Chapter One

 

March, Pevlova Oblast, several hours east of St. Petersburg

WILLOW

How could I have given my heart to a perfect liar?

That’s the question I’m asking myself as my lungs burn, as my legs slash through the dark night, as my boots slide across grimy snow. I came here to find out the truth of Sergei, and I think that very soon, it’s going to kill me.

Sergei, the man I love and loathe in equal measure, may or may not be the person behind the series of kidnappings of young girls from local nightclubs. Girls like the blonde I’m hauling along with me right now, in a desperate race to reach the police station.

When the girls disappear, they’re never seen again, but there are dark whispers. Trafficking. Whorehouses. Rape and torture.

Some of the rumors say that Sergei is the man behind the kidnappings. Some say it’s Cataha.

Some even say that they’re one and the same. Or working together.

Or bitter rivals in the same trade.

The lies fall from everyone’s lips in hushed whispers, and I am further from learning the truth than I was when I arrived in Russia five months ago.

But I refuse to be an idle observer to the horror that continues to unfold here. I’ve been working with a local group of volunteers, to intercept the kidnappers and expose whoever is behind it all.

Whoever. Even if that means the man I was foolish enough to fall for. If it turns out that it’s Sergei, I’ll kill him at the first opportunity. Never mind that it will be the same as killing myself.

We volunteers dress up in our fake designer clothes like all the other club-goers. We wear our disguises, wigs, hair extensions, sunglasses, colored contact lenses, different makeup, the men wearing different types of facial hair. Never looking the same twice.

Last week I was a redhead. This week I’m a brunette, with long, flowing hair extensions.

When we go to the clubs, we dance and pretend to drink, but all the while we’re scanning the crowds, looking out for men who are slipping drugs into women’s drinks.

We secretly take pictures of the men with our cell phones, then move forward to warn the women of what’s happening. We’ve saved fourteen girls so far, and reported three “scouts”, as they call them, to the police. The scouts have been arrested.

I’ve been lucky so far, but nobody’s lucky forever. Not when they take as many stupid chances as I do.

Going to the American-themed Club Hollywood tonight was especially risky, because we’ve been tipped off that the owner is working with the traffickers.

But knowing that, we couldn’t sit idle.

Just a little while ago, I followed one of the bouncers and his intended victim out of the club. A beautiful girl with thick blonde hair hanging halfway down her back, wearing a cheap, stained white parka and grimy white boots. She didn’t know it, but she was advertising herself as perfect bait. Pretty, from a poor family, who wouldn’t be missed if she was taken. The bouncer flirted with her, bought her a drink, and then waited a few minutes until the drug kicked in.

As the man steered her past the bouncers outside, she was staggering, the effects of the drug already pumping through her system. Fortunately, she’d only had a couple of sips, despite his urging, or she’d have been in even worse shape.

I pretended to be drunk, stumbling along behind them.

Club Hollywood is in an industrial district, right on the border of a run-down block of apartment buildings. At night, the lights from the front of the club bathe the entire block in sickly yellow, but the parking lot, a block to the right of the club, is only lit up at the front. The back of the lot is a yawning black hole.

I made my move as soon as he maneuvered her out of the light, towards the back of the lot. I ran up behind him, my boots crunching noisily on the crusty layer of ice over the snow. He started to turn towards me, letting go of the blonde woman’s arm. Gasping for breath in the chill night air, I jabbed him in the neck with a needle. I’d practiced that move for months, in the apartments of various friends I was crashing with, using an empty syringe and a dummy.

He staggered, his broad, flat face twisting with rage. He struggled to stay upright, feet suddenly gone stupid. Not listening to instructions from his brain.

“See how it feels, you bastard?” I shouted at him. The girls he’d drugged, the horror that they’d felt when they’d realized what was happening to them… The raw terror, the helplessness, the betrayal of one’s own body… He was feeling all of it.

Slowly, he crumpled and fell onto his left side, with a satisfyingly hard crash on the icy pavement. His jaw was working, his tongue suddenly too thick to form words.

The blonde stumbled back a step and gaped at me, her eyes unfocused.

She tried to speak, but her words came out in a mumbled slurry of saliva. “Whash happen…”

I couldn’t imagine what would have happened if she’d finished her drink. She’d have been down on the ground unconscious, I imagined.

“You’ve been drugged,” I told her quickly. “That asshole drugged your drink – he was going to kidnap you.” I grabbed her arm to steady her. “We’re going back to the nightclub now, in case any of his friends are waiting out here. We’re going to call an ambulance once we’re inside the club.”

Triumph flared inside me, a source of warmth on this cold, evil night. This would be enough for Akim to publish an article in Reforma, naming this nightclub and forcing an investigation. This would be the third nightclub our group had shut down in as many months.

