Not a guard or a late-night jogger. Every step is measured and patient. The sound of someone who knows exactly what he’s after and how to find it.
Kirill closes in. Penning me in a cage I can’t see.
The air thickens, a current of static prickling along my skin. In my head, the soundtrack from that old shark movie starts.
Dun-dun, dun-dun, dun-dun…
The harbinger of death and inevitability, relentless as the tide.
The footsteps stop.
The weight of Kirill’s gaze drifts around me.
I clamp my eyes shut, plunging myself into absolute darkness.
There’s nothing left to see. The hunt is already in motion. I have a fifty-fifty shot of him finding me.
I’ve lived this moment before.
Not in this park or with this man, but this same mind-numbing panic. And the accompanying impossible stillness of praying for invisibility. All accomplished by holding my breath and erasing the edges of myself. Fading into the scenery around me.
Years of spiritual work, the endless meditation and energy rituals, every lesson I ever gave… I always knew there was more beneath it than incense and affirmations. Beneath the crystals and journals was this.
The art of vanishing into myself.
Don’t move. Don’t breathe. Don’t even let your thoughts ripple the air.
You don’t exist. You’re just part of the universe.
Stillness.
One heartbeat. Another. Time distorts.
Then, impossibly, his slow, methodical footsteps move on.
The urge to run pulses in my veins, but just the idea of stepping into open air makes my skin crawl. Out there, I’m exposed. Here, shrouded by earth and leaves, I’m camouflaged. He’s already combed this patch of park. Logic suggests he won’t search here again.
So I stay, invisible but listening.
Always listening.
Cold seeps up from the ground, soaking through the battered, borrowed clothes and burrowing into my bones. Every shiver reminds me that I’ve endured worse.
Kholodno.
This isn’t nearly as bad as that.
Or even what I’ve gone through myself.
I slept beneath bridges when I was just a teenager. Fled my mother’s world of gleaming silver and garden parties and daughters that never argued, bled, or failed to fit the mold.
The first time, I’d been fourteen and desperate but unprepared. Hunger brought me home after only two days. The second—a little braver, a little older at fifteen—lasted the better part of a week. Over and over, I tested my limits.
By sixteen, I knew what to do.
And never went back. I’d slept on cardboard, knew which shelters offered safe beds and which asked too many questions. Learned to steal bandages and painkillers from pharmacy shelves. Discovered that stale bagels from the bakery dumpsters kept you alive just as well as filet mignon, even if they proved harder to chew.
This? A pile of leaves beneath a rhododendron, on a patch of dry, unfrozen earth? Practically luxury. There’s no rain. The air is cool, yes, but not biting. Fall won’t start for a few more days.
