Page 30 of Sheltering Hollis

Still reeling from getting finger-banged, I tried to behave. I probably should be concerned about myself that seeing Dimitri kill someone turned me on. Somehow, it didn’t make me that worried.

As we approached the narrow street, the neon flamingo in the window flickered ominously, casting an eerie pink glow over the darkened street. This was where Gregor claimed the doctor waited, the drop-off point.

Luka, Dimitri, and I moved silently, our footsteps barely audible over the distant sounds of the city. Tension coiled in my stomach as we moved towards the door. It was hard to believe that I was here at all. In some ways, I felt like I was floating along in another life, another body—the whole thing, a movie playing out on a screen.

“Are you sure about this? You could stay in the car with Luka.” Dimitri’s voice was low, his concern evident despite his steely exterior.

I nodded, my resolve hardening with each passing second. “I need to do this. For closure.” I wasn’t naïve enough to believe that Rodriguez wouldn’t set up another location, but at least he would be slowed down. That would be something. And this man – well, at least he would be gone. That had to count. It counted to me.

Dimitri placed a reassuring hand on my shoulder. “Let’s see this through together.”

The building loomed ahead, its façade worn and weathered. The neon flamingo was garish, its light dancing across the wet pavement. Memories of that night threatened to overwhelm me—the cold hands that grabbed me, the feeling of utter helplessness. But I pushed them aside, focusing on the present.

We approached the door, its peeling paint just a trick, makeup to disguise a well-used location. It wasn’t neglect; it was purposeful. I suddenly wished for a can of gasoline to burn it down— Dimitri signaled us to halt, his eyes scanning the surroundings. “We need to be quick. He’s not expecting us, but we can’t afford to be careless.”

Luka moved to the side, his gun ready, while Dimitri placed his hand on the doorknob. With a swift motion, he pushed it open, and we slipped inside.

The interior was dimly lit, and the air was stale and suffocating. The sounds of the city faded away, replaced by the oppressive silence of the building. We moved cautiously, our footsteps muffled by the worn carpet. Each creak of the floorboards set my nerves on edge, but I forced myself to remain calm and focused.

As we made our way down the narrow hallway, a faint light emanated from a room at the end. I could hear the murmur of a television, the low hum of a man lost in his own world. The doctor thought he was safe here in his little haven of depravity.

The doctor looked up, his eyes widening in shock and confusion. He had no time to react before Luka had him pinned against the wall, Dimitri’s gun trained on him.

“Hollis,” Dimitri said, his voice steady but urgent. “Is this him?”

The doctor’s eyes met mine, and I saw the flicker of recognition, the dawning realization of who I was. His expression shifted from confusion to fear.

“You,” he stammered, his voice a mix of anger and panic. “What do you want?”

“That’s him.” I wrapped my arms around myself.

He struggled against Luka’s grip, but it was futile. The power dynamics had shifted, and for the first time, he was the powerless one. “Gregor set me up,” he spat, desperation creeping into his tone. “You think you’ll get away with this?”

“We already have,” Luka replied, his voice deadly calm. He moved away, shoving the man against the wall. Dimitri didn’t hesitate to fire. This time, it didn’t surprise me so much. The two men looked at him in disgust.

“Alright, malysh. Let’s go.”

Loading the body took longer this time. The back entrance was inaccessible by the larger car that we had brought, so we’d had to park just at the end of it. Luka huffed and puffed along the darkened corridor, the doctor dangling over his shoulder like a grain sack. Dimitri scolded him after he switched spots in the car.

“Getting slow Luka. Got to get back to cross fit.”

“Fuck you. You can carry the next one,” Luka said crossly.

“I’ll do you a solid, and we can split it,” Dimitri conceded.

Dimitri had told me that they had a plan to kill Markovich and dump the bodies. I didn’t bother asking about the logistics. I trusted him to handle that.

Forty-five minutes later, I watched the two of them chuckling as they hefted the bodies into a car outside the very warehouse that I’d been taken from. They’d obviously set everything up in advance. I caught a glimpse of bricks of something, money, and then Dimitri stabbed one of the bodies a few extra times, wiped the knife, and tossed it on the floor.

I watched curiously as they arranged everything, and we were all back in the car, speeding along the road. Dimitri and Luka both had some seriously bloody shirts and hands — I couldn’t even imagine the vehicle. They wiped down with a hotel towel, but they still seemed messy and stained.

“All good?” I asked, with a quirk of my eyebrow, looking at Dimitri skeptically. It seemed indiscreet and not like the crime shows, slopping blood everywhere. Wouldn’t they get caught? Oh, wait … could I get caught? What would Olive do if I was in a Columbian prison? “What if we get caught?”

“Easy, nobody is getting caught,” he chuckled darkly. “We’ve got this covered. Also, it’s Colombia, not the States. Those are cartel members in the end. Looks like a deal gone bad. Rodriguez wasn’t too smart letting me know where his cameras and security were.” He smirked. “Now it just looks like he was paying these clowns off. Drugs, money.” He shrugged. “Should work out just fine. I got a few emails in Makarovich’s system, too, to cover bases. Sent off my apologies to Rodriguez that we had a family emergency.”

“Okay, I trust you.” I looked away, towards the window and the streets passing by. While I was okay with what we had done, the blood was admittedly making me a little queasy. I wasn’t sure where we were going, but Luka seemed to be heading out of town. Remarkably, I trusted Dimitri in my life. There was no way that he didn’t know what he was doing, even if I didn’t understand everything. He’d done this shit before, and it seemed like he thought of everything.

Eventually, we pulled past a gate and onto a tarmac, where a plane was waiting. Suddenly, my stomach was lit with butterflies. “We’re leaving? Now?”

---