“What did Dima do?”
I hate that my face gets hot. It’s impossible for a redhead to hide a blush. “Nothing,” I snap, the memory of what we’d done turning my core molten again. I shove the erotic thoughts away and bury them under my anger. “He left. I don’t know where he went.” I write the blood pressure down on the piece of paper the vet gave me then take Nikolai’s temperature.
“Was he a mudak?” Nikolai asks as I beam the scanner at his forehead.
“Yeah,” I breathe. “Total dick.” His temperature isn’t elevated, so I don’t write it down. I turn away from Nikolai, fidgeting with the equipment.
I could ask Nikolai about the other woman. About the ring.
“Um… does Dima have a girlfriend?”
“No. Definitely not.”
Huh. I turn. “Why definitely not?”
Nikolai closes his lids, his head falling back on the pillow. “That’s Dima’s story to tell,” he says.
Gah. “So he is unavailable?”
Nikolai’s gaze is musing. “Is that what he told you?”
“More or less.”
Nikolai shakes his head. “Fucker.”
“You didn’t answer my question.” I’m not usually bold or pushy, but I feel like I’m hanging onto my sanity by a string here. I have to fight to regain some equilibrium.
“I guess he thinks he is,” Nikolai mumbles. His lids are drifting closed.
I sigh and watch him as he drifts into sleep. And then I have no idea what to do with myself. I go over to make up the other side of the bed—where Dima slept.
Like an idiot, I lower my face to his pillow and breathe in his clean masculine scent.
Nikolai doesn’t stir. Seeing him there, so pale, his clothes cut away for the surgery, the remaining tatters still a crusty, bloody mess, his hands swollen with fluid retention from the IV, I’m shaken by another wave of guilt. Of fear.
What if Nikolai dies? If I’m responsible for costing Dima the one person he loves most in the world? I hate that I was so gullible. That Alex used me to do this.
I crawl into the bed beside Nikolai and pick up his hand without the IV in it. Using the very light touch used for lymphatic drainage, I start to massage out the fluid, up his arm and in the direction of his heart. It may not be much, but I can do this one thing for him. Maybe it will help.
Dima
When I’m in the Land Rover, I plug Natasha’s dead phone into the charger. I disabled tracking on it back at the vet’s place last night, but I’m pissed at myself for not looking at it sooner. If my head were in the game, I wouldn’t have gone to bed last night without reading every message she has on there and thoroughly investigating every source of information I could get from it.
The trip to the closest store takes twenty-five minutes. It’s a gas station/convenience store for hikers and campers, so it features some random shit like mosquito repellent, hats, and t-shirts. I get milk, eggs, bread, and other basics, then grab a few of the t-shirts. I’m still in my undershirt, which is stained with Nikolai’s blood. When the clerk stares at it, I look down and grimace. “Hunting accident,” I tell him.
When I get back in the vehicle, the phone has charged enough to come on, and I check her calls and texts.
One text from Alex at six this morning, one phone call an hour ago. The text is simple, it just says, Are you all right?
I listen to the voicemail. “Natasha, I need to know if you’re all right. Fuck! Please let me know as soon as possible.”
Mudak. I want to cut off his balls and shove them down his throat.
I text back the single word, yes.
I doubt he’ll be dumb enough to accept that since it could easily—and did—come from someone else, but no response might make the asshole itchier.
Then I realize I might be able to get more out of him, and I add No thanks to you.
I don’t know what the fuck we’re going to do about him. About the Feds. Or a better question might be, what they plan to do about us. I had a camera running in that hotel room, so everything was recorded. If Alex claims it was self-defense and Nikolai pulled a gun first, I can prove him wrong.
But my gut says he was as derailed by what happened last night as we were. The kid is young, and he made a split-second decision that ultimately was a bad judgment call. I don’t think he knew what he was doing. I don’t know—there was something sort of off-the-books about the whole thing.
I drive back to the cabin. As I pull up and get out, a sickening thought occurs to me. Natasha could’ve tried to run. She didn’t have a vehicle, but she could’ve been ballsy or desperate enough to try to hike out of here to find another cabin or hitchhike on the main forest road.