In spite of wearing a tank top and panties, Katya felt entirely naked in front of this man, a practical stranger. He’d seen her that way already, had been inside her—a place she’d let only a few, very familiar men go. And then he’d apologized for being a jerk, which had momentarily softened her defenses. But they were old, entrenched fortifications, and she reassembled them quickly.
He returned his sweatshirt to her.
“Can I also have some pants?” She pulled the baggy garment over her body, already warmer than she’d been the first time he’d brought her back. Maybe the blood—there’d been more of it this time.
“Pants? Sure.” He rummaged in a bottom drawer, giving her that delicious view of his broad back and meaty, muscular butt.
Heat flared on her cheeks. Yep, she was definitely warmer.
With him momentarily turned away, the sense of privacy from the lack of his intense gaze melted away some of her tension. Intense, yes, but for a man who’d seemed so gruffly in control when she’d appeared in his bathroom, he’d been equally, adorably disoriented when she’d vanished.
Katya dropped onto his bed to pull on a fresh pair of socks. The others she’d worn must still be in the kitchen, where Dariya had pointed them out when Katya had been invisible. Katya smiled down at her feet, awash with affection for the peculiar young woman.
Since they’d moved in, Katya had enjoyed eavesdropping on the pair’s affectionate and yet awkward teasing, as if they weren’t quite sure how to be together. And the strong, capable Nikolai seemed somewhat cowed by Dariya, unwilling to exercise his authority as her guardian.
Every day, Katya observed the girl didn’t go to school, and she brought her ghostly thumb to her mouth to nibble on the nail, though the fidget could bring her no comfort. Why did Nikolai allow his niece to stay home? Katya’s parents had found it more convenient to keep her with them or to take her traveling for their work, which had made for a lonely childhood with only books for company. She’d have done anything to be allowed to march into a classroom every morning.
“Shouldn’t Dariya be going to school?” she blurted.
He spun, a pair of basketball shorts in one hand and sweatpants in the other. In the interest of warmth, she pointed to the pants, even though they would dwarf her.
“You know Dariya?” He glanced down the hall as if Katya might still be a trick, an elaborate spoof orchestrated by his niece.
Katya colored, wishing she could deny her voyeuristic presence in their lives. “Well, I’ve never visited her dreams, if that’s what you mean. But I’ve seen her around, even hung out a bit. We like the same TV shows.”
He raised his eyebrows. “You’ve been watching TV with her?”
“Only sometimes.” Katya shrugged, hoping to imply it wasn’t a big deal to be a third, secret, and spectral roommate.
She reached out to accept the pants, then looked from them to him pointedly and twice before he got the hint and turned around. Maybe it was silly after what they’d done, but in the skin again, her usual inhibitions had returned full force. Maybe even in fuller force, with this man who made her so aware of her body and its new, unfamiliar desires.
As he spun, he crossed his arms over his chest, spreading even wider the muscles of his back. The final time they’d had sex in the dream, he’d rolled her over, parted her legs wide, and driven into her with abandon. None of her lovers had ever taken her like that, so deeply, so thoroughly. She’d simply clung to his massive deltoids, driven her fingertips into them, and let him push her all the way to an orgasm that had actually wiped her mind blank for long, blissful seconds.
“Why TV?” His question startled her out of the memory and sent her heart pounding like she’d been caught in some illicit act.
Belatedly, his question registered. “No one to talk to for more than a year. It gets boring, and lonely.” She threaded her feet into the vast pants. At least they had a drawstring.
He straightened the sparse items on his dresser, a wallet and keys, a charging cellphone, and then spun all at once, not bothering to ask if she’d finished dressing. “So you can see us, even when we can’t see you. You’re here, watching us?”
Lightning fast, his gaze flicked toward the bed, and she knew he was remembering touching himself.
“I’m around. But I have no interest in spying on people in their private moments.” Which was more or less true, except that one very private moment when he’d been so achingly beautiful and so sad, and she’d felt free enough and desperate enough to offer him solace. “I’m constantly trying to get through to someone, to find help getting to Lisko.”
“Right.” Nikolai’s low rumble sent a tingle over her shoulders and down her spine.
“I need you to tell me everything you can about your boyfriend, and everything you remember from that night. What did Lisko look like? What was he wearing? Exactly what did he say to Fedir?”
“I al—”
“Nikolai, who are you talking to?” Dariya called from the hallway. “You liar. There is totally a woman here with you. And you’re going to be late for work.”
