“Oh,” she says, nodding. “Okay. Usually, I work alone. . . But it would be nice to have some help.”
“I am happy to be of help.”
She nods. “I’ll tell you about my uncle’s villa compound outside St. Petersburg then. Because you’re right. He’s a paranoid son of a bitch, and we’ll have to be careful if we want to get in unnoticed.”
I grin. “I can walk in shadow. I’m very good at going unnoticed.”
Her eyes narrow. “I remember. You followed me in the woods.”
I nod.
“And you’re a good fighter? I mean, I saw you with the wolves, but what about men?”
“My father often set my brothers and I against each other. I am a good fighter.”
Her eyes widen. “Well, if you grew up fighting them, I guess I can trust you to handle yourself. Plus the whole—” She waves a hand. “Reaper thing you’ve got going on. You can just, what? Send people to that shadowy place by touching them?”
It’s a bit of an oversimplification, but I nod.
She breathes out long and low. “Okay then.”
She moves to the fire and snatches up one of the thinner kindling sticks, then roots around in the ashes near the edge of the fire. “So this is what my uncle’s compound looks like.” Moving far enough away from the fire to be free of the sleeping bag, she begins to sketch on the stone floor with the ash.
“He’ll have his commandos stationed here, here, and here. . .”
For the next half hour, she discusses her plan. It’s well thought-out. Detailed. She has contingencies.
“We’ll strike at night, so he should be in his bedroom,here.” With fresh ash, she circles a portion of the schematics she’s sketched out. “But sometimes he stays up watching movies, so he might be in his home theater down here.” Another circle. “We must keep quiet at all costs so he doesn’t have time to get to his safe room.”
“What happens if he gets to his safe room?”
She huffs out a breath, making a lock of hair that’s fallen in her face flutter. “Then I have to use the explosives, which gets messy. The walls are a foot thick. Concrete with reinforced steel. It will take time we don’t have.”
I nod. “So we need to be fast and quiet.”
“Exactly.”
“It is a good plan.”
“It has to be a perfect plan.”
I tilt my head at her. “There’s no such thing.”
She frowns. “There has to be.”
“I have fought many wars with many commanders who were excellent tacticians. Including Napoleon. There are no perfect plans.”
She frowns and lifts up from her crouch, dropping the ashy stick to the floor. “That’s why I bring the explosives along. There’s always a plan B.”
She stands up, and so I do too, which she notices, eyes narrowing.
“I’m going to go for a walk.”
I frown. “Where?”
She walks towards the pack and grabs the flashlight from the floor. She gestures towards the dark part of the church. “Around. I need some space.”
My chest tightens. “Don’t go far.”
