Susan Warren - In Sheep's Clothing

“Ah, food for the famished!” Roman smiled broadly at the waitress skulking back to them. She balanced a bowl of borscht on her tray.

Ignoring him, she plunked the borscht down on the table. “Twenty rubles.”

Roman peeled a bill off a wad from his pocket. She snatched it from his grip and marched back to the kitchen.

A tendril of steam curled from the borscht like a ribbon and Roman made a show of sniffing. The smell of dill clawed at Vicktor’s taste buds, but he doubted he’d ever have an appetite again after Roman’s news.

The cell phone trilled in his coat pocket. Vicktor dug it out and flipped open the case. “Shubnikov.”

“Get over here, and don’t ever say I never did you any favors.”

“Arkady?”

“That’s still Chief Arkady to you. I’m at Kim-yu-Chena Street, apartment twenty-three, sixth floor. You’d better hurry if you want to beat the rest of your three-letter cohorts here and get a piece of this.”

“Piece of what?” Vicktor asked, wadding a paper napkin in his fist.

“You’re in luck, hotshot. The Wolf has struck again.”

Gracie’s keys shook as she fought with the bolts of her steel door. Flinging herself inside her apartment, she slammed the door shut behind her.

Fatigue buckled her knees and she crumpled hard onto the floor. Sweat poured down her face, into her eyes, down her chest and back. Hiccuping breaths, she fought with her buttons, then shrugged out of her coat and left it in a heap.

Get clean. The thought pushed her forward, beyond exhaustion. Toeing off her shoes, she unbuttoned her dress, let it slide off and left it in a ring. Stumbling down the hall, she whipped her turtleneck over her head and pitched it into the corner. She slapped on the bathroom light, then reached for the faucet and cranked the water on full, hoping the city hadn’t turned off the hot water yet. She ripped off her socks and underclothes and shoved her hands under the spray. Dried blood loosened, dripped off her. Evelyn’s blood. She felt her stomach convulse.

Keep it together, Grace. She fought the shakes as she climbed into the tub, unwilling to wait for the water to warm, and grabbed her soap.

The water turned her skin to ice. Blood edged her fingernails, lined the creases in her hands. She scrubbed until her fingers were raw and wrinkled. Her eyes burned as she watched the water pool red at her feet.

Evelyn. Oh, Evelyn.

A howl, hot and painful, began at Gracie’s toes. By the time it had worked into her chest, she was shaking.

Gripping the sides of the tub, Gracie sank into a ball and wept.

Evelyn deserved better than this. After everything Evelyn had done for God, didn’t that guarantee her some safety? It felt as if Gracie had been kicked in the chest. “Is this how You protect those who serve You?”

What did it mean to be a Christian if she couldn’t count on the Almighty for the one thing she needed from Him—protection? Why had she poured out her life for a God who so obviously didn’t care?

Gracie curled her arms over her head, kneaded them into her wet hair and rocked. Evelyn’s face, white and horrified, stared at her. She pressed her fists into her eyes. She heard herself moan, and gulped it back.

If Evelyn’s sweet life devoted to God couldn’t protect her from a brutal murderer, then where did Gracie, a soiled failure, stand in God’s eyes?

Memory hit her like a fist and she heard laugher.

Tommy’s laughter. She pushed away the feeling of his hands on her body, his roughness. Had she seriously thought that an escape across the ocean might free her from the nightmares?

She got out of the tub, toweled off and grabbed a robe. Shivering, she realized she’d come full circle.

She was alone. Just as she had been the night three years ago when she’d gone home with the campus jock.

No wonder God had abandoned her. What a farce she lived.

Better than anyone, she knew she didn’t deserve God’s forgiveness, let alone His protection.

She pulled the robe tight, trying to warm herself, but it was quite possible she’d never be warm again.

The ringing phone sliced through her despair. Gracie’s heart stopped. Who knew she was here?

No one.

The only people who would call her now were…dead.

She dried her hair with the towel and dashed to her room, panic making her muscles pulse. She tugged her sweater over her head and was pulling up her jeans when the ringing finally stopped, leaving an eerie silence in its wake.

Gracie abandoned her apartment moments later, to the sound of the murderer—she was sure it was him—again ringing her line.

Vicktor flipped on the siren. Somehow the rhythmic whine slowed his heart beat and enabled him to sling his car safely around traffic toward Leningradskaya Street.

The Wolf had returned. Vicktor’s knuckles blanched white on the steering wheel as he tried to corral his racing thoughts. The implications of the Wolf appearing again after nearly a year meant he hadn’t moved on to Moscow, as informants had speculated. Vicktor’s pulse hammered in his ears.

Maybe he could finally put right what went wrong and atone for his mistake. And it all hinged on him finding a woman covered in blood, stumbling around Khabarovsk.

How hard could that be?

Vicktor screeched onto Leningradskaya, nearly dropping his cell phone. “Yanna, you still there?”

“We just got the file from Passport Control, Vicktor. It’s loading. Hold on to your shirt.”

Vicktor slowed and turned into the rutted courtyard of Grace Benson’s apartment. Please, please let her have returned home. He’d spent the last hour walking through the crime scene with Arkady, reliving every crime that bore the Wolf’s mark. The Wolf’s first victim had been a girlfriend of a KGB colonel. Ten years hadn’t erased from Vicktor’s memory her glassy eyes, or the wound across her throat. No forced entry, no obvious struggle. Medical Examiner Comrade Utuzh had dubbed the killer “the Wolf,” like the Siberian dogs who stalked their prey, then pounced without mercy. This was a lone wolf, however—cruel, maybe desperate.

And an American woman might be Vicktor’s only lead. While Vicktor scoured the scene with Arkady, Yanna had pulled the FSB file on the victims—Dr. and Mrs. William Young. Evidently, they had one emergency contact, a woman who just might match the description offered by the local neighborhood watch, an elderly babushka sitting outside the apartment building. Vicktor had tracked down the American’s address, and after calling her flat three times, he’d had to concede that Miss Grace Benson was not going to answer.

But…maybe she was holed up inside, hiding. He eased his car over a pothole as he struggled to think like an American.

“Yanna?”

“The file is still loading,” Yanna snapped. “That’s what we get when the government siphons funds for parades instead of equipment.”

Apparently Yanna still nursed wounds over the city’s penchant to re-do the streets every time Putin came to town, leaving her with ancient paperweights for computers. No wonder she did so much of her work at home.

Vicktor softened his tone. “I’m sorry, I’m just in a hurry.”

“Blond, five foot two, green eyes.”

“Thanks, Yanna. You’re a prize.”

“I forgive you.”

Five minutes later he was leaning on the American’s doorbell. “I know you’re in there,” he muttered to the closed door. “I see the footprints.” Her steps were outlined in mud, and a wad of fresh dirt stuck out from a groove in the metal door. She’d scuffed her shoes stumbling over the frame.

No answer.

He buzzed the neighbor. A wide-faced babushka cracked open her door and peeked her nose over the chain.