Kissing My Killer (36 page)

And there it was, a dot on a map of New York. She was less than five miles away.

I grabbed the laptop and ran for the door.

Gabriella

Seventeen brought the saw blade right up to my face and my screams died abruptly. I could feel one of the blade’s teeth pushing against the soft skin of my cheek, indenting it but not breaking the surface....yet. If I so much as exhaled, it was going to cut me.

Seventeen brushed my hair back from my forehead. His touch made me want to vomit—clammy and cold, utterly alien.

“He must really like you,” said Seventeen. “For him to betray the Bratva.”

He glanced down at my body and I tensed, waiting for some question about whether I was good in bed, some stinging, sexist jibe. But there was nothing. I realized something was missing: that unspoken edge of male lust. It had been ugly and brutal with Petrov, aboard the ship. With Konstantin it had been subtle and refined. It had even been there with Vadim, in the steam bath, despite his age. But with Seventeen, there was nothing, no hint that he thought of me in that way at all. The total absence of it was almost more disturbing. It was as if we were different species.

Seventeen looked into my eyes again and pressed the saw blade inwards, rolling it as he did so. The teeth pressed harder and harder, threatening to break my skin, and I went rigid, not daring to shy away from him, taking tiny breaths through my nose. The blade slid between my lips and clacked against my teeth, pushing and rolling. I had to open my mouth or it would have started to scratch away at them. It slipped into position between my jaws, just as he’d intended, with its teeth pricking at the corners of my mouth...and stopped.

I took slow, shuddering breaths, tasting steel and feeling the rough texture of rust against my tongue. I couldn’t speak, couldn’t move at all or I’d slice myself open.

“Close your teeth,” said Seventeen.

I gingerly closed my teeth on the blade. It was heavy and, when he let go, the weight of it made it tip alarmingly, but I managed to hold it by tipping my head very slightly back. I tried not to think of what would happen if it slid any further in.

“Now,” said Seventeen. “Nikolai wants me to ask you some questions. You will answer by nodding or shaking your head. And if I think you’re lying, even once...I will use
this.”

He picked up a hammer...and mimed knocking the saw blade into my mouth as hard as he possibly could.

I had to stop myself throwing up from fear. With the blade in my mouth I didn’t dare even do that. Instead, silent tears started to trickle down my cheeks. I wanted to be strong, like Alexei had taught me, but all I felt was tiny and insignificant. The Dread had me now, as powerful as it had ever been. I was all alone in this place, and no one was ever going to find me.

“Now,” said Seventeen again. “Who—”

His phone rang. Without anger or frustration, he laid the hammer neatly down on a table and pulled the phone from his back pocket. I could only hear his side of the conversation that followed. I knew it might be important and I fought my fear and tried to listen, but it was all in Russian. The only part I got was a name: Lizaveta. He said the phrase twice, as if confirming an order: “
Dazhe Lizaveta.”

Then he pocketed the phone and turned back to me. He gave me a smile and even that was
wrong:
plastic and cold, as if he’d copied it from a picture. That whole side of his personality, the part that tells us how to deal with people...it wasn’t just broken, it was
missing.

Jesus Christ, I was so scared
.

“Who else knows about Nikolai and me?” he asked. “Have you told any hacker friends?”

No way was I leading him to Lilywhite and Yolanda. Very slowly and carefully, I shook my head. I was crying so hard that I could only see him as a hazy shadow through the tears.

He tilted his head to the side. “I think, perhaps, you’re lying.”

And he picked up the hammer.

Gabriella

The end wall of the sawmill exploded into blinding daylight and shards of glass and metal as a car crashed through it. I glimpsed Alexei hunched over the wheel, grimly determined.

Seventeen drew his gun and got off a single shot before he had to dodge and roll out of the way. I saw him scramble towards a back room as the car slewed to a halt just in front of me.

Alexei climbed out, his face like thunder. He looked towards the doorway Seventeen had disappeared through, then looked at me. I wanted to tell him to go after Seventeen, that I’d be okay for a moment. I didn’t want him to risk turning his back on that door. But I was going to go insane if I had that saw blade in my mouth another second.

Alexei must have been able to see it in my eyes because he reached gently in, grasped the blade between thumb and forefingers and eased it all the way out, then tossed it aside. I kept my lips as wide apart as possible as he did it, shaking the whole time. Then it was out and I wanted to weep in relief.

