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“Why me?”
“Because you’re the last person to be seen with her. And because your DNA and hers are all over a bloody hotel room in Prague.”
* * *
Oh,she was going to die here, Shae felt it in her bones.
She just had to face the truth…even if Ned found her, or if Uncle Ian ransomed her, it would be too late.
No more illusions, no more hands over her eyes or ears, no more hope that if she just kept her head down and kept digging, she might survive.
Because after today, well, she’d barely kept her toes, and not because the wind burned her ears and through her wool jacket and flimsy canvas jumpsuit. The pressed wool footwear turned out to be surprisingly warm, even when wet and muddy.
No, the death of her would be the enemy she’d somehow made in Vikka.
Vikka, who apparently had a favorite shovel.
Shae lay in her bunk, pressing her fists to her eyes. Her hands burned with blisters, and every muscle ached. She’d gotten a shower today, but the chill of the boat seeped through her wet head, down into her body, and she trembled, hard.
But she had to blame, too, the near miss of losing her toes today.
Eta moya lopata.
The woman had said it in Russian and then, because Shae wasn’t looking at her and didn’t understand a word she’d said, Vikka had said it again, this time in broken English—Zhat is my shovel—while an inch from her face.
This version, Shae understood.
What she didn’t understand was her own crazy reaction. Maybe it was the result of sitting with Judah Lion at dinner last night and this morning at breakfast. The way that others sort of gave him berth, as if he might be scary or possess power. But even Vikka had found another table to terrorize.
Shae had started thinking that everything might be okay. That she would survive. It wasn’t anything Judah said, either.
Just his presence. Sorta made her heart slow down, made her thoughts stop spiraling, stopped the constant thrum of fear.
But he worked on the pipes, welding the new pipes together or breaking open the old pipes to be lifted out of the trench, which left her alone with the diggers.
And Vikka.
And Shae’s stupid, unfounded bravery.
“I like this shovel,” she’d said.
Oh, what an idiot. Even as the words issued from her, she’d wanted to grab them back. Especially when Vikka’s face twisted—a sort of smile, almost—and she stepped back and—
The sharp end of her shovel came down right against the top of Shae’s wool boot. So hard that it snipped off the finest layer of wool and dug a trench in the sand.
Toes. She needed those to run.
Shae handed over the shovel.
Vikka took it and then walked away, her shovel still standing guard in the dirt.
Around them, others had seen, many of them women, some of them men, but their expressions betrayed nothing.
Shae’s stomach wanted to lose her kasha and brown bread breakfast. Somehow, she managed to keep her head down, keep digging, not look up, even when the tears came.
Just dig.
She’d foolishly pinned her hopes on seeing Judah after the workday. She’d gotten the rhythm, even after two days. Stack the shovels, line up by number, march back to the boat. Except Judah, and a number of the other welders, didn’t join them.
