Page 235 of Mile High Ruin

“Where?”

“Industrial stretch. Warehouses, service lanes, old distribution yards.”

I reach beneath my coat and take out my gun. The weight of it fits into my hand with the familiar certainty. Just metal, purpose, consequence. And Petrov’s reckoning is coming tonight. I check the magazine, slide it back in, and lock it with a soft, final click.

Marek’s gaze drops to the weapon. Then to my face. “This is going to be ugly.”

I look out at the road ahead, where the city is already thinning into gray buildings and dead lots under the morning light.

“No,” I say. My thumb brushes once over the grip. “This is going to be simple.”

38

SLOANE

The car doesn’t slow down.

“Viktor.”

He keeps his eyes on the road.

“Please,” I say, and I hate the sound of my own voice because it comes out too close to begging. “You have to stop the car.”

He doesn’t answer.

The city begins to thin outside the window, hospital blocks and shopfronts giving way to wider roads, shuttered warehouses, low concrete buildings, stretches of fenced land and yards full of trucks that look abandoned in the dull morning light.

My hands are shaking in my lap. I press one over my stomach and try to keep my breathing steady. “Viktor, I’m pregnant.”

“I know.”

“Then stop the car.”

His jaw tightens. “I can’t.”

“You can. You’re driving.”

He glances at me then, and for the first time since the garage, the calm mask cracks enough for me to see something ugly beneath it.

I stare at him. “You told me he was the monster.”

“He is.”

“And you?”

He doesn’t answer.

The car turns off the main road and takes a narrower lane between two long factory buildings. The place looks half-dead, all rusted gates, broken signage, weeds growing through the cracks in the concrete, and old loading bays with peeling numbers painted above them.

Finally, Viktor brakes hard near the side of a warehouse. The sudden stop throws me forward against the seat belt, and I grab at my stomach with a gasp.

He shuts off the engine. For a second, neither of us moves.

Then he says, without looking at me, “You should run.”

I turn my head slowly. “What?”

He stares through the windshield, his hands still on the wheel. “You should run.”