“Sit down, and wait here,” I order.
She slumps against the wall and looks up at me. “If I let you do this, you will be all right?” Her voice is hesitant and almost skeptical.
I almost laugh because it’s so absurd. I don’t know why she thinks she needs to protect me. Because I don’t want to kill my opponents in the Bloodsport ring? Those guys aren’t homicidal psychos like Egorov.
“Yeah,kiska. I’ll be all right. Stay there.”
I take the gas can and set fire to Egorov’s body. I wait until I’m sure he’s completely consumed in flames and that the ground where she was lying burns, too.
I walk back to the van and lift her out of it. Then I splash the insides of the van with the remaining gas and light it on fire, too.
When the blaze is a dozen feet high, I toss the gas can in the back and then scoop her up. I put her over my shoulder and hike back out to the road.
When we reach the car, I put her in the passenger seat.
“I will be okay soon,” she promises. “I am drugging myself by mistake. This was the only way. Egorov…” She clucks her tongue in distaste and then mumbles in Russian, “Finally when he tries to kill a Kalashnik, one kills him instead.”
EPILOGUE
Alexei
I lean against the doorway of Sasha’s kitchen.
“This is very nice to wish America happy birthday,” Natalia says, looking at the Fourth of July cake with its red, white, and blue icing. “I think though I will not enjoy eating this cake,” she whispers, switching to Russian. “One lick tells me it is too sweet for me.”
I take a swig of Guinness, my gaze raking over her for the hundredth time. She’s wearing a gold bikini top, a shiny gold mini skirt, and sparkly high-heeled sandals that would put fireworks to shame. Long golden brown waves cascade down her back, nearly touching the small tattoo of a pair of wings with the date we met sandwiched between them.
She plays with a champagne bottle, then turns. “Alexei, please?”
I set my beer on the counter and open the bottle for her. She gives me a kiss while squeezing my bicep like she’s checking a piece of fruit in the grocery store.
“What’s she making?” Connor McCann asks as he comes in from outside.
“No one knows,” I say, which makes him chuckle.
“How about I make you something?” he asks her.
“You are bartender?”
“Not professionally, but I dabble.”
“Dabble, I like this word. It means to do something happily?”
“That too, I guess,” McCann says. He moves to the counter, cuts an orange and squeezes it over a strainer above a crystal tumbler.
“Alexei has two restaurants,” Natalia says, watching his hands. “The bartenders teach recipes to me… until Alexei gets mad about this. So now, no.”
She leans in as McCann adds vodka, vanilla, cream, a pinch of sugar, and ice to a shaker, mixes them and pours them into the glass, adding a splash of champagne.
“Vanilla and cream. This, I will like,” she says, putting a hand on McCann’s arm as she takes the glass.
He looks at her hand touching him and then at me. “I can’t imagine why he got jealous.”
I say nothing and keep my expression neutral. Natalia is a natural flirt. I know that on her end, it’s just innocent friendliness, but men don’t always take it that way. She and I have had more than one talk about this fact. By now, she should know better than to put her hand on another man, but sometimes she slips.
Natalia takes a sip and smiles. “This is excellent. You will make another, please?”
“You’re ready for another one now?” C asks.
