I release her, and she turns to face me. Her blue eyes are blazing as she glares at me. And then her face morphs into confusion. "You're not one of Pavel's men. Who are you?" she demands. She speaks perfectly good English, but her thick Russian accent is a dead giveaway as to her roots.
"Who is Pavel? The man you shot?"
She slowly begins to back up, but I follow her every move. "What…what do you want from me?" she asks.
What do I want? Wait, what the helldoI want? I don't even have an answer for that question. I made it a point to follow her, to capture her, but now I have no idea what to do with her.
I should turn her into the authorities. That is what Ishoulddo.
But I've never really been one to follow the rules, and this girl has me so intrigued I can't even think straight. I decide that I want answers more than anything else. I want to know who, what, where, why and how before I choose her fate.
"I watched you murder someone," I tell her. "What do you think I want? What would you do if you were in my situation?" I ask as calmly as I can.
Her head shakes, her blonde locks swishing from side to side, some of them sprinkled with specks of blood. "You don't understand. You can't take me to the police. I'll be dead by morning," she cries.
I'm not sure if she's meaning the police will kill her or perhaps someone else. Someone else connected to the man she shot perhaps.
As her eyes fill with tears, I immediately feel sorry for the girl. I don't know her backstory or why she murdered that man. Maybe she had no other choice?
I put my hands up in a pacifying gesture. "Look, just tell me what's going on, and then maybe we can both just walk away from this," I offer.
She stops walking backwards and looks up at me with big, blue, sad eyes. "Yes. Okay," she whispers.
I'm drawn into those beautiful blues, like two endless, tranquil pools surrounded by waves of tears, as she takes a step closer. And then, with reflexes that surprise even me, I manage to block her knee that's aiming for my balls once again. I grab her leg in midair and twist hard until she falls to the ground on her stomach. Damn, all that sparring with Wraith in the gym really fucking paid off.
"Jesus, what is it with you and kneeing people in the balls, lady?" I hiss at her. "You on a mission to stop procreation or something?"
I go to the ground with her, pinning her under me as she struggles like a wild animal. "Stop!" she screams. "Let me go!"
Fuck, I can't have her drawing even more attention than that damn gun going off in her hotel room. I can already hear the sirens in the background racing towards the scene of the crime. I don't need the police finding us and asking me questions I simply cannot answer.
Feeling like I have no other choice, I retrieve the syringe from my pocket, pop open the cap and stick the needle in the back of her neck, slowly injecting her with the sedative.
"I'm sorry," I whisper in her ear.
She struggles to the very end. And then, she gradually goes limp under me.
Rising up, I stare down at her sleeping form and frown.
What the fuck am I supposed to do now?
CHAPTER 5
KATYA
"WAKE UP, SLEEPING beauty," someone calls from far away.
Groggily, I blink open my eyes, my vision blurry from sleep. "Wh-what…where am I?" I ask the spinning room. I'm beginning to think that everything was just a dream…
"We're in a small bed and breakfast a few miles outside of the city," says a familiar voice.
It takes me a few moments to recognize his voice…and then it hits me. The man who attacked me by the docks. The man who saweverything. And the man who apparently drugged me and knocked me out.
Sitting straight up and feeling more aware now, my eyes focus on the figure sitting across from me at a table. The table is full of breakfast food, and he heartily chews a forkful of eggs with a killer smirk on his face.
I stare at him, taking in all of his features and committing them to memory in case I need those details later. He's tall and handsome — brutally so — with dark hair, gray eyes. Day-old stubble lines his strong jaw, and he's wearing dark jeans and a gray, short-sleeved, V-neck shirt with a blazer draped over the back of his chair.
I carefully watch him as he lifts another forkful of eggs into his mouth, his full lips clamping over the tines. His left arm is decorated in black and red tattoos, and his dark head of unruly hair looks like he's been combing his fingers through it recently.
