Chapter 15
AURORA
“He treated me like a hostile witness.” Marisol’s voice is tight with fury. “Aurora, I was sitting in an interrogation room at Miami PD with my attorney beside me, and Detective Stalker was asking me where you are like I kidnapped you myself.”
I press the phone against my ear and sit down on the edge of the bed in the third property Adrian has moved me to in two weeks.
This one is a two-bedroom condo in Islamorada with ocean access and a security system that Viktor installed.
I’ve stopped unpacking completely. I leave everything in the suitcase because unpacking implies permanence, and nothing about my life has been permanent since the night Dominic died.
“What did he ask you specifically?”
“Everything. When I last spoke to you, do I know your current address, if Adrian Bugrov has contacted me, and if I believe you left Miami voluntarily.” She exhales sharply.
“He asked if I was aware that withholding information in a missing persons investigation constitutes obstruction. Rebecca looked him dead in the eye and told him to cite the statute. He couldn’t, so he pivoted to asking about my personal relationship with you, how long we’ve been friends, and whether I’d noticed any behavioral changes in the weeks before Dominic’s disappearance. ”
I groan. “He’s profiling me through you.”
“Yeah. He’s trying to build a psychological portrait that justifies his theory.
Rebecca caught it immediately and objected to every question that wasn’t directly related to the Caruso case.
Eric kept rephrasing the same questions in different ways, testing whether I’d give a different answer if he changed the angle. ”
That sounds like Eric. He’s tenacious. “Did he push after that?”
She snorts. “Did he! He pushed for another forty minutes. He circled back to the same questions three different ways, used your mother’s name twice to see if I’d react, and implied that my refusal to cooperate suggested I was protecting someone dangerous.”
She pauses to take a breath and sounds a little calmer when speaking again.
“Rebecca shut him down every time, but he’s good at what he does.
He doesn’t yell or threaten. He just keeps applying pressure from angles you don’t expect, and if Rebecca hadn’t been there, I might have gotten rattled.
Actually, no. I would have told him to go fuck himself, and that would have been worse. ”
I laugh despite the situation. “Probably.”
“Definitely. Rebecca’s approach was better.
She was precise and made Eric look like the one being unreasonable without once raising her voice.
” She lowers her voice. “She’s filing a formal complaint with the precinct commander.
She says Eric’s questioning crossed into harassment territory, and the recording from the interview room supports it. ”
I blink in surprise. “Eric let her record?”
“Eric didn’t have a choice. Rebecca insisted on it as a condition of Marisol’s voluntary appearance, and his lieutenant approved it because refusing would have looked worse.” She clicks her tongue. “The woman is worth every penny Adrian is paying her.”
I smile despite everything. “I’ll tell him you said that.”
“Tell him I said to double her retainer and send her a nice fruit basket. She mentioned loving strawberries. Oh, and I want Eric’s badge on my wall by Christmas.”
I laugh again. “I’ll see what he can do about that.”
The weeks blur into a pattern I didn’t expect and can’t quite name.
Adrian rotates me between properties as threat assessments change, which means I’ve slept in four different beds in three weeks, each one temporarily mine and none of them home.
The movement is annoying, but it’s justified.
Grigor found digital traces showing Karpov is searching for Dominic’s archived recordings, which means he’ll also be looking for the physical hard drive.
I overheard Adrian telling Viktor that if Karpov recovers that drive, either the physical version or the digital version, he’ll get every file, including the ones that are currently fragmented, and the one from the night of the club.
He said it with significance. He must have been referring to our private…
meeting before Dominic’s death. Between Eric’s escalation and Karpov’s persistence, staying in one place too long risks both threats converging, so we move before it reaches us.
What I didn’t expect is how the danger would coexist with something resembling a routine. Adrian and I sleep together most nights. We eat together when his schedule allows, which is more often than I’d have guessed for a man managing a criminal organization under siege.
We argue about small things, like whether the coffee machine requires filtered water.
He insists it does, but I’ve been using tap without telling him, and the espresso tastes exactly the same, and if I’m allowed to go for a run on the beach alone.
