Page 16 of Eyes in the Shadows

The refrigerator and freezer stand in the middle of a wall of cabinets with no handles, their dark finish the same, making them almost indistinguishable. I grab an unmarked glass bottle from the freezer, uncork it with my teeth and take a deep drink. The taste is familiar, smooth, and I welcome the burn in my throat.

I let my stomach settle around the alcohol, take one more drag, and breath out in relief as my face starts to warm. My hand grips the neck of the bottle and I start to lift to pour some of it on my wound—force of habit—before I remember this is not the field. The kit has disinfectant, I do not need to waste the best potato vodka from my home country.

To offset the dehydrating effect of alcohol, I pour a glass of water and take it with me to sit at the ornate glass table near the windows that easily fits ten. After some spritzes of hydrogen peroxide and a few minutes applying pressure over a gauze pad, the bleeding slows enough so I can work. The first stitch is the hardest, mostly a mental hurdle, easier done with a little liquid bravery.

This injury is infuriating. It is infuriating because it was avoidable. The gunman met his own untimely end with a knife to the throat, but James could have easily picked him off long before he had the chance to aim his gun at me.

Though, truthfully, he was in my line of sight the whole time, and within knife-throwing distance. Maybe it is not completely James’s fault.

I have not stayed alive so long by ignoring my own shortcomings, few as they are. The truth is, I have gotten complacent knowing he has my back. But the trouble is, I need to be able to trust my team. A man is only as good as his word in our line of work, and James said he would clear the second floor.

I hear the front door open and the Englishman call into the house, “Dimitri?”

“Here,” I respond, pulling the string through the last stitch I will have to make. I work the curved needle under the suture to tie it off, a difficult task with fingers slippery from blood.

Wesley walks into the kitchen with his usual carefree manner, laptop tucked under his arm. That thing is a permanent fixture, an extension of his body in away similar to my knives. He stops by the refrigerator and I glance his way to see his stare locked on the pile of bloody gauze in front of me at the table.

He is deadly enough—we have sparred plenty of times for me to know that he deserves my respect—but he spends less time using those sparring skills he practices. His work is mostly done with the blue light of his screen reflecting on his face while he makes this technology bend to his will. It is truly a sight.

And he is many things, including a crucial member of our small team, but I am never quite sure if ‘good with blood’ is one. We have been on enough missions at this point that he should be used to the sight of me cleaning myself up.

I hear the soft clack as the laptop hits the surface of the counter, then see him rest his upper body on his forearms as they strain against his shirt. He was not exactly scrawny before, but he has put on some muscle since we formed our team. Those ridiculous tattoos that wind down his arms are slightly distorted from the thicker limbs and veins. I credit myself with this. As James is closer to my size, he has always been a stronger fighter than Wesley, but it is still my job as the strongest of us to push the others.

“Can’t be that bad if you’re still sitting upright,” Wesley says with a smile curling his lips.

He smiles too much, like a woman or a child. It made me suspicious when we first met. James, too, though I think that is just an American thing.

“A scratch,” I grumble, clipping the string and placing the medical scissors back in the metal box.

“That’s good to hear.”

“I should not be scratched at all,” I point out. Our research was thorough, the meeting and setup went to plan, the execution should have been easy. “What happened? Where is he?”

“You know I don’t like to speculate…”

I glare at him as I tear a piece of tape with my teeth, then place it over the edge of the gauze pad. “Tell me.”

“I think someone walked in on him.Exterminus interruptus, as it were.”

I curse. “How could this have happened?”

“Well,” he begins, pushing himself up off the counter, “we don’tknowthat it did.”

I eye him. Wesley’s unwillingness to speak in absolutes or believe assumptions is one of his most frustrating qualities in conversation. An asset when he is triple checking everyone’s work, though. “But you think he was compromised?”

“I do.”

I swallow some of my anger and shift in my chair to face him more fully, now that the wound is taken care of. “Does he need backup?”

“He said he was handling it.”

Good. I would not bother concerning myself with it, then. “We lost Rossi. We need to regroup. We are back to our first square.”

“Square one,” Wesley corrects.

“That is what I said.”

His lips twitch and he grabs his laptop. “I’ll put out some feelers and see if I can find anything that’ll help us nail down their next move.”

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