“Chert,” he muttered, covering his eyes with his palm. “Just a minute, Dariya,” he called out through the door. Then he peeked through his fingers at Katya. “I’ve got to figure out how to sneak you past her so we can do a little investigating.”
“Out?” Katya’s palms turned sweaty. She pictured the stretch of sidewalk at the apartment building’s entrance, which she’d often stared at longingly through the glass front door since she’d become a ghost. Plenty of times, she could have slipped through when it opened. But fear of a blustery Kiev breeze kept her inside.
What if the wind blew her ghostly particles asunder and they never reformed? A bullet hadn’t erased her consciousness, but could the outdoors? She wasn’t willing to risk it—she had a mission to achieve. “I can’t go out. What if I turn into a ghost again in front of somebody?”
“But don’t you want to help?”
“I’ll help from here. I can hang out with Dariya, keep her company—”
“She’s fifteen.” He sat on the bed and pulled on a pair of boots. “She doesn’t need a babysitter.”
“No. She needs a friend. And we can read her superhero comics, or we’ll do all the leg work for your Femme Fatale story.”
“You know about her comic books and that stupid story?”
Geez, she really did sound like a voyeur.
“It’s not a stupid story,” she said. “Dariya is right. Those women are going to win a Nobel Peace Prize, and you are going to feel like an idiot for calling it a puff piece.”
“You’re kidding.” He took off his glasses and bit the tip. They were trendy and elegant in contrast to his ruggedly handsome face, but when he put them in his mouth like that, he looked so picture perfect she could almost believe he was posing. “They’re just a couple punk rockers hoping to sell records.”
“Sorry to break the news to you, but they’re serious activists. And I happen to know a little bit about the awarding of Peace Prizes. My father is so obsessed with winning one he’s nominated himself twice.”
“Himself?” His mouth split into a grin. “Of course. I can’t believe I didn’t put it together sooner. You’re Mikaiel Dvoynev’s daughter.”
Ugh. She’d been enjoying her anonymity, and now she’d gone and blown it, and to a journalist, no less. “The one and only.”
“I should have seen the resemblance.” Nikolai shook his head, scouring her with his gaze, making her want to disappear again back into her ghost form.
She’d certainly heard that before, usually accompanied by leers. Her former-actress mom had been the model for her father’s nudes. All the men who’d seen Katya naked had commented her breasts were identical to her mother’s.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t look anything like my father.”
Nikolai cocked his head, his eyebrows drawing together, searching her face intently and heightening her urge to disappear.
Escaping was second best to vanishing. She marched to the door. “Introduce me to Dariya. We’ll keep each other company and help you with your research while you look into Fedir’s murder. Deal?”
She didn’t wait for his assent, just yanked the handle, dashed down the hallway, and found the girl sitting cross-legged on the couch reading a Justice League comic book—one an invisible Katya had perused over her shoulder many times. A plate of toast sat on Dariya’s lap. She’d styled her spiky pink hair elaborately, though her bathrobe made it clear she had no intention of going to school.
“Hi, I’m Katya.”
Dariya gave her a once over. “Wow. You’re pretty.” She looked past Katya to where Nikolai had come up behind her. “He’s, like, way too old for you.”
Surprised, Katya turned to face him. “How old are you?”
“Thirty-one. You?”
“Twenty-six.” At least she had been when she’d died. “Or, twenty-seven, I guess.”
“Wow.” Dariya whistled. “Clearly you two discussed all the important things. I hope you at least used a condom.” She took a bite of toast and then talked around it as she chewed. “She is out of your league, Kolya. I hope you can deliver in the bedroom, old man, or she’ll trade you in.”
Katya burst out laughing both at the words and the way Nikolai turned as purple as a beet.
“Hush, girl. Didn’t your mother ever wash your mouth out with soap?”
The girl frowned, tucked her chin, and her lower lip began to tremble. Belatedly, her uncle’s eyes widened as he realized what he’d said. The blue turning storm gray of his irises betrayed his own reserved grief. His splayed hands hung at his side, and his big form remained still, paralyzed.
So Katya went to the girl instead. She might as well make herself useful.
“Shhh.” She sat and gave Dariya a sideways hug. “I know it’s hard. Nikolai told me all about it.”
The girl remained stiff but leaned into Katya. “He did?”
“Yes. I lost the person who loved me most in the world too, about a year ago. It’s hard to heal, to believe we’ll ever be loved like that again.”
Dariya sniffed, whimpered, and threw her arms around Katya. Katya let her own tears for Fedir fall. Death had deprived her of the chance to weep over him.
