Last Kiss (Hitman #3) (17 page)

“
Caffè
. You, Naomi?”

“Orange juice if it’s bottled.”

“
Succo d’arancia
,” I tell the hostess. She pours the glasses and provides us with napkins, a moist towel, and our drinks.

“
Dolce o salato
?” She holds up a bag of cookies and a bag of pretzels.

“Do you wish sweet or savory?” I ask Naomi.

“Savory.”

“
Due salato
.” I hold up two fingers.

“What is this?” Naomi picks up the slim plastic package with the train’s name on the packaging and the words
Salvietta Rinfrescante
.

“It is a cleaning towel. You can wipe your . . . hands.”

Naomi already has it open and is wiping her face, neck, and hands. She then proceeds to wipe the table. With horror, she holds it up to me. The Trenitalia train is fast but perhaps not as clean as it could be. Wordlessly I hand her my towel. She rips it open and feverishly begins to wipe.

“I need another one,” she pants. Rising, I pull open the door to summon the hostess back, when a black-suited man wearing thin black gloves turns and pulls out a pistol.

“I need another towel,” Naomi cries behind me.

“My companion needs another
salvietta rinfrescante,
” I say to the pockmarked, tanned face. His lip curls and he raises his gun to my forehead. My two hands fly up on either side of the barrel. In one motion I step toward him, pushing his gun hand up. The
action surprises him and he stumbles backward. I thrust the gun into his throat with a punch, flip it to my other hand, and shoot the other black-suited man running down the aisle.

“Naomi, grab our bags,” I yell, facing Naomi, one hand stretched down toward the front of the car. My foot is on the throat of the first attacker.

I sense a shift in the air behind me and drop to my knees, rolling over and then up. With one knee up and the other leg bent back, I sight and then shoot. The man stumbles but manages to squeeze off a shot before falling to his knees. I shoot again, this time aiming for his hand, but he topples over and I think I graze his shoulder. A burning sensation on the side of my biceps warns me that one of their bullets has made some contact with my skin. The shot isn’t embedded, though. This feels more like it sliced off the outside edge of flesh and muscle. It’s of no concern at the moment.

“Naomi,” I yell again, running toward the first attacker, “the bags.”

She saunters out. “You don’t need to yell. I heard you the first time. Raising your voice is only necessary if the listener has hearing impairment or the sound is blocked. In fact, for some people, it’s better to merely lower the octave of your voice instead of speaking louder. Studies have shown—”

The attacker pushes upright and leans down to pull at his ankle. I shoot again. One bullet left. Pushing Naomi back into the compartment, I drop a knee on the gut of the downed man. He grunts and I shoot him in the shoulder. At point-blank range, his wound is enormous. Blood spurts out like a geyser. He cries out and I slam the butt of the now-empty gun onto his wound, which causes him to howl like an animal.

“Who sent you?”

NAOMI

People scream around us as Vasily shoves the gun harder into the stranger’s wound.

“Who sent you?” Vasily snarls again, and I realize this man is another assassin. He howls as Vasily tortures him, and I want to retreat mentally, to pull away from the noise. But Vasily needs me, so I pop in my earplugs and force myself to take calming breaths.
Itsy Bitsy Spider . . .

The man grins up at Vasily and grinds his teeth, and Vasily shakes him angrily even as froth bubbles out of the man’s mouth. I stare in fascination, wondering what could cause a chemical reaction like that, but then Vasily grabs the bags from my hand and throws them over his shoulder, then takes my hand and drags me forward.

There’s an audible sound in the train, muffled by the earplugs,
and a screech, and I realize we are braking. The train is slowing, and everything seems to surge forward.

People continue to scream around us as Vasily drags me through the car, toward a door at the far end. He shoves it open, muscles flexing, and then tugs me after him, and we’re on a platform outside of the car, a mere foot above rushing track. The ground screams past, even as the brakes continue to squeal.

Vasily mouths something to me and grabs my chin, forcing me to watch him. I’m near deaf from the earplugs but I stare at his mouth as he speaks.

Watch me. Run. Follow.

Then, as the train continues to squeal, he tosses our bags over the side and onto the ground, and moves onto the side of the train, hanging off of a ladder. He looks back at me again, surely seeing my wide eyes, and I catch the word
follow
again before he jumps down to the ground, running alongside the train, legs windmilling until he rolls away.

I just . . . what the
fuck
.

Vasily, that crazy Russian, just jumped off a train and expects me to follow. I can’t stay here, but I don’t want to jump, either.

Of course, I’m fascinated by the fact that he can do this. I wonder what speed we’re at, and if he’s hurt himself, but there’s no time. I hear more alarms sounding—faint and annoying—through the earplugs. The train is getting slower and slower, and in moments, it’s going to stop entirely. I can’t stay here. I climb out to the ladder like he did and watch the rushing ground, then jump and run like he did.

