is because my flight was delayed.
There’s a heavy silence in the room, all of us trying to find the right words to say. It’s a horrific situation to be caught up in, which is why I wish I could thank Vera for attempting to withstand it at all.
“Just keep me posted,” I say, cutting through the silence with a jagged edge. “I’ll be waiting for more updates, and I’ll let you know if I find anything related to Johan or the shooter.”
