Kissing My Killer (16 page)

“Fed.” He reached out and took my hand in both of his and, immediately, the heat of him spiraled up my arm, blossoming in my chest. “Gabriella…” He sighed. “
This is what I am.
All my things in a bag. Going where they tell me”—he lowered his voice—”
killing
who they tell me.”

I felt myself tense up again at that word
killing,
just as I had in the steam bath. “Go on,” I muttered.

“This is not a life you should be part of,” he told me. “You’re a...civilian.”

“I’m a
hacker.”

He sighed again. “You sit at home and”—he mimed typing. “You are...safe.”

“Not
that
safe. They sent you to kill me.”

He looked at me seriously. “I didn’t mean you
were
safe. I meant you
are
safe. Safe to be around.” He paused. “I am not. Not safe to be around and not good to be around.”

“Who decides that? You? You saved my life!”

“I tried to kill you. I nearly did.”

I grabbed his hands with my free hand and squeezed. “But you didn’t. You’ve protected me ever since. That first night, you sat in a chair all night just watching over me!”

He looked ashamed for a moment. Then, staring down at the table, he said, “I am trying to protect you. That is why I should not have done...what I did at the steam bath. I am”—he stopped as if to taste the unfamiliar word before he said it—”
sorry.”

“
That’s
why you pulled away, because you were trying to protect me?” I leaned forward. “And you think that’s why I was hurt...because you nearly kissed me? Alexei, I was hurt because you
stopped!”

He stared at me with such an intense look of lust, I thought he was about to haul me over the table and fuck me right there. But before he could speak, soup plates were set in front of us.

“
Borst,”
said Alexei, by way of explanation. It seemed to be a purple-red soup. Neither of us knew what to say, so we both started to eat.

It was several spoonfuls before I’d worked out a speech. “Alexei...you used to be that man. The Bratva made you into him, but you’re free of them, now.”

He shook his head.

“What? What does shaking your head mean?” I was starting to get frustrated with his icy-cold, you-don’t-understand-my-problems thing. “You’re still that man? The Bratva didn’t make you that man? Or you’re not free of them?”

He looked at me with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen in my life. “All three.”

We finished the soup—which was delicious—before he spoke again.

“I was...what I am...long before the Bratva found me. I was in the army. Killing was the only thing I was ever good at.”

“But you can change—”

“Maybe I don’t want to!”

He sounded defensive, more than angry, but the force in his voice was still enough to make me flinch. “B—But...You’ve left the Bratva, now. Aren’t you exiled or disavowed or whatever the fuck they call it?”

He leaned in towards me and his voice grew softer. “Because of what I did, they want me dead. But if you are right about Nikolai, if we expose him, if they forgive me….”

My jaw dropped open. “You’d go back to them?”

He shrugged. “They are my family.”

And everything reversed in my head. I’d been thinking of him as a reformed criminal, a gangster who’d seen the error of his ways and turned on his employers. But that wasn’t it at all: he wanted to prove his loyalty by exposing a bigger traitor, and was praying they’d take him back.

We weren’t on the run together.
I
was on the run and I’d towed him along with me. I’d forced him to choose between me and his family and he’d picked me. But if he could set things right, he’d go back to being a killer for hire in a heartbeat. He’d go back to the Bratva and I’d never see him again.

I felt sick. I suddenly understood why he’d pulled away and now I wished I’d never asked. If it
had
been my fault, that almost would have been easier.

The soup plates were whisked away and two fresh plates were set in front of us. Each one held four bony, meaty things wrapped in white that I didn’t recognize at all. “What are those?” I asked hoarsely.

“Pig’s knuckles,” he said.

Which gave me the excuse I needed to run for the door. When he caught up with me outside, dry-heaving into the gutter, I blamed the food. It was only when we were back in the car that I said, “I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“For messing up your life.” I shook my head. “This whole time, I’ve been thinking about me—leaving my apartment, being chased...but it’s
you.
It’s you who’s had their whole life ripped away.”

He started to shake his head.

“If you’d burst in and I’d been a guy, you’d have shot me, right? You’d have shot me and carried right on with your life.”

He wouldn’t meet my eyes. I could see him wanting to say
no.

“You spared me because I was a woman,” I said.

He finally looked right at me. “I spared you because you’re...
you.”

Which might just be the nicest thing anyone had said to me in my entire life. I felt my eyes filling with tears and looked away, out of the side window.

I never should have tried to get him to talk. From now on, I had to accept things as they were—a partnership of necessity. Most likely, the Bratva would catch up with us and we’d die together. But if by some miracle we did figure out what Nikolai was doing and expose him...my protector would disappear back to his old life and I’d be alone again.

“Drive,” I said. It sounded rude, but my voice was cracking and I could only manage one word.

He drove.

Alexei

She was staring out of the window and I knew she was silently crying. I just didn’t know what to say to fix things, or if that was even possible.

