10. Sergey
SERGEY
Another gas station.
The rain’s let up, but it left a film on everything—windows, asphalt, the ugly orange awning above the convenience store.
I step out into the grit and grease, the air cold enough to make my bones feel wet, and light a cigarette just for the heat of it.
In the battered sedan, Mikhail keeps his face forward and his hand out of sight, which means he’s got the gun on his thigh and the safety off.
Veronica is watching me through the fogged glass, her silhouette is blurry.
I push into the store and try not to flinch at the gunshot of a bell that rings out.
It looks like every other gas station on this side of the highway.
All hard angles and chemical light, the overhead fluorescents buzzing like they’re full of bees.
The floor’s a patchwork of sticky spots and stains and the aisle displays are sun-faded and out of date.
They never restock the good snacks in these places.
I walk past the racks of jerky and candy to the counter, feeling the twitch in my jaw where it hasn’t stopped aching since the ambush.
The cashier’s a woman, forty going on fossil, chipped pink nail polish tapping at her phone while her other hand flicks the register buttons. She doesn’t bother looking up. I slap the cash on the counter.
“Need forty on pump three,” I say.
She hums a reply, then mashes at the register. The drawer pops and slams into her hip. She counts out the change absently and fishes around for a roll of coins.
Above her head, a television bolted to the cinder block wall flickers with the blue-white pallor of local news. The volume’s down, but the crawl at the bottom is big enough to read from ten paces.
brEAKING NEWS—ABDUCTION—NOVARRA POLICE SEEK SUSPECTS.
It’s white noise until my eye catches the photo. Veronica’s face, posed and perfect, the kind of glamour shot that makes her look like an untouchable angel. She’s on-screen for three, maybe four seconds. The word “KIDNAPPED” hangs beside her head, red block letters screaming her into the world.
I reach for my change, fingers going numb.
But then a spike of shock hits my brain when my own face flashes next—a mugshot from two years ago.
My nose is broken and my eye is swollen shut—but it’s me.
Mikhail’s mugshot comes after, he glares into the camera.
Colder and more dangerous, and the anchor’s voice rolls over the images.
Armed and dangerous. Suspected of multiple homicides.
The cashier finally looks up.
“Anythin’ else?”
“Nah,” I choke out.
She drops the coins in my hand. They hit my palm one by one, cold and greasy, and I let them sit there. I don’t say thank you. I don’t say anything.
The hot dog machine behind the counter clicks over a new rotation. The sausages sweat and spin in place, glistening obscenely under the red lamps. My heart’s beating so loud I can feel it in my ears.
I turn and scan the store again. There’s a family in the snack aisle, two kids, one parent.
The kids are staring at the candy, the parent’s got that look of a person who’s not really present.
They won’t remember me. The camera in the corner, though, that will.
I stare right into the fisheye dome and show it my best side.
On the way out, I pause. The rain has started again, just a little, speckling the windows and turning the parking lot into a mirror. My face in the reflection looks like someone else’s—older, meaner, the lines around my mouth dug in with a shovel.
Back in the car, Mikhail’s eyes snap to mine.
“We’re fucked,” I say, and start the engine.
Veronica doesn’t react. I look at her in the rearview. For a second, she meets my eyes, but then looks away. She’s scared.
She should be.
I drive, gripping the wheel so tight I can feel the bones shifting in my hands, and I make a silent promise that if anyone tries to take her again, I’ll kill them slower than it takes to say my name.
Mikhail doesn’t look at me, but I can feel his eyes slicing in my direction, wanting an answer before I even open my mouth.
“We’re on every news channel,” I say as I pull out of the gas station and onto the side road. “All three of us. Your mugshot, mine. Her face, too. It’s official—kidnapping, armed and dangerous.”
His jaw clenches. There’s a muscle there that used to vanish when he smiled, but it’s always tense now, always ready for a fistfight.
“Anything else? Anything about the bodies we left behind?” he asks, voice flat.
“No.” I check the rearview, but nobody’s coming up the road. “They’re sticking to the family angle. Her dad’s on the press circuit already. You want to bet he’ll have half the city cops out looking for us by noon?”
He doesn’t answer. In the back seat, Veronica’s gone statue-still. Her chin is up, but her eyes are fixed on the window.
I watch her in the rearview, the way her throat works when she swallows. She’s not crying, which is worse. Crying would be normal. This kind of stillness—it’s the kind of thing that happens right before a person breaks.
“Misha,” I say, not taking my eyes off the road. “We need to get off this road.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean now. Not in ten miles. The next exit.”
He doesn’t argue. He’s already pulling out the burner phone we picked up at the last rest stop, the screen glows blue in his palm. His thumb moves fast over the keys, searching for something—a route, a safehouse, anything that isn’t a dead end.
Veronica shifts in the back seat. I hear the rustle of her dress. “My father,” she says. “He’s on television?”
I don’t want to answer. I want to keep driving and pretend I didn’t hear her. But Mikhail beats me to it.
“Probably,” he says. “He’s a politician, right? That’s how it works. He calls the press before he calls the police. Get ahead of the story. Get more eyes on it. Concerned father?—”
“He’s not concerned about me,” she snaps. “He’s concerned about Orlov and what it means for his deals. He sold me to that bastard. And now he’s pretending I was taken to cover his ass.”
I grip the steering wheel tighter. She’s not wrong. Her father’s probably sitting in some polished studio right now, hair sprayed into submission, practicing his concerned-dad face for the cameras. The kind of performance that makes people forget to question his sudden influx of campaign donations.
“Your father’s a piece of shit,” I say, because someone needs to say it out loud. “But right now, that’s the least of our problems.”
Mikhail’s still tapping on the phone, his face lit blue in the dim car. “Ranon’s place is off Route 9. Two miles east. Cash only, no cameras.”
“Perfect,” I mutter. “A shithole with no security. Just what we need.”
“It’s what we have,” Mikhail snaps. “Unless you want to keep driving until someone spots the car and calls it in.”
I check the rearview again. Veronica’s staring out the window, but I can see the reflection of her face in the glass. She looks like she’s been hollowed out, her features sharp and pale.
I take the next exit without signaling. The road narrows into a cracked two-lane that snakes through scraggly pine trees and abandoned farmland. The kind of place where people dump bodies and nobody finds them for months.
“Turn left up ahead,” Mikhail says. His phone vibrates in his hand. Confirmation that Ranon knows we’re coming.
Haven’t seen him in years. Hope he doesn’t expect to be paid back for the money I borrowed off him.