“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.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
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 m
anipulative, 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.
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.
Perfect Prey Page 20