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“I would never call the Pakhan stupid,” I reply automatically. I wouldn’t put it past Roman to be testing my loyalty. I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if Nikita put him up to it.
“That doesn’t stop you from thinking it… He doesn’t have all of the Bratva’s loyalty. His leadership can’t handle many people turning at once, and if he kills a lieutenant, he knows he’ll turn their followers.”
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because,” he drawls. “You aren’t a lieutenant.”
I shift in the seat when his meaning becomes clear, but I don’t respond. Instead, I stare out the window and watch buildings pass by on the way to my apartment.
“You have to be careful, Alik. You’re valued, but no soldier is allowed mistakes, and it’s highly unlike you to make one. If there’s anything I need to know about this girl, now is the time to tell me.”
A woman walks on the sidewalk up ahead, cell phone attached to her ear and dog leash in hand that extends to a little terrier. Her reddish hair makes me think of Olive from the back, but the floral peacoat and confident gait is so ill-fitting, I’d never mistake the woman for Olive.
“There’s nothing,” I say, my voice low as I stare at the woman.
“You sure?”
“Yes.” I don’t linger on the woman as we pass, letting my eyes move along the sidewalk, but I get the urge to look behind me just to make out her face.
I wonder if Olive will be home, hiding from the world in her apartment. Or if she’ll be out somewhere, lost in a city where we won’t find her tonight.
Why am I hoping for the latter?
Condensation forms on the window from the cold, and I run a clear path down it with my finger. “I want to ask you for something, and you won’t like it because it involves lying to the Pakhan.”
“What is it?” Roman asks.
I rest my head against the seat and close my eyes as I form Olive’s dead image in my mind. I’ve accepted this. It’s fine.
A sigh escapes my lungs. “You can take me to her, but as far as the rest goes… I need to finish this on my own.”
6
OLIVE
The cold bites into my fingers as I hold the camcorder up as inconspicuously as I can while shielding myself behind a pillar under the overpass. I have to fight to keep my hand still, but I manage. Nothing will get in my way of catching what’s going on thirty feet from me.
Creeper’s gravelly voice is like a nail hammering into my ear. I can’t hear what he’s saying, which means it probably isn’t being picked up on video either, but the bag he takes from the Irish man is unmistakable. Thanks to an infrared attachment, so is the identity of each man, despite it being nighttime.
Creeper meets here with someone just like this every other Wednesday night, and even if this tape isn’t enough, the information will be. This bastard is going down.
My hand clutches the camcorder tighter, thinking about what might’ve happened the other night, how I got there, how much worse it could’ve been. If I was a bad person, I’d get rid of him another way. I’d kill him instead of sending him to prison.
Images so dark I’d never form words to describe them flick through my mind, causing the world around me to fade. It isn’t until the sound of my feet shuffling on the gravel brings me back to the present.
I blink and look down at the camcorder to see no one there.
Squinting, I move it around, searching for the car, for Creeper, for the Irish guy, for anyone.
Nothing. They’re gone.
Did I really lose myself for that long?
How…? How did I not hear them leave?
Shaking my head, I slap the recorder closed and scan the area before sticking my practically numb hands in my pockets and creeping out from under the overpass.
I’m careful to take a path without streetlights illuminating it for several blocks, just in case Creeper is somehow still around. Ihatethat I didn’t see either of them leave.
