August 4, Serbia
HIS VOICE IS cold, full of hatred that drips off his words like icicles. He doesn’t shout, but it echoes around the warehouse regardless.
I drop the handle of the trolley. Look up. He’s standing in the middle of the mezzanine, hands by his side, one drenched in blood. Did he try to stem Borko’s wound? Did desperation make him think he could still save Borko?
There’s a gun in the other.
Reflexively I step back. It’s pointed at the ground, not at me, but somehow that’s no solace. “Andrijo . . .”
“You killed my cousin,” he repeats, as if reminding himself of the fact. Maybe he is. Maybe the last thing he wants to do is murder me, but again and again he remembers what I’ve done in an attempt to give himself the courage.
Because I see it in his eyes. He doesn’t want to kill me. He’s not a murderer by nature. I saw him with Erin, conflicted, caring, trying desperately to think of a solution that didn’t involve slitting her throat. He wants this all to be over as much as we do.
But now his cousin is dead. Because of me.
“Your cousin was going to kill me,” I say, steadily as I can. The strip lighting reflects off the gun. It’s all I can look at. “I had no choice. I . . . I didn’t want to die.”
He grits his teeth so hard I hear it from the bottom of the stairs. The air is cold, so cold, and I shiver. Why do I feel like I’m lying? I didn’t want to die. I wanted to live. I still do.
Maybe because I don’t know that Borko was going to kill me. He could’ve just been coming to check on me.
I chase the thought away. There was no happy ending for me or Erin until I got that phone.
He just stares at me, in shock, or a daze, or something more psychotic.
I tilt my chin up. Force myself to look at him, not the gun. “The police are on their way. It’s over. There’s no reason to kill either me or Erin. Your best bet? Run.”
Maybe I was trying too hard to be manipulative, because I didn’t think it through—I know immediately I’ve said the wrong thing. His face thunders, and a pit of fear settles in my chest. What I’ve basically just told him is this: “The police are on their way, and unless you kill us both, we’re going to tell them everything we know. We’re going to implicate you. And your parents will be left to suffer alone.”
Instantly I attempt to backtrack. “But I already told them everything. Killing us now, enforcing our silence, won’t buy your freedom. They already know. They’ve already been to your apartment. They know. Why make it worse by murdering two innocent girls? You’ll get a life sentence. But if you cooperate now . . . maybe they’ll be lenient. Strike a deal.”
His expression darkens. Shit. I can’t play people with my words the way Erin can. I can’t replicate that feeling, that “I truly care about you in every way” vibe she sends everyone’s way.
What he says next catches me completely off guard. “You have something that belongs to me.”
“I . . . what?” I take another step back from the foot of the stairs. Try to glance around quickly as I do. Suss out the best direction to run in. I feel incredibly vulnerable with him staring me down from a height. Everyone knows high ground is the safest. Right now, I am anything but safe.
Blood drips from the tip of his forefinger to the ground. “You were in my office.”
The confusion on my face is real. Does he mean the letter knife?
Then I remember. I feel it in my front pocket—smooth and firm and rectangular.
The USB stick.
Keep your cool.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Meet his eye. Don’t look down, or up, or sideways. He’ll know you’re lying.
He takes a step toward me, nearing the top of the stairs, and I hate myself for flinching backward three more steps. “What did you use to stab my cousin in the neck?”
I bite my lip. “A letter knife. It was left on the top shelf in the storeroom.” Slowly, I pull it out of my back pocket, hold it up for him to see, then drop it on the ground in front of me.
Another step toward me. This time I stand my ground. “You have something else. I know you do. You’re lying—you were in my office.”
I narrow my eyes. “How the fuck would I have got into your office? I’ve been locked in a storeroom for hours. And don’t you think if I had managed to escape, I’d have left the warehouse without looking back, rather than gone rummaging around in your office drawers?”
That makes him pause. I’m torn between using the hesitation to run for my life, or trying to talk him around.
They’re both flawed. I sprint, he knows I’m lying and he puts that gun in his hand to use. I talk, he could poke another hole in my story and use the gun anyway.
So I choose the former. Elongating my words as much as possible, I murmur, “I don’t have anything to hide from you, Andrijo. But I’ve told you. I don’t want to die. And I don’t think you want to kill me.”
And then, leaping over the letter knife and dodging the crates to my right, I run.
It takes ten seconds for the gunfire to start—enough time for me to reach the nearest aisle. The noise isn’t as harsh as it seems on TV. More a tat-tat-tat than sharp cracks of exploding gunpowder. Still fucking terrifying.
I make it to the far end of the aisle before he fully descends the stairs, and I duck behind the stocked end-cap before pulling out my own gun.
How is this happening?
There’s no time to dwell on the absurdity of the situation. I fumble with the safety on the gun, weigh it up in my hand. I don’t want to use it; although I’ve already taken a life, pulling a trigger at another man’s head seems like too big a leap, like a line within myself I could never uncross.
So I keep running.
He’s halfway to the first aisle now, bullets pinging off the shelves and bursting the boxes. I sprint past several more end-caps, hoping he’s as inexperienced with a gun as I am. The erratic spraying of bullets seems to suggest so. He doesn’t even have a clear shot and he’s already using up his round.
