Darkness(44)

The apple fell from her suddenly nerveless fingers. It hit the floor with a thud and rolled a few inches away.

A scream bubbled into her throat. Something—a sixth sense?—made her choke it back. What had happened to them? What could have happened to them?

Oh, God. Oh, God.

Whatever it was, it must have just happened. The blood—on Mary, on Jorge—was still fresh, still spreading.

Shock, grief, and fear hit her like a baseball bat. Her chest was suddenly so constricted that it felt as if a giant hand were wrapped around it, squeezing. She tried for a deep breath and ended up with something that was shallow and painful.

Footsteps thumped on the stairs.

Her head snapped up, whipping around toward the long back hall where a staircase led to the second floor. Someone was coming down the stairs with a heavy tread.

Gina’s heart leaped into her throat.

She didn’t know who it was, but—

Her every instinct screamed, Get out now.

Pivoting, she ran back the way she had come, being as quiet as possible but hideously conscious of the soft thud of her footfalls, the slithering rasp her arms made brushing against the body of her coat, the barely stifled sobs of her breathing.

Danger was as tangible in the air as the moldy, unpleasant scent that she suddenly realized was probably blood.

She was just about to fly through the doorway into the kitchen when she heard someone open the back door and walk into the mudroom.

Two someones, she realized as she stopped dead, practically teetering on her toes inches short of the threshold. Men. She could hear them talking.

One said, “Ty iskat vezde?”

To the sound of the back door closing, the other replied, “Da.”

She was no linguist, but she recognized Russian when she heard it.

Behind her a man called out in English, “Ivanov? Anything?”

Having reached the bottom of the steps, the man with the heavy footfalls from the stairs was coming along the hall toward the common room.

None of the voices belonged to her colleagues.

Stark fear turned her blood to ice.

Two of her friends had been brutally murdered—and she was trapped between the men who probably did it.





Chapter Sixteen





Nothing,” a man who was presumably Ivanov called back in heavily accented English.

From the sound of his voice she could tell he was coming through the kitchen, presumably heading for the common room. Panic sent Gina’s pulse rate soaring. She could hear it drumming in her ears.

Hide.

It was the only thing to do, the only chance she had. Wildly she looked around.

Under the table . . . behind the couch . . . in the closet . . .

The closet was the only possible place to go. Everywhere else she would be spotted the moment someone walked through the room.

Juiced by a spurt of adrenaline, Gina fled toward the nearest closet with a door—a wooden double slider—that was partly open. Unless someone actually looked in it, she wouldn’t be seen. Pushing the door open a little wider, she dove inside. It was maybe three-by-six feet, moldy-smelling, dark. There was a jumble of gear on the floor, snowshoes, fishing rods, a net on a long pole. Rolled-up sleeping bags piled in a corner. Clothing hanging from the overhead bar. She tripped over something—the hose of a bicycle pump—and barely managed to catch the upright metal canister part before it hit the floor. Bent almost double, with the cool metal column of the pump in one hand, she froze in place with her heart in her throat as she heard Heavy Tread walk into the room.

Stomach twisting, she realized that she’d missed her chance to slide the door shut behind her.

Maybe that’s a good thing. Maybe he would have noticed that it was open and now it’s shut.

“You sure it was one of these folks?” That was Heavy Tread. He was American, she could tell from his voice. It had a noticeable accent—Texas?

“Only people on island,” Ivanov replied. He was in the common room, too. She caught herself on the verge of gulping in air and immediately clamped down, forcing herself to breathe in careful, quiet sips instead.

Her heart pounded so hard she could practically feel it knocking against her breastbone.

“Eto byla zhenshchina,” the third man said. He was in the room, too.

Trying not to make any sound at all, carefully lowering the bicycle pump so that it rested on the ground, Gina recognized that last word, meaning “woman.”

“It was a woman,” Ivanov said, in a way that made her confident that he was translating. He walked into her line of vision as he spoke. Seen from the back, he was of average height and stocky build. A black knit cap hid his hair. He wore a forest-green puffy coat and black ski pants with boots. Stopping beside the long table, he glanced down.

Gina’s stomach turned over as she realized that what he was looking at was Mary’s body, which had to be lying almost at his feet.

“Not this one,” he added, indicating Mary. “I do not think.”

“Why not?” Heavy Tread asked.

“This one talked funny.” Ivanov’s black-gloved hand came up to rest on the table. With a surge of nausea, Gina saw that he was holding a gun.

Mary was—oh, God, had been—originally from New York. She’d had a heavy Brooklyn accent. If Ivanov knew about her accent, then Mary had talked to Ivanov before he’d killed her. Had he questioned her? Tortured her?