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Gag. Barf. Gross. Thank god we were getting out of here because I might have seriously considered grabbing someone’s gun and going out in a hail of bullets if my only alternative was to go with Martinez.
“Understandably,” Armstrong said, grinning broadly, casually referring to human trafficking like the monstrous creep he was. I knew something must be happening soon if Martinez was getting ready to leave and I was right. I happened to glance at Anya, and she gestured to my mom with her eyes.
Following what I assumed was a direction to hold on to her, I turned to her and hugged her as if we were having a tearful goodbye. Unfortunately, in my mom’s case, that’s exactly what she was having. The minute I hugged her, she started sobbing and shaking so hard, I feared she wouldn’t hear what I had to say over the noise she was making.
“Oh my god, Emmy, I’m so sorry! I can’t believe this is happening,” she wailed.
With my mouth hovering close to her ear, I tried to quickly inform her what was going on. “Mom, we are going to be saved. You have to calm down. Ivan is going to rescue us. The girl that’s standing with Martinez is Anya. You remember Anya from this summer, right?” The words flew out of my mouth in a rush and my mother’s body stiffened against me.
After a small pause, my mother nodded against me, and I breathed a sigh of relief. For a moment I forgot we were supposed to be saying a tragic farewell and reminded myself I had to do my part to sell this sad, emotional pretense.
“It’s okay, Mom. I’ll be okay.” Not my best.
“Oh, I’ll make sure she’s better than okay,” Martinez boasted, loathing and disgust making my stomach turn.
As I hugged my mom, I noticed Mikhail drifting closer to the still open door of his Town Car. Okay, this was about to happen. I needed to keep my eyes on Anya, since she’d been the only one communicating with me thus far.
“Oh, Thomas?” Mikhail said mildly as he reached the open door of his car. “Pereday privet Yuri, kogda uvidish' yego.”
I had no idea what he’d just said—unless he decided to call me a naughty girl, I wasn’t going to know what anyone said in Russian—but I knew it must mean something important because Anya’s hands slid from in front of her to behind her.
Thomas smiled slightly, then frowned, obviously confused and, therefore, unsettled. “Is that some kind Russian goodbye?”
A genuine grin broke out across Mikhail’s face, revealing surprisingly nice teeth, considering the condition of his nose. “That’s exactly what it is.”
“What does it mean?”
“You’re about to find out.”
As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Anya threw herself against my mom and me and dragged us to the ground as chaos broke out all around us. Deafening explosions of gunfire broke out as the sound of bullets ricocheted around the hangar.
“Come on!” Anya barked at us.
I gripped my mom’s wrist tightly and belly crawled toward a nearby stack of boxes in the corner. As we got closer, Anya yanked us up and had us run in a low hunch toward the boxes as she shot at any number of people behind us.
“Is Ivan here?” I yelled at Anya after we were stationed behind the small barricade of cardboard.
She shot me a quick, deadpan look. “Are you asking about your fucking boyfriend while I’m trying to protect us from getting shot?”
I cringed in embarrassment. “Right, sorry.”
She focused on shooting for several, tense minutes allowing me to observe the fascinating contradiction of her highly feminine appearance and the hyper masculinity of the big, black gun in her hand. After subduing the most pressing threats to our safety, she shot me a half-smile. “Of course Ivan’s here. You seriously think we could have kept him away?”
I wanted to ask a hundred more questions, but I didn’t want to distract her again. Instead, I wrapped an arm around my mom as bullets continued to sing out. After the initial eruption, the explosive noises quickly died down to periodic bursts. I wanted to peek out from behind the boxes and see what was going on, but I doubt Anya would have appreciated that.
My mom was sitting with her head tipped back against boxes of what looked like motor oil, her eyes squeezed shut. My stomach clenched in concern.
“Are you okay, Mom?”
She slowly opened her eyes and turned her head to me, remorse and guilt stamped all over her tear-streaked face. “Em, I don’t know what to say. I can’t believe all this has happened, what you’ve been put through. I have failed so completely as a parent. I’m so sorry about everything.”
I gripped my mother’s hand. “Mom, this is not your fault. How could you predict any of this? This was Armstrong’s doing, not yours.”
It was difficult to have a sensitive conversation when Anya stood to my right shooting at random targets, the sound of her gun ringing in my ears.
She shook her head, resistance causing her forehead to crease. “No, I should have told you a long time ago. I should have told both of you girls.”
“How could you possibly—”
