“What?” she whispered.
Her back stayed facing him.
He didn’t mind.
Pav didn’t actually know what he wanted to say to her. It was more like he just wanted two more seconds with her. Another moment to breathe her in and drink every drop that she was willing to give him.
“Make sure someone gets you home safely. And sleep well.”
She let out a quiet laugh. One he didn’t understand, but it still felt loaded. She didn’t reply before she climbed the rest of the steps and headed into the house. He gave it twenty seconds, more than long enough for her to rejoin the party without it looking like he was following behind, and then he went inside, too.
He assumed she would find her family in the crowd and join them for the remainder of the party. Instead, he noticed her standing alone in the entryway of the living room, away from the guests. She said nothing to him. He said nothing to her as he passed.
Pav couldn’t help but reach out to touch her as he headed for the hallway that would lead to the front door. It was nothing big, really, just the brush of his fingertips along the soft skin of her inner wrist.
But it was enough.
Enough to make her relax. Enough to make her shiver again. Enough to drive him crazy.
Pav was not done.
Not with her.
He tended to like broken things. She was certainly that.
And more …
• • •
Pav hadn’t known what the issue was that needed their immediate attention at the Compound. For the entire drive, Konstantin drove in silence. Pav wasn’t the type to talk anyway, so he hadn’t bothered to press the man for details. Not that Konstantin owed him anything, if he had tried to ask.
But now, as he stood in front of the empty cell that had once housed a man for almost two years, Pav was beginning to think Konstantin was concerned over more than just the fact that one of the Boykov prisoners had escaped.
“He killed the man watching the Compound,” Konstantin said from behind Pav.
Pav didn’t turn away from the cell. His gaze swept the shackles at the other end of the cell—this was one of the few rooms beneath the Compound that actually had a door. He’d never known the name of the man housed in this particular cell, but the man refused to be broken. He was beaten more often than the rest, and for the first couple of months after he had been brought in, Pav remembered specifically that Kolya Boykov had made a few trips down to visit the man.
And the screams …
He wouldn’t soon forget those.
“Someone let him out of the shackles,” Pav said, cocking his head to the side as he eyed the chains and metal cuffs resting forgotten on the cement floor. They didn’t look broken or ruined at all. They simply looked as though someone had undone them. “The man watching him and the rest of them, yes?”
Konstantin cleared his throat. “Likely. Would you have released him from his confines for any reason?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I know better. Abused dogs never forget where they come from. They can pretend, and act like they’re broken and incapable, but once they’re free …” Pav trailed off with a quiet noise and shook his head. “You turn your back once, give them that chance, and I promise, they will take it every time.”
“This was only the man’s second time watching the cells.”
Pav was aware. The man was intended to watch the lower part of the Compound—Pav’s duty, normally—when Pav took his leave from the grounds. It was all a part of Konstantin’s great plan to get Pav away from these four walls and back into some semblance of a normal life. This was also why it was pointless. No one was Pav. No one but him could possibly understand how dangerous it was to watch the people being held in these cells.
“Where’s the body of the man killed?”
“Being taken to the furnace.”
“Where was he found?”
“Just outside the cell, along with a cell phone that had been used to make a call.”
Pav’s brow furrowed. “Whose phone?”
“The dead man’s.”
“Do you think he made a call—”
“I think unless he choked himself out, and then laid the phone on the back of his head after it had been said and done, then it’s probably safe to say it was the one that escaped who used the phone.”
“Do you know the number—”
“As far as we know, the call went through to a burner. We have no other information.”
Pav took a moment then to look over the cell again, and with new eyes this time. A little bit of information could go a long way. It could change one’s perspective, and the way they approached a situation.
The shackles …
The dead man just outside the cell …
A phone call …
“He planned this,” Pav said. “This was something he was waiting for, and when he finally got his chance, he took it.”
“Looks like it.”
“But why?”
That was the better question.
Konstantin shifted on his feet. Pav couldn’t see him do it, being that the man was behind him, but he could hear it. He heard everything. One’s senses were their best defense against something that might attack when a person wasn’t expecting it. Pav had become accustomed to using all his senses to protect himself, and not just one or two.
“You’re either uncomfortable, or thinking about lying,” Pav said when the silence continued on from Konstantin. “Which tells me you know something about the man I was keeping in this cell, and why he
