Page 61 of In Her Blood
She turned, catching the eye of a man in a vest that indicated he worked perimeter duty. “What is it?”
He approached and held out a tablet. “We scoured the footage from between when Viktor’s crew arrived earlier and when the Molotov went through the window.”
Evelina pulled the device closer and realized he already had some footage queued up. She tapped the button and watched in anger as two men approached the gate and one proceeded to reference some kind of note before inputting whathadto be their security code—because the gate swung right open. No muss, no fuss. The two rushed through, disappearing from the camera’s line of sight.
Wait, two?Both men had carried bags over their backs of similar size. But only one Molotov had come through thewindow. Her eyes widened and she practically shoved the device back at the guard. “Forward that footage to Artem’s private email,” she said. She had her own, but she wasn’t giving it out so easily. “Do we know where the other guy went?”
The guard’s jaw tightened and he shook his head. “We’ve been too low on resources to scour the feeds like that.”
Evelina threw her hands up, her voice rising accordingly as her temper flared. “So, somewhere in this massive fucking house there’s probably another fire we haven’t even found yet because everyone’s focused on theobviousone, and you’re not eventryingto locate it? Is that what you’re telling me?”
Several people nearby stopped what they were doing and looked over.
The guard paled. “I— We— It’s just that—”
She raised a hand and silenced him. “We have too many wounded to properly evacuate if this shit gets worse right now.” She raised her voice. “I need spare hands to spread out and find that second fire!”
Chapter twenty
Taking a Moment
Sunday felt like ithad taken three years off her life, but it was finally fucking over. Technically, and hopefully in every meaningful way. She still needed to wind down enough to actually sleep.
Evelina tipped her head back and closed her eyes, trying to let the spray from the practically antique showerhead soothe her. Even figuring out a single night’s sleepingarrangements had been too much of a headache. She didn’t want to think about any of it.
She didn’t know how to make her brain shut off.
Her throat swelled with another rush of emotion—sadness, guilt, oppressively familiar grief, rage, helplessness, all of it bundled into one—as the acrid stench of the freshly extinguished fire burned through her memory. What the fire hadn’t directly destroyed had been mostly lost to the relief efforts. Between the flame, smoke, water, and apparently necessary structure destruction that came with fighting fire, the Nikolaev house was unlivable. In a grand, ironic twist, only the basement had sustained sparse enough damage that it could continue to function.
Evelina pushed out a hard breath. Was this really the same day she’d woken up in that hotel room in Fort Wayne feeling light, optimistic, and something akin to happy?
There is good news.
She repeated the reminder to herself as she leaned forward, fingers digging into the old tile on the wall.There is good news.It was true.
She’d set her pride and her genetic stubbornness aside long enough to listen to Pavel’s advice and managed a rushed evacuation. Some people tripped, some people were bruised, possessions were left behind that live-in staff would have preferred to keep, but thepeoplemade it out. There was even still hope that some of the smaller things would prove salvageable in the light of day.
And, well, if maybe not all the people had made it out and maybe that was on purpose, Evelina didn’t count that as a loss,either. If Viktor ended up being the only death that resulted from Pyotr’s latest temper-tantrum, it served both of them right. She only wished they’d caught the actual arsonists.
Her fingers dug into the worn grout lines of the tile. Still, it was good they had heavy influence in the responding fire crew. It was good that nearly all the people on-site, if only for their own reasons and even if temporarily, had played along and supported her blended truths.But it was all bullshit.
All of it. Because none of it should have happened.
“Easy, now,” Otto murmured in her ear, suddenly curling a hand around one of her extended arms as his other arm looped around her waist. He pulled her away from the wall, into his naked and already wet body, and bent his head lower to press a kiss to her neck. “Prosto dyshi.”
Her lungs expanded as if she’d been struggling to draw breath before and she sank into his hold. Maybe she had. Her head was too full.
Otto released her wrist in favor of trailing his fingers up her abdomen, over her chest, and pressing his palm between her breasts. “Slower, baby. Deeper breaths.”
Evelina let her eyes close and allowed herself merely to follow along, to focus on the moment and the sensations and the weight of his palm moving with the rise-and-fall of her lungs.
He pressed a kiss to her hair. “That’s better. Good girl.”
She found a smile. “This is way nicer than when you just abruptly haul me out of my freak-out showers while you’re fully dressed.”
He snorted and the hand over her hip gripped her tighter. “Yeah.” His breath practically disappeared into the tinystreams from the shower that continued to rain down on them. “But it’s more dangerous.”
Brief, soft laughter trickled past her lips and Evelina deliberately rocked her ass backward, grinding it against his arousal. “Some danger is fun.”
