Last Kiss (Hitman #3) (7 page)

“Do you need anything upstairs?” I ask.

“The computer.”

“We can buy you a new one.” I lean against the door to see if I can hear footsteps or even the elevator.

“I have code running on it,” she protests. But I have had enough of her lies and subterfuges. She may have captured me, but I am not helpless.

Catching her chin, I look at her and say softly, “I will not hurt you so long as you do as I ask. Be loyal and you will live. Cross me and you, too, will have a hole between your eyes.”

NAOMI

“I do not want a hole between my eyes,” I tell him. “You do realize that would kill me? A human cannot survive a hole between the eyes, though there have been some medical cases in which a screwdriver or a nail was embedded behind an eye socket and the subject actually was fine until—”

“It was a threat.”

Oh. I blink. This is the first time that Vasily has actually threatened me. I frown to myself and study him, trying to figure him out. He’s been polite to me before, and caring. I’m taken aback by this change. Maybe shooting the other man has put him in a bad mood.

He grabs my hand and drags me forward before I can protest that he’s touching me. “Come. We go.”

Not this again. “Where are we going?”

“We are leaving this place. It is festering with Golubevs.” He
drags me along behind him down the hall, and we make our way back to the fire exit. He takes off his shoes and instructs that I do the same, and we creep down the stairs quietly.

I think of the laptop we left upstairs. It’s bothering me. I should have insisted we take it with us, if nothing else, to wipe the drive and erase my footprint. I’ll have to hack into it from afar and clean the slate. I don’t like leaving my workstation unattended. It’s one of my (many) compulsions and it’s really getting to me, to the point that I can’t think of anything else.

I’m so distracted by thoughts of the laptop that I’m hardly paying attention when Vasily shoves his shoes into my hands. “Wait here.”

I tilt my head and watch him stalk to the door of the stairwell. He’s moving like a hunting cat I saw at the zoo once, all predatory muscle and imminent danger. Then, the door flies open and he steps through it, grabbing something. I see a flurry of dark fabric and thrashing limbs, and then I hear a snapping noise.

A man in a suit slumps to the ground at Vasily’s feet, neck at an odd angle.

Vasily looks in my direction and gestures quickly, impulsively, for me to follow him.

I do, neatly stepping over the body. “Where are we going?”

“Airport,” he says, adjusting his jacket. “To Rome.”

I brighten. “To see uncircumcised penises?”

“Among other things.” He looks around, and then gives me another gesture. I am to follow him into an alley.

I do so, clutching our shoes. We have not put them on yet, but he doesn’t seem like he wants to stop. I really should protest about the germs we could be picking up, but now does not seem to be the time.

We round a corner and run into another man in a suit. I gasp,
but before I can react, Vasily grabs the man’s head and smashes it into a nearby wall. Just
boom
. The man crumples and Vasily continues stalking down the alley, a predator at work.

Fascinating. I admit I’m impressed.

Two more alleys, and we come to a busy cross street. Vasily grabs the door of a cab and jerks it open. He leans in and snarls something, and two people spill out the other side of the cab, running into the street. Then, he looks back at me and points at the cab.

I get in, and Vasily slides in next to me. “
Aeroporto
,” he says and pulls out a fistful of money. “
Rápido
.”

The man nods and takes the money.

Vasily relaxes as the cab speeds down the street. He glances behind us once, and then grunts. “They do not follow. Dumb fool Golubevs. They will sit in the lobby and wait for hours, thinking they are so clever.”

I hand him his shoes.

“You are quiet. Do not be afraid of me.” His voice is soft, soothing, as if trying to calm me.

“I’m not afraid.”

He arches an eyebrow as if questioning my words. He almost looks affronted that I’m not scared. Vasily leans in and speaks in a low voice. “No more lies.”

“I’m not lying. I’m not afraid.” A bit surprised at how fast things are moving, but not afraid. No one wants me dead. What is there to be afraid of?

“You saw me kill two men. This does not frighten you? Most women would be sobbing and weeping in a corner.”

I shrug. “I don’t know those men. Should I be upset?”