Terror starts to kick in as I take a sharp left and dart down a different aisle, hoping he can’t make out where I am. Blood roars in my ears, electrifying adrenaline shoots through my veins. Pure, raw fear like I’ve never felt before, not even in my worst panic attack. I could die. I could die in the next few seconds.
I’m halfway down the aisle when I realize I have no plan. I can’t keep simply running away from him until the police arrive; he’s leaner than me, faster, and he wants to kill me more than he wants himself to survive. Because survival means prison, and that kind of nothing-to-lose determination is impossible to outrun.
No plan. The keys to Erin’s room still press into my hip, but even if I could get up there uninjured, what then? Why pull her from a trench just to throw her onto the front line?
My bare feet pound the concrete painfully. I’m nearing the end of the aisle. He’s drawing closer.
I have to shoot. Maybe not to kill, but to slow him down . . . or bring him to a stop. Then I can get Erin out of the warehouse in the crate pull trolley and hide in another building, or out in the dark fields where he’ll never find us, until the police arrive.
The realization gives me focus. Momentum.
When I reach the end of the aisle, I make a last-second decision. And I swing left, running back in the direction I came from—in the direction of Andrijo, who’s down one of these aisles I’m about to run past.
For my first shot, I have the element of surprise: he doesn’t know I have Borko’s gun. I plan to keep this card close to my chest until the last possible second.
Thump, thump, thump. My bare footsteps are muffled, but not enough. He’ll still hear me coming.
One aisle, two. Nothing.
Three.
Crack.
The bullet misses me, but I kick myself for not being quick enough. I need to get a shot in fast.
I double up the fourth aisle while he lingers in the third. Duck down as he fires aimlessly into the middle shelf between us, sending boxes cascading down around me.
I keep forgetting to breathe.
He’s peering through the shelves; he sees me, but doesn’t have an angle.
Go.
I continue to sprint down the aisle, loop around the end-cap and quickly fire into his aisle.
The gun shakes in my hand and two, three, four bullets spray wide of Andrijo.
I don’t react fast enough.
Turning my side to the aisle, I start to run, but he’s anticipating the movement.
A bullet thuds into my shoulder, and I cry out in pain and shock.
In that moment, everything else fades.
Fuuuuuuu—
I stumble forward, force myself to keep tripping one foot in front of the other, but the warehouse swims around me. Pain, fear, shock. Dizzy. Swirling shelves and boxes and concrete.
All I can see, all I can hear, all I can feel, all I can taste, all I can smell: the bullet wound.
It fucking hurts.
He’s catching up with me. I pass two, three more aisles and dive down the next, gasping, sprinting as far down as I can, then spinning on my heel to face the entrance where he’ll appear in three seconds.
Two.
One.
Breathe. I drop to the ground. It’s the last place he’ll expect me to be when he swivels and shoots, and it’ll give me the split second advantage I need.
He appears, fires, bullets sailing a meter above my head. In the same moment, I take aim and fire four, five, six bullets at his legs.
One hits its mark and he collapses to the ground, roaring in pain, clutching his shin. He lets his gun clatter to the concrete.
I could shoot again, but I don’t. I turn and run.
Dizzy, dizzy, I’m so dizzy, so breathless as my shoulder wound sears and bleeds and pulses.
Stairs. Just make it to the stairs.
Five years later, I get there. He’s not following.
Hauling the pull trolley, I emit a wail so piercing it comes from miles away. The motion tugs my shoulder, shifting the bullet and causing a jolt of fresh pain.
The warehouse whooshes and dives and whirls.
Don’t pass out. You’ll never wake up again.
I have to leave it.
Two at a time I dash up the stairs, begging my brain to stay conscious. From the top of the mezzanine I can see Andrijo still crumpled on the ground below, not even attempting to climb to his feet and pursue me.
Shaking and wheezing, it takes me a few attempts to jam the keys in Erin’s lock and twist. Click.
She must’ve drifted out of consciousness again, because when the door slams open, she jolts awake from her curled-up position on the floor. Her eyes go straight to the blood gurgling down my arm. Widen, gape.
“What the fu—”
“No time. I can’t carry you downstairs. You have to walk, or crawl if you must. There’s a trolley at the bottom. If we don’t go now, we’ll both be shot.”
Steely resolve fixes on her face. Maybe it’s the sight of my bullet wound—she realizes she’s not the only one in physical pain. “Okay.”
Unsteadily she pulls herself up using the shelves.
“Once we get to the stairs, you can lean on the bannister. Until then, use my arm.” I offer her the crook of my uninjured elbow. “Faster, Erin.”
Swallowing the last of her hesitation, she grips me tight and we start making our way across the mezzanine.
That’s when I realize Andrijo is no longer in the aisle. All that remains is a pool of his blood, smear marks where he’s climbed to his feet and a patchy trail that stops halfway down the aisle—he must’ve stemmed the bleeding after that.
Shit.
Trying not to spook Erin into halting, I subtly scan the warehouse for any sign of movement.
Nada.
Where the fuck is he?
