August 4, Serbia
HE’S TALKING TO her in a tone I’ve never heard before. Guilt-ridden, which I recognize from the way I feel right now, and shame. Helplessness. But it’s pierced with other emotions, too: desperation, care, longing.
Here’s what I don’t hear: malice, evil, aggression.
His voice is low and soft, but from just beside the grate I can make out what he’s saying.
“ . . . wanted to be a teacher. But my father . . . he is sick with Aubin’s, and my mother is disabled and cannot work to support him. The government . . . they help out with money, but it’s not enough. I am an only child. I need to take take care of my parents, and teachers’ salaries . . . they’re not enough. Borko . . . he knew I needed more money. For them. He gave me what he could from his own savings, but it still wasn’t enough. So he got me the management job at Bastixair. It was great at first, you know? Lots of money, enough to live well and help my father, and the company I worked for was on the cusp of a cure for the disease he’s fallen prey to. When Borko told me he needed my help with something that could make our lives easier . . . I felt like I owed him. And . . . he’s my cousin. He’s family. And if you won’t support your family, well . . . you of all people understand.”
My blood freezes in my veins.
Borko and Andrijo are cousins.
Well, were.
Erin mumbles something inaudible.
“What?”
I peer through the cracks in the vent. The door is ajar, illuminating the scene. He’s sitting on the floor opposite her, back against the shelves. He stares at her face, angled toward him. She’s in exactly the same position as when I left her, wrapped in the baggy gray hoodie and a pair of sweatpants bunched around her narrow waist. Now there’s more light, I see her greasy hair tied in a knot, her naked face washed clean of makeup, her bare feet tucked up to her backside.
She speaks louder, words slurred and flat. “Why are you telling me this? You said I already knew too much. Unless . . . unless you’ve already decided to kill me. And you just want me to die believing you’re not as evil as you seem.”
The creepiest thing is the lack of fear in her voice. Terror is replaced by resignation. Almost like she’s known it’s over for a while, and all she wants to do is give in to it.
No, Erin, I silently urge. It’s the sedatives. You want to live. Please. Say you want to live.
Andrijo says nothing for a while, and the accusation hangs between them. “We’ve never wanted to hurt you. Never.”
A groan of disbelief. Erin’s face is twisted as she presses it into the floor, like all she wants is to not have to listen to him bullshit her. “No?”
“No!” He leans forward, staring at her with those intense black eyes, begging her to understand him. “When you came to me . . . I wanted to help you. I did.”
My stomach falls through a trapdoor that’s opened up somewhere south of my guts.
She came to him?
When? Why?
But my brain is working in overdrive trying to make sense of it, and a nugget of realization floats to the surface. A nugget with more clarity than any other I’ve produced so far.
Andrijo works for Bastixair. Bastixair makes an Aubin’s drug, which isn’t available in the UK.
She went to him for the drugs.
Racing through all the information I have, I try to work out how Erin could possibly have known how to contact Andrijo for the Aubin’s drugs. Through Tim, perhaps? Did she do an online search, stumble into the depths of some dodgy forum and reach out there? It’s a long shot.
No.
I have it.
“And if you won’t support your family, well . . . you of all people understand.”
She didn’t need to find out who to contact herself. Because her father already knew.
He sent her here. He needed the drugs, because he, too, has Aubin’s. And the only way to get them was on the black market.
Andrijo and Borko are the black market.
There’s silence in the room below as I tuck this epiphany away, terrified of losing it again. Now the part I can’t figure out is what went wrong. Why is she here in a random warehouse, drugged and defeated, at the mercy of two cousins who only wanted to help their struggling relatives, albeit by selling drugs illegally?
Andrijo wanted to help.
But . . . ?
Maybe the first part of my theory, the part I told the police, wasn’t right. I told them I was abducted because they were afraid of what I knew, which is true, although it doesn’t make sense in terms of Erin’s case. Obviously she knows about the fact these drugs are being sold on the black market, but she’s in no danger of exposing it to the police or press. She’d have kept it quiet forever if it kept her dad from suffering. So why is she here now?
It’s one reach too far for my exhausted brain, and I fall short of the answer.
“So what are you going to do?” Erin murmurs. “You wanted to help me, but you’re not going to. So what next? Am I going to live or die?”
His face contorts, betraying his indecision.
She sees it, too. “Can you do it? Can you really do it, Andrijo? Can you hold a gun to my head and pull the trigger, or smother me with a plastic bag, or slit my throat?” The slurred words are eerie, thick, heavy. “Watch the light in my eyes snuff out, feel my heart stop beating? Can you really take a life?”
Her words are stab wounds to my already crippled conscience.
I’m a monster. If we survive this, will anyone ever look at me the same again? Knowing I’m a killer?
Will I ever be able to look at myself and still believe I’m a good person?
“I want to believe you’d keep this quiet,” Andrijo replies, voice hoarse. He runs a hand through his hair again. Nervously taps a foot on the floor over and over. “Even if Kasun lets you go. But once you’re free, what’s stopping you exposing this to the world?”
