Chapter 21 #2
Something cracked inside me, her words finding their way into a single fracture in the wall I'd built, too small for Viktor to see, too deep for me to reach. My reaction only lasted a half a second, and then I sealed it shut before the next beat of my heart.
But she heard it that slight hitch in my breath. I know she heard it. Because she knew me the way I knew her, in the dark, by breathing and scent and the particular quality of silence a person makes when they're coming apart.
"Finish it."
I tore my eyes from what I'd done and tried to listen to what Viktor was saying.
"I've beaten her for an hour and she hasn't said a word. She's innocent." I held his eyes. "She deserves to live."
Viktor's jaw tightened. He didn't like being told no. Nobody told Viktor no. The last person who'd told Viktor no was currently dissolved in a fifty-gallon drum in a storage unit I'd rented under a fake name.
"That means nothing. That she is too stubborn for her own good. Finish. It." He pointed at the knife in my hand.
I didn't even remember pulling it out. Pain shot through my busted knuckles as I opened my hand and dropped it on the floor. "I'm not slitting her throat like a goddamn dog. Not after this. That's my line."
"This is about loyalty, Milo." His voice was quiet. Dangerous. "About proof. Moscow needs to see—"
"You've got an hour of video of your fucking proof.
" I kept my voice even. Practical. The voice of a man discussing logistics, not morality.
"You watched me do this to her. I did what you asked.
She's not breaking. There's nothing else I can do to get a confession from her. Now let me end this my way."
Viktor stared at me long and hard.
The silence lasted long enough for me to count Raven's breaths. Three. Four. Five. Each one shallower than the last. She was barely conscious.
Then Viktor sat back down. The chair creaked under his weight.
"Fine." He waved a hand. Dismissive. "Your kill, your method. But I watch."
I nodded.
My hand went to my jacket pocket. The syringe was warm from my body heat. I pulled it out and walked back to her.
She was curled on the floor in the fetal position, arms wrapped around herself, her dress torn and dirty and spotted with blood. Her hair had fallen across her face, dark strands sticking to the wetness on her cheek.
She looked so small.
She'd never looked small to me before. Not in the alley the night we met, when she walked through blood without flinching. Not at the piano, where she filled a room with music. Not in bed, where she took everything I gave her and demanded more and made me feel like I was the one coming undone.
But here, on this floor, in this warehouse, with my knuckles torn and aching from the bruises I'd put on her body, she looked small.
I crouched beside her.
And I couldn't stop myself.
My hand went to her face, touching her softly.
The first gentle thing I'd done since this started.
My fingers found the swollen ridge of her cheekbone, then traced the line of her jaw the way I'd done a thousand times.
The way my hands knew her in the dark. The way I'd memorized her because she was the only thing about this life that mattered.
She flinched.
And then she didn't.
She leaned into it. Into my hand. Into the touch of the monster who'd just beaten her bloody, because even now, even after this, she reached for me.
That thing in my chest that I couldn't identify and couldn't afford to feel nearly brought me to my knees. But Viktor was watching. I could feel his attention like a blade at my throat.
I pressed the needle to the inside of her elbow.
"Milo." My name.
My fucking name was the last thing she said.
I pushed the plunger.
The drug hit her bloodstream fast. I could see it working as the tension left her body in a wave, her muscles going slack, her breathing changing from the ragged rhythm of pain to something slower. Deeper. Quieter.
Her hand twitched once against the floor. Then went still.
Her eyes were nearly closed. Her lips were parted. And for a moment, in the dim light of the building, despite the blood on her face and the bruises blooming dark across her pale skin, she looked like she was sleeping.
Her breathing slowed.
And slowed.
And stopped.
My hand was on her throat. Positioned so my fingers covered her pulse point. Viktor stood and walked toward us, his footsteps heavy and deliberate.
One second.
Two.
Three.
The longest three seconds of my life.
Then I felt it. Thread-thin and barely there. A pulse so faint it was more memory than movement, tapping against my fingertip like a whisper.
She was alive.
My hand didn't move. Didn't adjust. Didn't telegraph the relief that would've sent me to the floor if I wasn't already on my knees.
My fingers stayed exactly where they were, covering the evidence of her heartbeat, and when Viktor leaned in over my shoulder, what he saw was a body going still. What he saw was death.
Putting the back of his hand near her mouth, he checked her breathing and felt nothing. The drug was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
He looked at her eyes. Pupils fixed. Unresponsive.
He straightened.
"It's done," he said.
There was something in his voice that I hadn't expected. Something almost gentle, like he was giving me permission to grieve. Like he understood that what had just happened in this room had cost me everything, and he was acknowledging the price without apologizing for demanding it.
I didn't look at him. I couldn't.
"I'll handle the body," I said. "And the building."
"The video?"
"You'll have it within the hour."
He nodded. Pulled another cigarette from his coat. Lit it. Took a long drag, the ember flaring orange in the dim warehouse light.
"You did what was necessary, Milo. Remember that."
I rose to my feet and said nothing.
