If Natalia was lying, Ponytail would have confirmed it. Maksim wouldn’t have blown him up before he could tell me.
Maksim is full of shit.
I gasp in a mouthful of burning air. It might be the lack of oxygen in this vault. Or the head injury.
But as flames start to close in on me, I’m certain that Natalia didn’t betray me.
“I know it wasn’t her,” I cough. “How did you get that recording?”
The smoke is getting thicker now. I can smell the acrid scent of burning gunpowder. I need to find a way out, now, or I’m going to burn to death along with all evidence of Maksim’s forgeries.
He gives that obnoxious laugh again. “I suppose it won’tleave this room, will it? That first visit, when Natalia came home, I swapped out her cat’s collar.”
The fucking cat? If I had the oxygen to do it, I would groan.
I commando crawl my way into the grey haze of smoke.
Bangs rock the floor of the vault, echoing in my ears for too long. The noise becomes a constant ringing in my ears.
I keep going.
The corner where Ponytail died, where the first explosion was powerful enough to knock me to the floor, that cornerof the vault is my one hope. I crawl frantically in what I think is the right direction as the heat feels inescapable.
This is my only way back to Natalia.
My throat burns. My vision blurs. I can’t taste anything except the acidic burning that’s filling the vault.
Then, I might be imagining it, but I think I taste the salt of the sea air.
The next explosion sends me flying forward until I’m on the concrete, just at the edge of the water. I taste blood and burning and then nothing but cold, cold, darkness as another bang rocks the whole world.
As I float into an abyss, my ears ringing, the taste of smoke on my tongue, I know three things.
One: I always knew that cat was trouble.
Two: I owemoya zolotsethe biggest fucking apology in the world.
Three: that apology will have to be monumental enough to make up for the fact that I’m going to kill her father in the most painful way possible.
If I survive this, Maksim Bryusov is a dead man.
36
NATALIA
We fall into silence as we reach the port.
Because there’s nothing here.
It looks like a war zone from the news. Nothing but smoldering ashes and smoke drifting in the sea breeze. This doesn’t feel real.My heart squeezes at the emptiness of the whole area. How many people died? What happened?
There are paramedics and fire-fighters everywhere. They glance at me and Vera in confusion, but seem too busy to do anything to stop us.
I float past them, not noticing anything except the faces on the stretchers. There’s only one that I’m interested in seeing.
Without the warehouses standing at this end of the docks, there’s nothing between us and the wide grey expanse of the ocean.Just charred, twisted remains of what used to be here.
I walk past the emergency services into what used to be my home. Leks’s home.