I was in Erin’s storeroom less than a minute. He can’t have gotten far.
And yet he has.
Shit, shit, shit.
We wobble down the stairs, both of us hovering treacherously on the verge of collapse.
Adrenaline is the only thing keeping me moving. Survival instinct. Fight or flight.
My shoulder is killing me. Literally.
Throb, step, throb, step. The rhythm is painful, intoxicating.
I’m still holding the gun. It’s covered in my own blood.
The silence of the warehouse is lethal, and my muscles tense, my body anticipating the imminent patter of gunshots as Andrijo takes aim from wherever he’s hiding.
We make it to the bottom of the stairs without fire cracking through the quiet. Maybe he’s out of bullets, I hypothesize hopefully, foolishly, desperately.
Or maybe his gun’s range isn’t long enough, and he’s waiting for us to draw closer before he buries the final bullets in our brains.
Erin collapses into the crate trolley. Surveying the warehouse one last time, I fix my eyes on the nearest door, just to the west of the aisles, and go. Push her in front of me, angle myself so I’m ready to drop down the second he shoots, make sure the gun is firmly in my grasp.
One hundred fifty yards away. One hundred twenty-five. One hundred.
My eyes stream, my vision dances. Erin’s crouched as low as she can.
The farther we get from the stairs on the wall, the more of an open target we become. There’s a dartboard on my back, and he’s taking aim. I can feel it. Feel his eyes on me, feel the barrel of a gun burning between my shoulder blades.
Seventy-five. Fifty.
I’m almost disbelieving as the huge sliding doors, corrugated iron and dull gray, draw closer.
Might we really survive this?
Twenty-five.
I start thinking about the next steps. Will the ground outside be hard enough to push Erin through a field on a trolley?
Will the police be here?
I imagine the relief of sirens blaring and blue and red lights lighting up the night sky.
Ten. Five.
We’re there.
Erin doesn’t know how much of a miracle this is because she’s blissfully ignorant of the fact Andrijo is not where I left him.
“Hold this,” I mutter to her, handing her the loaded gun, not reacting to her horrified stare. I’m dizzy and in a lot of pain, and my aim is bound to be even worse than before. And she’s going to be harder to push across open field in the trolley. “Safety’s off. Be careful.”
Thud.
Somewhere nearby, terrifyingly nearby, a cardboard box shifts and thumps to the ground.
We both recoil in shock, her swinging to face the offending shelf just ten yards away.
The next second lasts an hour.
No shadow shifts behind the boxes, no labored breathing can be heard over the silence of the warehouse.
Moving as quickly as possible, I haul the sliding door to the side, whimpering at the effort of tugging a heavy sheet of iron with a wounded shoulder.
Without looking back toward the aisle, I shove Erin in her trolley out onto the concrete forecourt. A floodlight illuminates the area—it’s motion sensitive. We’re outside. Queasiness tears through my abdomen, and the rays of light wobble across my pupils.
Blood loss. I think I’m going into shock.
It’s warm and sticky down my arm, beginning to clot.
The nausea is searing. I almost double over.
Can’t.
Push, Carina.
I try breathing through the agony in my shoulder. How is it possible for something to hurt this much? If I survive this, I’m never complaining of a migraine again. My skin is cold and clammy, and my pulse and breathing are quickening alarmingly. I’m so weak my head keeps drooping onto my chest, because the effort required to hold it up feels intolerable.
Definitely shock.
Think.
Keep thinking.
As long as you think, you’re still alive.
And Erin needs you alive.
A few sheafs stick out of the neatly stacked pile of papers in my head. The clinic. How does that fit in? Perhaps it’s just coincidence that Tim and Kasun were photographed there together all those years ago, but . . . no. Borko was there, outside. It has to be connected. And Brodie Breckenridge . . . is she relevant, or another coincidence?
Something prods into my hip: the thing Andrijo was willing to shoot me for.
Do the contents of this USB stick somehow link all this together?
There are blips and jerks in my consciousness, skipped moments like a broken tape.
I can’t get a grip on the world. I’m losing my foothold.
Part of me is floating above myself. The other part is nearly empty. I stop pushing the cart.
“Erin . . .”
“Yes?”
“I love you, you know that?”
From behind us, words slice through the moment: low, cold, final.
“Well, isn’t that touching.”
Andrijo.
He’s right behind me, and the barrel of a gun is pressed against my skull.
Erin whimpers. “Please, Andrijo, please don’t shoot—”
I hear the snarl without seeing it. “She killed my cousin.”
“Please,” Erin begs again. “Please don’t do this. All we want to do is go home and forget this ever happened. We wouldn’t tell a soul, I swear. We wouldn’t—”
The gun shifts slightly against my scalp.
A click. Safety off.
It’s too late. I’m already fading . . .
In the distance, a faint wailing.
Is it . . . sirens?
Less faint.
Erin’s head jerks to one side, listening.
Sirens.
I’m sure the sky is alight with blue and red flashes, but my world goes black. I’m succumbing.
They’re too late. The police are too late.
The last thing I hear before I slip away is Erin’s piercing scream and a gunshot cutting through the night.