He walked to the door, his footsteps fading until he reached the entrance. A few seconds later, a car door opened and closed. The engine started. The headlights swept across the warehouse windows as he pulled away.
The crunch of gravel grew fainter.
And fainter.
And then there was nothing but silence and the woman on the floor and me.
I didn't move for thirty seconds.
Then I crouched beside her body and picked up her limp hand, holding it in mine. I wanted to check her pulse again, make sure it was still there, but they were watching.
My vision blurred and I blinked hard and fast. "It's over," I whispered so the camera wouldn't pick it up. "It's over, little bird. And I'm here. I'm right here."
She didn't respond. She couldn't. The drugs had her down deep, somewhere below consciousness, somewhere below dreaming, in the dark space between life and death.
I gave myself ten more seconds. Ten seconds to kneel beside her and hold her hand against my mouth and breathe her in and fall apart.
Then I got to work.
Reaching into my inside jacket pocket, I found the remote for the video camera and paused the recording.
Then I went out to my car and moved the substitute body from the trunk into the warehouse.
Positioned her in the center of the room, right next to where Raven had fallen.
She had the same general build. Same hair.
It was enough to fool them from a distance.
Then I picked up Raven and carried her broken body out to my car.
She weighed almost nothing. Or maybe she weighed everything.
I held her against my chest with one arm under her knees and the other supporting her head, and her face rested against my shoulder, and the blood from her split cheek soaked into my shirt, and I walked through the night carrying the woman I'd broken.
I laid her in the backseat of the car. Carefully, this time.
The way I should have done it hours ago.
I positioned her on her side so she wouldn't choke if she vomited, and I grabbed a blanket and folded it under her head because the seat was cold and hard and she'd been on a concrete floor and the least I could do—the absolute fucking least—was give her something soft to rest on.
Last, I pulled another blanket over her that I always kept there. Even if the Russians found me on a traffic camera driving out of here, they wouldn't see anything strange.
Back inside, I knelt back down by the body with my back to the camera, moved her until she was lying exactly where Raven was, and unpaused the video recording. Then I got up and started taking care of the body.
The cleaner in me worked with efficient, mechanical precision, doing what I needed to do to minimize the chances of any parts of the body being recovered from the ashes and identified.
Normally, I wouldn't leave her here or take the chance.
But Konstantin wanted absolute proof. So that's what I would give him.
When I was finished, I disconnected the camera and pocketed the memory card.
Then I doused the building. Gasoline along the baseboards, acetone pooled in the corners where it would catch fast and burn hot.
The smell was sharp and chemical and it mixed with the copper scent of Raven's blood on the concrete.
My stomach lurched, and I swallowed it down.
Glancing around one last time to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything, I struck the match.
The building caught fast. Flames climbed the walls, ate through the old wood framing and found the acetone and bloomed into something alive and hungry. The heat pushed me back three steps, then five, and I stood in the gravel and watched it burn.
The fire would gut the structure within the hour. By morning, the county would have an old burned-out building, a body hidden within it they'd hopefully never find, and a case that would go cold before it ever got warm.
Raven Oakley was dead.
I got in the car. Checked her pulse again—still there, still threadbare, still the most beautiful thing I'd ever felt under my fingertips.
Then I started the engine and drove north. Away from Bastrop, away from Austin, away from every place that knew my name or hers. The highway stretched out in front of me, empty and dark, and in the backseat, Raven breathed.
I drove for sixteen hours and only pulled over twice. Both times to check on her. The first time, her pulse was stronger. The second time, her eyelids fluttered. A movement so small I might have imagined it.
The safe house was north of Sioux Falls. A cabin I'd rented under a name that didn't exist, paid in cash with no paper trail. Remote enough that no one would come looking. Close enough to a town that I could get supplies.
Still wrapped in my blanket, I carried her inside and laid her on the bed.
Getting the first aid kit, I cleaned her up and did what I could with the injuries I knew she had while she was too out of it to feel anything.
Then sat down in the chair beside her, put my head in my hands, and allowed the mask to come off.
It didn't happen all at once. It came off in bits and pieces. Like plaster that had dried out in the sun and slowly crumbled over time, revealing the cracks and holes underneath.
I don't know how long I sat there. Long enough that the light through the windows changed from gray to gold.
Long enough that my hands stopped shaking and started again and stopped again.
Long enough that I replayed every second of the warehouse in sequential order—every blow, every scream, every mark I'd left on her body—over and over again until I'd never forget it.
Because I didn't want to forget.
I'd done this.
The bruises on her face, her ribs, her arms—they were all mine. The split skin on her cheekbone—mine. The raw, torn sound of her voice when she'd called my name and begged me to stop—mine.
The words she'd screamed at me—You're a fucking monster. You were always a monster—
Mine.
I sat in that chair and watched her breathe and waited for her to wake up.
And I understood, with the kind of clarity that only comes after you've destroyed the thing you love to save it, that she was right.
I was a monster.
I'd always been a monster.
The only difference was that now I was a monster with something to lose.