The impact on my legs is harder than I thought it would be. I try to run but the ground gets away from me and I end up flailing. I lose my balance and roll down a hill into the green countryside.
The wind is knocked from my lungs and I lay on my back, stunned. I think I’ve lost an earplug. Or a kneecap. Or both. Everything hurts. If I’m dead, I hope they bury me back home—

A shadow looms over me and I squint one eye open. Vasily.

“Naomi?”

I groan. I just jumped from a train. Surely he doesn’t expect me to hold a conversation?

He kneels beside me, and his hands run all over my body. “Speak to me. Tell me you are all right.”

I wait to see if his hands are going to go to my breasts or between my legs. I’m disappointed when they don’t. “The train must have been going a very slow speed, or else we would have broken several bones simply due to the velocity—” I break off as he starts to laugh. “It’s not funny.”

“I am not laughing because it is funny. I am laughing because I am relieved you are not hurt.” He extends a hand to me. “Come. Get up.”

“I’m up, I’m up,” I grump, and take his hand and get to my feet. Other than bruises and an all-over body ache, I’m fine. “Why are we jumping off trains?”

Once I am standing, his hands move over me again, examining my skin and smoothing down my limbs, as if he doesn’t trust that I am truly all right. It’s almost . . . sweet. He’s obsessed with my well-being, this man. When he is satisfied that I am whole, he speaks. “We jump because several people saw me kill those men, and they will be looking for us. Follow me. We will retrieve our bags and hide until train is gone.”

I trot behind him as we head down the tracks. Our bags are nearly a mile away, but we retrieve them and then Vasily hustles me over a hill and into the countryside. We find a copse of scrubby
bushes near a road and hide behind it. I can’t help but think we look like the criminals we’re pretending not to be. Vasily’s clothing is torn and grass stained, and I’m sure I look like a mess.

“What is the plan?” I ask Vasily.

He says nothing. His jaw clenches and grinds, not unlike the man on the train a moment before the bubbling froth emerged from his mouth. I watch him curiously to see if the same will happen.

“Do you have a poison capsule in one of your teeth? One of the men back on the train did.”

He shakes his head. “I am just thinking.”

I pick a piece of grass off of his collar and my fingers smooth his clothing. He looks rumpled, and it doesn’t suit his fierceness. “Think harder. We have to have a plan, Vasily.”

“I know.”

But he doesn’t share. I make a frustrated noise in my throat. “You need to tell me what’s going on. Were those men Golubevs?”

Vasily shoots me a look I guess I’m supposed to understand. “
Nyet
.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the Golubev
Bratva
is filled with fools who bust in and take over buildings. Those men were different assassins. They were professionals.”

And I suppose the Golubevs are not. “Emile’s men, then?”

“Emile would not have assassins after us. No one could finger us but the woman, and I doubt she will talk.”

My brow furrows. “So who else is trying to kill us?”

“That is interesting question, is it not?”

“How many enemies do you have?”

His eyes narrow at me. “All that are not friends are my enemies.”

“Okay, how many friends do you have?”

He is silent. Either he is dredging his memory for friendships or he truly does not believe anyone is a friend. I feel a stab of unhappiness on his behalf, which surprises me. I’m not a sympathetic person, but I feel like Vasily belongs to me. His germs, his smiles, his skin, his scent—they are all mine and I am unhappy that he seems alone. I know how that feels.

So I smooth his collar and ignore the hand that swats my fingers away. “I will be your friend, Vasily. For now.” Until he threatens someone I care for. I think of his words from last night—he would kill Daniel or my parents if they stood in his way. That is a thought I can’t process right now. If I do, my mind will run in endless unhappy circles. So for now, I tuck it away and will turn it over in my head later, when we are not squatting in bushes by the side of a road.

“I do not need friends. I am
volk
.”

“That’s sad,” I tell him. Vasily is no optimized computer like me, so he should have lots of friends, shouldn’t he? Daniel does. I feel a stab of sympathy for my friendless wolf. “Aren’t we friends?”

“Do you still consider me friend after all I have told you?” He asks the words in a low, intense voice.

I remember our conversation. How he stated he would kill people if he had to. People I loved. But . . . he never said he would hurt me. I think of the way he carefully brushed my hair and spoke to me on the train to calm my spiraling mind. These are not the actions of a man who cares for no one.

I’m torn.

“Consider me one less enemy,” I say, unwilling to give entirely.

A faint smile touches his face, and I feel as if I’ve somehow won a prize. Warmth blooms through me, and I smile back, meeting his eyes.

He glances at the road, the buildings in the distance, anywhere but at me. The faint purr of a distant car approaches, and Vasily nudges me. “Step in front of the car and ask for help. A woman alone is less fearsome than a man. Pretend another one of your seizures if you must. When they stop, I will attack when they open door.”

