Page 192 of Mile High Ruin

Someone swears.

I can’t move. For one suspended second, everything inside me knows it’s Vadim. My heart crashes against my ribs so hard that it hurts.

He found me.

A man like him doesn’t lose people.

The figure turns. He’s not Vadim. He’s older, shorter through the shoulders, his face completely wrong. Relief hits first, followed quickly by disappointment.

I hate myself for it.

I finish crossing quickly, ignoring the driver who gestures angrily from behind the windshield. My hands are shaking by the time I reach the other side.

“Still doing that?”

I turn on my feet abruptly.

Viktor stands several feet away.

He’s dressed simply today, dark trousers and a charcoal coat, no tie, no polished club smile, though there’s still something composed about him that makes every ordinary setting look slightly staged around his presence.

I stare at him. “You can’t just sneak up on people.”

“I said your name twice.”

“I didn’t hear you.”

“I noticed.” He glances across the road toward the silver-haired stranger walking away.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“Checking on you.”

“You checked on me last week.”

“That’s generally how checking works,” he says.

I sigh. Despite everything, there’s something strangely easy about talking to him now. That’s another thing I try not to examine too closely.

Vadim spoke about Viktor as though he were a plague given human form. A man who sent people to kill him.

Yet the Viktor I know brought me home. He arranged transportation when I had nowhere to go, found a way to get me back without alerting the people I was terrified might be watching the airports, and never once demanded anything in return.

He never stays long. He never pushes when I don’t want to talk.

I can’t reconcile that man with the one Vadim described.

Then again, perhaps that’s the problem. For weeks I couldn’t reconcile Vadim either. The man who carried me after Hale attacked me. The man who held me when I woke from nightmares. The man who laughed with Anya and fixed Boris’s ear because a six-year-old told him to.

The man who pointed a gun at Camille and fired without hesitation.

Maybe people are whatever version of themselves they need you to see.

Viktor nods toward the café on the corner. “Coffee?”

“I should go home.”

“You look like you haven’t eaten.”