Him even referring to Holly makes me see red and I jam my gun into his temple.
"How many of you?" I demand.
He's laughing again but the sound dissolves into a death rattle, and then he's gone, his eyes fixed on some point past my shoulder.
But I'm already moving. Running through the lodge.
Because Holly is all alone in the bedroom.
28
HOLLY
The floor beneath me is cold.
It’s numbing my skin, but I don't dare move. Don't dare breathe. I lie on my stomach with Nikolai's gun clutched in both hands, my elbows pressed into the carpet, my eyes fixed on the sliver of moonlit room I can see beyond the edge of the bed.
Two gunshots cracked through the silence a few minutes ago.
Then another a short moment later.
Then nothing.
The silence is somehow worse than the gunfire. At least when the shots rang out, I knew Nikolai was fighting. Now I don't know anything. I don't know if he's alive. I don't know if he's hurt. I don't know if the men who came for us are dead, or if they're on their way up the stairs right now.
I don't know if I'm about to die.
My heart pounds so hard I can feel it in my throat. In my temples. Behind my eyes.
Please be okay. Please be okay. Please be okay.
I think of my parents.
The memory comes rushing forth, sharp and clear despite the terror clouding my mind. I'm ten years old, standing at ashooting range in Connecticut, my father's hands adjusting my grip on a handgun.
"Again," he said. "Until it feels like an extension of your arm."
I hated it. Hated the noise and the recoil and the way my ears rang even with the protective gear. I couldn't understand why my quiet, art-loving parents insisted I learn to shoot. Why they made me take self-defense classes every Saturday morning when I wanted to be with my friends.
"You're being ridiculous," I told them once. "I'm not going to be a spy. I'm going to work in an art gallery."
My mother just smiled. That sad, knowing smile that I never understood.
"Humor us," she said. "Please, sweetheart. Just humor us."
I hear a noise somewhere in the hallway, and every muscle in my body goes rigid.
They’re not Nikolai's footsteps.
I know this instinctively, the way you know when a stranger is watching you across a crowded room.
The bedroom door opens wider.
I stop breathing.
Through the gap between the floor and the bed skirt, I watch a pair of black boots enter the room. They pause just inside the doorway, and I can picture the intruder scanning the space, taking in the empty bed, the rumpled sheets, the open bathroom door.
Looking for me.
