I step backward, trip, and just catch myself as a deer springs across the path and into the dense cover of trees. I exhale a loud breath and clutch my stomach, my body relaxing in relief.
A deer. It’s just a deer.
I laugh out loud, but it sounds a little crazy, and the second alarm on my phone goes off, warning me I’ll be late if I don’t leave. I walk quickly back to the Jeep, almost running by the time I get to it.
The remote doesn’t work, and with my fingers as cold as they are, it takes several tries to get the key into the lock. When I’m finally in, I slap the locks down and start the engine. I’ve never been in such a hurry to get away from here. Never been so spooked, not for a long time now.
I’m safe. It was just a deer. I’m jumpy because of the anniversary. That’s all.
I keep telling myself that as I drive a little too fast down the mountain road, only glancing in my rearview mirror when I think I see a flash of headlights, but in the cover of low clouds and the thickening snow, I see nothing. I’m alone on the road. Just me. And after one more turn, I’m back in civilization.
Safe.
11
Lev
Katie fucking March.
She gets out of her piece of shit Jeep and walks around to the back. For a split second, I question if it’s really her. The magenta hair is gone, replaced by a natural red. Her clothes aren’t the same either. She’s wearing a winter coat and boots, but they look cheap and sad, and I don’t like it.
I don’t like any of this fucking scenario. When Alexei told me he’d finally gotten a hit on her, it was difficult to accept. Even now, I still can’t be certain. Not until she turns and glances in the direction of the woods, as if she can feel me watching her.
My breath pauses, and I can’t even bring myself to blink. I know it’s impossible, but it feels like she’s looking right at me, and now, it’s undeniable. Katerina has been holed up in the mountains of Colorado, hiding from me.
Adrenaline rushes through my veins as I consider what happens now. I have searched for her so long, compounding my frustrations into a low simmering rage. She ran out on me, and she took something very important with her. Logically, I know what I have to do. What Vasily expects of me. But seeing her after so long has triggered something else in me. Something I never expected to feel again.
Katerina returns her attention to the back seat of the Jeep, and in a split second, everything changes. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but when she hauls out a little boy, it sure as fuck isn’t that.
My fingers turn rigid around the binoculars as she glances around one more time and heads toward the entrance. Surely, he can’t be hers? Ice enters my lungs as I drag in a deep, painful breath and release it. She works at a school. Perhaps he’s a student here. But logically, I know that can’t be true.
I can’t tell from this distance how old the boy might be. But I can only surmise that Kat didn’t wait long to run off and set up a new life with somebody else. That betrayal burns the blood in my veins as I watch them with an intensity I can’t shake. It only gets worse when another man approaches her. They seem familiar, but not familiar enough that he could be a husband. Regardless, it’s evident that he wants to find his way into her pants as he tosses out easy smiles and pretty words.
He looks like a fucking douchebag in khakis, and I’m willing to bet he bought a pair in every color from his local Sears before they went out of business. Motherfucker.
I retrieve my phone and snap a few photos, aware they are probably too blurry to do anything with. But I send them to Alexei anyway, hoping he can give me some background on this piece of shit sniffing around Kat like he has a right to.
She disappears into the school with the little boy in tow, and I spend the day staking out her environment. It’s fucking freezing up here in the mountains, but I can’t bring myself to move. Now that I’ve found her, I’m not willing to let her out of my sight.
At lunch, she takes a short drive up into the mountains and spreads some flowers out along the overlook. Today, it has been four years since that clusterfuck of events transpired. And it’s clear that Kat is still in mourning for her friend. A fact that grates the raw wound in my chest whenever I think about Nina von Brandt and her mother. They didn’t deserve to die that way, and I have every reason to believe Kat thinks I’m responsible for it. Why else would she be here out in the middle of nowhere?
I follow her back to the school, careful to keep my distance, and she spends the rest of the afternoon there. When the bell rings, it isn’t long before she’s traipsing back out to her Jeep with the little boy in tow. When I consider that someone else touched her and impregnated her, acid coats my throat. I don’t want to believe it. But the only alternative to that notion is something else that seems too farfetched for me to accept.
Regardless, I follow them home and park down the street, camping out with a decent vantage point where I can watch the small cabin she calls home. As the hours pass, I catch her glancing out the window a few times. She can feel me here, but she doesn’t trust her judgment.
Eventually, around nine o clock, the lights go out, and the house falls quiet. Nobody else comes home. And so goes the routine over the next several days as I study her, learning her patterns. I take notes of everything she does. When she shops for groceries, when she makes dinner, when she takes her break at the school. Vasily calls me for constant updates, asking where I am. I tell him I’m in Florida, and that any day now, I’ll have something tangible. That proof he requested four years ago.
On the fifth day, I can’t wait any longer. I break into the school and wait in the janitor’s closet before she gets to work. It’s a risk, but I manage to go unnoticed until lunchtime, when she leaves her classroom. In her purse, I find her keys, and I slip out of the building, taking them down to the local hardware store to make copies.
When I return to the school, I dump her set near the front entrance and watch as the khaki-wearing motherfucker comes to her rescue during the ensuing chaos. He finds the keys during her minor freak-out, and he gets to be the hero. But it doesn’t end there.
I expect her to get in her Jeep and go home the same as she does every night. But tonight, she follows him back to his house. And then she goes inside. I park on the street, contemplating the various ways I might murder him. Burning his face off with a blowtorch seems like a good idea. But as I watch them through the window, eating cake and celebrating what appears to be a birthday, it occurs to me that her heart isn’t in it. The smile on her face is polite but forced. And soon after the celebrations, she takes the opportunity to leave.
It doesn’t relieve me as much as I’d hoped. Because even if she isn’t staying tonight, that doesn’t mean she never will. I shift the car into gear and drive around town for a while, trying to clear my head. Inevitably, I end up back at her place after dark. She’s already asleep when I slip in, and for the first time, I can finally smell her again. I drag in lungsful of that scent like an addict, and then touch everything in her space as if to mark my territory.
I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with me. I just know that when I stand on the threshold of her bedroom, watching her sleep, there is finally peace in my soul. For all of two minutes, until I realize that I came here to kill her. That was the job I set out to do. A thought that was much easier when there was distance and years between us. Now everything is fucked up again, and the only thing I understand is that I can’t. Not tonight.