9. Cara #2
I don’t see her, yet I feel her fingerprints everywhere.
I take two steps closer to the next corridor and read the brass label before Square Face can block my view.
Women’s Wing.
A maid slips past with folded linens and a ring of access cards clipped to her belt, taps one card to the reader, and disappears inside. No guard follows her.
A familiar voice reaches me from the far end of the landing. “You’re far from your suite.”
Dmitri stands near the staircase in black trousers and a black shirt, freshly shaved, hair still damp at the edges.
Morning has made him harder to look at for long.
My eyes move from the clean line of his jaw to the width of his shoulders, then settle on the blue eyes that make my worst decisions look tempting.
His gaze drops to my shirt, then lifts slowly back to my face. He knows I was looking at him. Worse, he knows I liked what I saw. My body answers before I can stop it, and heat gathers low and angry while the memory of his hands comes back.
One night. Five years. Still, my body has the nerve to remember him faster than my pride can object.
“I was told I could walk,” I say.
“Within limits.”
“Limits should come with signage.” I lift a hand toward the brass label. “Possibly a snack table.”
His eyes move over my face, my hands, then the space between me and the doors. “You found the signs.”
“I found the part where your house labels women.”
His expression closes. “That wing belongs to Elena and her staff.”
“Good for Elena. Does she know her label sounds borrowed from a Victorian warning?”
Dmitri’s mouth tightens. “Don’t venture into things you don’t know.”
“I’m a woman of many hobbies.” I tip my head, almost sweet enough to be dangerous. “Trespassing, sarcasm, surviving foreign kidnapping.”
For half a second, his gaze drops to my mouth. I still own at least one weapon.
He looks at the guards. “Library.”
Scar Chin nods. Square Face steps aside.
“I asked for my laptop,” I say, walking after Dmitri.
“No.”
“You brought me here over Patrick’s digital disaster, then decided the person who knows how Patrick lies through computers should be decorative.”
“We can find him.”
Dmitri walks ahead, setting the pace without checking whether I follow. I hurry just enough to reach his side.
“Men with guns are famously great at password recovery,” I say.
Dmitri’s shoulder comes close enough that I catch clean soap and winter on his coat. It’s distracting enough to make thinking feel like work.
The library sits behind double doors and another card reader.
I expect dead leather, gloom, and old men pretending books make them civilized.
Instead, the place feels used. Plants fill the corners.
Family photographs sit between shelves. Chairs wait near long tables.
A blue settee faces a fireplace. A rounded window rises from floor to ceiling, barred on the outside with black metal.
Beyond it, Russian winter presses against the estate in white ground and black trees.
Dmitri takes out a phone and sets it on the table. “Your allotted call.”
My heart trips, then gets up angry.
He dials before handing it to me. His place near the window puts him close enough to hear every breath, every pause, every lie I may need to tell. I want to throw the phone at his head. Instead, I grip it.
Kathryn answers fast. “Cara?”
“Hey,” I say, and every part of me wants to break open. “I’m okay.”
“Bullshit. Still on that trip?” Her voice comes through thin, but I’d know it anywhere.
“It got weird.” I speak slowly.
“That work trip can eat glass.”
A laugh nearly escapes, then comes out too close to a cry. “Yeah. It really can.”
Kathryn breathes once, and I hear her switch gears. “The mechanic never gave any trouble.”
My fingers dig into the phone. Thank God.
I look at the window instead of Dmitri’s face. “Good. He’s usually a union problem.”
“He asked if you’re bringing home his missing toolbox,” Kathryn says.
Papa. She means papa.
My laugh comes out thin and wrong. “Tell him I’m checking lost-and-found.”
Dmitri’s attention settles on me.
“The garage is locked,” Kathryn adds. “The mechanic is asleep.”
Safe. Done asking questions for now.
My lungs remember their job. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. Come home.”
“I’m working on it.” I press the phone closer to my mouth.
A male voice sounds in the background, casual and much too near. “Is that the emergency trip thing you told me about? I told Patrick, and we had a good laugh over the blue lunchbox.”
My fingers go numb around the phone.
Kathryn snaps away from the receiver. “Go to the kitchen, Evan. Stop hovering.”
Evan. Kathryn’s boyfriend.
The blue lunchbox shouldn’t be in his mouth. I say nothing. Dmitri stands six feet away, and silence is the last lock I own.
Kathryn comes back rushed. “Sorry. He’s being annoying.”
“I get it.” My voice holds. Barely. “I’ll call when I can.”
The line ends.
Dmitri takes the phone, his eyes fixed on my face. “What happened?”
I see his mouth move. I know he’s speaking to me. The words reach me without meaning. Evan’s voice plays again inside my skull.
Emergency trip thing. Blue lunchbox.
My emergency phrase. My son’s safe place. The last line before Patrick reached Mikhail’s bed. Kathryn would never have given him that. Evan heard it. Evan carried it.
My safe place in Boston now has a crack in it, and Patrick is on the other side.