Page 51 of Blood Mosaic

“You’re a good daughter.”

That was debatable, but she didn’t have time to argue. “Thank you.”

“Be careful. I’m going to drive away so they don’t look at me too long. I’ll just circle around and wait at the front of the road.”

“Thank you.”

She had pulled her sweater out of her bag and used it to cover her hair, which was far more visible than she’d like in the moonlight.

Tatyana hurried over the rough ground on the side of the neighbor’s house and ducked under their clothesline until she made it to the back stairs of the old three-story house.

Climbing up, she tried to be as silent as possible to avoid waking the neighbors, and eventually she made it to their back balcony and the kitchen door where she saw her mother snoozing under a lamp with her glasses falling down her nose.

Tatyana eased the door open, noticing the shadow at the front door of the house.

She tiptoed over to her mother and bent down, touching her knee and putting a finger to her lips when Anna’s eyes flew open.

“Mama,” she whispered, “I can’t tell you what’s happening right now, but you have to trust me. Grab a few things, all the cash you have, and we need to go out the back door. Now.”

Anna’s eyes went to the silhouette of the man standing outside the front door, and then she looked back at Tatyana, nodded, and silently stood.

They droveout of the city on back roads, avoiding the motorways until they were well away from Sevastopol and heading northeast.

When they were past Simferopol, Anna finally spoke. “It’s another two hours to the farm. Are you going to tell me what’s going on?”

“My new boss is not who I thought he was.” Hopefully that would be enough.

Of course it wasn’t.

“What a surprise. The wealthy, handsome man who buys you designer coats and Italian leather bags isn’t a typical businessman. I am so shocked.”

“Mama, can you not?”

“I don’t know what you expected. First you take this very strange job working for that crazy girl who didn’t even let you go into the office, and then when she stops paying you, you find theone who helped her start her company and expect him to be an honest person.”

“Yes.” Tatyana sighed. “This is obviously all my fault.”

“If you had applied for a job at the city office, none of this would have happened.”

“If I’d applied for a job at the city office,” Tatyana snapped, “the farm we’re driving to right now would belong to a developer.”

That shut her mother up.

So far the escape had been seamless, which made Tatyana somehow even more nervous. Her mother had cooperated. So far.

Anna was suspicious by nature, so disaster never really took her by surprise. She’d grabbed Pushkin and put him in his carrier, taken the backpack she kept in the pantry for emergencies, and retrieved all her cash from the garish pink shoebox she’d hidden in her closet.

Tatyana had grabbed her backups, a change of clothes, some extra underwear, and nothing else. She dumped the fancy leather bag that Oleg had given to her, suspecting that it could have a tracker, along with all the clothes she’d brought from Odesa.

She pulled on a black hoodie to cover her hair, a ratty old barn coat, and her baggiest jeans. By the time she and her mother were sneaking out the back, she felt like even if Oleg stepped right in front of her, he wouldn’t recognize her.

Then again, maybe he could track her by smell.

“Did you just… smell me?”

“You’re wearing some fragrance. I like it.”

“I didn’t put on perfume before dinner.”

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