Nikolai pinched the bridge of his nose, a study in fierce emotion contained by masculine will. Clearly, he didn’t want to join the cry fest.
“Go to work,” Katya said.
“Just tell me the name of the company where Mr. Antipin worked, and I’ll look into the case.”
Mr. Antipin? Why was he being so formal?
“He worked for Novyye Resheniya.”
Dariya pulled back. “Don’t tell me you’re a source. Kolya, it’s unethical to sleep with your source. You have to be objective to evaluate her reliability.”
Katya shook her head and stroked Dariya’s pink spikes, crunchy with styling product. “Nope. He’s not working on a story about Fe—Mr. Antipin, just a personal matter for me.”
“Oh. Good.” She rested her head on Katya’s shoulder again. “Then tell me, who did you lose a year ago?”
Her gaze flew to him and his thin, sensual lips spread into a smile. He’d seen Dariya’s question coming, and had used Fedir’s last name to make sure she could confide in his niece.
Katya couldn’t help but smile back. “Fedir. His name was Fedir.”
* * * *
All the seats in the metro car were taken. Nik grabbed a pole and caught sight of his reflection in the window on the door. He’d put on his suit in a hurry, and he’d managed to miss a button in his vest. The knot of his tie was lopsided too.
“Nice glasses,” a woman said.
With her sleek, dark hair and navy-blue pea coat, she reminded him of his epically selfish ex-girlfriend, Alisa, the one who’d tried to make him choose between her and his career. The resemblance left zero interest in talking to the woman beyond a polite response. “Thanks.”
He did receive a lot of compliments on the eyeglasses. Dariya had helped him shop for them online and told him they suited his Clark Kent persona. Her obsession with Femme Fatale ranked a distant second to her love of those American comic book heroes, Superman and Batman.
She often left him little printouts around the apartment. After they’d ordered the frames, he’d found a page taped to the bathroom mirror. The clean-cut Clark Kent, journalist and alter ego of Superman, wore glasses identical to the ones they’d bought. In his speech bubble, Cyrillic letters spelled out the phrase, Hello, I’m Nikolai Zurkov, senior editor at the culture desk.
A man opened a newspaper, which featured a photo of two city officials taken in a park, one of Mikaiel Dvoynev’s giant nude sculptures at their back. And Katya was the artist’s daughter. Christ. Having a dad like that would surely screw with a kid’s head. Years ago, before Nikolai had landed a job at his beloved politics desk, he’d reported on a new exhibit at the modern art museum and literally walked through the man’s installation of a vulva and vagina large enough an adult could stand inside—supposedly modeled on the sculptor’s wife’s body, as all his work was.
Now that Nik knew of the connection, platinum-blond Katya’s physical resemblance to the renowned beauty Svetlana Dvoynev was stunning. Everyone in Ukraine had seen the woman’s iconic breasts. Hell, Nik had more or less strode through the birth canal from which Katya had sprung. The sculpture’s prominent clitoris had been rubbed dirty by all the hands caressing it.
And, chert, what kind of narcissist nominated himself for the Nobel Peace Prize? Twice. It had to say something that she grieved the adoring Fedir but hadn’t once mentioned missing her still-living parents.
He got off the train at the next stop and headed for the headquarters of Novyye Resheniya. The pharmaceutical company wasn’t enormous, but politicians celebrated its success as vital to Ukraine’s economic development. Nikolai had spoken to their media relations director, Tatiana Oburski, on more than one occasion, so that’s who he asked for at the glossy chrome reception desk in the lobby.
Sometimes his media badge was as powerful as carrying around an automatic weapon—pen mightier than the sword, and all.
A guard showed him upstairs where a glass window revealed a small meeting underway in the media director’s office. One glance at Nik, and Tatiana dismissed her underlings with a wave. She gave a crisp nod, inviting him in. The PR-lets rounded him with a wide berth, and one even whispered, “That’s Nikolai Zurkov.”
Once upon a time, he’d been somebody—the senior reporter on the politics desk. Now he was the fucking culture editor. Music, books, food. He may as well publish a damn cookbook—Nikolai Zurkov’s Guide to Reheating Takeout in the Microwave Oven.
“Hello, Kolya.” The director gestured to a chair opposite her desk. Her shoulders lifted, and he imagined she was trying not to cross her arms over her chest.
“Tatiana.” He didn’t want to give her any ideas, so he didn’t reply with the familiar form of her name.
“Personally, I never mind getting a glimpse of you, but when you show up in my office unannounced, it sets my teeth on edge. Is this a courtesy visit before you fuck me with some cooked-up whistle-blower piece?”
