We took the metro back into the city and went up into the streets. With the stations and presumably the roads out of the city under surveillance, we’d have to hole up in the center while we figured out what we were going to do. But, as soon as we got above ground, Luka swore under his breath and nodded ahead of us. One of Ralavich’s men, marching determinedly towards us. We turned and there was another one behind and more getting out of a car across the street. Between them and the police, they had the whole city locked down.
Luka pulled me towards the street. I didn’t know what he had in mind until he pulled open the door of a man’s car and pointed his gun at him. The man scuttled out, hands over his head, and Luka pushed me into the driver’s seat.
I stared at the steering wheel in horror. I hadn’t driven since the crash. Luka flung himself into the passenger seat. “I can’t,” I told him. It was night. Snow was falling. I was going to have a full-on flashback. Just being in a car might not be enough to trigger it, anymore, but this combination of stress and fear sure as hell would. And if I had a flashback at the wheel, we could both be killed.
Luka grabbed my head between his hands. “You have to,” he said, waving the gun. “I have to shoot.”
My eyes bugged out. Shoot?! Shit! Shit shit shit shit—
My whole body was stiff with tension. I clumsily put the car into gear, then tentatively pressed the gas. We shot forward and smashed into the car in front. Luka swore.
“I told you!” I snapped. Ralavich’s men were running towards us, now.
An irate driver climbed out of the car ahead of us. Luka pointed the gun at him and he climbed back in.
There was a bang and a crash of shattering glass. Bits of the rear window were in my hair.
“Arianna!” Luka’s voice was commanding and calm despite the chaos. “We have to go! Now!”
I hauled on the wheel and pulled out into traffic, drawing honks and shouts. I prayed and floored the gas. We screamed forward, pinballing off parked cars but pulling away from the car behind us. For a moment, I thought it was going to be okay. Maybe I really was healed.
Then a corner came up, way too fast, and we slipped and skidded on the hard-packed snow. The past rushed up to meet me, the horrible feeling of the wheels leaving the ground.
I could feel the memories rushing up to engulf me, bright and sharp as the day of the crash. The feel of the seat under me. The creak and crunch of tortured metal. I squeezed my eyes closed but it was too late. I was with my parents, the car skidding towards the cliff—
“Arianna!” It was Luka. “Stay with me!”
I focused on his voice, on the exquisite, perfect solidness of him, my anchor in the here and now. I opened my eyes and I was out of the flashback and back in Moscow.
I hauled on the wheel and managed to get us round the corner, though we clipped a parked truck. Luka gripped my arm hard, keeping me in the present. He was firing out of the window with the other hand.
I sped through the twisting streets. There were several loud gunshots, but all I could do was stare at the road ahead, go as fast as I could and pray a bullet didn’t hit me in the back of the head. After a few more corners, the sound of the car chasing us seemed to fade.
“There!” yelled Luka, pointing. “Go there!”
I looked. A big, open doorway led to an indoor market. I aimed for it and then hit the brakes as soon as we were inside.
We came to a stop with the car half-covered in rugs and carpets and a guy yelling at us in Russian that we’d ruined his stall—but at least no one was hurt. Luka pulled me out and carried me through the crowd, then planted me down on my feet and grabbed my hand. By the time the other car caught up with us, we’d disappeared into the crowd.
***
“We have to change our appearance,” I told Luka. We’d left the market through a rear entrance and were moving through a maze of alleys.
He blinked at me. “You really are a spy.”
“I can talk in Russian, remember?” I said in Russian. “Less conspicuous.” Although my Russian accent wasn’t great. I’d only had to understand Russian, back in Langley, not speak it and convince people I was a local.
I was shutting out the panic and fear, now, and going step-by-step through what I’d learned in my basic training. All the stuff Nancy used every day, the stuff I’d never thought I’d need. Thank God for my memory.
Luka’s phone rang. He grabbed it and put it to his ear, pulling me into an alcove. I could feel the tension in his body….and then he relaxed. “My father is okay,” he said.
I let out a long breath. Given how pale Vasiliy had been, last time I saw him, I’d feared the worst. “Yuri got him to a doctor?”
“Yuri is the doctor.”
I stared at him.
“It’s fine. Yuri was a medic in the army.”
“At least tell me they went to a hospital?!”
He shook his head. “A safehouse.” He looked at my expression. “It’s fine. Yuri will have knocked him out with vodka and then dug the bullet out and stitched him up. It’s his third—no, fourth time.”
“Please say this hasn’t happened to you!”
“No. Well, only once. Bullet hit my leg. Hardly counts.”
I shook my head in disbelief. It was a miracle any of the Malakovs were still alive.
We found a department store that was open late and I led him through it, buying up clothes and make-up. Then we found the grottiest, seediest hotel we could, a place where they’d take cash and not ask questions.