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I slip around to the trunk, pulling on the second jacket I brought. This one is all black, waist-length and made of a slinky but sturdy waterproof material that mutes sound. As I slide it on, I hear not even a rustle. Then, I check my gloves, make sure my hair is fixed in its braid and will stay out of my face, and pull out the rifle I stole. It’s one of Yuri’s, which he let me borrow to practice shooting with a few days ago.With Toma, I realize withdread.Toma, who is dead.Toma, who betrayed me. Who, for whatever price, was bought, and gave my head in return.
Cold seeps into me. I hook the strap of the AK over my shoulder, astonished as I was the first time I held it at how light it is. For something so horrible, so menacing and lethal, it should weigh a ton. But it’s no more than a guitar; no more than a bag or two of groceries to carry up the drive.
And now. It’s time.
There’s no moonlight to walk by, but the night isn’t so dark as I thought it would be. I can see by it, the deep velvet contours of the edge of the road, and the ridge down, and the trees like felt cutouts, and finally, the cabin tucked below. There are no lights on in the windows, and only one car is visible as I press silently through the woods. I don’t recognize it, and can’t make out its details in the dark. I imagine it’s another of those nondescript SUVs these Russians appear to be so fond of.
I keep my finger on the trigger, and I keep the safety off. No one crossing my path out here is a friend to be spared.But am I a killer?The voice that speaks so, so softly in the back of my mind doesn’t belong to me—but to my son.Mommy, did you hurt somebody?I shake it like ice off my bones. I know that isn’t Adam’s voice. It’s my own fear, my own cowardice. I may be a woman. I may be a lover more than I am a fighter. I may be soft, an artist, a mother, a sister, a daughter; but these last few days have been hell. I can’t leave it in someone else’s hands to save me, even if it means taking a life. I won’t do it.
My boots are quiet enough over the ground, but until I reach the edge of the house, I move extremely slowly. It’s early, nearing three in the morning, now; and when I make it to the window of the cabin, I find all inside still. There are no drapes or shutters, and inside, the furniture is sparse and thick with dust, even in the dark. I’m looking at a small kitchen, and through itshall, I see one form on a couch—shoulder shifting up and down. A person, asleep.
A person with white-blonde hair.
Konstantin.
Anger pours through me, or maybe it’s adrenaline, making my blood high and thin and my muscles light. My head swells with it.Focus.He’s just in there. Just ten feet away. And sound asleep. In my mind’s eye, I picture it: my feet on the dusty old floorboards; the muzzle of this rifle, brushing aside a lock of that pale hair. The grim stop of the barrel against his skull.
I flick on the safety and swing the rifle back over my shoulder, testing the window. It’s loose, the pane thin enough to rattle faintly at even that slight touch. I stop dead-still at the sound—but no answer comes. I can’t imagine that Konstantin is alone. But how many guards can he have here, realistically? So silent, and hidden among the dark trees?
It doesn’t matter. This might be a suicide mission anyway; we came in knowing that.But now that I’m here, so close…I don’t know if it’s worth it. Maybe it never was, and I was here fueled by pure rage and fear and spite, and now I’m feeling that warm bud of love.Adam…sweet Adam, what would you think of me here, now?But if he knew his father had so many times done the same, done worse, what would he think?The things a man can do, but a mother can’t.
The things this mother will. Konstantin threatened my son. He beat me, and with pleasure. Who is to say what he would do if he got his hands on me again? No. I won’t even allow the eventuality to enter my mind.
Carefully, quietly, I manage to work the window open. It’s old, the lock on the hinge long rusted to uselessness. A thick piece of wood has been wedged into the frame as a block, but whoever put it there wasn’t prepared for an intruder with hands or wrists as slender as mine. I slip my hand right in and withdraw thewood, bending to place it at my feet. Then the window is open, and there is nothing left to do but go in.
