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Demyen stands tall. “Helen Cooper?”
Her face pales. She opens the door a fraction wider, glances between us, then focuses on Demyen.
Her eyes widen.
And then she slams the door in his face.
“I think she knows you,” I mutter.
“Family resemblance.” He tries the doorbell again, but this time, we hear her shout at us to go away as she retreats to the back of her house. Demyen blows out a low breath.
“Dem,” I interject, “we really need her to like us.”
“We really don’t.”
“Do you think she’ll respond to intimidation?”
He throws a hand at the door. “She’s not responding to a fucking doorbell. Intimidation is the next option.”
Fair point. I sigh. “Alright. Do your Bratva boss thing, I guess.”
He gives me a sarcastic bow. “Thank you.” Then turns around and with one swift kick to the doorknob, knocks the whole thing in.
Helen/Alice screams. She grabs a frying pan from the stove and swings at Demyen when he approaches. He quickly ducks out of the way before she can knock him out cold.
Well, notcold.I notice the way she’s gripping the handle with a potholder.
He doesn’t.
“Dem—”
Now, it’s his turn to howl. His grab for the pan proved my guess accurate: she’d been cooking breakfast.
“Sonofabitch!”
She spins on her heels to face me, her expression nothing but fear and sheer determination to live through this encounter. “Get the hell out of my house!” she screeches at me.
“Helen! Wait!” I hold my hands up in surrender as she storms toward me. “Wait! We’re here to help you!”
“Yeah?” She laughs and holds the pan over her head. She must be reaching her later years, but damn, she’s strong. “Well, I got news for you, sweetheart. Helen Cooper is dead!”
Demyen’s slumped against the wall, nursing his burned hand and hissing through his teeth what I am absolutely certain are every curse word invented in the Russian language. He’s not exactly in the right mindset to interrogate our witness at the moment.
“I know!” I back up to avoid a potential swing, but I keep my hands up and bow a little deeper. “I know! We know. Sorry. Alice. Alice Tremaine, right? Helen Cooper died in Hawaii.”
She blinks, then slowly lowers the frying pan. “Yeah. That’s right.”
Demyen squints at me and mouths what looks like,“The fuck?”
But here’s the thing: I get it. I gether. Lord knows I’ve thought about doing exactly what she did: setting her old life on fire and running for the hills. It was high on my list of options the night I ran into Demyen in that hotel suite.
“I am so sorry for the mix-up.” I carefully crouch and pick up her broken door. “We just have a few questions, and we’re kind of desperate.”
Alice blows out a skeptical laugh. She turns and points at Demyen. “I know you. I know what you do. What your family does. Come to personally make sure your hitmen don’t miss this time?”
“The fuck are you talking about, lady?” Demyen grinds out between deep breaths. He flexes his hand and hisses again.
“You’re gonna look me in the eye and tell me you didn’t put a hit out on me a week after Tolya’s sentencing?”