I’m not, and the argument about it lasted longer than the run would have, but now he runs with me as Viktor and Fedor watch over us.
We also have one ongoing conversation neither of us can avoid, and it surfaces whenever the silence between operations stretches long enough for me to think about the future instead of surviving the present.
“What happens if this doesn’t end quickly?
” I ask him one evening at the Islamorada condo while we’re eating takeout at a kitchen counter that belongs to neither of us.
He sets down his fork. “I can keep you hidden as long as necessary.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.” I push aside my container.
“I’m asking what happens to me. Not to the situation, the investigation, or Karpov.
What happens to Aurora Moore? Because right now, I don’t exist. I don’t have a job, a home, or a phone number that belongs to me.
I’m living in your properties, spending your money, and moving every time Viktor decides the perimeter is compromised. I’m in limbo.”
He doesn’t argue. He picks up his fork, eats another bite, and looks at me with an expression of deep listening. He’s not dismissing what I said. He’s working through it, and the response will come later, probably at a time I’m not expecting, in a form I didn’t predict.
“I’m not going to disappear into someone else’s life.” I say it firmly because the alternative is too close to what Eric did. “I need to understand where my own life is going, even if the answer is ‘I don’t know yet.’”
“I don’t know yet.” He says it without defensiveness. “I’m working on it.”
I nod, oddly satisfied. “That’s better than pretending you have it figured out.”
He arches a brow. “I never pretend that.”
“You always pretend that. You just do it convincingly. You’re certainly better at it than pretending to know how to ride a horse.” I steal a piece of his chicken because mine is gone, and he always orders too much.
He almost smiles, and the near-smile is the most reassuring thing he could offer because it means he heard me and isn’t going to insult me by arguing about the chicken or the point.
The symptoms start during the second week of our moving around, just a couple of days after Marisol’s call.
The nausea comes first as a low, persistent queasiness that greets me every morning and stays until noon.
I blame the takeout. Then a bone-deep tiredness arrives that doesn’t respond to sleep, coffee, or the afternoon naps I’ve started taking without admitting to anyone that I need them.
I fall asleep on the couch twice in one week and wake up with a blanket over me that I didn’t put there.
Adrian doesn’t mention it. He just keeps buying saltines and plain crackers I can eat without my stomach revolting, and I pretend not to notice that the pantry is being stocked specifically around my nausea schedule.
On the third morning of vomiting instead of just queasiness, two weeks after the symptoms began, I call Marisol.
“You sound terrible,” she says immediately.
“I sound terrible because I just threw up for the third day in a row, and I can’t stay awake past two in the afternoon.”
Her tone changes to one of concern. “Have you eaten anything weird?”
“I’ve been eating the same takeout for weeks. Nothing has changed except that now I can’t keep it down.”
She pauses for two seconds, which means she’s already arrived at a conclusion and is deciding how to deliver it. “When was your last period?”
The question jolts me upright. I should have considered this already. I sit very still on the edge of the bed while trying to count backward, and the counting produces a number that makes the room tilt slightly.
“Aurora?”
“I’m doing the math.”
“Stop doing the math and go see a doctor.”
“I’m doing the math first.” I count again.
It’s been eleven weeks since my last period, and nine weeks since the private room at Echelon, when Adrian and I had sex without protection because neither of us thought about it, and I never brought it up afterward because we were dealing with a dead body, a murder investigation, and a rival syndicate.
Birth control somehow fell off the priority list alongside everything else that used to constitute my normal life.
“How late are you?” Marisol asks, and the concern in her voice has shifted from general worry to something more targeted.
“I don’t know exactly. Eleven weeks, I guess. I’ve been irregular since the stress started, and I assumed it was that.”
She speaks firmly now. “Stop assuming and see a doctor today. Not tomorrow, when it’s convenient, or after you’ve rationalized it into something less terrifying. Today.”
I agree, hang up a short time later, and sit on the bed for five minutes. I put my hand on my stomach without deciding to then pull it away because the gesture means something I’m not ready to confirm.
I walk to the study where Adrian is reviewing documents. He looks up when I appear in the doorway.
“I need to see a doctor.”