Page 97 of The Beast of Moscow

27.

“Do you know why I liked you?”

The near-constant stream of chatter from the driver’s seat came to a halt the second Vaslav posed the question. The thing was, he really wanted an answer.

Because he couldn’t remember.

“No,” Igor eventually said.

Too quietly, maybe.

Even Igor’s massive shoulders tensed enough that his boss could see from his position in the backseat of the familiar SUV. If it were another man, Vas might have let the whispers of paranoia become louder to his mind about what his man’s actions meant, but it was Igor.

Of all people, Vaslav trusted him.

At the very least, to always do the right thing.

“Hmm,” he muttered in the backseat, turning his attention to the window and the passing scenery. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see how Igor’s gaze shifted to the rearview mirror, but he opted not to continue the conversation further.

A smart choice, really.

“Can I take your random question to mean you weren’t listening to me?” Igor asked. “Would you like me to repeat—”

“Do I ever want you to repeat things, Igor?”

Silence answered the rhetorical question. Not for long, of course, but the brief period of reprieve at least allowed Vaslav to survey the newspaper that had been folded and left in the seat beside his. Front page up, with a name sticking out amongst the sea of black letters on a white background.

Nico.

He suspected if he picked it up and turned the newspaper over that he would find his old friend’s death had finally been properly announced to the city of Moscow—and the rest of the country—along with the fact he’d been murdered. Why else would they put the well-respected lawyer’s picture and name on the front page, if not to connect it to a previous story about a body being found in the canal?

I gave you that, anyhow, he thought, wondering if his dead friend could even hear him wherever his soul was now. Another front-page story, Nico.

“Good to see they finally got around to identifying the body.”

“I expect the funeral details to be forthcoming,” Igor muttered as he blew through a four-way with little signage or lights to control the different directions of traffic. A dangerous thing to do on the streets of Russia.

Neither man even blinked.

“Soon?”

Igor nodded in the front. “Within a couple of days, yeah.”

Good.

Funerals were the one social event that Vaslav still liked to attend. If only because it always made a point to anyone who needed one made to them about just what he could do. After all, the only funerals he attended were of those that he’d killed.

In one way or another ...

“Mira’s already called ahead to your tailor in the city about something new for the occasion,” Igor said when Vaslav didn’t continue their chat.

He didn’t reply to that, either.

It would require unnecessary effort that he didn’t care to expend. The handful of people who had the unfortunate responsibility of having their life tied to Vaslav for however long his would last didn’t need him to validate what they already knew. Whether it was what they should be doing, or what they needed to be doing at any given moment—didn’t matter.

Vaslav should have been comforted by the sight of a familiar landscape beyond the blacked-out windows of the SUV. To be home, in his motherland, was to be the safest. As much as was possible, anyway. He used to travel out of Russia often, even with the scattered, frequent migraines, but the last handful of years had made that more difficult.

And then there was the newest thing, too.