Before The Witches Part 5

Chapter Four.

They were out. Somehow, miraculously, they'd been rescued.

Rescued, for G.o.d's sake. Ved'ma or not, she never could have foreseen this.

Katya rested her chin on Junie's head and inhaled the fragrance of her flaxen hair. Soap and dust and the remnants of cheap perfume.

It was almost normal.

Except for the chaos on the streets around them and the fact that a dirty cop was driving Ivan's van. Dead Ivan. She hadn't even needed the sleeping pills.

She m.u.f.fled a hysterical giggle against Junie's hair. The girl's death grip on her waist tightened.

Scared. And Katya couldn't blame her. For the past ten minutes, since the instant the van had pulled away from the fractured curb, they'd all been tense and silent. Waiting for the other shoe to drop, maybe.

She watched Nigel punch in another series of numbers into his cell. Whomever her unwitting savior was calling, he wasn't happy about it. Frowning, Nigel put the cell down, once more replacing his hands on the wheel.

The scene outside was nothing short of pandemonium. People wandered, some bruised and filthy. Fires had started near downed power lines. A sheet of water gushed from a hydrant bent nearly in half under a car half jacked on top of it, pounding the roof as they drove under its spray.

The radio in the van droned quietly. "Sources say Alaska's Mount Redoubt erupted around two in the morning," the pert female voice said. "Shockwaves were felt as far south as Olympia, though authorities don't expect these to continue past the next day or so. Experts, however, are predicting a sudden temperature decrease by up to three degrees in the Pacific northwest-"

A rustle of movement drew her attention away from the stern lines of Nigel's face. Elena crouched between the seats, her s.h.i.+ny purple pants stretched taut over her thighs. "You are taking us somewhere safe?" she asked, her accent thick as mud.

Katya rubbed Junie's back softly as the girl stirred.

Nigel didn't look away from the treacherous road he navigated. "To the police station. We have-"

"That is not safe," Elena said firmly.

He flicked Katya a glance.

She shrugged.

"I want to go to my son," Elena continued, her tone unshakeable. "He is with others. The girls will come. Katya?"

She hesitated.

"Katya comes with me," Nigel said flatly. And if the redhead's tone was unshakeable, Katya read nothing but steely determination on the cop. She winced.

Elena blinked at her. Then, with a ghost of a smile, she said, "Junie can-"

"I want to stay with Katya," Junie said in sudden, rapid Russian.

"Sweetheart," Katya murmured, as soothing as she could. "I don't think he would like it if-"

"You can stay with Katya," Nigel interrupted in that d.a.m.ned pa.s.sable Russian of his. She shot him a narrow-eyed glare, but his features were implacably dense.

Determined. Right. She got it.

But he didn't have to let the girl stay. That he did was . . . oddly kind.

Who the h.e.l.l was he?

Junie settled, burying her face in Katya's shoulder, her back to Nigel. Elena nodded, pleased. She gave the man an address and returned to the back of the van, bracing herself against the lurching momentum.

Katya stroked Junie's back softly. "That was very nice," she said quietly.

He didn't look at her. "She wants to protect her family. I get that."

"And Junie?"

"Is that her name?"

Katya's hand stilled. Then, slowly, she resumed the rhythmic, rea.s.suring caress. "Not likely."

"Is your name really Katya?"

The tone didn't change even an iota. Cool. Calm. Cop voice, she thought, and sighed. "Yes. My name actually is Ekaterina. Katya, for short."

"You speak better English than you let on."

Junie's breath soaked into her shoulder, warm and vitally alive. Holding the girl tightly, Katya leaned her head back against the seat, tried to ignore the dull pain seeping into the side of her face as the adrenaline faded, and studied Nigel's profile.

She'd lied when she told the others that she didn't find him handsome. Although not cla.s.sically pretty, his features had an arresting quality she found intriguing.

And he hadn't shaved, she noticed.

Her lips curved faintly. "I learned fast." It was the only way to hear the lies in a foreign country.

His fingers tightened on the wheel. "Why were you in that house?"

"Are you a dirty cop?"

He fielded her return volley with raised eyebrows, only now turning his head to meet her forthright stare. His eyes were almost black in the gray daylight. "No," he said flatly. "I'm a good cop pretending to be a dirty cop so that I can take down that son of a b.i.t.c.h Mikoyan."

All conversation stopped behind them.

Truth. She stared at him. "You mean that."

Nigel cursed quietly and concentrated again on the van. The radio droned on. He asked her no more questions, and after that bombsh.e.l.l, she wasn't sure she wanted to pry any more.

Once the others were safe, she'd ask. She'd ask about his case. She'd ask why girls like Junie were abandoned to the system while men like him got to screw them in the name of evidence.

So much anger.

Smoothing back Junie's hair, Katya closed her eyes and let herself doze.