Everything felt so good at that moment. Everything was working the way it should, for once. The gears of justice clicking into place and turning, grinding evil to a pulp between their cold metal teeth.

And then everything flew to pieces.

Three men came pounding down the sidewalk, bearing down on us. They were a solid wall of muscular fury between us and our escape route. Where had they come from? They were like demons bursting out of hell, materializing out of thin air.

Seconds later, my two lookouts, Simon and Yakov, shot out of an alley across the street, yelling, waving their arms, cans of mace in their hands. The three men turned and fired at them with silenced weapons. Simon and Yakov folded like rag dolls in the middle of the street.

And now my friends are dead and the police station might as well be a million miles away, because we’ll never reach it in time.

I’m dead. The blonde is dead. Oh, we’re still breathing for now, but we don’t have a chance in frozen hell of surviving the night.

The police station is ten blocks away in the opposite direction. The second I saw my friends fall, I turned and ran across the street, dragging her with me.

We won’t make it, but we’ll die trying.

My heart is shattering into pieces for my two dead friends, but I can’t spare any breath for crying. I need it for running. And very soon, probably, screaming.

She’s staggering and slowing me down. I should drop her in the snow to save myself, but instead, I grip her arm tighter.

“Move your ass!” I shriek at her.

“Leave me,” the blonde slurs, her head lolling. “Shhhlow you down. Can’t feel maaa legssshhh...”

“No!”

I start screaming at the top of my lungs for help.

We’re passing an apartment building now, one of those ugly old Soviet-era blocks of concrete. Not a single door or window opens. If anything, I can almost feel the buildings hugging themselves shut, the people inside cowering with their hands clapped over their ears.

Here, in the land where poverty chews up lives and every traffic stop is the choice of a bribe or prison, good Samaritans are few and far between.

And they don’t live very long.

The men are gaining on us, and the true horror of what’s about to happen engulfs me, and I want to weep.

I always knew it would end this way. I’ve done a little good. I’ve saved a few girls. A pitifully small number. I just hoped I’d have more time.

Then the blonde pulls away from me, deliberately, and throws herself on the ground. Now I have a terrible choice. And it’s a choice that I must make in microseconds.

She’s sacrificing herself.

If I stay with her, I’m committing suicide. If I run, there is the chance, the faintest of chances, that I’ll be able to get help for her.

“I’ll come for you!” I scream into the wind, but I’m talking more to myself than to her. I run as fast as I can, my tears freezing to my cheeks. The muscles in my legs are on fire, and every panicked, icy breath burns my lungs.

Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving…

But her sacrifice is in vain. I only make it about another block before someone pops out from between two parked cars and a hood is thrown over my head. They move so fast that I barely have time to react before my world is swallowed in darkness.

I pretend to go limp, and someone picks me up from behind. I’ve lost, I know this, but I will fight every step of the way.

Fear pumping through my veins like acid, I lift my legs, hook them behind his knees, and send him crashing to the ground. He lands on top of me, a thousand-ton pile of bricks dropped right on my ribcage.

The snow barely breaks our fall. The breath is knocked out of me, stars explode behind my eyes, and I taste blood in my mouth. I gag on the reek of vodka fumes, B.O. and cigarette smoke. His massive weight is crushing me, and he’s cursing at me as he rolls off.

I’m temporarily stunned, my muscles jellied and my head whirling, as I’m scooped up and tossed into the back of a vehicle like a sack of flour. The ice-rink-cold of the floor shocks me back awake.

The metallic clang of a door slamming rings in my ears, and we start moving.

I’m lying curled on my side, and my hands are free. Why didn’t he secure my hands? Probably because he knows that he and his men don’t have a damn thing to fear from me. I am torn between the fear of seeing what’s waiting for me, and the fear of not seeing it.

I yank the hood off and sit up.

I’m in the back of a truck. There are no windows; it’s a metal prison without hope of escape.

There are four men in the back of the truck, sitting on benches. All armed. But it’s the one wearing a devil’s mask with curling horns who sets my heart racing in panic. He’s got a scar on his neck, which means it’s really him, not a copycat.

Cataha. The scar comes from a recent assassination attempt by a rival gang. One of the rumors I heard was that Sergei and his men were behind the attempt. But another story being whispered among frightened denizens of the underworld is that Sergei is Cataha, and he was injured when the police came for him.

The mask is something new, from what I’ve heard, something he only started wearing a few months ago.

He’s leaning back against the wall, his rifle resting on his broad thighs, and I think he’s looking at me, but it’s hard to tell in the dim light, with the dark eyeholes of the mask obscuring his gaze.

I shudder and look away, staring at the floor. I finally have the answer to one of the many questions that’s been tormenting me ever since that horrible night in California eight months ago, when Sergei broke my heart.

Sergei is not Cataha.