Page 94 of Kings of Cruelty

“Yeah. We’re fucked,” I answer.

TWENTY-FOUR

Sierra

Yuriand I stare at his phone. It’s still displaying the message Nikolai had sent.

Don’t come back.

We’re sitting on a small bench outside of the university’s tech building. There’s a small poster on the nearby bulletin board with a black and white picture of James’s face, asking anyone with information on his disappearance to come forward. The first time I’d seen the poster I’d felt a small thrill, mixed in with the panic.

Now, I’m more concerned about this single line Nikolai had texted.

“You think it’s about…” I motion vaguely in the direction of the bulletin board.

“No,” Yuri answers, still scowling. “He wouldn’t?—”

His phone buzzes, and a new text from Nikolai appears.

It’s safe. Come home.

I frown at it. It’s only been half an hour since the first one, and something just doesn’t feel right. I glance at Yuri, whose expression of confusion and wariness mirrors my own.

“Call him,” I suggest to Yuri.

Yuri bites his lip and shakes his head. “No. This isn’t how he’d do things.” He gets up and extends his hand to me. “We need to get out of here. If I am paranoid, that’s fine.”

I let him help me up and nod. “Better safe than sorry. But where should we go?”

Yuri’s phone buzzes again, this time with a call from somebody with a Cyrillic name.Stepan, I think it says.

He answers it warily. “Yes?” His eyes widen after he hears the responding voice. “Kotya! What happened?” he asks in Russian.

Before I can react, he continues to speak in rapid Russian that I can’t understand—but this time, I don’t particularly care even though the feeling of dread I’d felt is racing down my spine.

Yuri leads me in the direction of the parking lot, and his expression darkens as he’s on the phone.

Fuck.

We stop at his car and he motions for me to get inside. As soon as he starts the car, Yuri connects the call to the car’s speakers.

“I put you on speaker. We can meet you somewhere,” Yuri says in English. “The one restaurant, or?—”

“No,” Konstantin answers. “Nowhere my father would know. We need to lay low. But…” he curses. “He has all of our safe houses. Between him and Nikolai’s father, and the computers at the house…”

His father? I’m missing half the conversation, but it’s clear whatever’s going on, it’s dire.

“My laptop is with me,” I say, already rummaging around in my bag to pull it out. “Okay, I have a list of my father’s safe houses. These aren’t on that piece of shit laptop you gave me towork on, and the encrypted drive with that info is somewhere safe, right?”

“In Kotya’s safe,” Nikolai confirms, and his voice is strange.

“Okay, then…” I work through my own layers of passwords, and there’s something incredibly rewarding about being able to offer something. “My father’s office? Or one of his other safe houses.”

“His office,” Yuri says as he pulls onto the highway. “The one with the secret code on the back of the photo.”

I give him a confused look. “What? There was no…Oh. You’re joking.”

Konstantin curses. “No joking. Just get there. And figure out how we get Nikolai medical treatment.”

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