Chapter Twelve #3
swung the gun on both of them, snapping the safety catch off. He
accorded Laurie a glance of acknowledgement—almost respect. “Not
bad, gajo.” Then he turned the muzzle and his full attention onto
Sasha, who had stepped to Laurie’s side. Who was already trying to
get in front of him, to shield him. “Come on, Alexandru,” Luca
said. “I’m not your father’s fucking errand boy. I’m his assassin.
You know that.”
“Yes. I do. But not here, Luca, for God’s sake. Not in front of
Laurie.”
“He won’t have long to grieve. You’ve been on the run too long,
Sandru. Told too many people our secrets. Too much pillow talk. I
know you’ve been trying to watch over him, but it’s no good. ‘My
son and his friends,’ your father said. You know I have to take
both of you—then anyone else you’ve been playmates with. Come on.
Don’t make this harder than it needs to be.”
“There isn’t anyone else! Luca, there isn’t even him. I’ve told
him nothing. Let him go!”
Laurie drew one breath. Sasha had moved right in front of him.
Hesitantly, as if frightened, Laurie crept up close to him. He put
one hand on his shoulder—passed the other around his waist. To do
so, even now, was food and drink to him, sunlight at last on his
skin. He pressed his face to Sasha’s shoulder, as if hiding. Sasha
gave a kind of moan and tried to reach back for him, blindly
caressing. “Ah, love, don’t be scared,” he whispered. “I won’t let
him. I won’t let him. Luca, for fuck’s sake. Let him go!”
Luca
would not. Laurie knew this. He knew nothing about guns, assassins,
or the terrible world that had encompassed his, but he knew men’s
faces. And he knew how to act.
He shoved Sasha aside. He was a boy in a play who had been
held at gunpoint too long and had cracked. He was the coward, the
one who broke down and pleaded for his life. Sasha, caught off
balance, had dropped to his hands and one knee by the sofa. Laurie
lurched forward. “Oh, God, don’t!” he wailed, flinging out his
hands at Luca, seeing how the gesture brought the gun muzzle
swinging in his direction. A defensive instinct.
Good. “I don’t want to
die!” He allowed his legs to give. A proper stage collapse had to
be done with care. You always hurt yourself a bit. Trying to guard
yourself, to save yourself with an outstretched hand, spoiled it
entirely. And yet the movement had to be controlled, impact
absorbed in carefully tensed muscles. You had to be able to
die.
He fell
at Luca’s feet. Heard his growl of contempt, and that was fine with
Laurie too. Contemptible men were not dangerous. They clutched at
your ankles despairingly—not to distract or unbalance you. They did
not uncoil, drive one gouging fist into your balls, and snatch your
gun.
Luca’s
reflexes were good. His grip closed on thin air an inch behind
Laurie’s exit lunge, his leap back and away. Laurie would have
choreographed it better for the stage—so bold a move deserved a
better coda, not an undignified thump onto the sofa as he misjudged
his footing and the little table in front of it knocked his knees
out from under him. Instantly he scrabbled back up.
He was
lucky, he knew, not to have shot himself. He held the gun as he had
been taught in props class, straight and true, pleased at least
that he had the right end of the thing trained on Luca. “All right,
you bastard!” he snarled. “That’s it. Get the fuck out of my flat.
If you ever come near me or Sash again, I’ll…”
He
trailed off. Partly it was an uncertainty about how on earth he
should finish the threat. He could kill, he thought, but it would
have to be in hottest blood. It would have to be a man who was
attacking him or hurting Sash—not staring at him, disarmed, in
absolute bewilderment. And partly it was that someone was laughing.
Not Luca. This sound gave Laurie nothing but pleasure. He had
seldom heard it. His dealings with Sasha had been too intense for
much comedy. Laurie glanced at him without altering his
aim.
“Sasha. What?”
“Give that to me.” Sasha was getting to his feet, holding out
one hand. His eyes were bright with laughter, tears beginning to
catch in his lashes.
“Why? I’m okay.”
“Yes. But you can’t use a gun. And Luca knows it. You’re
not that good an
actor.”
Laurie swallowed. It was fair point gained. Already Luca was
shifting, his own grim smile beginning. “Oh?” Laurie whispered,
edging toward Sasha, keeping his fierce mask in place. “And
you can use one,
right?”
“That’s right. I’m sorry, ves’tacha. So much I should have told
you.” He met Laurie’s eyes, and carefully, carefully, lifted the
weapon from his grasp. He sobered absolutely. “Yes. I can use a
gun. Forgive me, Luca. You should never have come here.”
