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I am an idiot for it. It opens all kinds of doors I can’t imagine how to close. But it’s true. Who she is and how she behaves, how wildly brave she is, how headstrong…these are all of the quirks and traits that made me like her, once. Now they’re flowing and wild, all in vivid color. She’s not a girl any longer, and I’m not a boy. She’s a woman. I’m a man. And that’s why tonight, I must end this once and for all, and free her from the torture I have brought down on her.
“It’s time,” says Yuri, appearing silently in the doorway. His hair is wet, as are the shoulders of his jacket. Beneath it, he’s wearing a bullet-proof vest, and he carries a rifle across his back. “The men are ready to go when you are.”
“I’m sorry,” I tell him, pouring him a glass of whiskey. “About Toma.”
“It is me who should be apologizing.” He paces into the kitchen, and drinks. His expression is somber, grieving; and despite his man’s betrayal, I can’t begrudge him that. This line of work asks us to do all kinds of things most men would never even need to think about. Sometimes that darkness alone keeps me up at night. “But tonight, with the information he gave us, we will remedy it all. We will end this, and our feud with Konstantin, once and for all.”
I nod in agreement, bolstered by his confidence. Together, we drink. “I’m going to say goodbye to her,” I tell him, sighing. “I’ll be outside in a moment, and then we can leave.”
He nods. When he steps out the front door, I see it’s raining, heavily, dark slanting torrents illuminated by the headlights of a dozen SUVs, armed and loaded and ready to drive. Not for the first time, this place looks like it is preparing for war.
And I suppose it is.
Kat doesn’t answer when I knock at her door. “Come. Let us speak.” Does she know I’m not taking her with me, that I was bluffing earlier, when I promised that she could go? I shouldn’thave, maybe. But it was the only way I could think of keeping her from running off right then. Now I regret it. “Kat. I’m leaving, and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I know you’re angry. But at least come out, so I can see you’re OK.”
No reply. I sigh. Is it like her to serve the silent treatment? Perhaps, if she’s angry enough. Or maybe she’s fallen asleep.
“Kat,” I repeat, more impatiently, and try the knob.
Locked.
My breathing seems to thicken, my head seems to swell—and a feeling of deep anxiety throbs inside of my gut. I try the knob again, harder—nothing. “Kat,” I say, raising my voice to a shout. “What are you doing? Open the door, now.Open the fucking door.”
Sweat is pouring down the back of my neck as I rattle the doorknob, jerking it hard, over and over, to no avail. My mind isn’t even trying to make sense of it—something is just wrong, I know that now, something is deeply, deeply wrong. I step back, then launch forward, throwing my shoulder and all of my weight into the door.
It cracks and splinter, and with another hard shove, I break it all the way through. Fingers of wood clinging to the lock.
No. No no no no no…it can’t be.
It’s pitch black in Kat’s room, that’s the first thing I notice—the second is that it is freezing cold. My eyes adjust to the dark, and I see that the window she used to once to escape through is flung wide open. Lightning flashes, illuminating it, bare and accusatory, drapes billowing, the carpet wet in a dark half-moon where the rain has come in. Her bed is made, nothing out of place, as usual. But the room is empty in the way that only a soul can tell: she is absolutely not here.
And, worse than I have possibly ever fucked up before, I have fucked up now.
I’m storming down the stairs, throwing open the front door, plunging into the rain. My heart is haywire. My skin feels like it’s burning, lit up.Marya. Damn her, this is all her fault—did Kat see what happened between us?Or enough of it to send her running?No, you idiot. You just count yourself a far more convincing liar than you are.And chances are that Kat knew from the first that I wasn’t actually going to take her with me tonight to face Konstantin.
“What is it?” Yuri seems to read the alarm in my face, rushing to fall into step with me as I walk fast toward the car. “Aleks, what’s wrong?”
“It’s Kat. She’s gone.”
Yuri blanches. All of the SUVs are lined up, prepared like tanks to deploy. The night beyond is dark and rich, stirred by the tempest. The trees that line the long, deep drive are twisting and tossing in it, like drunk revelers, barefoot and pagan. They seem to be laughing at me, pointing. Like I’m some stranger in a foreign land, on Kat’s land, and I’m more the fool for thinking I could pull one over on her.
“She didn’t hear us, did she?” Asks Yuri, his voice shot, for once, with panic. “When we were interrogating Toma—she didn’t hear any of the locations of his safehouses, did she, or where he could be hiding or planning to strike next?”
“I don’t know.” I reach my truck and jump in. “But if she did, that’s sure as hell where she went. You can bet on it.”
“Do you really think she would do that? Just turn herself over to him?” Yuri’s face is pale and full of alarm. He really doesn’t know Kat at all, does he?
“She’s not going to him to turn herself over,” I say coldly, gripping the steering wheel. “She’s going to kill him.”
Yuri says nothing to that, perhaps stunned by her stupidity, or her bravery, or both.
“I don’t know how she got out,” I say. “Off the property, I mean. None of the vehicles are missing. There’s a chance she went on foot.” Rage crashes through me, a sudden hot flood of it. I slam my fist down on the steering wheel so hard that it vibrates. “What the fuck do I need to do, put a fucking tracker on this girl?”
“It might have been prudent,” says Yuri, with a hint of dark humor. He composes his face at the hard look I give him. “I’ll have the men who were assigned to remain behind comb the entire estate. We will find her, Aleks, before anything happens. Don’t worry.”
I nod once, but I am worried.This woman will be the death of me.And I’m the fool, ever the fool, for ever underestimating her. Some part of me, beneath the fear and the rage, is impressed as ever with Kat. She may look unassuming, but the girl is anything else. She is certainly the heroine of her own story.
The problem is, there’s nothing more likely to get her killed. And I can’t live with that. In truth… I’m not sure I can ever go back to the way things were before this week. I don’t know if I want a life that she’s not in. It feels stale now, pointless. All this fighting. All along, I didn’t even know what I had to fight for.
