Kaya spits blood onto the gravel and swipes his mouth with his thumb. “I am.”
“You call this fighting?”
“I call it letting you get it out,” he says, voice rough. Another humorless little laugh. “You’re not going to listen otherwise.”
Rage goes white.
I grab him by the front of his shirt and drive the gun into his ribs. “Where is she?”
He looks down at the weapon, then back at me like he couldn’t care less.
“I don’t have her.”
I pistol-whip him across the face. His head jerks with it. A line of blood opens near his brow.
Still he doesn’t go down.
Just lifts his chin again like a stubborn bastard and takes a breath through blood.
“That,” I hit him again, harder, “is for fucking up her face.”
Kaya’s smile this time is red and wrong.
“And this?” he asks, breathing rough. “This helping?”
I slam him back into the car, gun pressed up under his jaw.
“Tell me where Ayla is before I put a bullet through your teeth.”
For the first time, some of the amusement leaves his face. It turns to something flatter. Colder.
“You’re wasting time,” he says.
“Maksim,” Vaska says, sharper now, somewhere behind me. “Let him talk.”
I don’t take my eyes off Kaya.
“Start talking.”
Kaya breathes once through his nose, blood running down over his mouth. “I don’t have her.”
I shove the barrel harder into his jaw. “Wrong answer.”
His gaze stays locked on mine.
“But I know who does.”
Something cold slices straight through the rage. Kaya’s mouth tips, blood-red and humorless.
“And if you don’t find her soon,” he says, “she’s dead.”
Chapter 55
Ayla
Iwake up in the dark with pain already waiting for me.
It’s not gradual. No slow drift up through sleep. Just pain and cold metal and the sharp, ugly throb at the side of my head like it’s been there the whole time, sitting on my skull and waiting for me to notice.
