29. Sloane #2
A few weeks shouldn’t have been enough for him either. Yet somehow it was.
I lower my gaze to the coffee between my hands, watching the faint steam disappear above the cup while I try not to think about where Vadim is right now, whether he’s hurt, whether he has realized I’m gone, whether he’s tearing that house apart looking for me.
The worst part is that I know the answer to at least one of those questions.
He will be looking.
I know him well enough now to be certain of that.
Daniel clears his throat. “We weren’t going to bring you.”
I look up. “That is strangely reassuring.”
“I mean it wasn’t part of the plan. Mila and I were leaving alone.”
“Then why am I here?”
His expression changes, becoming more serious. “Because I overheard two of Vadim’s men talking before everything started.”
Mila goes still beside him.
Daniel notices, but continues. “They were discussing you.”
A small knot forms in my stomach. “What about me?”
“One of them said someone had confirmed you’d been seen with Petrov.”
For a second, I honestly think I’ve misheard him. Across from me, Mila’s face darkens at the name, though she says nothing immediately.
I stare at Daniel. “Seen with him where?”
“They didn’t say. I only heard enough to know your name and Petrov’s were being mentioned together.”
Mila looks down at the table. “My brother wouldn’t have taken kindly to that.”
There’s something in her tone that makes my skin prickle.
“No,” I say. “He wouldn’t.”
The photograph on Vadim’s desk flashes through my mind. “I met him one time.”
Both of them look at me.
“At a club,” I continue. “After my first flight with Vadim. I didn’t know who he was.”
Daniel watches me carefully. “He approached you?”
“Yes.”
“What did he ask?”
“Nothing that seemed unusual at the time. What I did for work. Where I traveled. He guessed I was a flight attendant.”
Mila’s expression grows tighter. “And you never told Vadim?”
I look at her. “No.”
I should have told him the moment I recognized Viktor’s photograph. Instead, I stood beside Vadim in his study and pretended the face meant nothing to me.
Nothing. That was what I said.
I’d been afraid of what would happen if he knew, especially after everything with the tracker, but now the lie feels much worse than the truth ever could have. Because if his men already know somebody saw me with Petrov, then Vadim will hear about it from them.
He’s never going to believe me now.
The thought creates a hollow ache beneath my ribs.
I hate that it matters so much. I hate that after everything I saw tonight, after watching him shoot Camille without hesitation, part of me is still more frightened of losing his trust than I am of what he might do with the truth.
Mila shifts in her chair.
“Then what?” I say. “You just decided you were leaving tonight?”
“Well actually,” Daniel says, looking sheepish. “The birthday was a part of it.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
“I wanted you to suggest the celebration,” Mila says.
For a moment I simply stare at her. “You wanted me to suggest it?”
She nods. “I knew if the idea came from me, Vadim would ask why. If it came from you, he’d agree because you wanted it,” she says.
My stomach sinks slowly. “You kept mentioning that nobody made a big deal about your birthday.”
“Yes.”
“You told me you didn’t really celebrate.”
“I knew you would feel bad.”
I lean back in the chair. “So you manipulated me.”
Her face tightens. “I needed everyone distracted.”
The café suddenly feels much quieter.
I look at Daniel. He doesn’t meet my eyes.
Then I look back at Mila. “Distracted from what?”
She hesitates just long enough to answer the question before she speaks.
I stare at her. “The gunmen were yours?”
“Technically.”
I almost laugh because the word is so absurd. “Technically?”
“They were hired to create enough trouble around the perimeter for security to concentrate outside. They weren’t supposed to get into the house, and they weren’t supposed to hurt anyone.”
“They were firing guns.”
“Most of it was supposed to be controlled.”
“Controlled?” My voice rises enough that the truck driver near the window glances over, and I lower it again. “Camille is dead.”
Mila’s face loses color. “What?”
I look between them. Neither one appears to have known.
“Vadim shot her.”
Daniel goes very still.
Mila stares at me. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
That’s not entirely true.
Camille had blood on the knife. She was frantic. She said she was sorry.
I wrap both hands around my coffee even though it has gone cold. “He killed her right in front of me.”
Mila looks down.
