Page 104 of Devil's Thirst

He shrugs noncommittally. “I had somewhere to be.”

I smack his arm, ignoring the snicker coming from my husband, then carefully remove the tape covering the poor woman’s mouth. “Are you okay?”

“I’m so sorry. This is all a big mixup. I thought the apartment belonged to a friend who was out of town.”

“You steal shit from your friends when they’re away?” Sante prods, his voice dripping with suspicion.

“I wasn’t stealing,” she shoots back defensively. “I just needed a place to stay.”

“Ah, so you’re a squatter, not a thief.”

“Sante,” I say in warning. “You’re not even letting her explain.”

His incredulous stare balks at me for giving her story any weight.

My returning glare reminds him not to be a dick.

He grimaces, then makes aby all meansmotion, allowing her a chance to speak.

“I have a photographer friend from school who used to live here. I didn’t realize he’d moved, but I knew he was on shoot in Iceland, so I was hoping to use his place while he was gone. I would have checked with him, but the shoot is remote, and he couldn’t be reached.”

“You don’t look homeless,” Tommy notes without inflection.

“I’m not.” She juts her chin out a hair. “I needed to lay low for a bit.”

Sante suddenly takes more interest, his eyes narrowing. “Lay low sounds an awful lot like hiding. Who are you running from?”

The woman’s eyes squeeze shut with frustration before reopening. “It doesn’t matter. Look, I made a mistake, and I’m really sorry, but no harm was done. Can you please just let me go?” Her genuine fear on the subject is obvious, and I know that will only make the guys more insistent.

“Who?” Sante demands.

“You wouldn’t know him,” she says in exasperation. “And trust me, you wouldn’t want to if you did. He’s dangerous—that’s why I needed a place he would never look.”

Tommy pulls a gun out of thin air and points it right in her face. “Who?”

The silence around us thickens to a suffocating tension.

“Who … who are you?” the woman says in a breathless pant, terror bleaching her already pale skin to a pasty white.

Tommy responds, seemingly unaffected. “The last person you’ll ever see if you don’t give me a name.”

I know Tommy won’t shoot her. I’ve started to understand the way he acts and thinks, and I’m pretty sure he simply sees the gun as an effective way to move this conversation along. But I feel for the girl because she doesn’t know that, and she’s clearly terrified.

She squeezes her eyes tightly shut again. This time, tears roll down her freckled cheeks, and she whispers, “His name is Biba.”

The words hang in the air before a curse from Sante blasts through the air like gunfire.

“Fuck!”

I remember that name. He’s one of the Russians.

Why would this girl be running from the Russian mob?

I stare at Sante, pleading in my eyes.Please, help her.

He glowers, teeth gritted as he shakes his head at me. “What am I supposed to do, Mel? We don’t know what the hell she’s gotten herself into. This could draw us into a full-blown war.”

“We can’t send her out on her own. I know what it’s like to feel hunted and alone. Please help her.”

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