A large Volvo SUV glides to the curb, and someone opens the back door. My attacker tries to hoist me up, but I wrench away from him. Just as I’m getting to my feet, he spins and lashes out his leg. The sole of his sneaker lands in the center of my stomach, and my breath explodes from my mouth as I fold in two. My vision narrows to a dark tunnel as I stumble backward. I try to catch my breath, but there’s only a crushing pain as my lungs gasp for air.
Both men now are coming for me, and I stagger away from them. With what strength I can manage, I feel around in my pockets until I find Leo’s gun. The two approach, hands out, ready to grab me. I flip the pistol’s safety and level it at a blank spot between them. The pistol leaps in my hand as it fires with a loud crack.
The blank spot between them turns out to be a panel on the Volvo, and a small hole appears on its surface. I fire again, letting off four more shots, one right after the other. There’s screaming in the streets now, shouting. People run in every direction except toward us.
Then the attackers are diving into the backseat of the Volvo, and the SUV roars away from the curb with five bullet holes in its side and the back door still open. It disappears a few seconds later, and the sound of its engine is replaced by sirens.
*
I ran before the cops got there, ditching the gun in a garbage can half a block away. But there was no way in hell I was going to let the only lead I had disappear on me, assuming he was still alive. So I circled the block and stayed near the back of the crowd that had gathered for the show, hoping no one would recognize me, which no one did. An ambulance had arrived, the name of a hospital printed on its side, and I watched as they loaded Christian in. It took off with sirens blaring and lights flashing. Would they do that, I wondered, if he were already dead? Then the police started closing off the area and taking statements, so I slipped away.
I replay it again and again in my mind. Who had the attackers been? Was their target Christian or me? For five hours, I prowl the neighborhood around the hospital named on the side of the ambulance. My plan is fucked, and not only because Christian, if he’s still breathing, is likely now in the relative safety of a hospital room. There’s also a police car parked in the fire lane outside the hospital’s front door. As well as a plain white Volkswagen sedan. Plain until I recognize that it has special license plates and an odd radio antenna. Just police detectives, or someone else?
As I reach hour five of my stakeout, however, I decide to make the only move I have left. I enter the hospital through the emergency room and find a door in the lobby that leads to the rest of the hospital. I inquire about Christian at an information booth. He’s been admitted, the clerk tells me. Fourth floor, room twenty-two.
The machines attached to Christian whir and chirp with an even, mechanical rhythm. He’s alive, every chirp says, he’s alive. Both his eyes are black, one cheek is misshapen, and his jaw is off center. But there’s no ventilator, and the graph of his heartbeat on the monitor has the reassuring certainty of a math problem coming up with the same answer every time.
There’s a light tap on the door, and a nurse enters. She has stringy brown hair that doesn’t quite touch the shoulders of her green scrubs. Her name tag says URSULA.
“He’s going to be all right?” I ask.
She shrugs, then makes a note on a clipboard.
“What’s wrong with him?”
“You family?”
I nod.
“Concussion, hairline fracture to his left cheekbone, four broken ribs,” she says as if reading off a grocery list.
“Do the police know who did it?”
A sigh from Ursula. “Police are looking for two white men and a Volvo. But there was a woman with the victim, and they’re looking for her, too.”
“A woman?”
The nurse looks at me for just a moment too long. “American. Some runaway, they said.”
I look away but feel her eyes on me. How did they know? “When is he expected to come around?” I ask, making my Russian accent as deep as I can.
“Anytime now. The next month will be one long headache, but he should be grateful he’s alive.” Ursula picks up a small remote control with a single button and passes it to me. “If you’re here when he wakes, you can give him this. It’s a morphine drip. Press the button; get a treat.”
“And what stops him from overdosing?”
“He can only do so many doses per hour. It’s enough to take away the pain and get him high as a kite, but no more.”
Ursula makes a move toward the door, then stops. “Do me a favor, tell the nursing station when he wakes up.”
“Okay.”
“There are cops waiting in the cafeteria to talk to him.”
My eyes follow her as she exits. She knows who I am. Maybe. Or will figure it out.
I draw the curtains over the windows facing the hallway, then turn to Christian, helpless in his bed. He looks younger like this, unconscious, like a child of ten instead of a thug of twenty. There’s a bandage drawn in a tight loop around the crown of his head and his swollen left cheek puffs out like the top of a muffin.
“Christian, wake up,” I whisper in German, not bothering with Sofia’s accent anymore.
No movement. I rest a hand on his shoulder, one of the only parts of him not bandaged up, and shake him gently.
“You need to wake up, Christian.”
His body twitches slightly, and he shakes his head, as if saying no in a dream. So I clasp his shoulder and squeeze, driving my nails into his skin with all the pressure I can manage. Christian’s body wiggles, his eyelids flutter open, and the metronome beeping of his heart monitor speeds up. But his eyes settle on me, and even through the swelling, I can see him attempt a smile.
“Do you hurt, Christian?” I ask, gentle as a kindergarten teacher.
He manages a weak nod.
“Do you want me to help make the hurt go away, Christian?”
Another weak nod.
I take up the remote control for the morphine drip and press the plunger. It only takes a few seconds before his face slackens and his eyes turn milky and compliant.
“Tell me where the American is, Christian,” I whisper.
His pupils shrink as they focus on me. There’s confusion in his face. “What American?” he manages, so quietly I can barely make the words out.
“The American Paulus had kidnapped in Paris.”
I hear the tempo of his breathing rise, and his eyes start their confused dash around the room again. “Bad things, Sofia.”
My blood goes cold. “What bad things, Christian?”
His mouth opens and closes without sound, a fish on the cutting board. “We do bad things there,” he whispers. “At the warehouse.”
Gently, I tell myself. Gently. “Is the American there, Christian? At the warehouse? Is the American at the warehouse?”
“I saw him.”
“Saw who, Christian?”
“The American.”
“At the warehouse? You saw the American at the warehouse?”