Page 183 of Mile High Ruin

I take it slowly. “You went through my things?”

“I needed to make sure you had it,” he says.

“For what?”

Mila looks at Daniel. Then at me.

“In case we had to bring you,” he says.

That makes no sense. “Bring me where?”

“Away,” he says, simply.

I look out the window. The lights of the estate are long gone. There’s only road now.

“How long have you been planning this?”

Mila faces forward again. “A while.”

Daniel reaches over and squeezes her hand. She squeezes back. The sight does something uncomfortable to my chest.

Vadim does that.

Not often. Not in front of other people. But sometimes when we’re sitting beside each other and he thinks I’m upset, his hand finds mine without him seeming to decide to do it.

I turn toward the window before the memory can settle too deeply.

We drive for hours. By the time the sky begins changing from black to a dull gray at the horizon, exhaustion has turned everything inside me heavy.

Daniel says we’re approaching the border. He doesn’t tell me which crossing until we’re nearly there.

I don’t ask many questions. I’m beginning to suspect I won’t like the answers.

We stop at a roadside café not far from the border because Daniel says we need fuel and because none of us has eaten since the birthday dinner.

The place is nearly empty. A truck driver sits alone near the window, and an older woman behind the counter barely looks at us when we order coffee and sandwiches.

We take a table in the far corner. Mila sits beside Daniel, their shoulders touching.

I sit opposite them with my passport in my bag and dried blood still hidden beneath the coat Daniel gave me. Nobody mentions it.

I eventually look at Mila. “Start talking.”

She lowers her coffee.

Daniel looks at her.

She nods. “We were leaving tonight.”

“That part I gathered.”

“We’ve been planning it for the past week or so,” Mila says.

“What?” I say, still confused.

She glances at Daniel, and something passes between them that’s so intimate I almost feel like I’ve walked into the middle of a private conversation.

Daniel answers this time. “It happened quickly.”