Every time she calls me a jackass and means it like a love letter, I fall a little further.
And when Barb saidmarried, for one second—one godforsaken second—I let myself see it. A future. Wide. Warm. Bright.
I saw the whole thing in the time it took my heart to beat once, and then I cut it down, because that's what you do with things that can hurt you.
I had that. Twenty-one years ago, I had that, in a borrowed suit at city hall, with Gervasii standing witness and a woman in a blue dress telling me I was too ugly to deserve her. Ihadthe warm room and the future, and I thought I'd have it forever.
But forever only lasted a year. The world took all of it back on a cold, lonely county road outside Saratoga Springs.
Nobody in this life gets that twice. Nobody. You get one shot, and if you're a man like me, you're lucky to even get that. If you do get a taste of it, like I did, it doesn't last long. It's ripped away and leaves behind only a thin bronze ring.
Well, that plus the nightmares. Those are here to stay, too.
So no. I will not picture the crib. I will not let myself want what I'm not allowed to keep. Caroline Oglethorpe is going to walk away from this mountain one day soon, and I am going to let her, because that's the kindest thing I have ever done for anyone, and because wanting her to stay is the most selfish.
I straighten up. My side screams where the graze has reopened twice now, but I embrace it. Pain doesn't lie about what it wants.
Then, when I feel the familiar steel in my soul again, I reach into my jacket and pull out the satellite phone.
A quarter-pound of plastic and circuitry. So little and yet so much. I've carried it like a tumor for days, and kept it buried under a cairn for months before that, because the number stored in it is the devil's number. Not because Lukas Lazarev is evil; he's not.
But because, if I call him, it's a one-way ticket to hell.
So I'm not calling Lukas.
I power the phone on and the screen shines blue-white against the storm. It takes a moment to find a signal. Up here, even in a town, the sky has to cooperate.
Then the bars climb, one, two, three. I scroll past the single stored number and key in another from memory, one I haven't dialed in years but never forgot.
It rings four times. I'm preparing myself for voicemail when the line clicks.
"Yeah?" It's a man's voice, deep and lazy. There's music behind him, jazz with a saxophone, and the clink of glass. A bar, or a kitchen, late.
"It's Afon."
A pause. A surprised breath. The music dims—he must be moving somewhere private. When he speaks again, he doesn't sound so lazy and distracted anymore.
"Afon Satyrin." He whistles. "Well, fuck me sideways. I'd just about put you in the ground in my head, old man. Figured you finally went and got eaten by a bear up in those mountains."
"Not yet."
"Damn shame."
But there's warmth under it. There always was, with this one. Alexei Ivanov—or whatever he's calling himself this decade—was a fixer before I left and he's a fixer still. A man who knows things, moves things, keeps the kind of ledger you can't subpoena. He owes me from a long time ago.
"Don't I know it," I drawl.
"What's wrong? I know you aren't calling to catch up. I only ever get a ring from you when shit's on fire."
"Something's definitely fucking burning." I watch the snow scribble sideways through the lot. "Listen to me. I need to know where Lukas is. Lukas and his people. Kir. Matvei."
He pauses again. Careful, as always. I can hear him deciding how much it's safe to know and how much it's safe to say. That's a skill that's kept Alexei alive for thirty years.
"Why," he questions, "would a man who walked away from the Lazarev Bratva and went to live in a tree want to know where Lukas Lazarev is?"
"Because I might need him, and I need to know what I'm working with before I decide whether I'd rather take a bullet or ask for a favor."
Alexei laughs, a short, surprised bark. "There's the Afon I remember." A clink, ice in a glass. "Alright. Off the record, for old times, because I still owe you for that thing in Newark we don't talk about. You're in luck and you're out of luck both. They're gone. All of them. Lukas, his boy, your nephew—they took a trip, what, a week back? Maybe ten days. The whole circus. Took the wives, too."
