“We’re on our way. Are you in danger?”
I look at the corpse in front of me. There’s a puddle of blood on the floor now, and my sandals are stained maroon. “I killed Borko,” I say, measuredly, calmly, so he knows I’m not in an anxiety frenzy. “He attacked me, so I stabbed him in the neck with a letter opener.” For a moment I worry there’s not going to be enough evidence of his violence to justify self-defense, and they’ll prosecute me for murder. Then I remember my bound hands and broken nose.
“All right. I don’t want you to worry, Carina. You’re not in any trouble. But now that we’re on our way, I want you to start from the beginning. What happened?”
I tell him everything, from being dragged through the clinic and questioned to being punched in the face and loaded into a van. From being interrogated again by both Borko and Andrijo, to climbing through the vents and finding Erin.
“You say she’s been sedated. Was she physically harmed?” Ilić asks. I hear sirens blaring down his end.
“Not that I could see. She’d lost weight, and her skin was pasty and dry. But no cuts or bruises. No blood.”
I’m hit with a sudden surge of guilt for not being with her right now, instead remaining in a closet with a dead body and a whole lot of blood. I’m about to consider climbing through the vent again, until I remember the keys hanging in the door of my storeroom, a small loop most likely containing her key, too. I slip it from the lock and close the door as softly as possible.
Ilić is recounting something in Serbian, but I interrupt again. “Ilić, I’m going to see Erin now. Tell her you’re on your way. Call me when you’re here?”
“Wait, Carina. Stay on the line a few more minutes. I’ve put you on speakerphone in the car. Can you tell us why exactly you think Erin is being held there? Did you get any information out of Andrijo? Or Borko, before . . . ?”
Before I killed him.
The childish part of me wants to stomp my feet and demand he tell me everything he knows, because he’s done nothing but keep things from me for weeks. But this isn’t about me.
“I’m . . . I’m thinking she found out something she shouldn’t have. Something about Kasun, or the clinics. Andrijo and Borko have been obsessed with figuring out what I know, too. There’s a secret there. Something they’re willing to abduct a young woman to protect. Something . . . something Brodie Breckenridge might have known, too.”
“Have you got any idea what the secret could be?”
I strain my brain like I’m stretching a cramp out of a muscle. But I can’t slot the pieces together. “No.”
“All right. Go and see Erin. Call us if you need anything. We’ll be there soon. And stay safe, okay? Once you get to her storeroom, lock yourselves inside and leave the key in the door so nobody can get in.”
I swallow hard. “Right. Okay.”
Mustering the courage to leave the room is almost impossible. I have no idea whether Andrijo—or anyone else involved in this scandal for that matter—is still on-site, and I don’t know what they’d do if they saw me running from one room to another. They’d know I’d disarmed Borko. And the mezzanine is so exposed . . . I remember watching my brother play shooting games, and his entire tactic was staying away from exposed areas. He’d sneak around the perimeters, through abandoned trailers and behind oil drums, even if it took twice as long. His kill-to-death ratio was always stellar.
Maybe it’s worth going through the air vent. It’ll take three times as long, but I know for certain I won’t be seen. And no matter how unpleasant the dusty surface and cramped space and the sensation of being crushed, I’m willing to bet being shot feels quite a bit worse.
Taking one last look at Borko’s body—the wound still oozing thick blood, and the way his eyes are devoid of all light—is a mistake. I did that. I ended his life. I turned him from someone into nothing. Into a lifeless entity. He went from a person to not existing because of me.
Gulping in air as calmly as I can, something lead-like settles in my stomach. I remember how the thin handle of the letter knife reverberated in my hand immediately after the jarring sensation of metal through skin and muscle and flesh. I remember the horror, the shock, the panic on his face when he realized I’d hit an artery. I remember how quickly his soul left his body, how fast he made that transition from full to empty.
The invisible elastic band around my chest is pulled back and snapped against my skin. The pain is sharp, sharper than the letter knife. Guilt larger than anything screams in my ears.
I can never undo the murder I just committed.
So, through shame rather than fear, I clamber back up the shelves, arms wobbling like a plate of jelly, and climb back into the dusty air vent, leaving behind the evidence of the life I stole in order to save my own.
TUNNEL VISION.
I need to channel tunnel vision in order to save my friend. I need to leave my guilt in that storeroom with the dead body and focus on one thing and one thing only: getting us the hell out of here.
My movement through the vent is smoother this time. I slip off my sandals and leave them on the top shelf—I figure a quieter escape can’t be a bad thing. I shuffle as efficiently as I can without thumping the metal too hard. I don’t want Andrijo, or anyone else for that matter, to hear a commotion and come to check on us and Borko before the police arrive.
Passing the first office, then the second, I start to move quicker as the thought of telling Erin we’re nearly safe propels me forward. I want it more than I’ve ever wanted anything, more than a successful journalism career or to be free of debt. None of it matters. All I want is to survive, with her, and live my life with a whole new appreciation for the people around me. For my broken family, my fucked-up friends.
And I want to understand. I want that delicious satisfaction of everything clicking into place: the bruise, the pregnancy test, the abusive father, the disease, the clinic. Tim, Andrijo, Borko, Kasun. Erin—who is she, really?
It’s not until I’m within a few feet of the storeroom, sliding along silently on my knees, that I hear his voice.
Andrijo. He’s in there with Erin.
Chapter Twenty-Four
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 gra
y 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 . . .”
Perfect Prey Page 19