With a glare as chilly as the air inside the car, he leaned over the seat and retrieved the bottle. I kept my back to him to give him some privacy. “And, smart-ass, Uncle Lev will be glad to see me. I just didn’t want to show up in the middle of the night. He’ll know something’s up. If he thinks I’m in trouble, he’ll be all over us, asking questions, and trying to get us to stay. We can’t afford that.”
“Why not?”
I hadn’t gotten very specific with Michael on how exactly I’d left my earlier employment. It had been difficult enough to tell him what little I had about my life in the Mafiya. “I told you how I quit the mob to come after you,” I started slowly, jangling the keychain that hung from the ignition.
“I remember.”
Of course he remembered. What had it been? Four, five days ago? “Well, it’s not the type of job where you give two weeks notice and they throw you a going-away party. Konstantin, the man I worked for, wasn’t exactly boss-of-the-year material. He could’ve made things difficult for me if he’d wanted.” From day to day it was hard to guess his mood. From distantly amused to coldly murderous, Konstantin was rarely predictable in the depths of his violence. He wouldn’t have hurt me, not once he heard my reasoning. He still respected Anatoly too much for that, but he could’ve slowed me down while I laid it all out. That I couldn’t afford. “So, I simply took off. Disappeared. I could always explain myself later if I needed his help. I show up with my missing brother, Anatoly’s lost son, and all’s forgiven.” Leaning my head back on the seat, I massaged the back of my neck. “But on the day I left, someone killed Konstantin. Shot him. For his ex-bodyguard, yours truly, that doesn’t look too good.”
“Won’t your uncle Lev believe you’re innocent?”
“Do you?” I asked lightly and far more casually than I felt.
There was a moment of thought, the sounds of shifting blankets, and then, “I do. You don’t seem to like hurting people. You’re good at it, but you don’t like it.” His voice dropped to a barely audible murmur. “Not like Jericho.” A hand came over the seat before I could comment to thrust a capped and newly warm bottle into my hand. “Here. There’s no room back here.”
Right. Sure there wasn’t. But encouraged by his belief in me, I decided I could probably put up with a little urine. Putting it in our trash bag for later disposal, I returned to the conversation. “Uncle Lev will know I didn’t do it, but that doesn’t matter. If we’re there more than a day or two, it’ll get back to Miami via the grape-vine, and Konstantin’s son will send some people after me. They won’t be as scary as Jericho, but that doesn’t mean they can’t do us some damage all the same.” Damage was a nice euphemism for “kill us and dump us in the harbor.”
“All right. That makes sense, I guess,” Michael accepted doubtfully. Cheek to cheek with him, a sleek ferret head poked free of the blanket to fix me with a nearsighted glare. “But it’s still cold. And it’s still your fault.”
“The logic of a true student of the sciences,” I grumbled, but I started the car and set the heater on high. “We’ll find someplace to clean up and head to Lev’s. That reminds me; I have something for you.”
He took the glasses I retrieved for him from the glove compartment. I’d lifted them yesterday at a gas station. With cheap wire rims, the lenses were tinted tawny brown, but not nearly as dark as most sunglasses. Michael would be able to get away with wearing them inside without raising any eyebrows.
Releasing his death grip on the blanket, Michael turned the glasses over in his hands. “What are these for?”
“Your eyes,” I said matter-of-factly. “You can deny you’re my brother until the end of time, Misha, but if Uncle Lev sees your eyes along with the blond hair, he’ll have something to say. And we don’t have time to get into that with him.” Nearly twenty years older than Anatoly, Lev was basically retired. He had a few of his old crew who still hung around, but they were like him, in their early seventies and not as quick with the brass knuckles as they used to be. They might put a crimp in Jericho’s style, but they wouldn’t be able to hold him back for long.
I could see that Michael wanted to say something. Eyes distant under the fringe of unruly hair, he chewed at his lower lip before opening his mouth, only to shut it again. “Something wrong?”
He shook his head slowly at the question. “No . . . no. I’ll wear them.” Slipping them on, he raised both eyebrows. “How do they look?”
“You’re practically a movie star there—Brad Pitt all the way.” The glasses did work well enough at obscuring the differing color of his eyes, making them both appear an indistinct color, maybe brown, maybe hazel, maybe gray. “Just keep them on. Hey, we could always dye your hair again. There’s a whole rainbow of colors out there we haven’t touched on.”
He promptly retreated back into the blankets. “And let’s keep it that way.”