Page 14

My ears are still ringing from the bitching that Nikolai and Maksim gave me. After I hung up on them the first time, they called me again to ream me for my decision.

They kept shouting over each other on speakerphone until I hung up on both of them mid-sentence.

Let them be furious. Furious is survivable.

A two year old in a stranger’s hands is not.

I sling my bag over my shoulder.

It took me fifteen minutes to pack it, because it turns out there’s no good answer to the question: what does one wear to a kidnapping.

I walk out my own front door before I can stand here long enough to let my cousins’ voices win.

The driver is already out of the car and I stop short when I see him.

He’s huge, shoulders like a doorframe, a gray crew cut and a completely expressionless face.

Ever heard the phrase ‘the lights are on but there’s no one home?’ Yeah, that’s this guy.

He takes my bag from my shoulder, sets it in the trunk, and opens the back door without a word.

“Paul?” I ask, and he barely nods.

“Thank you,” I say, because my mother raised me to be polite even to the man delivering me to god knows what.

Nothing. Not a flicker.

I swallow and glance around, wondering when the next time I’ll see this place is, before I get in.

The leather swallows me and it’s butter-soft, smelling of faint citrus. It’s a beautiful car, which is its own small horror because the worst night of my life comes with heated seats.

My hands are shaking, so I shove them under my thighs and press down until my fingers go numb.

The driver settles in and the engine wakes up purring. If Maksim were here and this wasn’t a life-or-death situation, he would probably be salivating.

Now that he’s a suburban married father, he gets to tinker with cars to his heart’s content.

“Where are we going?” I lean forward, desperate for information. “How long is the drive?”

The driver checks the mirror and pulls into the empty street, not saying a word.

I frown. Okay, rude.

“I’m Katerina, but I prefer to be called Kat even though my cousins call me Katya. They refuse to call me Kat, which is super annoying.” I really need to shut up.

Am I seriously introducing myself to my own abduction’s chauffeur?

But the silence in here is starting to feel suffocating and I have never done well with awkward silences. “Is there a bathroom stop, or do I⁠—”

He reaches forward and turns on the radio and low, mournful, funeral cellos blare through the car. Is this…Adagio for Strings? I sit back hard against the seat as the blood leaves my face and the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

That’s it. I’m for sure being murdered.

Why the hell would anyone want to play this song other than for funerals or because they’re depressed and need a song to literally make themselves cry?

Serial killers, I decide. Serial killers are the only ones who would want to play this song.

I also decide it’s probably wise to keep my mouth shut the rest of the journey.