My forehead struck first. There was a cracking sensation that I prayed was the mirror and, an instant later, white-hot pain flooded my brain.
She still had hold of my hair. She used it to yank me backward and I stumbled in my heels.
“Blyadischa!” she yelled. Whore. Something cracked against my cheek and I fell sideways, landing on my knees. My face burned and I thought I tasted blood. She’d slapped me, with the full weight of her oversized rings.
Tears sprang to my eyes. My head throbbed so hard I couldn’t think. Why does she hate me?!
“American shalava!” She was calling me a slut. She’d been glaring at me all night, ever since she’d first seen me with—
Oh no.
She kicked me, then, aiming for my breasts but fortunately hitting me in the shoulder. I sprawled backward, almost going full-length on the tiles. My brain was trying to catch up with what was happening. I’m being attacked. Things like this don’t happen to me. I’d never been in a fight in my life. Part of me wanted to curl into a ball and pray that, if I just took it, she’d run out of steam and stop.
But she wasn’t even close. Hitting me just seemed to make her madder. “Yob tebye suka!” she screeched, almost hysterical. She grabbed me by the hair again and I had to scramble onto my knees or she would have ripped it out by the roots. She half-dragged me forward, into a stall.
Don’t panic. A voice from my past, one that was meant to cut in at times like this. I just had to listen to it.
She rammed my head into the toilet bowl and there was a sudden roar, deafeningly loud. Freezing water filled my ears and nose. I clamped my mouth shut.
The woman screamed something, muffled through the water. I tried to lift my head but her hand was shoving my head down, holding me under. My hair was being pulled around by the currents, wrapping around my face like seaweed. My lungs screamed for oxygen.
Panic won’t help you. The voice had an accent. A Texas drawl. Rick Espiano, my unarmed combat instructor, back when I’d done my basic training. I hadn’t been good at it, not like Nancy.
But I do have a good memory.
Don’t panic, I heard Rick say, as fear clawed at my mind. Just think. What do you have? What can you use?
I drove my foot back, hard, and felt it connect with something. There was a muffled scream and my head was released.
I pushed myself up, vision half-blocked by my tangled, soaked hair. I heaved in a huge lungful of air, tossing my head to try to clear my eyes.
The woman was staggering back from me, gripping her bare thigh with both hands. There was a satisfyingly large red mark there.
She came at me again, nails ready to slash like claws across my face. But my memory had kicked in, now. I ducked under her arm, my shoulder against her thigh, and used her own momentum to throw her over my back. She screamed and I heard her land hard. When I turned around, she was sprawled on the floor, groaning.
Luka’s head bodyguard put his head around the door, saw what was happening, and ran in. Luka was right behind him.
My legs wouldn’t hold me anymore. I sank to the floor, my back against a sink. My hair, face and shoulders were soaked with water—thankfully, the place was classy enough that the toilets were clean. But I could feel tears running down my cheeks, no doubt taking my make-up with them in long, ugly streaks. My hair was over my eyes and, when I tried to sweep it back out of my face, it stuck to my hands in wet ropes. I sobbed.
Luka marched over to the woman on the floor. She was still half-dazed from the throw but, when she saw who it was, she tried to scramble backward away from him. He looked between me and her and the look on his face was one of raw protective fury. He reached down and grabbed the woman by the front of her sparkling top, lifting her easily into the air until her head almost brushed the ceiling. “This woman hurt you?” he asked. Emotion made his accent thick and heavy.
I nodded. And then my stomach lurched because his expression went from angry to murderous. He was going to kill her, for touching me. His bodyguard was by his side in an instant, ready to help.
“Wait!” I croaked. “Don’t—don’t hurt her!”
Luka glanced at me, but didn’t release his grip.
“I don’t need you to,” I said.
He looked back to the woman. He was going to do it. This is the only way he knows.
“I don’t want you to!” I blurted.
Nothing happened for a second. Then he turned his head slowly towards me, as if I’d said something absurd. He held my gaze for a moment and, just for the briefest second, I saw that flicker again, the hint of something underneath. Something—someone—who needed me.
He suddenly tossed the woman away like a bag of garbage. She yelped with pain as she hit the floor and quickly crawled away from him, terrified but alive.
Luka strode over to me and crouched, then scooped me up into his arms. I wanted to run away and hide, humiliated by the way I looked and still shaking from the sudden violence. I twisted my head away from him.
But he put his hand on my cheek and coaxed me to look at him, as gentle as he had been brutal a moment before. He was frowning at me. “You don’t ever have to hide yourself from me,” he admonished, his voice heavy with emotion again. He jerked his head at the bodyguard and the man nodded and ran off ahead of him. To ready the car, I realized.
“Where are we going?” I rasped, my throat raw from crying.
“To my apartment,” he told me. “You can shower, and wash that bitch’s touch off you.”
His apartment. And after I’d cleaned myself up...sex?! I was still reeling from the suddenness and brutality of the attack. I was having a hard time getting my mind back onto the date...and the mission. I just nodded. Then, as he carried me to the door, I glanced back at the groaning woman on the floor. “How did your bodyguard know?” I whispered. “How did he know there was something wrong?”
“Yuri sees everything,” said Luka with a sort of grim pride.
Yuri. The man with the scar now had a name.
Outside the bathroom, a crowd had gathered to see what the commotion was all about. When they saw Luka stride out with me in his arms, they parted like the Red Sea. Through the open door behind us, the blonde woman was visible, still lying on the floor. I saw a couple of women look from her to me to Luka, their expressions incredulous. Then one of them muttered something to the other. “Tupa Karova!” Stupid cow! About the blonde, not me.
The next comment made me freeze inside...yet, worryingly, my heart gave a flutter. “What was she thinking? Couldn’t she see the American girl’s his?”
***
I looked at the flawless, pale leather as I climbed into the car and thought about how many ways I was about to ruin it. But Luka didn’t seem to care about the toilet water in my hair or the mascara running down my face. He just set me carefully down on the back seat and climbed in beside me. I was starting to breathe again, but I was still lost. I could taste blood in my mouth and my head was ringing. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted. For a moment, as his strong arms released me and he brushed a strand of wet hair off my forehead, I just allowed myself to...be. I let myself sink into the soft leather and enjoyed the stillness, forgetting where I was.
With me, that’s an incredibly dangerous thing to do.
As we started to move, Luka leaned across me and did up my seat belt. The metallic click resonated through my entire body.
That was all it took.
It all came together: the car; the feeling of a man doing up my seat belt, just as my dad had done for me that day; the snow whipping past the windows.
I was too wiped out to use my translating trick to distract me and my emotional defenses had been shattered. I could feel my sense of time and place sliding as I was ripped away into the past.