“Are you not upset that human life was taken?”

“They were bad guys.”

“
Nyet
,
moy besstrashnyy devushka
, we are the bad guys.”

“Then they were worse guys.”

He laughs, the sound humorless despite the smile curving his hard mouth. “You have a simplistic view of things.”

“I don’t feel emotions the way ‘normal’ people do.” I shrug my shoulders and bend a knee, propping my foot on the seat of the taxi so I can put my shoe back on. “I don’t know those men. They mean nothing to me alive or dead.”

“I am not sure if this makes you a sociopath or the perfect woman.”

I’ve heard the sociopath comment before, but not the perfect woman part. It throws me for a loop. I blink at him and my fingers reach for my baseball cap, to run along its comforting bill.

It’s gone.

I realize a moment too late that it’s back at the hotel, next to my laptop.

I burst into tears.

“And now the tears come,” Vasily mutters, and he sounds disappointed.

“My hat,” I moan, weeping. “I left my hat at the hotel.”

He pauses. “You are crying over a hat?”

“It’s my hat,” I wail, my voice getting louder. Clearly he does not understand its importance. “I need it! I can’t function without it! Turn around!”

“We are not going back,” he says in a firm voice. “You will have to forget it.”

“My hat!”

“Forget it.”

“My
hat.
” The cab driver is staring at me in the rearview mirror. I don’t care. I need that hat. It’s been with me since I was a
child. It’s seen me through so much shit. It’s comforting in a world of strangeness, and I need that comfort to ground myself. I’m throwing a tantrum like a child, but I don’t care. I need my hat.
I need it.
I decide it’s time to pull out the big guns again. I start a full-body tremble. He won’t stop? I’ll make him stop—

The big Russian grabs my jaw and pulls my face against his. For a man that doesn’t like to be touched, he sure is touching me a lot. “Do not even think about it,” he whispers against my skin. “I know this for a lie.”

I swallow hard and go still. The loss of my hat is sending me into a panic, but I know a threat when I hear one.

“Good,” he says softly when I calm. His gaze flicks to my mouth, and for an odd moment, I think he wants to kiss me. But that’s . . . weird. “No seizures,” he tells me. “We do not have time for such things.”

Vasily is the first person other than Daniel that has seen through my seizure game. Even my parents have fallen victim to it. But this man? This predator? I can’t bluff him. That disturbs me almost as much as the loss of my hat. I chew on my lip, anxiety welling up as I think of my hat, lost and alone in the hotel room. My fingers twitch and I find that I’m twining them in Vasily’s clothing, looking for some sort of anchor. I feel utterly lost. “I need my hat,” I say softly, and my voice sounds broken. I feel broken. How can I function without my hat? “Please.”

“I will get you a new one.” He’s still staring at my mouth. His fingers are still on my face, and he’s still staring at my mouth. I wish I understood what he was thinking.

“It’s not the same if you replace my hat,” I tell him slowly, and his gaze follows my words as my lips move. “I need that one.
It’s my talisman. It helps me sleep. It helps me think. How will I be able to function without it?”

“You will manage,” he says. “You are strong.”

I don’t feel strong at the moment. I feel very naked and vulnerable without my hat. I feel like crying even more, but I know Vasily won’t like my tears. I sniff them back and try to calm down. I flex my fingers and release his clothing. “I’m sorry. I’m touching you and I know you don’t like that.”

He grunts. I don’t know if that’s agreement or relief, but he lets go of me.

—

We’re silent on the way to the airport. I don’t know what Vasily is thinking about, but I’m thinking about my hat and my laptop. I feel as if I’ve been stripped of all comforting items, and I don’t like it. I don’t care that men were chasing us; all I can think about is returning to the hotel to get my hat back. Maybe the computer. Maybe.

I wasn’t lying when I told Vasily that I have a hard time functioning without my talismans. I like for everything to be in order. Things have to be in their place and just so in order for my brain to function optimally, and my hat is part of my work process. I sit down, put on my hat, put on headphones—but I don’t listen to anything. I like silence, and the headphones just muffle things even more. The mouse must be at exactly a ninety-degree angle from the right-hand side of the keyboard, and the keyboard must have a number pad. I need a chair big enough to sit cross-legged in and I must work uninterrupted.