“Because no matter what happens now, my father will always need those drugs. And you’re the only ones who can provide them. Why would I expose that?”
Andrijo nods slowly. “Right. It wouldn’t make sense for you to tell the world.”
“No.” There’s more force behind Erin’s voice now. She can sense him backing down. The smallest shred of her survival instinct remains intact, and she’s clinging to it now like a life raft at sea. She shuffles so she’s facing him more head-on. “You and Borko won’t go to jail. You can continue looking after your parents. Nothing would change.”
Andrijo’s eyebrows unknot slowly.
“I don’t think it’s bad, what you’re doing. Giving Aubin’s sufferers across Europe access to medicine to ease their symptoms. I don’t disagree in theory, and I don’t disagree in practice. But this? This is fucked up. Keeping me here, lifeless, wishing I was dead. This isn’t good, or noble, or even making you money. This isn’t you.”
She’s doing that Erin thing of making people believe she knows them, cares about them, more than anyone else. And it’s working.
He climbs slowly to his feet, like a just-born baby deer. When I first met him, he seemed so tough, so resilient. Now he just looks tired.
Why is Erin here? I want to scream at them both. The answer is there, just beyond my grasp, and I know I probably have all the information needed to answer it. Unless she directly threatened to expose them, there must be more to it than the simple need to protect their drug trafficking secret. Why Erin? Why now?
I don’t have time to ponder the answer, because Andrijo is on the move.
Rubbing his jaw tiredly, he says, “Try and get some sleep, okay?”
A girlish murmur. “Andrijo?”
He pauses. “Yes?” There it is again. That trace of something like compassion in his voice. Does he actually care about her?
“Even if you do have to kill me . . . promise you’ll leave Carina alone? Let her go. She knows nothing. And even if she did . . . she wouldn’t say anything. I know her. She wouldn’t.”
He stops in the doorway before bowing his head and pulling the door closed behind him. He locks it—of course he does—and much to my dismay, there’s no keyhole on the inside. Not only can we not get out, but we also can’t keep him out by leaving the key in the lock. Shit.
What’ll happen when he finds his cousin’s murdered corpse in the farthest away storeroom? Will he come racing back in here? Unleash his wrath and grief on Erin? Kill us both on sight?
I cross my fingers that he’ll search the rest of the warehouse first. Perhaps Andrijo wasn’t supposed to come here and talk to his hostage. Maybe he’ll go back downstairs and wait for Borko to resurface. Maybe we have plenty of time to figure this out.
Or maybe we have no time at all.
I drop into the room, and Erin visibly reacts with a sharp inhalation and a jerking movement. She’s far more alert than when I saw her, and, from what I’ve just heard, capable of speech. She stares at me disbelievingly with renewed wonder. Does she even remember me being here earlier in the night?
“Carina! What are you—”
“Borko’s dead,” I say flatly. “I killed him. We have to get out of here.”
“He’s . . . you . . . what?!”
“I’ll explain as soon as we’re out of here, I promise. Can you walk? Climb up into the vent?”
She frowns, deep in concentration, and I see her attempt to tense her muscles enough to move her body. Propping herself up on her elbow requires so much energy that she promptly collapses back to the ground with a whimper. “No. Shit. What are we going to do?” The bags under her eyes are dark purple, like bruises.
“The police are on their way,” I say. “But I have to find a way to keep you safe until they get here. Andrijo could discover Borko’s body and come back any minute now. And I’m willing to bet he’ll have changed his mind on letting us live when he does. This door doesn’t lock or unlock on the inside, so even though we have the key we can’t get out—or keep him from getting in. I have a gun, but I don’t want to have to kill him. Once was bad enough.”
I rack my brains for a solution. She’s staring at me with some kind of newfound respect. The Carina she knew three weeks ago was hopeless, the worst person you’d want in an emergency, but now I’m overcoming my anxiety and taking charge. It’d feel good if I wasn’t in mortal danger. And I hadn’t just killed a man.
I push a stray lock of hair out of my eyes. “Okay. I’m going to use the air vent to go back to the storeroom they were holding me in. The door’s closed, but not locked. I’m hoping Andrijo won’t be on the mezzanine, he’ll be waiting for Borko downstairs. I’ll slip out and . . .” A bolt of inspiration strikes like lightning. “And I’ll grab one of the crate pull carts from downstairs. Then I can come up and unlock you, load you onto it and we can escape.”
Fear is written all over her naked face. Bloodshot eyes, pale skin, a sheen of cold sweat. “Wouldn’t it be safer just to wait in here until the police arrive?”
“Yeah.” I nod. “If I hadn’t just killed his cousin. Next time he’s back in this room, he isn’t going to be whispering sweet nothings in your ear.”
She recoils like I’ve slapped her. “You think something happened between Andrijo and me?”
I’m about to retract my ugly words, pull them back inside myself, when I stop. A difficult truth crystallizes. “You left the fortress with him, Erin. Voluntarily. There’s no way he could’ve abducted you without someone noticing. You . . . you wanted to be with him. You didn’t know then that he was bad news.”
Now her cheeks flush red. “Carina, I . . .”
