Page 122 of Mile High Ruin

The question catches me off guard. “I think so.”

She studies my face. “You have had a very strange first private assignment.”

“That’s an understatement.”

“I promise they’re not normally like this.”

“I’m relieved.”

She manages a tired smile before returning to her room.

I should sleep too. Instead, after twenty minutes of lying on the bed staring at the ceiling, I discover that exhaustion and actual sleep are apparently no longer connected.

My body feels heavy, but my mind refuses to stop.

I think about everything that happened yesterday—especially Hale’s body dropping on the ground like a fly. I had never seen a man die before. Then everything that transpired in the hospital…and after that, Vadim’s mouth on mine.

That last thought is particularly unhelpful.

I get up. Fresh air seems safer than continuing that line of thought, so I pull on the sweater and pants someone left for me and head downstairs.

Nobody stops me. They watch me, though.

I feel it as I cross the rear terrace and step into the garden. A security camera turns almost imperceptibly above one doorway, and two men near the far wall track my movement before returning to their conversation.

Something about their presence is so creepy and unsettling.

I walk farther into the garden anyway. The house becomes quieter behind me, and for the first time since the flight began yesterday, there are no engines, sirens, gunshots, arguments, or men asking questions.

Only birds somewhere in the trees and the soft crunch of gravel beneath my shoes.

Then something moves behind a hedge. I stop.

A small head appears.

A little girl looks at me.

She can’t be older than six or seven, with dark hair tied into two messy braids and a bright yellow cardigan that seems almost aggressively cheerful against everything else I’ve seen on this property.

We stare at each other.

Then she asks, “Who are you?”

“Sloane.”

She considers this, clutching a battered stuffed rabbit beneath one arm. “Are you staying here?”

“For a little while, I think.”

Her eyes move over me with the blunt curiosity only children seem capable of getting away with. “You came with Uncle Vadim?”

That catches me. “Uncle Vadim?”

She nods. “He’s my uncle.”

Of all the things I expected to find at Vadim Chernovar’s heavily guarded compound, a small child wandering through the garden with a stuffed rabbit was nowhere near the list.

“What’s your name?”