He couldn’t help but smile. She was maybe five years older than him and so stunningly beautiful she might have stepped off a fashion ad for women’s designer work wear, but she possessed a mouth as filthy as a Black Sea pirate. Before Sofiya got sick, he’d run in to Tatiana in a bar drinking vodka all alone after what she’d called an elephant dick of a day, by which he’d taken her to mean a long one. She’d cozied right up to him, and they’d had such a fun evening kvetching about the state of journalism and throwing back shots that he’d very nearly taken her back to his place.
But when the freezing Kiev air had hit him on the way out of the bar, it had sobered him enough to remember his hard-learned lessons about journalistic integrity. Never compromise your objectivity. It will always bite you in the ass, and sometimes it will cause someone to die.
Still, months after that night, he wasn’t above flirting. He opened his mouth to say he wasn’t there to fuck her with a story or otherwise, and then he thought of pretty little Katya at home on the couch in his clothes, and all the many sexual positions they’d enjoyed in his dream last night. He snapped his mouth closed on the flirtatious retort and sat in the plush armchair.
“There’s no whistle-blower case, unless you have an exclusive you want to give me?” He turned up his palms, signaling his readiness to receive a gift.
“Fat chance.”
“Actually, I’m asking for a favor. Just a little background on a former employee who was murdered last year.”
“Murdered?” With narrowed eyes, she glanced out at the office beyond the glass wall behind him. “If one of our employees was murdered, I sure as hell better have known about it. Our trade secrets are very valuable.”
“I doubt this lowly sales rep knew any trade secrets. Maybe it was reported to Novyye Resheniya as an accident. Given what I heard about the murder, I would have expected an investigation, but I suppose your human resources department could have kept it under wraps.”
“They wouldn’t have kept it a secret from me unless they wanted their balls served up with a side of gravy.”
Nikolai barely resisted the urge to cross his legs. A pang of pity for her underlings passed through him. “Well, he died, and an eyewitness told me he worked here.”
“What was his name?” She opened her laptop and began typing.
“Fedir Antipin.”
She clicked away and then shook her head. “Antipin. With an I?”
“That’s usually how it’s spelled.”
She managed to shoot him the bird without missing a keystroke. “No record. He never worked here.”
“But surely he’s in the HR database? Mind walking me over—?”
“Zurkov, what kind of media director would I be if I couldn’t access the HR database? I know everyone in this building’s password.”
In spite of a disappointingly dead end, he chuckled. “Woman, I wish you would choose to use your powers for good, not for evil.”
She crossed her arms, eyes glinting, and not with amusement. “Novyye Resheniya employs 20,000 workers in Ukraine. We are a major player in economic development. Don’t blame us that you sister didn’t respond to her cancer treatments.”
Chert. How the hell did she know about Sofiya?
He snorted. “Don’t psychoanalyze me. Novyye Resheniya didn’t even make her drugs. What makes your company one of the bad guys is all the pockets you grease to get out of paying corporate taxes and the judges you pay off to find in your favor every case brought against you from class action suits to employment disputes.”
“That’s the price of doing business in Ukraine. You can’t hold us responsible for a corrupt system.”
“If no one’s held responsible, things will never change.”
Her brittle laughter rang out, vibrating off the glass wall of her office. “You sound just like that American superhero. What’s his name? Batman.”
“You know about him?”
“My goddaughter made me watch a movie. Apparently, the comic books are all the rage among Kiev’s youth.”
“Them, and Femme Fatale.”
She snorted disdainfully. “This Batman, he spouts principled determination in a low, gravelly voice just like yours, and all the women find him sexy. But I know his type, and yours. You chose an impossible fight, and the only way to win it is by pushing your self-destruct button. That’s not sexy for long.”
He didn’t give a fuck who thought he was sexy, but he sure as hell felt the bruises from every round in this unending match. Nine years reporting on corruption, beating the bushes, turning over the rocks, dodging the bullets—had he accomplished anything? Made Ukraine even a little safer? A little fairer? But her analogy was fundamentally flawed.
“Batman is tenacious, but he’s also a vigilante. I’m a journalist. I’m Clark Kent.” He tapped his glasses in proof even as he wished like hell he felt like the more chipper, less-jaded Superman than the guy Dariya called the Dark Knight. “I write news stories because I believe in the power of the truth.”
She sighed. “Well, the truth is, Fedir Antipin never worked here. Your eyewitness must have been mistaken. Or maybe he’s the one lying to you.”