I felt like a rhinoceros, trying to figure out the mechanism of a Swiss watch by nudging it with my horn.

All I knew for sure was that, whichever way this ended, I couldn’t have her. Either we’d both wind up dead or I’d go back to my old life—I couldn’t see any other way out. I didn’t know any life except killing.

I risked a sideways glance at her. God, even like this, red-eyed and tear-stained, she was the most gorgeous thing I’d ever seen in my life. I’d never had to comfort a crying woman—never been deeply enough into a relationship to be in that situation. But even I knew I was supposed to take her in my arms and hold her close.

And I couldn’t. That would set everything in motion again, undoing the fragile stability we’d found. The best thing I could do—the
only
thing I could do—was to keep her at arm’s length. “This gang—Petrov’s gang, the ones who Seventeen works for. Can you find them with your hacking?”

“I can find
anyone,”
she muttered.

I nodded and drove on for a while, giving her space. At last, she turned back towards me, blinking away the last of her tears. “The university,” she said. “Their sociology department runs a criminology course and its network has a gateway into the NYPD database. Much easier than breaking in directly.” She looked me up and down. “But first, you need some new clothes. You’ll need to look like a student.”

We found a clothes store that Gabriella declared was suitable. I stared dumbly at the racks while Gabriella picked out cargo pants, sneakers, a t-shirt, a shirt and a jacket. We threw in a backpack to put my suit and shoes in.

“I feel stupid,” I muttered when I came out of the changing room.

“You’ll pass,” she told me. “If anyone asks, you’re a Russian grad student.”

We walked back to the car with me adjusting my pants every few steps. I couldn’t get used to not wearing a suit.

It wasn’t difficult to sneak into the sociology building. With her laptop under one arm and her jeans and sneakers, Gabriella looked like any other student. I still felt ridiculous, but I walked alongside her and tried to blend in.

“Don’t look so damn purposeful,” she said after a while. “Just...stroll.”

I looked down at my feet and tried my best. She was right: the students moved differently. They slouched around, takeout coffee cup in one hand, Macbook under the other arm, listening to music on their headphones. They moved as if they had all the time in the world.

This is the life she should have,
I thought. A student, with friends and a whole world of possibilities. Not an empty existence in that apartment.

If we fixed things, if things could go back to the way things were...would she go back to that solitary life? Was that her future, when we parted? She deserved better. She deserved—

She deserved a man. That thought tore me in half, because I didn’t want to think of her alone. But I couldn’t bear the thought of her with someone else, either.

“So, what do we do?” I asked impatiently. The sooner we got the information we needed and got out of there, the better. I was way out of my element.

“Their network has WiFi so I can login from anywhere in this building, but I need a username and password.”

“How do we get those?”

“Well, I’ve never done it like this before. Normally I’d do it from my apartment: I’d find a criminology student on Facebook and befriend her and get her to install some game Yolanda had tinkered with on her laptop. The game would be malware—”

“What wear?” I didn’t understand any of this stuff. I didn’t trust technology—technology was the preserve of the government, the police. Messing with it was a good way to get caught. That, and I’d never had anyone to teach me.

Gabriella bit her lip, trying to find a way to explain it. “Malware is like...like the inside man on a bank job. That would let me take over her laptop and use the network as if I was her. But we don’t have time for all that, so we’ll have to do some social engineering.”

“Some what?” I was feeling steadily more and more stupid.

“We have to get someone’s password from them.”

Finally!
Something I understood. A male student with a lip piercing and bleached blond hair was just walking past me. I checked no one was watching and then grabbed his shirt and dragged him towards the men’s room.

“Hey! Shit!” He flailed and kicked, so I lifted him off the ground and carried him.

“Um…” said Gabriella, sounding worried. She hurried after us.

I crashed through the door to the men’s room and slammed the guy up against the wall. “What is password?” I snarled.

“
What?”
he squeaked.

Gabriella burst in. “
This wasn’t what I meant!”

“
What is password?”
I snarled again, putting my face right up to his.

“Your password for the network!” Gabriella said quickly. “And your username!”

“
What?”
The guy’s voice was going higher and higher. “Are you
serious?”

I grabbed his hand. “I break his fingers,” I said, and gripped the first one.

“ARGH! SHIT! km425 and my password’s
giraffechewing
with ‘3s’ for the ‘e’s!”

“You tell anyone, I come in night with knife and slit your throat,” I told him.

He looked as if he was going to throw up, but he managed to nod. I let him go and he fell to the floor, scrambled to his feet and fled.

When I turned around, Gabriella was staring at me in horror. “What?” I asked, genuinely confused.

She shook her head and refused to meet my eyes.

“He’s okay,” I said defensively. “He’s not hurt.”

She shook her head again. “You can’t just….” She raised her hands helplessly in the air and indicated the whole scene in the men’s room. Then she lowered her hands and grabbed mine, squeezing the fingers that had wrapped so easily around the student’s knuckles.