He glanced up at what was holding my arms, checked the door again and then grabbed a chisel and used it on something between my wrists. I heard plastic snap and then I was falling into his arms, burying my face in his chest. He eased me down to the floor, sitting me with my back against the leg of the table, and silently pressed my shoulders to tell me that I should stay there. Then he ran towards the back room. He hadn’t even reached the outer door, though, when we heard a car start up. Seconds later, we saw it blast past the windows. Alexei swore and kicked the wall.

He walked back to me and lifted me up, hugging me close. “What did that bastard do to you?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Nothing. Just this.” I touched my mouth. There was pain at the corners, but not too bad. I wondered what I looked like.

Alexei put his arms around me and squeezed me again, then led me to the car. Luckily the sawmill was only built from cheap corrugated iron sheets and panes of glass, so going through the wall hadn’t totaled it. There was a gunshot hole in the windshield, though—we’d have to change cars as soon as possible.

Alexei backed us out of the sawmill with a grind and scream of tortured metal and we got out of there before someone called the cops. A few streets away, he pulled into an alley. I flipped down the sunshade so that I could have a look at myself in the mirror.

I looked like a different person. Mascara rivers ran all the way down both cheeks below red, swollen eyes. The corners of my mouth had been cut by the sawblade’s teeth—not so deeply that I’d need stitches, but there were trickles of blood going down to my chin. I wiped them angrily away and they immediately reformed. I wiped them again. Again—

Alexei grabbed my hand. “Stop,” he said urgently.

I’d thought that I was okay, but I wasn’t. Seeing myself had made the whole thing real. I realized I was shaking...and I couldn’t stop.

“I’ll take you somewhere safe,” said Alexei.

“Where?” I hugged my arms around myself but I couldn’t seem to get warm.

“Somewhere I’ve never taken anyone.”

Gabriella

He drove watching the rear view mirror, turning down side street after side street to check we weren’t being followed. When we were still a block away, he left the car entirely and led me on foot, cutting through back alleys. We eventually came to an aging apartment block and he led me inside and up the stairs.
A safe house?
But wouldn’t the rest of the Bratva know about it?
A friend?
But then why hadn’t we come here from the start?

On the fourth floor, Alexei knocked on a green-painted door. A moment later, the door was swung wide.

The woman was no more than half his height and must have been at least eighty. Her skin was the same shade as Alexei’s, but transformed by wrinkles into a million tanned peaks and valleys. When she saw him and ran forward to embrace him, her eyes crinkled up so much they almost disappeared. “
Alexei!”
she gasped.

Alexei hugged her back, flushing. “My grandmother,” he said.

***

We sat down and there was a long conversation between Alexei and his grandmother, entirely in Russian. There was lots of nodding and smiling in my direction. I hoped that was positive. I took the opportunity to look around the room. There were faded photos of people who I guessed were Alexei’s other relatives. A radio played Russian folk songs and I could smell vegetables cooking. The couch I was sitting on was old and a little threadbare, but it was also really comfortable, in that way that only furniture that’s been worn in for decades can be.

“Sorry,” said Alexei, when they’d finished. “She doesn’t speak any English. She’s only been over here a few years. I brought her over when my parents died.” He winced. “I have to keep her a secret.”

I nodded, dumbfounded. “No one knows she’s here?”

He shook his head. “Someone could use her against me.” He hesitated, glancing at her. “She likes you.”

The old lady nodded at me approvingly and said something in Russian.

“What was that?” I asked.

He flushed. “Nothing.”

His grandmother bustled off into the kitchen and I heard water splash into a kettle. Alexei took my hand. “How are you feeling?”

I realized I was slowly calming down. I’d stopped shaking and I was starting to warm up. His tactic of bringing me here had worked. It was something about the normality of it, the permanence. Motels and even luxury hotels can be comfortable but they’re not comfort
ing.
This place was. I let out a long breath, starting to feel better.

There was another aspect to me coming here. It meant that Alexei trusted me more than anyone else he knew...and he was
introducing me to his family.
That was huge.

Alexei leaned towards me. “She has no idea what I do,” he said.

I nodded quickly. “I won’t tell her.”

His grandmother returned with cups of tea and strange Russian pastries, with the promise of soup as soon as it was cooked. Then she gave Alexei a string of instructions in Russian, pointing at the kitchen.