And I must have all these things in order to work. The fact that I won’t fills me with dread.

Even Hudson, who held me for two years and was an awful man, let me have my hat. What next? Is someone going to try and make me eat something red? Yellow? Deprive me of hand sanitizer?

The cab stops and Vasily gestures for me to get out. “Let’s go.”

I look at him. “I refuse to eat tomatoes or squash, just so you know.”

He stares at me for a long time. His lips twitch. “Get out of car.”

I get out and head for the staircase leading up to the jet. It’s a small one, and I wonder how many people will be on it.

When I get on board, though, I realize there is just me and Vasily. If there is a pilot, he’s not coming out to greet us. I stand in the center of the aisle, examining the oversized leather seats.

Vasily moves behind me. “Take seat. We are leaving soon.”

“I need to wipe it down first,” I tell him. Without my hat, my anxieties are surging to the forefront, and I feel the insane urge to sanitize everything in the plane. “Do you have antibacterial wipes?”

He mutters something in Russian and disappears into the cockpit. I hear him talking to someone, again in Russian. He returns a moment later with a package. I open it, pull out wipes, and begin to clean off a chair for myself. My fingers twitch and want to run across the brim of my hat, but of course it’s not there, which just sets me further on edge. Finally, though, I sit down and buckle in.

Vasily hands me a small blue booklet. “Take this.”

“What is it?”

“Passport.”

I open it up and examine it. There’s my face, but that’s not my name or my hair. The name on the passport is Karen Brown. The woman in the picture has dark hair, not my pale blond. I look up at Vasily, excited at this change. “Are we going in disguise?”

“
Da
.” He sits down across from me, not bothering to wipe
down his seat. I suppose he doesn’t care as much about germs as I do. “Once we get into the air, you can go in the bathroom and fix your hair. I am told there is dye there for you.” He says this without emotion, but he looks weary. Tired.

I wonder if he’s sad. One of the bad guys he killed today was his friend.

I watch him, but I’m not sure how to handle his emotions. The only thing I’m good at is distraction. “Smith is the most common surname in the United States. The most common female name is Mary.”

“Yes, but Mary Smith would look very obvious, would it not?” He stands up and goes to the bar at the front of the plane and pours himself a drink. An alcoholic one. It’s clear, like water. I like clear. It’s so clean. He sips it, then throws the entire thing back and pours himself another.

“I’m thirsty,” I tell him.

He gestures at the bar, indicating that I should pour myself a drink. I unbuckle my seat belt and get up, crossing to him. Instead of getting my own glass, though, I take his from his fingers and turn it. I drink from the exact spot that his mouth pressed to when he drank. There are reasons why I do this, I tell myself. One reason is that it’s a bit of rebellion, a way for me to control the things that control me. I am forcing myself to win this silent war. So even though my skin prickles with awareness and my brain screams about his saliva, I try to tune it out, because I have a higher purpose.

In the past, when I drank from the same spot Vasily did, his gaze went to my mouth. My breasts, then my mouth again. It’s a distraction for my captor, because distractions are the only weapons I have at the moment, and the need for weapons has to override any sort of phobia.

And I glance up at Vasily to see what he thinks of my distraction.

His focus is on my mouth, and when he takes the glass back, he drains it. “Did you know that vodka destroys all bacteria in the mouth?”

“Does it?” He pours more vodka in the now-empty glass and hands it back to me.

Vasily moves closer to me, so close that I can practically feel his breath. His lips are rather attractive this close up, sculpted and fine. “If I kissed you now, I would have no germs to transfer to you.”

“That’s very . . . interesting,” I say, dazed. “Do you want to kiss me?”

“
Da
, I do.”

“We should try it, then,” I tell him. “For science.”

His fingers go to my chin and he angles my face up, until my body is pressed against his and our lips are mere inches apart. “The boys that kissed you before, Naomi, did they use tongue?”