Page 41 of His Favorite Color is Blood
Grim stiffened and pushed the door open, letting out stale air. “No. The people who lived there ... they were bums. They didn’t pay for electricity on time and used candles during a crystal meth party. The house burned down in the end,” he said, walking into a tidy, sparsely decorated living room. The floor was some kind of brown resin covered with a withered rug, but the room was furnished with a black sofa and a coffee table. There were also some books on a block of shelves and a few photographs of landscapes on the walls. This place didn’t reflect who Grim was either. It was almost as if he refused to leave an imprint of his personality even in the most intimate of spaces.
“This isn’t your family home, is it?” Misha stroked Grim’s neck, trying not to think about the weird tingly feeling in his stump, which was still numb from the earlier surgery.
Grim shook his head and showed Misha around, walking into a room with a big bed on a black frame and a set of linens folded on top of the comforter, as if this were a hotel. “No. My old home is long gone. And it wasn’t much to look at anyway. This is all mine.”
Misha smiled. “Finally, brought to the prince’s castle. Or … the dragon’s lair? Where he hoards all his precious things?”
Grim smirked. “You’d be surprised. I’m too stingy to gather things I don’t need,” he said, showing Misha a small bathroom. It wouldn’t be wide enough for a wheelchair, but it had a tub and everything else one might need.
“I meant myself,” Misha said flatly. Maybe he wasn’t that precious after all.
Grim blinked. “Oh ... okay? I thought you meant like ... clothes or ... a stamp collection?”
Misha shook his head. It looked like his attempts at flirting weren’t hitting their target, so he’d better shut up. Chatting to horny guys on a webcam was much easier.
Grim nuzzled his jaw. “You don’t belong in a collection. You’re one of a kind.”
Misha’s insides got all warm at Grim’s words, and he took his time enjoying the smell of Grim’s cologne. “Flattery.”
“Maybe,” said Grim, carrying Misha past the kitchen and outside again. It was much more pleasant without the stale air they needed to get rid of before the night came. “We will think how to make the house more accessible in the future.”
“I liked being so close to nature. Even if it ended so horribly.” Misha looked to a squirrel climbing up a tall tree. “I’ve been locked up for so long, I can still hardly believe I’m out.”
Grim squeezed Misha in his arms and slowly lowered them to the grass. It looked so fresh and vibrant, and Misha still couldn’t fathom that he could lie here however long he pleased.
“Why are they after you?” asked Grim once he placed Misha on the ground, careful of the bandaged stump.
Misha took a deep breath, knowing that it was time to come clean. “I stole a flash drive from Gary. I think it has some insider intel on the organization. But they might not even know about that. Before I tell you, I … I just want you to know that it’s fine if you decide I’m too much of a burden. You’ve got your life, and I get it. I appreciate all that you’re doing for me, and I don’t expect it to last forever.”
Grim’s face fell, and he looked straight at Misha, handsome like a 1940s movie star with his slicked-back hair and masculine features. “It’s not fine. Don’t lie to me.”
“Okay, I wouldn’t feel good about it, but I’ve had worse things happen to me than being abandoned. I just don’t want you to feel obliged to help me.” He picked at a few strands of grass, loving the fresh smell of pine around them.
Grim picked up Misha’s hand and traced the inside of his palm with his fingertips. “You’re not a dog. I’m not gonna abandon you. I will always stay with you.”
Misha got that happy tingle in his chest again despite knowing that one day Grim could still change his mind no matter how much he believed what he was saying now. “You’re very sweet for a man who flays people.”
Grim laughed loudly. “That’s because I only flay people I don’t like. And those guys who came after you, they were the worst. I mean ... attacking a disabled guy?”
“Soo … I know why they are after me, and it’s not just out of revenge for leaving with the enemy. When I was seventeen, I was really good with code, you know, like a hacker. I’d probably be able to do a lot even now, but I’d be rusty with new systems. I used the deep web a lot. Do you know what that is?”
Grim’s brows shot up. “Sure.”
Of course, Grim would know. He was a professional killer. “So between all the offers of drugs for sale, and other shady stuff, I found this … riddle. I was attracted to it, because I really like puzzles, and there was supposed to be a great prize for whoever solved it, and it just was thismystery. At first, I had to break a simple numerical code to get the next clue, and when I did that, I had to make a phone call, then solve another numerical puzzle that was a mixture of a coding language and a maths problem. That went on for a few weeks. It was …intense.”
Grim petted Misha’s shoulder and pulled off the band, loosening his hair. It stayed slightly upright, but Grim started combing it free from the form it froze in. “So ... you believed some random guy on the dark web that you would win something? I mean ... that’s a shady place. What was the prize that you wanted it so much?”
Misha sighed, knowing he sounded naive, but he hadn’t been that experienced back then. “I didn’t know what the prize would be, I got lost in the chase. I felt like I was achieving something. I cracked codes. For one of the clues, I had to go into the kitchen of a Korean restaurant and pull a flash drive out of a freaking fish. You lose perspective, you feel like you’re part of something great, like you are about to become part of some Super-Mensa organization. And I didn’t have much growing up, so it was thrilling and addictive.”
Grim kissed the back of Misha’s head, twisting all the long hair around his hand and untangling it gently.
“As one of my last clues, I found a lot of foreign money—dollars—and a phone number. I called it, and a man picked up, congratulating me on having a unique mind, amazing abilities, blah, blah.” Misha slouched. He had been such an idiot to believe that crap, no matter how many mathematical problems he could solve. “He said they would pay me a lot of money to hack into their system so that I could help them find any holes in their security. But because they were so super-secretive, they said I would have to do it at their headquarters. I felt so appreciated, so proud, that I wasn’t thinking straight. For once, I achieved something, and I believed that there was more out there for me. They were talkingbigmoney for this service. The kind of money with which I could leave for Moscow, or wherever else, start a life that wasn’t about working at the salt-extraction facility, eating cup noodles, and spending nights in Internet cafes.”
Grim kissed Misha’s shoulder and loosely tied his hair into a low ponytail. “What happened?” he whispered, as if there was anyone here to eavesdrop on them.
“I did it. I traveled to their headquarters, got treated to nice food, and they even offered me a prostitute as some sort of perk. I err … declined. It was getting weird, but I sank into the task. I could feel it under my skin that something was wrong, but when I saw what it was that they wanted me to protect with a security system, there was no going back. It was a closed network, so I couldn’t send a message out while I was there.” Nausea hit Misha at the memory of endless videos of men, women, children, and animals violated, tortured, raped, and mutilated in horrific ways.
He never forgot those images. They still haunted him in the relative safety of Gary’s apartment, in nightmares that he hurriedly drew in sketchbooks that Gary always took away once there were no more empty pages left. Misha didn’t know what happened to them afterward, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know.
