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“I’ve got you.” My voice is wrecked, but it’s coming out. “Look at me. Right here.”

His eyes find mine. He says something low, but it’s too faint to follow.

“Don’t talk,” I tell him. “Breathe. Stay right here.”

His fingers move under mine, trying to grip, barely managing it. I let him hold what he can reach.

“Help.” I turn my face toward the broken doorway, and I let my voice go as loud as it will go, which is louder than I knew I could be. “Help me, right now, somebody please, he’s bleeding, I need help, please.”

The tears are still coming, and I don’t stop them. I press both hands into his side, keep my eyes on his face, and don’t look at how much blood is on the floor.

“Help.” My throat gives on the second syllable, and I push through it. “Now, please, now, he’s bleeding out, I need somebody in here right now.”

Boots hit the hallway. Running.

31

Evelina

“Move.” Marka fills the broken doorway, two men at his back, and his eyes go from the man face-down on the tile to Volkov braced on one arm, and he doesn’t waste a syllable. “Get your hands off him, let me in.”

“I’ve got pressure,” I tell him. My voice comes out scraped to the bone. “I’m not lifting my hands until yours replace them.”

He drops to his knees beside me without argument, and we do the transfer together, his palms over mine, mine sliding out only when I’m certain nothing is lost in the gap. Volkov watches this with his jaw locked.

The two men behind Marka get their hands under Volkov’s arms and knees. Volkov objects, but they lift him anyway. His eyes find me over the shoulder of the man carrying his upper half. I hold his gaze until they turn the corner into the hallway.

I follow in bare feet, the bathrobe pulled shut with one fist, not caring what I look like.

The car is already running at the front of the estate. They load him in, and I climb in after him. Nobody tries to stop me. Marka takes the front. I get my hands back on the folded jacket pressed against his side, Volkov puts his hand on my knee somewhere on the drive, and I cover it with mine. We stay like that the whole way.

The place they take him isn’t a hospital in any official sense, but the second floor has a surgical suite. The staff takes him from me at the door, and he disappears through it.

A woman in scrubs holds out a folded set, green, clean, close enough to my size. I take them, find the bathroom down the hall, and change. At the sink I wash his blood off my hands and watch the water run from dark to pale to clear. My palms are raw where the rail tore through my grip. I run cold water over them until the shaking stops, which takes longer than I’d like.

My father had opinions about hospitals. He said the fear people attached to them was a choice, that they were just buildings, that you decided what they meant. Standing at this sink at four in the morning, I’d tell him he was wrong. He’d look at the scrubs, the raw palms, and the blood still under my thumbnail that the water hasn’t reached, and for once he’d sit down without saying a word.

I turn the tap off and go back to the waiting room.

Marka is already in a chair with two cups of coffee, one held out when I walk in. I take it. It tastes like something brewed in a tire, but it’s hot, and I need the cup to hold, so I keep drinking.

“Tell me he’s been worse than this,” I say.

“He has,” Marka says.

“And he came out of it.”

“He’s here, isn’t he?”

I wrap both hands tighter around the cup and study the clock on the wall. Twenty past four.

Lorenzo arrives first, coat over his suit, moving fast without appearing to hurry. Adrianos is a step behind him, one button of his jacket done up wrong. Santiago comes in after, jaw set, eyes hot even at this hour, scanning the room like he’s already looking for something to be angry at. Declan comes in last with a paper cup of something that isn’t coffee, his eyes sweeping the room before settling on me and staying there.

Lorenzo takes the chair across from me, forearms on his knees. “Tell me what happened.”

I tell him in order, presenting it like a direct examination, from the alarm through the bathroom through the man in the doorway and Volkov on the floor. Lorenzo listens without interrupting. Adrianos stands against the wall with his arms crossed. Declan drinks from his cup, his jaw working slightly, eyes on my face the entire time. Santiago sits forward with his elbows on his knees, jaw tight.

When I finish, Lorenzo asks about the man. Dead, I confirm. He asks what the man said before Volkov got to him.