Chapter 11: Where She Said She Was

The note was in Pavel's small, careful hand.

"A man at the window said that Viktor wishes to speak, and that nobody will be hurt."

"I will not be the reason either of you dies. Forgive an old fool. P."

Luka read it twice.

Then he sat down on the edge of the cot.

"I told him," he said.

Mara turned. "Told who what?"

"My father. At the church lot." He rubbed his hand down his face.

"I said we were safe. I said we were out of the city. I said Gary, so he'd stop asking."

"Gary," Mara said flatly.

"Not the motel."

"Gary has seventy thousand people in it, and I own exactly one place there."

"A Draganov driver could find it in an hour with a phone book and a bad temper."

"Mara," I said.

"I'm only saying."

"I know."

Luka looked up at me.

He did not ask me to forgive him. He did not say anything at all.

I found that was worse.

"Stay here," I said. "Both of you. Let me look at the alley."

"I'll come," Luka said.

"You'll make noise, and your arm will bleed through. I'll be twenty minutes."

"Nika."

"I'll go with Mara to the shop on the corner," I said. "I need ammunition. I'll be right back."

It was a lie, and I said it in the cheerful voice, and I saw him hear that it was cheerful.

He said nothing.

He let me go.

The alley behind room ten was narrow and wet.

A rear window had been pried up with a flat tool, and the dirt under it was stamped with the print of a big shoe.

A second set of prints, smaller, uneven, with a drag on the left.

Pavel's bad hip.

They led to the end of the alley, and a car's wide tire marks pulled out onto the street.

I followed them on foot for six blocks.

The marks faded in the traffic.

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