It couldn't have been long. The vehicle slowed suddenly, and a flurry of activity jarred her solidly awake. Junie mumbled something incoherent against her neck, this time really asleep.

Nigel climbed out of the van, circled around the back and unbarred the back doors. Light flooded through the interior.

Katya opened the pa.s.senger door and slid out, Junie held awkwardly in her arms. "Elena."

The redhead stretched, her silk tank-top clinging to every curve, and shot Katya a grin from beneath her vivid bangs. "This is freedom, of a kind," she said lazily in her native language.

Katya opened her free arm and she stepped into it, hugging her as warmly as if they were sisters.

"Be safe," Katya instructed sternly. "Get out of Seattle. Go somewhere else." She didn't know why the words seemed so important, but she said them anyway. Seattle wasn't safe anymore.

True enough, anyway, as long as Mikoyan was alive.

"You are too young to be acting like a mother," Elena replied. She tucked a stray tendril of blonde behind Katya's ear, then ran her fingers down Junie's back. "Live your life, now."

It was sweet. But she couldn't promise anything, not as long as there were girls like her.

Katya kissed the women, said her farewells with tears thick in her throat, and returned to the van. Nigel watched silently, the set of his mouth unreadable.

Katya was always so good at reading people. Nigel's blank slate expressions unnerved her.

"I will come soon to talk to you," Nigel said in his cautious grasp of Russian.

Elena looped her arms around Irina and Magda, her smile nothing short of maneating. "You are good man," she replied in English. "But we will not be here."

Nigel hesitated. Then, jaw s.h.i.+fting, he nodded. "Take care of yourselves."

"Da."

"Do svidaniya!" Katya called in farewell. Junie stirred, but slept on. Hiking the girl's lanky body higher into her arms, she touched her fingers to her mouth and blew them all a silent kiss.

Her heart twisted as Nigel shut the door behind her.

As he climbed back into the driver's seat, his gaze touched on her face. Her swelling cheek. Something predatory banked. "Why did Ivan hit you?"

She flinched before she could force herself not to. "Someone told him I'd been to the police."

He swore viciously, too under his breath to catch the specifics. But there was no misreading the leashed tension in his hands, the taut muscles of his arms as he held the steering wheel.

She took a deep breath. "Was it you?" she demanded.

"No. h.e.l.l, no," he said tightly, his eyes hard on the traffic-choked road. "But I'm d.a.m.n well going to find out who."

Truth. On both counts. He believed what he said.

For the moment, it was enough.

She leaned back against the door, once more running gentle fingers down Junie's spine. Her lashes drifted closed, but even as she listened to radio, her mind wouldn't stop spinning.

Ivan was dead. She'd killed him. Her. Katya Zhuvova. She'd never killed a man before in her life, but she'd pulled the trigger.

And he'd fallen.

The disgusting man was going to rape her. To teach her a lesson; well, she'd taught him, all right. With a frying pan and his own gun.

She squeezed her eyes shut.

"Hey." He sounded so gentle. So d.a.m.ned rea.s.suring.

Was it a sign of weakness that she so badly wanted to be rea.s.sured?

"It's going to be okay," he said, and for the first time since meeting him, she detected a lie. But that was all right. Rea.s.surance usually came on the back of a white lie, didn't it?

It was almost enough to make her smile.

"The world is going to h.e.l.l," she said without opening her eyes. "I really don't think it's going to be okay at all."

He fell silent. And then, after what seemed like an eternity of waiting, he said, "I hope you're wrong."

Ah, her senses whispered. Truth.

He was an optimist, this cop.

It took far too long to get to the police station. Traffic backed up across the city, detours were installed around damaged bridges and overpa.s.ses. People milled in crowds, ambulances tore through roads shredded by fractures. By the time Nigel had escorted them to a small, clean office, Katya was worn to the bone. Strung out on faded adrenaline and, though she tried to keep from showing it, shaking from head to toe.

An older man with a rumpled suit had tried to ask her questions, but Nigel had deflected him.

He'd left, come back with clean clothes for both herself and Junie, and left again, shutting the office door behind him.

The silhouette of a police man hovered behind the drawn shade.

Katya was grateful. Junie sat on a worn green couch, wearing a too-large T-s.h.i.+rt and curled up into as small a ball as she could make herself.

Katya sat on the floor, her fingers loosely linked around the girl's gangly ankles. Her own borrowed s.h.i.+rt was gray, smelled like Nigel, and hung like a sack on her much shorter frame. "They're going to ask us some questions," she said, meeting Junie's exhausted brown eyes. "When we tell them everything, we'll be free."

Junie's lip quivered. "Will we go back to Ivan?"

Katya flinched. "No, sweetheart. You'll never have to go back to Ivan."

The girl fell silent, her chin on her knees. Her lips worked for a while, as if framing a question.

"What is it?" Katya asked gently.