The Guest Room(91)
The night of the party I had been in the doorway between the living room and the hall when Sonja jumped on Pavel’s back with the knife. I was stunned. Totally stunned. I knew she was avenging Crystal, but nothing else. Not yet. She hadn’t told me anything. And there was Kirill, coming back from bathroom on the first floor of the nice house. He looked up from his zipper when he heard the big commotion in the living room. There was the thump from the little table that got turned over when one of the men at the party jumped away from Sonja with her knife and Pavel, there were the yelps from some of the men who were screaming things like What the f*ck? and No!, and there was the sound of Pavel gagging as he swung his arms around, trying to get Sonja off him, before he finally fell over the back of the couch. All this chaos and noise? Happened almost at once. Within seconds. Kirill couldn’t see what it was, but his first thought was to reach for his gun before going in. Which was when I threw myself at him. I don’t know what I thought I was going to do. He was big guy. They were all big guys. It was just reflex. I landed on him right when he was pulling his gun from his shoulder holster. I landed on him right when he must have been using his thumb to flick off the safety.
And when I landed on him, by mistake he squeezed the trigger.
So he shot himself. Point-blank. The gun was maybe an inch from his chest. Maybe right against it. We both fell onto the floor, me on top of him, the Makarov between us, and for a second I thought I was the one who was shot: I felt so much blood on my belly and my tits and my neck. I had felt the back of his knuckles slam so hard into my ribs that I thought it must have been the bullet. The blast was almost in my ears, so my head was ringing and I was crazy deaf. But then I pushed up onto my knees and saw that all of that blood was his. I saw the way his white shirt was turning black and the way he was spitting it up—choking, just like Pavel.
And then Sonja was there, naked as me. At first her lips were moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. She took my hand and lifted me up, still talking, me still not hearing. Kirill’s gun was in his fingers, so she bent over and took it from him. She fired a shot into the bastard’s bald head, and then she handed me the pistol. I guess she was already planning that she would take Pavel’s.
“We have to get dressed,” she said. This time, maybe because she shouted, I heard her. I heard the words like I was underwater. But I understood.
I used a towel from that bathroom to wipe some of the blood off my chest and my stomach. And Sonja? She turned around and spat on Kirill’s body.
…
If it had been the other way around, if Kirill had liked belt holsters and Pavel had liked shoulder holsters, it would have been me who would have been shot in the front hallway that night. Think of how a guy draws his gun. Kirill would have been pulling his gun from his right hip, not pulling it across his body. He would have fired it smack into my thigh or my hips or my belly.
Before we went back into the living room with the cue-ball-head baby’s Makarov, Sonja took that little bathroom towel from me and dabbed at some of Kirill’s blood I had missed on my ribs.
…
The police guy. If only…
If only Crystal hadn’t talked to him. Or…
If only Crystal hadn’t been caught. Or…
If only she hadn’t told Sonja. Or…
If only Sonja hadn’t killed Pavel. Or…
If only she had gotten to the Georgian before they got to her. Or…
If only I had found the police guy who met Crystal. Or…
Or think of it all in whole different way.
If only my dad didn’t die in such horrible accident. Or…
If only my mom didn’t get such horrible cancer. Or…
If only I didn’t have such stupid dreams about being ballerina…
I don’t know.
I will never know how much is my fault and how much is theirs. No one does, right?
Chapter Fifteen
At the sound of the gunshot, Kristin threw her daughter to the damp earth, a sloping patch of yard by the garage that was always in shade because of the house and a copse of nearby evergreens, and fell on top of her. She could smell the autumnal reek of humus beneath the moldering, wet leaves; she could feel her daughter breathing hard through her navy blue peacoat. There she waited for…
She didn’t know what for. A second shot? The sound of running feet? A car engine? Sirens?
“Shhhhh, don’t move, love, don’t move,” she murmured into her daughter’s ear. She decided she would count to ten. Then she would roll over and turn around. If no one was coming, she would lift Melissa from the leaves and dash to the next house. The Sullivans.
And if the bullet had hit Richard? God. Please, no. Please, please no. She wasn’t sure she could bear it. But she couldn’t risk their daughter’s life by going back. How in the name of heaven could she help him anyway? No, she needed to protect Melissa. It was what he would want. He’d told them to run, and that was the only thing to do.
And if it was the girl who’d been shot?
She was…tiny. Never had it crossed Kristin’s mind that she would look more like a child than a…than a prostitute. No. She wasn’t a prostitute. She had been kidnapped. Even Melissa had said the words: she was a sex slave.
“Mommy, I can’t breathe,” Melissa whispered, and for a split second Kristin feared that it was her daughter who had been shot, and in the midst of her convoluted mental gymnastics she had failed to notice. But then Kristin got it: she was trying so desperately to protect her little girl that inadvertently she was smothering her. She raised herself up on one elbow and looked over her shoulder. The Escalade was idling—Had anyone even gotten out of the car?—but there didn’t seem to be anyone coming after them. Could whoever was in the vehicle even see them? For all they knew, the two of them were already at the next house. At any house.