“If Misha wants to ask around, he can ask around.”
Misha made it clear that he did not, in fact, want to ask around with a throaty grunt.
“What’s her name?” Sergei asked. “I know it’s not a ‘he’because Vitali would be the one who’d make ‘em disappear!” He laughed, looking to Misha, who gave exactly three polite, unenthusiastic chuckles.
“Elena Olegova, she’s my age. Blond, pretty.”
“Pretty isn’t good for disappearances,” he said. “Life is easier for‘pretty’until it isn’t. She mixed up with anyone?”
After what Misha said about Dmitri, I wasn’t so sure how much I could safely divulge. The rules weren’t clear about sides, and she did mention her‘lovers’telling her secrets… Sergei might have been the one who’d taken her. That should have occurred to me sooner.
Oh, I was such an idiot.Dumb Katya. Should have waited for Vitali, didn’t, and now I had to watch the toad-man gobble fried chicken in bare-lightbulb lighting of a basement kitchen,and think of a way to leave.
“She had friends with money, but I haven’t talked to her in a long time, and I don’t know who she kept in contact with.”
“Friends with money,” he repeated. “Misha, do we have friends with money who like pretty blonds?”
“Almost all of them.”
“Maybe you can ask around, see if anyone has seen an Elena. Now, what do I get out of these inquiries, Katya?”
Not a place in heaven, that’s for sure.
I hadn’t actually thought of what I had to give him…
“I can pay?”
He snorted, bits of food at the corners of his mouth dislodging onto his shirt. This time, Misha laughed too.
“You can pay me out of my own accounts, you mean?” Sergei hooted. “Where do you think Vitali’s money comes from if not out of the Fund? I know you’re not strutting the streets with your narrow hips and pulling in the cash.”
My hips weren’t that narrow… were they narrow?
I looked down.
“Alright, Katya. Since you’re part of the family and all, I’ll give you the discount,” he said, graciously shaking his head at that imaginary offering I wasn’t giving him. “We can talk payment later.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but he didn’t let me.
“Now, now, don’t panic. I’m a respectful man. I won’t ask for anything extravagant. Wouldn’t take advantage of our explosives engineer and his woman like that. I’ve been very good to Vitali, and he can vouch for it—and I am sure he will when he’s done with Baranov in a couple days.”
Baranov… no, I didn’t want to know. I told Vitali I didn’t want to know. But God—did he really abandon me the day I lost my virginity to him to do that?For three days? Sergei baited, and I bit that hook with fervor.
“Where is he?”
Misha hissed beside me, but it was too late.
“Just outside of town.” Sergei shrugged. “We don’t have the best relationship with the police in the city, and certainly not after what hepulled—” he barked a laugh “—on Saturday night. Would you like to see him, Katya?”
The hook flung me out of the water and onto dry land. The worm was gone, and I didn’t want to be there anymore, but it was too late.
“No, thank you, I’d like to go home.”
“Nonsense.” He stood and began shoving things around on a cluttered counter.
“Tohrenwith this…” Misha muttered, then louder, “Maybe you leave her alone? I’ll take her home.”
“No, no, she’s a big girl, and she came here on her own—no one made her. If she wants to get her feet wet, might as well learn to swim.”