Laurie
stared at the corpse on his carpet. He had not thought this was how
violent death came about—so quick, so soundlessly. The gun’s
silencer was good. Only the faintest detonation, like percussion
heard through someone else’s headphones, had accompanied Sasha’s
squeeze of the trigger. All Laurie’s attention had been on him, not
on Luca. No terrible crunch of bone and blood. Even now, all he
could see was a neat, dark hole in Luca’s T-shirt, just over the
heart.
Warm
hands closed on both his shoulders. “Laurie. Laurie, come
away.”
That was Sasha. Laurie didn’t think anything else could have
broken his trance. He had seen death before. Luca, in his
blank-eyed sprawl, had lost half his apparent bulk, just as
Laurie’s father had, laid out on the hospital slab. But he had not
seen dying. He
stumbled back a little, turning, and felt Sasha seize him and grasp
him tight. “Oh, Laurie. Forgive me.”
Laurie breathed him in. He smelled of the night, of frost. Of
hard living, as if he had been forced back out onto the streets.
Laurie closed both arms around his back, gulped down air, short
inhalations, until he could speak. “Forgive you?”
“Yes. So much trouble and darkness. I tried…I tried to keep it
away. I tried to keep away from you.”
“It was me that brought trouble to you.” That did not sound
right. Sasha had once taught him an easy grammar rule for checking,
but he couldn’t remember it now. “I brought my father to Birchwood.
I killed Mama Luna.”
“Ah, no. No, love. She would never say that, I swear to you.
Now, Laurie…” Sasha squeezed him ferociously, then pressed his
hands to his shoulders, trying to ease him away. “Now I have to go.
My people aren’t like Mama Luna. They’re like him. And there’ll be more, just like
him, who come after.”
He
pulled himself away. Laurie, frozen with shock, for a moment could
only stare at him. He remained rooted stupidly to the spot until
Sash was almost at the door. He had arrived so suddenly—his absence
before that had been so complete, so dreadful—that damaged
emotional tendons inside Laurie, strained beyond elasticity, were
failing to respond. There was an instant when he could have let him
go.
But just
one.
Sasha
gasped as his exit was blocked. Laurie took him by his collar, then
knocked him hard against the wall. “No,” he snapped. “You don’t do
this to me again. Kucharski offered you a deal. You’re a refugee,
and neither of us owes our sodding fathers anything. Take
it.”
“Laurie,” Sasha whispered. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated
all the way with shock. “I ran. I’ve got an unlicensed gun. I just
killed someone. All deals are off.”
Laurie
stood silently, taking this in. He glanced around the room. An
unlicensed gun. Yes, there it was on the table, where Sasha had
carefully set it down after shooting Luca through the heart, as if
it had had one sole purpose and was now useless to him. “You don’t
have a gun,” he said, releasing Sasha with one hand, reaching with
the other into the pocket of his jeans. “What would you be doing
with a gun? Your prints are on that one because you used it to
defend me. Luca’s are on it because it belongs to him. All right?”
Sasha gazed at him. Laurie, who felt like a stranger to himself,
was not surprised at the blank lack of recognition in his eyes. “As
for running, Kucharski knows why you did that. And you’ve no idea
how badly he wants Stefan Petrica.” He handed Sasha his mobile and
watched him take it blindly. “That’s Kucharski’s number. Call
him.”
Sasha
wrenched from his grasp. He turned his back—walked away from him
with his head down. Laurie shuddered and folded his arms across his
chest. What had he done? By what right did he tell Sasha what to
do? Christ. In exacting obedience from Sasha, what had Laurie
sacrificed? Couldn’t he have been content to love him and let him
alone, even if that meant losing him?
Sasha
slumped down onto the sofa. He propped one elbow on his knee and
ran a hand into his hair. In his other hand, he clutched the mobile
so hard his knuckles were white. He said, after a moment, “Is that
DS Kucharski?”
A pause,
during which Laurie thought he could hear frost forming beyond the
open window.
“Yes. This is Sasha. This is Alexandru Petrica. I’m turning
myself in. I’m in East Hill with Laurie Fitzroy. I want to seek
asylum, and…I’m prepared to give up Stefan to you. My
father.”
There was a long pause. During it, Laurie could only imagine
what John Kucharski had to say. The last part of it must have
been why now or why the change of
heart, because Sasha suddenly looked up.
Tears were pouring down his face. He said, brokenly, all the ice
gone from his voice, “Because of Laurie. My father sent someone,
and…he was going to hurt Laurie.”
Laurie
stumbled over to him. The mobile clattered to the floor. Laurie
knelt, said, “Here,” and caught Sasha as he crumpled off the sofa
and into his arms. He turned so that he shielded Sasha with his
body from Luca’s dead stare, and clutched him and kissed the crown
of his head until the seizure of sobbing relented.
Laurie
was half-relieved, half-afraid. He had known Sasha could cry, but
Alexandru—son of Stefan Petrica, capable marksman, deadly in