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That’s when I hear the first gunshot.
I stop, dead-still, upstairs in her bedroom. The bed isn’t made—does she not make her bed in the morning? I didn’t think of her as that type. I do. If we were together, if we shared this house or that bed, I’d keep it up for her. I shake the insipid thought from my head, and in the same split second, another gunshot comes ripping up the hill from the forest behind the house.
And I move.
My mind is everywhere. I’m not prone to panic. I feel like a fool as I tear through the house, down the stairs, out the back door. The fields and sloping hills are muddy and overgrown, thememories of a better-kept place everywhere: in the collapsed outbuildings, the chicken coop and barn, in the fences and gates that have broken down or begun to molder.
Where is she? Kat, where the hell are you?
Another gunshot. Close. Percussive. Easy enough to trace—it’s coming from downhill, from the woods.
I run. My feet carry me more slowly than I’d like, like I’m in some nightmare, escaping a madman or a tidal wave. The kind of dream where when you open your mouth, no matter how hard you try, you can’t scream. Another gunshot.
And I’m picturing the worst now, the absolute worst. I’m wondering: was I wrong, about Konstantin? Would he delegate this? Would he really let someone else do this for him? Kill her, torture her?
I see her in my mind’s eye: I see it all happening. Her, waking up, and maybe I left a door unlocked, or one of my men did, or maybe she did herself. Or maybe she wanted a moment alone, away from all of us and the guns and the stench of coming violence. Maybe she stepped outside for a breath of air, or just to feel the rain on her face.
Was someone waiting for her? Were there men out there in the woods, watchful and armed? In my mind’s eye, I see a man appearing behind her, up by the back of the house. Grabbing her by the hair, clamping a hand over her mouth. I watch the imaginative scene as he drags her kicking and clawing down the hill, into the wet, dark shadows of the woods. He doesn’t torture her in this imagining. He shoves her to the ground, and she falls onto her knees. He kicks her in the center of her back, and she falls flat, and that’s when he raises the pistol and fires:pop pop pop pop!Each of them straight into her back.
No more gunshots. I’m moving fast, but am I moving in the right direction? No more gunshots…because I’m too late, because the horrible fantasy might be real, because—
Because Kat is already dead, because I am a fool who thought he knew better, who thought he knew best.Why did I take so many men to scout Konstantin this morning, and leave her with even slightly lowered defenses? Why did I take Yuri?
What the fuck was I thinking?
Then—I see them. A pair of silhouettes in the woods, there, at the bottom of the hill. Both of them standing. Both of them moving.
Both of them alive—and one of them, distinctly Kat. I’m still moving fast but as I see them, I slow, lowering my gun. Kat has hers in hand, disarmed and lowered, with what looks like a full magazine of spent shells glinting at her feet in the rain-wet reeds. Further down the hill, beyond them, I see an arrangement of targets, pocked with holes.
When I squint, I recognize the man she’s with—one of mine, a guard. One of Yuri’s favorites, if I’m not mistaken. But fuck favor. Right now, my heart is vibrating violently against my ribs, my ears are full, roaring, and rage is surfing my veins like a drug. I can barely breathe, even as Kat spots me. Alarm lights up her face, and she twitches her gun hand in my direction—then realizes it’s only me.
“Aleks,” she says, half-startled but clearly pleased, too, her eyes softening and filling with light. A flush floods her face, and she quickly averts her eyes—remembering last night, no doubt. And if I weren’t so fucking livid, I might enjoy doing just the same thing—but I am livid. And I can barely see straight. “We didn’t expect you back so soon. Toma and I were just—”
But she cuts off the sentiment with a sharp gasp, staggering back as I reach them and unerringly launch my fist straight into Toma—that’s right, that’s his name, he is one of Yuri’s favorites—my fist connecting violently with his nose. He makes a startled sound, staggering back a foot, but I have him by the front of his jacket, and I yank him close.
In Russian, I snarl at him, low under my breath. “What the fuck were you thinking, bringing her out here like this?”
His eyes are huge and round, his face flat white with terror. Blood courses from both of his nostrils, and his body language is one of apology, of submission, hands thrown up, shoulders cringing away from me even as I yank him closer by the collar.
“I’m sorry,” he bumbles back in Russian. “She is supposed to be allowed on the grounds with a chaperone, when supervised, I am armed—”
“Are you a fucking idiot?” I demand, giving him a hard shake. “I wasn’t here. Yuri wasn’t here. Who the fuck do you think you are to bring her out like this, straight into the line of danger, hm? She could have been killed. Both of you could have been killed. You didn’t call, you didn’t text or leave a note—I found the house empty, I heard gunshots. I thought she was dead.”
“She is not dead! She is—”
“No fucking shit, Toma,” I say, and because the rage in me is so blinding, so sudden of a rush, so all encompassing, I cock my arm and throw my fist again.
This time I catch Toma across the jaw and he grunts in pain, falling back a few steps. He loses his footing and goes down hard, the breath knocked out of his lungs. Still, his face is supplicant, apologetic more than anything. When I surge forward toward him again, my vision tunneling, my outrage snapped off and getting me right in the ribs, Kat steps in.
I nearly shove her out of the way, I’m so furious, so blinded. But she steps right between me and Toma, placing her free hand against my chest. Firmly.
It snaps me out of my fear-filled rage. I look at her, breathing hard, rain catching on my shoulders, in her lashes. Her eyes are lit up, narrowed to slits. She’s looking at me like…hell. Like she’s disappointed in me.
And for some reason I can’t name, that wounds me more than I’d like to admit.
“Don’t ever make a mistake like that again,” I say, bitterly, to Toma over her shoulder. I say it in Russian, relishing more than I should the way Kat’s eyes narrow even further, this time in annoyance. She doesn’t like that she doesn’t know what I’m saying. “Why the hell do you think we’re here, hm? Why the hell do you think that we came all this way? She is not replaceable cargo. And it is not in your authority to decide when and where she is safe to go.”
Toma still looks drawn and terrified. My head is splitting, and I’m only just now coming down off the rage for real, my adrenaline starting to burn off. When I turn to head back up to the house, I expect Kat to fall into obedient line behind me—but she doesn’t.
