Dusha was hustling Clementine toward another SUV ahead of us in the caravan. She was letting him, though she was sniping bitterly at him the whole way.
“And yet you didn’t activate the panic button on your watch,” Ueli grumbled above my head, a statement obviously not directed at me.
Maybe he was talking to Nico?Please,dear God, let him be talking to Nicolai and Nicolai talking back to him.“Is he all right?”
Ueli was dragging me across the sidewalk toward the SUV, heat radiating from the cement and his gun pointed low, just past my sneakers.
And yet with one quick movement, Ueli could press that gun against my temple.
The gun was rightthere.
“We could have apprehended him,” Ueli complained.
Down the sidewalk from me, Dusha shoved Clementine into the rear seat of the SUV. Her blond head popped back out of the door hole, definitely haranguing him with one finger wagging hard. Dusha palmed Clementine’s skull and pushed her head back inside to shut the door, and then I was worried for Dusha’slife.
Ueli was still talking above my head to Nicolai, presumably,hopefully.God, I hoped Ueli’s calm and dry demeanor meant Nico was okay. I was about ready to ralph on the stove-hot sidewalk from terror at Nicolai’s safety and my own maybe-impending death at Ueli’s hands.
He frog-marched me toward the SUV, its door open and gaping into the darkness inside.
Desert sunlight needled my arms and the top of my head.
Ueli still pointed his gun at the sidewalk and griped at hopefully-Nicolai as he spoke through his Bluetooth headset.
Don’t let them take you to the second location.
That mantra was drilled into girls as soon as they could understand in an attempt to keep them safer from men, to keep us from complying with men’s commands like we are pressured to do in every single aspect of our lives except when we are somehow responsible for our own safety from men.
The SUV was closer, and Ueli was going to shove me into it to take me to a second location.
Whether or not I trusted Nicolai was immaterial. Nicolai wasn’there.Ueli had separated me from him. Or I had gotten separated. It was a blur.
But Nicolai hadn’t told me I could trust Ueli.
If anything, Nicolai didn’t trust Ueli. All those little glances and taking me into the bathroom to talk out of their hearing rose in my head like a thunderstorm.
And Ueli was dragging me away from him.
My knees collapsed under me, and I hung from Ueli’s arm by my chin.
Even buff, burly Ueli couldn’t handle gravity pulling the dead, floppy weight of a whole limp human hanging on his shoulder joint, and he bent, following my descent.
I twisted and ducked.
I rolled.
I got away.
I ran.
Behind me, Ueli said a bunch of words in German and then yelled,“Come back here!”
CHAPTER 8
gone
NICOLAI
“What the hell do you mean she’s gone?” I demanded into my phone.