Oh no. A carjacking? I don’t like this plan. It’s one thing to take a car when someone has left it sitting in the road by itself. It’s another to force someone to pull over and mug them. My stupid, screwy mind imagines Daniel driving behind the wheel of the Volvo in the distance and I panic. “We can’t just leave a swath of crime throughout the Italian countryside,” I protest. I’m inches away from another freak-out.

“Jump out, Naomi,” he growls at me. “Hurry.”

“No,” I say, and wrap my arms around his waist, burrowing my head against his chest. I push the full, limp weight of my body against his in case he tries to ignore me and carjack on his own.

I expect him to shove me angrily aside, and I’m prepared to lock my arms and act like a human sandbag. I feel him stiffen, but as the car drives past, he doesn’t move. Moments pass. The engine purr fades into the distance and eventually, Vasily’s hand rests on my shoulder. He caresses me, his hand moving through my hair. “Naomi?”

“No more, okay?” I say, and realize I’m close to tears again. “Can’t we just buy some bicycles from one of the locals and head to the closest town?”

His voice is soft, so soft my ears strain to hear. “
Da
. We will.”

—

Hours later, we ditch our bikes and limp into a place that Vasily says is called Ferrara. We took our time with the bikes, buying
clothes and hats from a tourist stand and then biking through town as if we were sightseeing before heading to a hotel. I have to sit on my skirts and tuck them against my legs to bike, but I manage it.

I’m exhausted, mentally and physically, by the time we get up to our room. One small room, with one tiny full bed. It’s nothing like the room we had in Rome, the grand suite overlooking the city. This is small and plain, and the bed is covered with an ugly duvet that looks as if it’s full of germs. Using the hem of my dress, I peel the bedding from the mattress and get the towels from the bathroom to lie on instead.

“
Nyet
, do not,” Vasily tells me. “We need those.”

I pause. “All of them?”

“We both dye our hair again tonight,” Vasily tells me. “This time, you are red.”

“Like blood?” I whimper. “I hate dyeing my hair, Vasily. The smell and the mess are so bad.”

“Is necessary,” he tells me. “I will do mine with you. It will not be so bad.” He nods in my direction. “Come. Take your clothes off,” he tells me, stripping his own clothes. “You do not want dye on your skin. It is a telltale and I do not leave those.”

I peel off my dress, still intensely unhappy about the turn this day has taken. “I’m tired of Italy. Can we go to Russia now? I want snow and the
dacha
.”

“Not yet,” he says. “A bit longer, Naomi.” His hands reach out and trace my skin, where bruises are mottling my shoulders. “You are hurt after all?”

“I jumped from a train,” I tell him. “I didn’t land that well.”

He chuckles, his thumbs brushing over my skin in a way that makes my nipples get tight and achy in response. “You were right about the bones. The train was slowing to a stop, or else it would
have been a death wish.” His fingers hover over a particularly bright bruise, and then his big hands are moving all over my skin. I’m wearing nothing but my bra and panties, but he’s still checking me over with a skim of his hands. “You are not hurt more than bruises, are you?”

“I don’t think so,” I tell him. “Though you might want to look at my pupils to see if I have a concussion. You don’t even have to be hit in the head to get a concussion. All you need is a blow that can cause the head to move back and forth rapidly. And traumatic brain injury is the number one killer of people under the age of forty—”

His hands cup my face and he peers into my eyes. My gaze skitters away, but his hands clench on my cheeks. “Look at me.” His voice is so firm it scares me a little. I look at him, though I feel weird about it. He gives me the tiniest little shake. “You are not going to die, Naomi.”

“Shaking me is probably not conducive to my brain health if I do have head trauma—”

“You’re fine,” he says, giving me a thoughtful look. His thumb skims my lower lip, and then he releases me. “Now come, we dye our hair before someone else finds us.”

It feels like he’s rushing me. It’s not like him. “Are you stressed? You might be the one with the concussion. It’s more common in men than women and one of the signs of concussion is irritability—”

“Naomi, if I am irritable, it is because I am not happy with having a set of new, mysterious assassins. They must be after the Madonna as well. This makes me very angry for a variety of reasons, none of which are aimed at you.” He raises a clenched fist and for a moment, I think he’s going to punch a wall, but he doesn’t. Instead, he flexes his hand and then returns to
undressing. I head to the bag and pull out the small bottles of hair dye he has carefully packed away for emergency. Vasily says he is dyeing his hair, too. I think he will be brown. It would look odd if we were both red, though the mental image of that makes me smile.

I turn around just in time to see Vasily peel a wet, sticky portion of his dark shirt off of his body, revealing the wound underneath. There’s blood everywhere—blood on his skin, on his clothing, and now leaking onto the towel that he presses to the wound.

Oh God, so much blood. This must be why he’s rushing. He needs medical attention. I blink rapidly as blackness swims in front of my eyes. It’s not my wound. It’s not my blood. It’s not. It’s nothing.