My head feels strange from his words.
“But you don’t want forgiveness. It’s the last thing you want. You need Tanechka to remember she is an assassin before she finds out you threw her off that cliff.” He turns to me. “That’s your fucking plan, isn’t it? You don’t want the nun to find out you killed her. You want the assassin to find out.”
“No.”
He unspools the line. “This is a fucking death wish is what this is.”
“If I wanted to die I’d be dead already,” I growl, pulling up the images on the app. All dark.
“Right. This suits you more. Way more twisted.”
I snort, concentrating on the feed from the camera now inside the warehouse. Nothing.
“Let me ask you a question—how would it feel if she plunged a blade into your gut?”
I still, stunned by the question.
“Come on, be honest.”
I imagine her coming after me with a blade. I imagine her sinking it under my ribs and…it feels right. Good. Warm, somehow. As though the world became cold when I killed her, and her blade in my belly would make it warm again. Right again.
I don’t know what to think—not about anything. So I focus on the picture. Shapes. The full room comes into view. “I’m seeing something.”
He doesn’t reply.
I look up to find him glaring.
“It’s bullshit,” he says. “Maybe I’ll fucking tell her.”
“Leave her alone.” I make an adjustment in the cable.
He clamps a hand over my arm. “You want Tanechka to be herself when she remembers what you did so she can hurt you. You want Tanechka to punish you.”
“Stop it,” I say.
“You want to be the one falling into that gorge. Or at the business end of her blade. You’ll provoke her until she’s back to Tanechka. Let me ask you, how is it she was wearing Tanechka’s clothes anyway? Seems odd she’d change, considering she insists she’s a nun. A bit odd, right?”
“I burned her nun outfit,” I say calmly. “I stripped her and burned her outfit.”
“That’ll get a nun out of a forgiving mood,” he says.
“She’s a nun with Jesus as her imaginary friend.” I shove the tools back in the pack. “A nun.”
“You deserve forgiveness.”
I sniff.
The silence between us stretches long and wide. I think again about her blade, sliding between my ribs, piercing my heart.
I think what it would feel like.
I think it would feel like freedom.
Chapter Fifteen
Tanechka
The strangest sense of familiarity passes over me as I sneak along the rooftop, night wind in my hair. The men below are good; they know to look up. They had one man stationed on the roof, but he went down for a piss break. He should’ve pissed on the roof.
I race along and jump the short gap to the next roof, a deeply familiar move. I know not to look down. I know how to land, setting my weight forward. My plan is to run to the Orthodox church I found in the phone book in the kitchen. These guys are so careful about keeping me away from phones and the internet, they forgot about paper. A Russian Orthodox church not twenty blocks away, judging from the map at the back. Very large. The name is Sacred River—very similar to our Svyataya Reka, Holy River. There are nuns there. These are my people. I’ll tell them of the virgin brothel, and we’ll identify police with ties to the church, the community, those we could trust. We’ll get them involved in rescuing the girls. And I’ll contact the sisters.
And get away from Viktor.
He’s too much, too compelling to me, infusing the air with desire whenever he’s near. I need to get back to Ukraine, to put a world between us.
Most of all, though, I need to fall to my knees and throw myself on the mercy of God. I’ll beg to be shown the way back. I have so much to atone for. I took a life. I don’t know how to be in my skin.
I race across, leaping again, landing lightly, feeling strong and small. I pause and take in a breath, then I slip down the side of a peaked roof and grab onto a tree, clinging to the branch. I fumble for a foothold and quickly descend. I rustle the branches, but never mind; I’ll vanish before anybody can get to the window.
I hit the ground and take off, racing through the night streets toward the church.
I feel eyes all around. A person watching you is a feeling, always a feeling.
I turn a corner and walk; it’s time to blend. I hate that I know this. A nun wouldn’t know this. I tell myself things will be all right. When I used to worry about my violent past, Mother Olga would say that God loves all his children, especially the difficult cases, the lost causes.
Surely it’s no less true now.
Footsteps. I’m being followed. I slip around the corner of a brownstone and hide.
Somebody coming. Three men.
I set off running in the other direction, though unfamiliar streets. I can feel danger growing. It’s a feeling on my skin. In the air.
I cut through a gloomy alley. I don’t know this place. I don’t like it. I move through the shadows and peek out. Empty sidewalk.