“Closed?” I drawled as I walked away from the car to lean against a tree. The bark scratched roughly through my shirt. “Damn, Dmitri, who died?” There was silence in my ear. No glasses clinked, no music boomed; the only sound to be heard in the velvety quiet was the rasp of Dmitri’s breath against the receiver. It was eerie enough to have my senses sharpening instantly. Something was wrong.
Ah, shit. Konstantin had found out about Bormiroff. It didn’t get any more wrong than that. I had known that moment of morality was going to come back to bite me in the ass. I’d known it as I’d looked down at the man on all fours, his bloody hands trying to carry him away from death, trying to carry him away from me. I didn’t try to fool myself with false memories. I’d had every intention of pulling that trigger. There was no doubt it would’ve effectively destroyed what was left of my soul, making the generous assumption I had one to begin with, but I hadn’t seen any other option. Vasily had to die so that Lukas might live. It wasn’t a fair choice, big surprise, but it was the one I had to make. That my finger refused to move had stunned me. That I’d lifted Bormiroff unceremoniously off the asphalt and hidden him in the trunk of my car before driving away had done more than stunned me. It had shaken me to the core, and not in a positive manner.
I hadn’t been proud that I hadn’t killed. Far from it. I was furious with myself, choking on guilt as corrosive as sulfuric acid. I had been risking Lukas’s life for the life of a thief, and, at that, one stupid enough to steal from murderers. Vasily had sworn he wouldn’t be seen in the state again, his hound dog eyes terrified in the gloom of the trunk. He’d promised he’d vanish. It could be done, especially if you were assumed dead. Whether that sad loser could pull it off was another story. But I’d given him the chance while simultaneously reducing Lukas’s. The only thing that made the situation any less disastrous was that I planned to disappear myself days later. I hadn’t anticipated needing help so soon. If Konstantin had found out about Vasily, help would be one of the few things he didn’t visit upon me.
“Stefan?” Dmitri asked slowly. “Is that you?”
My attention was shifted from the recollection of helping Vasily from a bloodstained trunk in the bus station parking lot and giving him a fistful of money. “Yeah,” I answered cautiously. “What’s going on, Zakharov?”
“Nothing much.” There was another pause, not as long as the first. “Where are you, pal?” Such a casual question and so very casually posed. I was fucked all right, thoroughly fucked. Dmitri was not especially adept or clever, and he was as aware of that as anyone. That he was attempting to be other than what he was brought home the tense nature of the situation.
“None of your damn business,” I responded flatly. “Now tell me what the hell is going on, Dmitri. I don’t have time to screw around here.” The discomfort of the tree bristling against my back, the ache of the scrape on my jaw all faded. Every nerve ending I had, every sense I possessed; all were centered on the voice in my ear. And then the next three words shocked those senses numb.
“Konstantin is dead.”
Konstantin? Dead? How could that be? People died, but Konstantin? He was a malevolent force of nature; the tidal wave that wiped out cities, the lightning storm that decimated the church picnic, the wildfire that destroyed half a state. How could someone . . . something like that die? My job had been to protect him and I had, but not at any time had I ever been able to picture him actually dying; not even when in the basement of Koschecka when I’d taken out his cousin with a vodka bottle. It just wasn’t conceivable.
“Dead?” I said hoarsely. “What do you mean ‘dead’?” Because that was such an ambiguous word, wasn’t it?
“I mean that someone splattered his brains all over the inside of his car. Give me your fax number and I’ll send you a sketch. Jesus Christ, Stefan, what did you do?” he hissed, the sound oddly hollow from the hand I could so easily picture cupped between his mouth and the phone.
“Not a goddamn thing,” I snapped back. “What the hell, Dmitri? You know better than that. You know who my father is. I’m loyal.” As if there was any other choice for me.
“You don’t show up yesterday and Konstantin ends up a trip. I ain’t the only one connecting those dots.”