Gregg Hurwitz - The Survivor

Wendy called after him, but his ears were ringing and he kept on, moving mechanically, almost on autopilot. He banged through the screen into the front yard just as Janie picked up; not trusting the house line, he’d called her cell.

“The names on the list,” Nate said. “Those people, they’re all witnesses to a drunk-driving accident that killed some people. Shevchenko’s daughter was behind the wheel.”

“Holy crap, ” Janie said.

“I’m going to Abara. Keep lights on in the house, make sure it looks like you’re home. Wait for me. I don’t know how long it’ll take with Abara, but I’ll come for you well before the deadline.”

“Wait-what if Shevchenko’s men catch wind of you going to the FBI right now?”

“I’m covered — I told him I was going to see Abara today. That it was part of my plan to get to the safe-deposit box.” Something seemed odd outside, but when Nate paused and looked up the street, it was peaceful and still. No suspicious cars. No loitering Ukrainians. He shoved the car key into the lock. “Keep the gun close,” he said.

She agreed and hung up. He swung the driver’s door open and was about to climb in when it occurred to him what felt strange about the neighborhood: It was perfectly still. When he’d waited at the front door earlier, traffic had been a constant background buzz. And now not a car. He shut the door and moved slowly to the center of the asphalt.

He looked up the street. Then down.

A few orange and yellow leaves scraped the sidewalk, the only movement.

A roar of engines shattered the silence. With stunned amazement Nate watched black SUVs screech into view from every side street, cascading in synchrony like stunt cars in a commercial, one after another, a ballet. They hurtled forward, sliding to within feet, corralling him, and then there were shouting voices and sunglasses and pointed guns.

Agent Abara broke through the vanguard, reaching Nate first, spinning him neatly to the ground, knee in back, zip ties on his wrists, frisking him high and low. “Nate Overbay, you are being taken into custody.”

“For what ?”

“Issuing a terrorist threat against a United States airliner.” Fisting Nate’s shirt between the shoulder blades and grabbing his belt in the back, Abara hoisted him painfully to his feet. “Forget third base, Overbay. Now you’re gonna get fucked.”

Shoved from behind, Nate stumbled and tripped, disappearing into the dark interior of a waiting SUV.

When Pavlo entered the kitchen, Nastya was eating red caviar on borodinski, wiping crumbs of the black bread from her glossy lips with the back of her hand. Dima and Valerik sat with her at the table, shots of cloudy horseradish vodka set before them. She was in the middle of a story, her graceful arms gesturing comically, and the men were laughing, basking in her radiance. A black halter top and miniskirt displayed her woman’s body, and yet she was still so much a girl, telling tales through a full mouth, laughing with abandon, wearing sunglasses even in the house, even at dusk. A razor-blade pendant, made of thick blunted steel, dangled on a black cord, resting against her flat chest.

Misha remained by himself at the counter, sipping tarkhun, the cheery bright green tarragon soda failing to lighten his dark expression. The fingers of one hand shifted and rubbed a set of matte-black handcuffs, working them like a rosary. He stared straight through a Russian soap opera on the wall-mounted TV, his thoughts as impossible to gauge as ever.

Six and a half hours to wait, and they would have resolution with Nate Overbay, one way or another. They would have the list, those names, and shortly thereafter seven hearts would stop beating and all would rest right in the world again.

Pavlo paused in the doorway, taking in the sight of his daughter. Young enough to be his granddaughter and yet ageless, timeless, the kind of girl-woman he’d chased around Kiev when he was twelve and twenty and forty. She was framed against a wall of plate glass that showed off the dizzying view. The lights of the Strip twinkled below, the wattage of Sunset Boulevard waging war with the encroaching night, whispering its age-old promise that it was not yet time to sleep, that there was more fun still to be squeezed from the residue of the day. Youth, beauty, and dangerous promises, all there in a single snapshot. Had there ever been a better encapsulation of the City of Angels?

Misha noticed Pavlo first and stood, the others following suit. Nastya smiled and removed her sunglasses, a sign of respect. The light limned the fringe of her face, the feathered seam of scar tissue along her ear in sudden, evident relief. He recalled coming into the back room of the club where she’d fled that night after the accident, her panicked, babbling phone call still echoing in his head. She’d been hunched over as if vomiting into a friend’s maroon T-shirt, and it was only as he’d stepped closer that he’d realized that the cloth was not maroon at all, but had started the evening as a white undershirt. At the sound of his voice, she’d looked up, her face hanging off, hinged at one side.

He had known immediately that it was not severe. He had seen and inflicted injuries such as these and knew the ways that flesh could tear and mend. Her friends were shocked at his collected demeanor as he’d reseated the living mask and bundled her off. Then again, he was not like most fathers.

She’d had the best surgeons, one who’d been brought in to improve a pop star’s nose, and within days the reconstruction had been complete. Swelling had diminished. Purple had faded to tan. Flesh had knit together, leaving only tiny cracks, like etched veins. In short order all that remained was the imprint of the accident at the back of her cheek like a manufacturer’s stamp, a reminder that people were no more than toys that could be broken apart and occasionally, when luck and fate complied, put back together.

“Papa? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, my beauty.” He crossed and took her face in his rough hands, holding it delicately, like a bird, kissing her softly on the scar. Nastya squeezed him in a hug, her mane of hair redolent of French cigarettes. A lovely smell, the closest thing to home these days.

Shotglasses clinked, and Dima cracked a joke, and there was laughter, muted in the soft glow of the kitchen. A haven up here in the Hollywood Hills, safe from the chill of evening and the world outside with its fangs and claws. Even Misha smiled and hoisted his glass in a toast, his boyish cheeks tightening into ovals.

Then Nastya stiffened in Pavlo’s arms, all bone and angles.

Pavlo pulled back from their embrace, followed her gaze.

The television. A commercial. Plump diapered baby sitting in a car tire, floating safely along.

He looked back at his daughter. Frozen with remorse and horror.

The TV shut off-Yuri had the remote. Then the men faded from the room like wraiths, and there remained only the sound of Nastya’s hard breaths.

“I forget it, like a dream. A drunken dream. But then images come back, here and there.” Nastya’s chest heaved. “The baby-”

“You hit no one. You were at the club all night. The Jag was stolen from valet there. You were struck in the face with bottle during fight on dance floor.”

“I know,” she said. “But no. This is you and me now. We can talk-”

“There is no need for talk. There is only what happened. You hit no one. You were at the club all night. The Jag was stolen-”

A thin, high-pitched noise escaped her throat, a stifled scream. Tears streaming down her face, she shifted her weight from boot to boot, as if the parquet flooring burned her feet. “I need to say the words. I need to know what I did. I need to know who I am.”