48
CASSIE
I lookedout the window of the rented SUV as we climbed into the mountains around Kedrovsk, Russia. It was only mid-November but the peaks were already covered with snow, the towering trees dusted white.
“I never pictured Russia like this.”
Hawk looked over. “How did you picture it?”
He looked devastatingly handsome in sunglasses, his long hair brushing against his black coat.
“Colder,” I guess. “More desolate.”
“Give it a month on the colder part,” Vigo said from the back seat.
Up ahead, Bram drove a beat up truck, Jagger in the passenger seat. We’d need more than one car for the approach to Dimitri Kaprolov’s mountain compound.
“How much farther?” I asked.
Hawk laughed. “Are you asking are we there yet?”
“I have to pee.” I’d had to pee for the last hour, since we’d left the small airport in Kedrovsk, a barely-there mountain town with a general store, a tavern/restaurant, and a rental car company that shared space with a hardware store.
Luckily the general store had stocked an assortment of basic cold weather gear, and we’d been able to buy snow boots, coats, gloves, and hats in a motley assortment of patterns and colors.
My boots were a little big, and Bram’s coat was a little small, but they were better than nothing.
“Almost there,” Hawk said, glancing at the GPS.
We’d left Capri early the morning after the White Night gala, Alina’s tracker pinging the app on Vigo’s phone.
It was strange to know exactly where she was after all the time I’d spent thinking about her, weird to watch the little dot move around within the tiny radius of Dimitri’s compound after the weeks Alina had spent jet setting around the world.
She wasn’t here to party. She was home.
Bram turned on his blinker and slowed down to make the turn onto a narrow dirt road that climbed a hill.
“I hope Rafe didn’t set us up to get ax murdered,” Vigo said, looking out the window at the towering pines that lined the road.
“He set us up to be hidden,” Hawk said. “It’s what they’re good at.”
I’d been heartened — and a little surprised — by the help we’d gotten along the way to finding Dimitri. Lilah had given me the information about Imperium Fratrum, the Kings didn’t seem to mind that fact that we still had their plane (although Hawk had grumbled that it was definitely going to cost us, and byusI think he meant the Hawks), Daisy and Sarai had helped me figure out Alina’s social media handle, and now Rafe, Jude, and Nolan — Lilah’s men — had found us a safe house in an obscure mountain town in Russia.
Bram and I weren’t as alone as I’d thought when I’d first stepped into the tunnel from the Hunt.
Maybe we never had been.
“That looks… small.” Hawk said when we emerged from the dirt road into a clearing ringed by trees.
A dark, abandoned log cabin, about as big as the living room and kitchen in Blackwell Falls combined, sat on a knoll that backed up to the mountain.
“It’s cozy,” Vigo said from the back seat.
Probably why Hawk wasn’t happy. It was one thing to travel with Bram to Capri where we’d had separate rooms. Staying in such close quarters with my brother and the three men I was fucking wasn’t ideal.
Not that there would be any fucking.
I was exhausted and hungry again, and we had plans to make for later that night when we’d breach Dimitri’s compound.
