LIESL
The SUV smells like blood to me.
I press myself against the far door, as far from Andrei as the seat allows, and watch the estate disappear through the tinted window. Smoke rises from somewhere near the east entrance. Bodies are being loaded into vehicles. Men move with urgency, scanning for threats.
We just left a war zone.
I should be grateful—relieved that he got me out, that I'm alive, that those men didn't succeed in dragging me through that broken window.
Instead, I feel numb.
The driver doesn't speak. Andrei doesn't speak. The silence in the vehicle is suffocating, broken only by the hum of the engine and the occasional crackle of the radio as his men report in. I can feel him looking at me.
I don't look back. My hands are folded in my lap, perfectly still, but I can feel them trembling. I can feel my whole body trembling, actually, a fine vibration that I can't seem to control. Adrenaline, probably. Fear. The aftermath of watching men dieand nearly being taken, of seeing Andrei at his most violent again.
He killed them for me.
The thought should comfort me. It should make me feel protected, valued, safe. That's what he wants me to feel, right? But I don't feel that way, because he's also the reason they came. The reason men are dying. The reason I'm sitting in this vehicle fleeing to another prison instead of home in my own bed, safe and untouched by any of this.
And I'm part of the reason, too. So is my father. All of us are tangled together in this awful, bloody web now, and I don't know how to ever get out of it.
Andrei is the spider, drawing me in with poisonous venom, making me want more every time he injects it into my veins.
"Liesl." His voice is low and careful, like he's approaching a wounded animal. I don't respond. I don't even turn my head. "Are you hurt?"
"No." The word comes out flat. I sound like him—like the cold, controlled version of him that interrogated me in that expensive room weeks ago. The one who looked at me like I was a problem to be solved rather than a person. Maybe that's what I need to be now. A problem. A transaction. Something that doesn't feel.
"We'll be there in two hours," he says. "The safe house is secure. You'll be?—"
"Safe?" I turn to look at him finally, and I see him flinch at whatever expression is on my face. "Is that what you were going to say? That I'll be safe?"
His jaw tightens. "Yes."
"I was supposed to be safe at the estate too."
"The estate was compromised. This location isn't. No one knows about it except my most trusted men."
"Your most trusted men." I laugh, and it sounds wrong. Brittle. "Like the ones who want me dead because I'm making you weak?"
"Liesl—"
"Don't." I turn back to the window. "Just don't."
He's quiet for a long moment. "I'm sorry."
The apology catches me off guard. I wasn't expecting it. Truthfully, I wasn't expecting anything except more commands, more justifications, more reasons why this is all necessary and I should just accept it.
But I don't know what to do with his apology. So I say nothing. The silence stretches between us, heavy and uncomfortable, and I watch the city give way to suburbs, then to rural landscape, then to forest. Trees press close to the road on both sides, their branches forming a canopy overhead that blocks out the fading light. It's beautiful and isolated.
The perfect place to hide someone you don't want found.
—
The safe house appears suddenly,a rustic cabin nestled among the trees like it grew there naturally, with windows that reflect the darkening sky. It's beautiful in an old-fashioned kind of way.
It's also the most isolated place I've ever seen.
The driver pulls up to the entrance and Andrei gets out first, scanning the perimeter with the automatic wariness of someone who's survived by being paranoid. Then he opens my door and offers his hand. I ignore it and climb out on my own, clutching my bag against my chest.