I see Vadim’s face again, emptied of everything except that terrible certainty. If he believed I’d been helping Petrov, what would he have done? Would he have listened when I tried to explain? Would he have believed that I met Viktor once and didn’t know who he was?
The thought makes my stomach tighten.
Maybe he would have killed me too.
I should be terrified enough that thinking about him becomes impossible. Instead, I wonder whether he has slept. Whether he knows Mila is gone. Whether he thinks I left because I wanted to. Whether he’s furious with me. Whether he’s afraid for me.
I miss him so suddenly that it feels almost humiliating.
I look away from the couple across from me.
Mila checks the time on Daniel’s phone. “We have to go.”
Daniel nods. “We need to cross before people start looking too closely.”
I stare at them. “And me?”
Mila’s expression changes again. That guilty look returns. “We have to separate after this.”
I expected it.
That doesn’t make it pleasant.
“You’re leaving me here.”
“There’s a town not far away with a bus station. Daniel has cash for you, and you have your passport. You can get somewhere safe.”
“Somewhere safe.”
She winces. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But I know my brother will be looking for you. I don’t understand the depth of his feelings for you, maybe he doesn’t either, and that’s what makes it even more dangerous.”
I think about what she says. There’s no way Vadim feels so deeply for me, except maybe hate itself. But I don’t tell her.
Daniel takes an envelope from inside his jacket and places it on the table. “There’s enough there for transportation, a hotel, whatever you need for a few days.”
I don’t touch it yet.
Mila reaches across the table. “I wish I could help more.”
I look at her hand, then at her face. “You’ve done enough.”
The words come out colder than I intend.
She withdraws her hand.
For a moment, guilt tries to rise. Then I think about the birthday decorations, the gunfire, Camille bleeding into my dress, and I let the guilt go.
Daniel pays for the food while Mila gathers their things.
Outside, the morning has turned pale and miserable, the kind of gray that makes it impossible to tell whether the sun has actually risen or simply given up behind the clouds.
Mila hugs me before she gets into the car. I stand stiffly for a second, then return it because despite everything, I can’t make myself hate her.
“I really am sorry,” she whispers.
I don’t ask what she means. There are too many possibilities.
Daniel gives me the name of the nearby town again and tells me which direction to walk if I can’t find a taxi. Then they get into the car.
I stand beside the road and watch them drive away. Mila looks back once through the rear window, and then the car turns and disappears.
The second they’re gone, my stomach twists so violently that I barely make it around the side of the café before I bend over and throw up.
At first I blame the coffee, the lack of sleep, the blood, the gunfire, the fact that I’ve spent the last several hours running on fear and adrenaline, but even after there’s almost nothing left in my stomach, the nausea keeps rolling through me in slow, miserable waves.
I brace one hand against the wall and wait for it to pass.
It doesn’t, not completely.
When I finally straighten, my throat burns and my eyes are watering.
“Perfect,” I mutter, wiping my mouth with the back of my hand. “Exactly what I needed.”
In the restroom back inside the café, I stare at myself in the mirror. There’s still a faint reddish smear near my hairline.
Camille.
I scrub until it disappears.
When I go back outside, I sit on the low wall beside the café and take out my phone. For several seconds I simply stare at the screen.
Vadim’s name is there.
I could call him. I could tell him everything.
Then I remember Camille falling.
I close the contacts. Then I check my phone and try to buy a ticket, but my account appears to be frozen.
I swear under my breath. I have no doubt who did that. Daniel gave me some money, but it’s not enough. Sooner or later, it’ll run out, and then what? I’m in an unfamiliar country where I don’t even know the fricking language.
That’s when I think about the card Viktor gave me at the club. I had the good sense to throw it away afterward because I had no intention of calling him, but before I did, I took a photograph of it. I’d almost forgotten.
I open my photos and scroll back.
There. The heavy white card sits against the hotel room table where I photographed it weeks ago, Viktor’s name printed across the front with a phone number underneath.
Viktor Petrov. The man Vadim believes wants him dead.
The man who approached me before any of this started.
The man who may know exactly why my bag carried a tracker.
I stare at the number for a long time. Calling him is probably the stupidest thing I have done since pouring wine over Vadim Chernovar.
That thought nearly makes me laugh.
Instead, I type in the number, and call.
The phone begins to ring.