“Come.” The man opens the car door. “I will tell you everything on the way.”
“On the way towhere? My father is in Siberia?”
A swift nod. “One of his satellite operations required his immediate attention.”
The human trafficking operation Alexei sabotaged. “Slaves?”
“I don’t know the details, Annika. All I know is he has been tracking you, and we saw this as the perfect opportunity for a rescue mission. He will return to meet you in Moscow as soon as you are secured. Please, Annika. Come.” He gestures toward the car. His eyes keep flicking back toward the train.
In Moscow? So he intends for me to come like a good girl and wait for him to
speak with me?What the hell are you waiting for?the voice in the back of my head demands.This is the rescue you wanted, Annika! Get in the fucking car!
But no, something isn’t right—the guilt in the man’s eyes, the fact that my father has been tracking me but hasn’t come for me…
“What else does he know?” I ask softly, but the cold stone of terror in my belly already tells me. Still—I need to hear it spoken aloud. I need to know for certain. “Tell me.”
The man looks down.
No.“Where are my children?”
He touches my arm, gently this time, and looks into my eyes. “They are safe, Annika.”
Crack!
The single gunshot echoes endlessly into the snowy night. Hot blood sprays my face, and the warm-eyed man buckles, crumpling into the dirty snow.
Another hand catches my arm, huge and punishing. A cloud of vaporous breath touches my face. “You are lucky I didn’t shoot you too.”
Gregor. I look at him, blinking. The man’s blood is dripping down my face.
Gregor looks down at the man’s body, then neatly cracks me across the jaw with his pistol. The blow is hard enough to send me staggering. I lose my footing in the snow and slam onto my knees, head ringing like a bell.
“Get up,” Gregor growls, and when I’m slow to obey, he jerks me to my feet by my arm. “Nearly got away, huh? But not quite.”
He drags me through the snow toward the train. Blood freezes on my cheek—the man’s, or mine? I know I should be angry. Fighting, perhaps. I know I should be forming an apology or an explanation for Maxim right this moment.
But I can’t. All I can think of is that my children are supposed to be safe.
That is the furthest possible thing from true.
Chapter Eleven
Maxim
Ican’t look at her the way she is.
I order a bowl of warm water and clean rags, and order Annika to sit across from me in the train compartment, as she was before. We say nothing for a long time. I set to cleaning her face, the jagged split in her brow left by Gregor’s angry pistol. Then her knees, blood seeping through the tears from her fall.
She shivers for a long time.Annika Desyatova with cold blood running through her veins.It’d be all too easy to let my rage slip away, looking at her as she is now. Small, shivering, pale-faced and bleeding. In need of someone to protect her, though she’d never admit it.
You are a fool, I tell myself.This is exactly what Sacha was afraid of.But I’m not falling for her. I can’t be. Especially after this.
When she’s cleaned and no longer shivering, sipping tea from beneath a thick wool blanket, I sit back and wait for her to explain herself. She doesn’t.
“You fled,” I say simply.
She nods. Her black eyes are glazed, her expression cool and almost impassive.
