“Let’s hear Maxim out. Let him tell it.”
I meet his eyes. “So, we’re about to meet a man who knew my mother.”
Lev told me who Maxim was last night. Well, he gave me a brief history of his time together with him in Vasily’s organization and told me that Vasily thinks Maxim is dead.
He also told me he’d been the hitman hired by Vasily to kill my mother.
“She’d dyed her hair like mine. I know that’s a memory and not something I’m making up,” I tell Lev again. “You really think she did it because she was running from Vasily?”
“Running from Vasily Stanislov or Gleb Mikhailov or maybe both.”
“And Gleb is Vasily’s boss.”
“In a way, yes.”
“I don’t understand any of this.” I slide down a little in my seat and look out the window.
“I have to go potty, Mommy,” Josh’s little voice says from the back seat.
I turn to look back at him. “You just went at the hotel, remember?”
“I have to go again.”
I look at Lev. “There’s an exit in about ten minutes. You think you can hold it until then, buddy?”
He nods and returns to playing with his truck.
“It’s fine,” Lev says. “I need to fill the tank anyway. Why are you so uneasy?”
“I think it’s understandable, isn’t it?”
He squeezes my knee, then keeps his hand there. “I promise nothing is going to happen to you or Josh.”
“And what about you? What if something happens to you?”
He holds my gaze, then turns his out the window. “There’s one more bit of news you should know.”
“What?”
He glances in the rearview mirror, then turns to me. “Andrei isn’t dead,” he says quietly enough that Josh won’t hear.
“What?” I feel the blood drain from my face.
“I’m pretty sure he’s badly injured, and I’m going to take care of it, but I wanted you to know.”
“How? And…oh my God. He’s going to come after us too.”
“Mommy?”
“Stay calm, Kat. It’s going to be okay,” Lev tells me. “Do it for Josh.”
I press the heels of my hands into my eyes then turn to Josh.
“I really need to go.”
“Almost there, baby.”
Lev picks up speed, and we’re turning off the exit not ten minutes later. He drives right up to the service area.
“I’ll fill up the tank and come back for you. You stay inside until you see me.”
I nod, climb out, then get Josh out. He’s got Wally in one hand and the toy truck in the other.
“Should we leave those in the car?”
“No,” he says and waves at Lev with the truck-hand.
I don’t argue and walk in through the sliding glass doors and toward the ladies’ room. The center is busy, and we have to wait in line for a few minutes, but pretty soon, it’s our turn. When Josh is finished, I lift him up at the sink to wash his hands.
It’s when we walk out that I see them.
Josh must see them at the same time because he stops, then waves. He recognizes the men from last night. They’d returned his scarf.
“Let’s go,” I tell Josh, pulling him along toward the door where, through the glass, I can see Lev at the pump across the parking lot.
“We’ll use the other exit,” the man says near enough to my ear to make me shudder. His hand falls on my shoulder again, like last night, except that today, it’s heavier, and when I try to pull away, he shifts his grip to my upper arm, and I know he’s not going to let go.
“You were getting ice cream,” Josh says to the younger one, who is on Josh’s other side and trying to take his hand.
“Let us go,” I tell the bigger man at my side.
“My orders are to bring you and the boy in. That’s all. I’m not going to hurt you, and you don’t want to scare the kid, so act normal.”
I look back over my shoulder and see the SUV still at the pump.
Shit.
“Please, I—”
“Wally!” I look down at the same moment Josh’s hand slips from mine and see his other one in the younger man’s hand as he separates us, walking him fast toward the exit at the back of the center. “I need Wally!” Josh is trying to get free of the man, body half-turned as he sees his stuffed animal farther and farther behind.
“I’ll get you another toy,” the man tells him in an accented voice. If he’d spoken last night, I would have known. But the one who has me, he sounds American.
“He needs his toy!” I yell louder than I’m sure either of our companions like and loud enough that people stop and look.
“Fine,” the one who has me says through gritted teeth. He leans toward me. “You grab it. We’ll hold on to the kid for you.”
I look at Josh as he’s hurried out of the service area. I grab Wally and run after them, wondering how no one is stopping us. Don’t they see what’s happening?
We’re out back in the next minute and headed toward a dark SUV with tinted windows. It’s parked illegally, and the man who has Josh opens the back door as the older one grabs my arm again.
“Mommy!”
“I’m coming, Josh!” I run for him, but the one who has me won’t let me get to him.
I remember the pistol still in my purse. It’s loaded. Ready. But Josh is inside the SUV.
The younger man gets into the driver seat after closing Josh’s door, and although I can’t see him, I hear him calling for me as the older one walks me around to the other side.
Slipping my hand into my purse, I feel for the pistol. Just when I get my hand around the grip, I see the sliding doors open, and Lev rushes through them.
“Hey!” he calls out sharply, cocking the pistol he takes out from beneath his jacket. It’s got a silencer on it. I can see that from here. “What you’re taking doesn’t belong to you.” His voice is low, rage just beneath the surface of that false veneer of control.
“Motherfucker,” the one who has me says and reaches beneath his jacket, eyes glued to Lev. That’s when I pull my pistol out because he doesn’t expect me to have one. He doesn’t expect me to be armed or dangerous.
But I am.
I did it once before, but I was too late then. Joshua was already dead by the time I acted because I hesitated.
I won’t be too late again.
And so, steeling myself, I cock my pistol, ram it under the fat belly of the man who has me, and in the same instant that he realizes what’s happening, that he meets my eyes, I pull the trigger.
The pop is quieter than I expect. Maybe it’s his fat that muffles the sound, I think, as the man stumbles backward, then slumps against the wall.
There’s another sound, another popping. I open the back door to get Josh and can see Lev easing the younger man into the driver’s seat.
Lev shifts his gaze behind me at the man now seated on the ground.
Josh stares up at me when I turn to him, dropping my pistol and grabbing him in my arms. I bury his face in my chest so he doesn’t see the man on the ground.
“SUV is at the pump,” Lev says to me. “Walk. Don’t run.”