“Why?” I whisper. “You have a boyfriend.”
“I . . . Smith . . . he’s not a good man, Carina. I haven’t loved him for a long time, but I can’t leave him. I don’t know what he’d do.” I read the subtext: I don’t know if he’s violent like my father. “He was spying on me.”
“What?” I ask, although I think I know where this is going.
“He created a fake Facebook profile to check up on me.” She presses her eyes closed. She looks so tiny in that huge gray hoodie. Frail. Breakable. “He started flirting, pretending to be some other hot guy. Was so sure I was unfaithful to him, and wanted to catch me in the act.”
“Kieran Riddle?” I guess.
Her eyes ping open. “How did you—”
“We’ve been looking for you pretty hard, Erin. You’d be surprised what we know.”
She swallows so hard I see her neck muscles ripple. “Andrijo was just . . . he’s so . . .”
“I know,” I interject. “Erin, I know.” I try to soften my voice, but it’s laced with impatience and fear. Fear of what’ll happen if I don’t start moving. “But we don’t have time for this now. I have to get us out of here.”
I start moving toward the shelves to climb up to the vent, hating myself for the irrational anger I suddenly feel toward my best friend. I should hate the men that drove us here: Smith, Andrijo, Kasun, her violent father. The men who made her so terrified of the world that she lost her way.
Maybe I’m furious with them, too. And maybe I’m angry with us for not fighting back harder.
Maybe all my rage is just wrapped into one.
“Carina . . .”
Her voice is tiny, ashamed, like a child who’s wet the bed.
I stop, like Andrijo did in the doorway just a few moments ago. “Yeah?”
“Please don’t hate me.”
I swivel to face her. A lump rises in my throat. “I don’t hate you, Erin. Nobody does. We love you, and need you home safe. Let me rescue you, okay?”
She nods once, a minuscule motion I almost miss.
And then I turn back, climb up into the vent and pray that’s not the last time I see her alive.
THE ROOM CONTAINING Borko’s body is as empty as it was when I left it. Andrijo is nowhere to be seen.
Stepping over the body, I fumble with the doorknob and open it a sliver.
Empty. The whole mezzanine floor is deserted. No Andrijo, no other people. Not even the cardboard boxes that were stacked adjacent to my doorway—they’ve been moved, too.
I’m scared. So scared. Rooted to the spot, obsessing over all the ways this could go wrong. If Borko had a gun, Andrijo probably does, too. If he sees—or hears, because even though I’m barefoot I’m still not silent—me running down the stairs, he may just shoot me on sight, knowing something has gone terribly wrong with Borko’s visit to my storeroom.
I strain my ears for sirens—sirens that would allow me to sit and wait instead of taking action.
Nothing.
And so I take a deep breath, forbid myself from thinking too much about what I’m about to do and run.
The crack of gunshots and pinging of bullets on metal stairs never comes; there’s just the sound of my bare feet padding along the cool surface. It takes me twenty seconds to reach the staircase, then I’m sprinting down them, trying to pretend the soft thumping isn’t audible to anyone but me. I leap down the final three steps, landing quietly on the cold concrete floor, and with a pounding chest I dash over to the nearest stack of crates and crouch behind it.
First leg: complete.
Can’t I just stop now?
I survey the area. It’s like the warehouse at the end of IKEA where you pick up all the flat-packed furniture you’ve spotted wandering through the showroom. High shelving laid out in narrow aisles, lined with white cardboard boxes neatly labeled with information on whatever drugs they contain. When Borko first dragged me through this warehouse, that’s where I saw the forklifts and crate pull carts—the latter I need right now, but from here I can’t see any.
Poking my head out the side of the stack, I quickly scan the room. Still empty of people; Andrijo is nowhere to be seen. This makes me feel worse rather than better. He could appear around a corner at any second, grab me by the throat, hold a gun to my head. I think I’d die of fright rather than grievous bodily harm.
Go.
I make for the closest aisle, relishing the feel of the air rushing past my face after hours of being trapped in a tiny storeroom. I run halfway down the aisle before realizing there’s no trolley here. I dive into an open space on a bottom shelf, crouching into a tight ball, breathing hard.
There’s no time for this, Carina.
No time to catch my breath when my best friend is in danger and the police are still miles away.
Go again. I jog down to the far end of the aisle, farthest away from the bottom of the stairs, and steer around the end. I cast a quick glance up to the mezzanine—no sign of life. No sign of our captor.
I’m not sure what I expected. I suspect that as soon as Andrijo stumbles over Borko’s body, they’ll hear the roar in Belgrade. There’s still time.
The door to my storeroom is ajar. Did I leave it ajar?
Fuck fuck fuck.
Is he in there now?
I have to move.
Two, three, four aisles pass by in a blur until my side is pierced by a ripping stitch, but finally I find a trolley. One of the wheels sticks and wobbles as I drag it noisily along the concrete, back across the open space of the warehouse—no point in trying to hide behind crates and boxes now—until I’m at the foot of the stairs and suddenly panicking about how the hell I’m going to carry it up when I already feel so weak.
My mistake is not looking up.
“You killed my cousin.”