“Miss? Are you alright?” he asks, stepping forward slowly, as if I’m a stray cat that might bolt at the first hint of surprise.
“I’m fine,” I lie, breathless from the stairs. “I just need some fresh air.”
“Of course,” he says, uncertain. He leads me to the main doors and holds one open.
The morning chill hits me like a slap. Cold February air. Sunlight bouncing off glass and steel. Traffic zipping along Wacker, like nothing in the world is wrong.
I step onto the sidewalk and wrap my arms around myself, trying to both warm myself and steady my breathing. People move past without looking—men in suits, kids in sneakers, a woman jogging past leading a miniature dog in a little sweater. Normal. All of it aggressively normal, a total contrast to the freaking barracks I just walked in on.
No one pays me any attention. That’s one of the nice things about living in the city—you see so many crazy sights on a regular basis that a manic woman in a robe and slippers out in the butt-end of winter is a pretty blasé occurrence.
Images spin in my head—surveillance feeds, the weapons case, my name on a folder written in a language I don’t speak. Men cleaning guns in a room a few dozen feet from where I slept.
You’re safe here, he’d said.
I take a step, then another. I don’t know where I’m going. Away from the tower, away from the weapons, away from the men who’d been trained to kill.
Away from Sasha.
My robe flutters. I grip it tighter and keep moving, half-expecting a hand to close on my arm, a voice to tell me to come back upstairs, where it’s safe and controlled and watched.
But when I glance over my shoulder, I see that no one is following me. No Sasha, no Bogdan… no one.
The wind cuts through the robe and raises goosebumps on my skin. A siren wails somewhere in the distance, then fades. A gull cries over the river. My heartbeat is finally slowing, but my thoughts aren’t. They tumble over each other, loud and ugly.
What did I just walk into?
When I reach the corner of the block, I stop and look back. The tower glints, impassive. My gaze drifts up, all the way to the penthouse windows at the very top. The sky above is a gray sheet.
I turn my face toward the crowd and move, disappearing into the masses. One more anonymous body moving through a city that doesn’t care whether I’m confused or scared or falling hard for a man who keeps a war room next to the bedroom.
I keep walking.
CHAPTER 16
SASHA
Ispot her before Bogdan does.
She’s a slash of white in the hard morning light, fuzzy slippers, robe snapping in the wind. She’s walking fast, chin up, shaking. I can tell she’s trying to look confident, like a woman in control.
But she’s rattled. It’s easy to tell.
Only question iswhatrattled her.
“Stop the car.”
Bogdan eases the car to the curb. He opens his door, but I touch his shoulder.
“I’ve got her.”
Gabriella doesn’t turn to look at me when I get out. Instead, she turns and stares into traffic, like she could step into it and vanish. Her hair is wild from the wind, but her eyes are not. They’re bright and furious.
“Gabriella,” I say, raising my voice to speak over the din of traffic and people.
“Don’t,” she says without turning. “Just… don’t.”
“Get in the car.”