Shit. He drummed his fingers on the table. He had a very sick feeling his eyewitness was the one who’d been lied to, by the person who loved her most in the world.
Time to call in some favors at the militsya station. Outside the pharmaceutical company, he swapped his blazer for a hooded sweatshirt he kept in his messenger bag, pulled down a ski cap over his hair, and traded out the fashionable glasses Dariya had picked for him for a ten-year-old pair. Not exactly deep cover, but he didn’t want to be recognized at HQ Voldamyra Street like he had been in the media department.
Then he was off to find Nagarov. Last September, with the cop’s help, he’d blown open a criminal ring whose leader had been a member of the president’s cabinet. The case had become known as the Sentyabr Affair. As it had unfolded, a sniper had shot out the windows in Nikolai’s apartment and fired one deadly round into his fish bowl. Tiger, the little orange and black beta fish Sofiya had given him, had never stood a chance.
With the evidence Nikolai had published, the cabinet official went to jail and before he could post bail, someone strangled him with his own sock to silence him. Nikolai would have preferred a triumph of law and order, but at least there was no price on his head anymore and he had a trustworthy informant in the city’s central police station.
From the lobby of the building, he could head downstairs to processing—he’d been escorted there twice before on cooked-up charges meant to silence him—or upstairs, to the administrative offices. He climbed up to the reception area and asked for Nagarov through a window in the wall.
A smartly dressed grandmotherly type appraised him. “Hold on.”
He dropped into a worn vinyl chair. A young man came out and looked him over carefully, from his dress slacks and shoes to the hoodie. Under the guy’s close examination, Nikolai would put money on him being a detective, not a beat cop like Nagarov.
After a long moment contemplating Nik’s face, he spoke. “You’re Zurkov?”
The hair on the back of Nik’s neck stood up. Was he inviting trouble or putting Dariya in danger? He rose. “And you are?”
“Junior Investigator Sergey Yuchenko.”
As Nikolai shook the man’s proffered hand, he studied his youthful features. The name was familiar, but he’d certainly never seen the fresh-faced inspector before.
“Where’s Nagarov?”
“Extended leave. Screwed up his hip in pursuit of a suspect.” The investigator patted his middle, which was trim and flat in contrast to Nagarov’s. “Has to lose twenty pounds before he’s allowed back on patrol.” He lowered his voice. “I know he was your source on the Sentyabr Affair.”
Nikolai stared into the young man’s eyes, eerily ancient for one who looked to be as old as Katya was, or had been before she’d died. Was he offering to inform for Nikolai too? He tested the theory. “Nagarov’s a good man. He cares about people.”
“He manages to keep himself pretty clean too, and that’s not easy.”
The kid was right. Dirty cops were a dime a dozen in Kiev.
“You any good at staying clean, Yuchenko?” Nik pinned him with his signature stare—journalistic and penetrating.
The inspector met the gaze head-on. A shudder of warning traveled up Nikolai’s spine, like Yuchenko could see far deeper into him than he could ever hope to peer into the inspector’s knowing eyes.
“I try.” The cop shrugged, and the uneasy sensation retreated down Nik’s backbone and vanished altogether. “But to tell the truth, the longer I’m at this, the messier the lines between black and white. I’ve got a wife, a baby on the way, so I do what I’m told. Sometimes the only way to keep a man’s conscience clear is to tell the truth to somebody who can’t fire him.”
Nikolai shook his head. “You’re in the wrong job then. You want to keep your family safe? Go work at an insurance company.”
“I’ll take that into consideration. But since Nagarov’s not here, is there something I can help you with?”
Nik scanned the man’s upright posture, his steady hands, and relaxed shoulders. That had to be good enough. Sometimes a reporter had to take that first leap and decide to trust the one who did not flinch or blink under close scrutiny, with no external guarantees of his integrity.
“I’m looking into a murder. I have a witness, but there’s no militsya record, at least none I can find. Looks like a cover-up. I was just wondering if Nagarov knew anything.”
“I can look into it. What have you got? A description of the victim? A date?”
Was it worth the risk? This cop was just as likely a part of the cover-up as he was ignorant of it, and Nik refused to expose his precious niece to the sort of danger that did in Tiger the fish. But Yuchenko might be the key to getting justice for Sofiya and Katya.
Nikolai rubbed the cut on his cheek until the split flesh stung. “It was last June, in a building on Saint Cyril Street. A couple in their twenties.”
If the address meant a thing to Yuchenko, Nikolai couldn’t see it.
