5. Veronica #2
I can’t help it. The laugh makes a cut on my jaw throb, and I dab at it with my sleeve, which comes away wet and pink.
Somewhere behind the wreck, I hear Sergey’s voice.
It’s different now, flatter and lower, the words spat between breaths.
I lean forward to see him, and the sight freezes me: he’s on one knee, crouched over the man who tried to drag me out of the car.
The attacker is still alive, barely. Sergey has him by the front of his jacket, knuckles digging into the flesh just below the man’s jaw.
There’s blood running from Sergey’s nose, or maybe it’s the other man’s, but the line between them is impossible to see.
Sergey asks a question. The voice is so cold it doesn’t sound human. The man on the ground gives an answer I can’t hear, then Sergey smiles.
It’s not a happy smile. It’s the kind a wolf makes just before it closes its teeth around something soft. He pulls a knife from his belt—a short, ugly thing with tape around the handle—and holds it at the man’s throat, blade resting just under the Adam’s apple.
Mikhail’s voice cracks the air: “Sergey.”
Sergey doesn’t even flinch, but he pauses.
I can see the tension in his arms, the desire to finish the work, to slice through whatever pride or pain keeps the man moving.
He holds it for a long moment—long enough that I can see the shake in his grip—then lets go, shoves the man’s head back down onto the asphalt, and stands.
He wipes the blade on the thigh of his jeans and, for the first time, looks up at me. There’s nothing in his expression. No anger, no relief, not even the raw satisfaction of survival. Just a kind of emptiness, as if everything else has been squeezed out by the violence.
Mikhail moves to my door and his movements are unhurried now.
He pulls it open and reaches in toward me. I move forward and he wraps his coat around me, careful not to touch the cut on my jaw, then puts his hand at the back of my head and gently, almost reverently, turns my face away from the carnage on the ground as I step out of the car.
He guides me away from it and into the shadow of the ruined SUV. The coat is too big, and too heavy, but it smells like his cologne. I can ignore the coppery tang of blood for that.
His hand drops the instant I’m upright. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t ask if I can walk, he just starts moving toward the only remaining vehicle. I follow, because there’s nothing else to do. Sergey stands a few feet away, head tilted up to the sky, eyes squeezed shut.
His fists clench and unclench at his sides. I want to say something—thank you, I think, though it sounds pitiful in my head—but the words don’t come. They’d be wasted here.
One surviving member of the group waits at the second SUV, hands trembling as he wipes gore off the steering wheel with a piece of ripped cloth. He won’t meet my eyes.
I slide into the back seat, coat still wrapped tight, and Mikhail gets in beside me. His pistol rests on his thigh. He closes the door and the silence returns, softer now.
The clouds have been threatening rain for hours—and now they open and the silence is punctuated by the slow patter of rain on the roof.
Sergey climbs in last, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the frame. Blood spatters his jaw like freckles. He doesn’t look at me, not even once.
No one says a word as we pull away from the wreckage, driving slow and cautious. In the rearview, I watch the bodies grow smaller, just dark stains on the tarmac. Abandoned cars and abandoned bodies.
Had they called it in? What did men like this do when something unexpected happened?
Of course they called someone.
Did they call Orlov?
Or my father?
Or their boss?
What would they do? What could they do?
Mikhail reaches over me, pulls the seatbelt across my lap, and buckles it for me. The gesture is quick and businesslike, but his hand lingers for a second on my thigh. I can feel the tremor in his fingers, just barely. He removes his hand and stares out the window.
I press my face to the glass and watch the rain smear the world into new shapes. I realize I’m shaking, though I didn’t notice until now. I don’t try to stop it. I let the shaking work through me, let the cold of it move the fear out of my veins.
There is a smear of blood on the collar of Mikhail’s coat, where it brushes my cheek. I touch it, rub my thumb over the dried edge, and try to imagine whose it might be. I decide it doesn’t matter. Blood is blood, and none of us are getting out of this without wearing some of it.
The new driver doesn’t speak until we’re half a mile clear of the ambush site. When he does, it’s a whisper: “Do we… call it in?”
Mikhail shakes his head. “No. We keep moving.”
Shocked, I stare at Mikhail.
They’re not going to tell anyone? But?—
The driver nods and stares at the road.
I close my eyes, just for a second, and see the afterimages of the fight—the flares of gunfire, Sergey’s eyes, the way Mikhail pressed my face away from the bodies. I see the way Sergey wanted to kill, and the way Mikhail wanted to keep me from seeing it. I wonder which is the greater kindness.
When I open my eyes, all that’s left is the road and the endless, hungry sky. I realize, with a kind of distant amusement, that I have nowhere left to run.