Rondo crumples, holding his belly.
Fuck!
She drops the thing and stares hands out, like she’s going to go help him now. Hug him, I don’t know.
“Out!” I say. “Go!”
She turns to me. She’s not even hearing.
“Out in the hall. For me, baby. Go, go, go!”
She looks back at Rondo.
Movement in the corner. Lazarus is trying to get loose.
She’s barely there. She’s in shock.
“Mira, don’t you fall apart. Look at me. Look.”
“You killed him!” Lazarus screams. He knows she’s freaking, and he’s pushing her. “How could you?”
“What did you do, bitch?” Ioannis screams.
“Both of you shut up!” I ram Ioannis’s head into the wall to make my point.
Mira jumps.
“Hall. Now!”
She goes for the door, and I limp behind, dragging Ioannis, covering her, covering us, covering the fucking world.
It’s here that I look Lazarus in the eyes. Mira’s out safe in the hall. I have everyone under control. It’s my big chance to execute him.
But all I can think of is Mira out there. You’re better than that.
I’m not better than that, but I want to be. He looks pretty fucking surprised when I back out into the hall and shut them in.
I jerk up Ioannis’s arm behind his back, nice and painful. We move past the slumped guys in the hall.
Tito and a few of the Russians come out of the stairwell door. “Fuck,” Tito says when he sees the three of us. “Come on.”
I hand Ioannis over to him because my ankle is beyond toasted, and mostly because Mira needs me. I grab her, give her a good hard look. We don’t have the time, but she needs me. “You’re okay.”
She’s shaking. “I killed him.”
“You gutshot him, nothing more.”
“Nothing more? As if that’s not enough?”
“We gotta get the fuck out, baby.” I pull her. She’s coming along.
Three more flights and we hit ground level. Tito leads the way out, right through the lobby. It should be fine—they disengaged the security cameras.
“Hey!” a desk clerk says uncertainly, backing off when he gets a better look at us. Guests at the cab stand outside startle when they see the guns and blood. It’s cool. It takes people a while to mobilize in the face of something outrageous, a little fact of life I happen to know firsthand.
“Medical emergency,” Tito says. Which explains my bloody face, but not the gun on Ioannis, whose face is also bloody. Sirens sound in the distance. But the real problem will be the Nikolla soldiers. We head down the alley out to the street on the other side of the hotel.
A flower delivery truck rolls up.
Tito opens the back. It has metal coolers along either side with a rubber mat between. I hop up and help Mira up, and he slams the door, enclosing us in cool darkness. He’ll handle Ioannis with the other guys. Seconds later we’re off with a jerk.
I turn on my phone light. A refrigerated flower delivery truck. The light jumps as the truck pitches, illuminating the crates and metal coolers all around us.
She’s crying. “I killed him.”
I reach out for her. “Come here.”
She pushes me away.
“Mira, you probably didn’t kill him. You got him in the gut.”
“I know where I got him!” She’s hysterical. “It was a bloody fucking hole in him!” She puts her hand to her chest. “My heart feels like it’s going to beat out of my rib cage. Fuck, I can’t breathe. I can’t feel my face.”
I go to her and grab her, pull her to me.
“I shot him!”
“You had to, Mira. He rushed you. You get to do that when a killer rushes you. You get to defend yourself.”
“I probably killed him.”
“Mira—”
“If you say gutshot one more time…”
So I hold her.
“I’m a fucking…” She can’t finish the sentence.
“You’re not a killer.”
“They lost twenty-one guys because of me tipping you off.”
“Guys were going to die one way or another.”
“That’s twenty-one human beings. Oh my God, what have I done?”
“Fuck, Mira.” I hold her tight, wishing I could suck up all the darkness.
“They killed Dad. He’s dead, Aleksio. He died—right in front of me.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“Are you?”
“He’s your dad.”
She pushes her face into my chest. “I don’t even know what to think.”
“Then don’t think,” I say. “I’m with you, okay? We can just be here.” I flip over my phone light so just a little brightness leaks out the edges, and I pull her into the corner of the truck. A small place in the darkness. It was something that helped me on the run sometimes, being in a small place in the darkness. “You’re okay.”
“I’m not okay.”
I hold her. I suppose she’s right.
“Dad…he tried to help me at the end—he really did.”
“What did he do?” I smooth her hair off her forehead. “Tell me how he tried.”
“He tried to kill Lazarus. To give me a chance to escape. He was…he could barely breathe. He was shot, and his heart…”
The vehicle takes a corner hard. I stabilize her. What the fuck, are we in a chase? I hold her more tightly.
“I know what he was. He killed my mother. He hurt so many people. He didn’t tell you everything he knew about Kiro that first day. Like hiding Kiro was everything. But he tried to help in the end—he really did.”
“He’s your dad,” I say. “He loved you.” She’s lost enough without losing that, too. He did love her in his way.
“They know about Kiro.”
I swallow. “But we have the head start this time.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Mira
His phone goes off, and he answers. I lean my head back on his chest and look at the faint shapes of crates and containers and listen to Viktor’s rumbly tone on the other end. I feel like I drank a thousand cups of bad coffee. All the death. I used to feel safe and good in the world, and now there’s a hole in me that can never be filled. I never want it filled. I shot a man.
“I probably killed him,” I say when the call ends. “I need you to hear me and not minimize it.”
He tightens his arms around me. “I won’t minimize it then. This is a war, and you’re right, there’s nothing small about shooting a guy. You shot the fuck out of him with a big fucking piece. You maybe killed him.”
I sniffle.
“And yeah, you saved yourself, but it doesn’t change how it feels.”
“Maybe I didn’t have to shoot him.”
“You think we were getting out of there alive without that?”
“No,” I say.
“Hell no. You saved yourself, and you saved us. I pulled you into this, and you did the best you could.”
“Is that what you tell yourself? That you did the best you could?”