Page 7 of Killer Love

The three of them run off into the snow, leaving my brother and me alone to breathe the fierce winter blowing in from the large hole.

“You’re bleeding…” Yuri points to my side.

I raise my arm and feel the sharp pain fire throughout my back. “It’s just a scratch,” I say, looking at my shirt. “Are you hit?”

He stares back at me with worry and shakes his head. “No.”

“Then, I did my job.”

Yuri breathes a laugh. “Is that all you care about?”

I pick us both up off the floor without answering and wander over to the blast in the wall. There’s no sign of anyone. Not even tire tracks in the snow to tell us where they came from or where they’ve gone.

“Markov!” I shout, listening to my voice echo through the darkness. “Markov!”

His groan travels from around the building.

“Over here…”

Yuri follows me outside, and we kneel beside Markov as he sits up in the snow.

His wrinkled eyes jut back and forth, searching for answers that he won’t find. “What the fuck just happened?”

“You didn’t see them?” I ask.

“See who?”

There’s a note pinned to his jacket. I snatch it off and fold it open.

Our man’s life for yours. We’re even.

I hand it to Yuri, and he sighs.

“You’re one lucky old man, Markov,” he jokes. “A few minutes later and he would have been dead.”

“You find out who he works for?” he asks. “I would very much like to have a nice chat with him and the bastards who hit me…”

“Unfortunately, no,” I answer. I hold out my hand and pull Markov to his feet.

“I should have seen them…” He shakes the white snow out of his gray hair. “They were like ghosts.”

“We’ll keep looking,” I say. “No one pulls this shit in Moscow and gets away with it.”

“We should get out of here,” Yuri says. “Send a crew in the morning to clean this place up.”

Markov nods. “I’ll lead it myself…” He looks at me. “Did he bleed?”

“He did.”

“Good.” Markov growls softly. “Blood leaves a trail. We’ll track him down.”

It’s been ages since I’ve seen Markov so pissed off. He’s usually a rather pleasant guy, but I’d never want to be the man who crosses him.

When I was a kid, a boy in my class gave me a black eye. Markov asked what happened when he came to pick me up after school and I pointed the boy out.

This happened on a Friday. On Monday, the boy was gone. His family had left town without a trace. I got up the nerve to ask Markov about it soon after, and he just smiled at me.

I never brought it up again.

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