Page 14

I drive ninety. Not reckless, but fast enough that the night blurs at the edges.

My left hand is on the wheel. My right is resting on my thigh, and every time I flex it, the bite sends a hot pulse up my arm all the way to the elbow. The skin around it is swollen, purple at the edges, and there’s dried blood in the grooves of my knuckles.

My gun hand. She bit my fucking gun hand.

The audacity, after I spent days traveling to find her and figuring out how to safely get her out of that hellhole.

I glance over at Viktoriya in the passenger seat. She’s staring straight ahead through the windshield, her cuffed wrist locked to the handhold above the door. Her other hand is cradled against her chest, covered by the long sleeve of her oversized sweater. She hasn’t looked at me once since I put her in the car.

I glare back at the road. The engine hums. The dark slides past.

Silent fury radiates from her in waves.

A thank-you wouldn’t go astray.

I glance at her again, my eyes drawn back to her profile like a moth to a flame. She has a heart-shaped face with rounded cheeks and an upturned nose. A pretty face. Cute as a button.

She can’t be more than twenty. Young enough she doesn’t know a thing about herself or the world she’s living in.

The interior light is off, but there’s enough ambient glow from the dashboard that I can see the marks on her throat. The fingertip bruises I left there, dark and brutal against her pale skin.

Guilt flashes through me, sharp and unwelcome.

I grit my teeth against it.

She shifts slightly in her seat, turning away from me. Loathing radiates from her in waves.

Whatever.

Stop thinking about the girl and remember your job.

I pull my phone out of my pocket and snap a picture of her.

I send the photo in a message, then speak aloud to my phone. “Voice note for Dragan: I have the asset. Acceptable condition. Delivering to Corvale. Send voice note.”

There’s a pause, and then the smooth electronic voice replies, “Voice note sent.”

Beside me, Viktoriya huffs quietly and shakes her head.

I know what she’s thinking. Asset. Acceptable condition. Delivery. She didn’t like that.

The highway unspools. I drive.

Just before five a.m., I feel my concentration slipping and my eyes growing gritty. I’ve been awake for more than twenty-four hours, and I need four hours of sleep minimum if I’m going to function for the rest of the day. This is nonnegotiable. If I’m tired, I’ll make mistakes, and mistakes in my line of work have deadly consequences.

After a few more miles of scrubland, I spot a motel sign glowing orange in the dark. The kind of place that takes cash and has probably seen stranger things than us at this hour.

I turn off the road, pull up in front of reception, and kill the engine.

“Where are you going?” she asks as I open my car door. The first words she’s spoken in hours. Her voice is hoarse from the throat grab, and that knowledge lands unpleasantly.

I get out and slam the door.

She can see me through the windshield the whole time. I’m not going far. What she’s going to do is stay in the car, because the last thing I need is for her to get within speaking distance of another human being. She’d make a scene. I know she’d make a scene.

The night receptionist is a bored teenager who barely looks up from his phone as I ask for a double room. I’m sure the printsessa sulking in my car is going to be delighted about sharing with me, but this is nonnegotiable after an extraction. The asset is never where I can’t get to her.

I give him cash, and as he slides a key toward me, I ask, “Do you have a first aid kit?”