I slide the rifle through first, and follow more deftly than I thought I was capable of. All that climbing up trees with Adam has paid off, I guess. I’m grateful for it, and my resilient, if beaten, body as it carries me quietly over the frame and into the cabin. I slide through, landing in a crouch more noisily than I mean to.
I wait, heart pumping, rushing like a tide in my ears. But if anyone has heard me, no indication is given. No one shouts. No door is thrown open. And Konstantin, sleeping just eight or so feet away from me, doesn’t stir even slightly. I watch him for a long moment, for what feels like forever. But his shoulder just rises as slowly and rhythmically as it did before.
I lift my rifle. My heart is in my mouth, throbbing there like a second tongue.Dead, I think to him, with sheer ice in my blood.You are dead, you bastard.
Softly, almost like a caress: the nose of a pistol presses against the nape of my neck. It’s cold, but tender as a kiss. The voice that speaks is Russian.
My hand is on the rifle. All it would take is for me to lift it. Turn quickly. Aim. Fire.
What the hell is stopping me then?
Nothing. I turn as fast as I can, watch the dark blur past me. I swing the rifle up to my chest and flick the safety as I go. No use trying to be graceful about it—I let myself fall onto my back and aim up, locking eyes with none other than the brute of a man who beat the hell out of me at the brewery. Not the one with the ring, but the one who held me. The one who watched, with relish in his eyes.
Easy day.I finger the trigger, watch the shock start into his eye like a pair of sparks. Then the muzzle flash shows in them, and the spray of bullets crashes straight into the brutish flat ofhis chest. He barks out a sound of surprise, or pain, the pistol flying from his hand and clattering loudly onto the counter. His huge form staggers back and he comes crashing down, not onto the floor, but into what I didn’t realize was a sliding glass door right behind him.
If the noise of the gunfire hadn’t alerted everyone on the property to my presence—that sure as hell does. I barely have time to watch him collapse through the stiff, brittle glass before I’m on my feet. It rains down around him, making so much more noise than I would have thought possible. His body lies still, the smell of smoke and sulfur hanging in the air.
Konstantin.
I whip around. Something hard and compact slams into my face, straight into my eye. I make a weird sound, something between a gasp and a gurgle, and stagger back, trying and failing to keep my grip on my rifle. I didn’t have time to slip the strap over my shoulder, and it’s loose in my hands. Free for the taking.
With my good eye, I see a blur of pale skin and paler hair, and feel that slight reassuring weight of the rifle as it’s ripped from my grip. It’s not a fraction of a second later that the butt of it comes cracking across my face, with force enough that it feels like it breaks my jaw.
I pivot, losing my footing, and slam into the counter. Stars are streaking behind my eyes. Blindly, I grope for the pistol the other man dropped, I know it’s here—
But the butt of the rifle gets me squarely in the back of the skull, and I drop like a stone. Pain blisters through me, but it’s dulling rapidly, lapping like a warm tide. Konstantin’s boot hooks me under the side; he flips me onto my back, and I’m looking up at him, at his blazing white-blue eyes, at the raging hatred, mingling with delight, in his too-handsome face. Hiswhite forelock hangs in his eyes, and they’re tired, and I realize he really was sleeping—I really did catch him by surprise.
But the edges of him are fading. The pain in my head is just a dull tap now, and I know that’s bad—that’s got to be really bad, and I realize that I didn’t picture myself dying this way, fading, but rather shot or martyred, in a blaze of romantic glory. I didn’t think I’d be lying on some musty kitchen floor in a bunch of broken glass, one man shot dead by my hand, but not the right one.
“God, you are a good girl,” says Konstantin. His voice is just shy of wild, almost hysterical. His grin is cut wide as a jackal’s. “I only hoped you would deliver yourself to me. But after everything, I didn’t imagine Lukin such a failure as to let you out of his sights again. More’s the pity for him, I suppose.”
I’m fading fast. I think I try to say something, I don’t know what, and I know I raise my hand because I see it blur in front of me, one finger limply crooked at him in accusation.