“And you’ve got a witness?”
“She saw the whole thing.”
“Not much of a cover-up for the killer to miss something like that.” Was Yuchenko a little white around the lips, or was Nik imagining it? “Where’s the witness now?”
“Somewhere no one on earth could find her.” Or she would be, when the second serving of his blood ran its course.
“Earth?” Yuchenko tipped his head forward, his brows drawn close together. “That’s a funny way to put it.”
“She’s safe, and I plan to keep her that way.”
“Sounds like you have a damsel in distress on your hands. Is she hot?” Yuchenko waggled his brows exactly the same way Dariya had earlier, like the two were old pals talking about chasing skirts. Speaking of skirts, a woman wearing an unseasonably short one passed by. Another woman followed, and oddly, they both cast glances at the detective that Nikolai could only describe as soft-core ogles. He was used to the attentions of eager women, like the one on the metro, but Yuchenko was getting an exponentially higher degree of female interest.
Nik could appreciate the kid was good looking, but really? The more modestly dressed woman stopped to stare, fluffing her hair and angling her hips like she was posing for a photo. Weird. Even weirder, Yuchenko didn’t pay her a second’s notice. Maybe he was used to it.
Nikolai raised his chin. “She’s a source, asshole. And didn’t you say you’re married?”
“So hot then?” He winked.
“She watched her lover get shot and she wants justice. It doesn’t matter if she’s a gnarly old babushka, has a third eye, or looks like…” Funny, people might very often invoke the name of Katya’s supermodel mother to end that sentence. “Or what she looks like.”
“Fair enough. But what if the victim was a scumbag? They usually are.”
Nikolai fisted his hands and shoved them into the front pocket of his hoodie. If he were Batman, he might agree with that sort of rationale. “It doesn’t matter if he was a scumbag. If we want freedom in this country, we must enforce the rule of law. We can’t execute scumbags off the record. We have to arrest them, try them, and send them to prison.”
Yuchenko’s face cracked open into the kind of smile that could land him a part on one of Dariya’s soap operas. He stuck out his hand. “I like you, Zurkov. I’ll see what I can find out about a murder in June on Saint Cyril Street.”
“Thanks.” For the first time in the conversation, the ground under Nikolai solidified. Instinct told him this Junior Investigator Sergey Yuchenko was a good cop, maybe even a good guy. He handed him a card—the one he used for sources, with only a number and no name on it. “You turn anything up, give me a call.”
With a crisp nod, the man pocketed the card and strode back to the door leading to the internal offices, using a badge to unlock it.
Nikolai headed for the stairs.
Footsteps thudded behind him and he turned.
Yuchenko had hurried back for a last word. He glanced around, confirming the stairway was empty before he spoke. “You know, Zurkov…”
“Yeah?”
“Sometimes, in the end, justice isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Sometimes even the bad guys deserve mercy.”
A scoffing sigh escaped Nikolai’s throat. “Once again, I’m going to suggest an alternate career in insurance for you, while I keep on striving for a Ukraine free of corruption, where honest judges can enforce the rule of law, and militsya protect and serve without presuming to be judge and jury.”
Yuchenko held up his hands, grinning. “Just saying, man.”
Nikolai didn’t dignify that with a response, but as he pounded down the stairs, the edge of a laugh lodged in his throat, and he found himself smiling. There was something about that kid-cop he liked.
He texted his informant Nagarov. “You trust Yuchenko?”
“Like a brother,” came the quick reply.
As he pondered those three simple words, his phone buzzed in his hand with a text from Dariya.
“I like your girl.”
Along with the message, she sent a selfie of them on the couch. His niece smiled broadly, her cheek smeared with what had to be jam. Katya held a mug tightly to her chest. The subtler curve of her mouth conveyed shy reserve, or even embarrassment over being caught in a schoolgirl’s photo for her uncle. But it was still, most assuredly, a smile.
Chert. Now he had Tiger the fish times two to worry about.
He put the phone back in his pocket and headed along the tree-lined street, busy with cafes and grocery stores, toward his office—morning life in the city. As he stood at the next intersection, waiting for the blue triangular crosswalk sign to flash, he found the device in his hand again. He could stare at the photo of Katya all day, trying to guess at the mix of emotions playing on her face—complicated like a painting or sculpture. A work of art, different in every light.
Then he snorted. He was no connoisseur of fine art. Hell, he barely managed not to suck outright at editing the culture section.
Maybe she was complicated, but his task was simple—use her evidence against Lisko, get justice.