I don’t know if he means more men in the room or elsewhere in the hotel, but I nod, too afraid to speak, and let Yuri pull me to my feet. We stay bent at the waist until Yuri looks around the end of the minibar and stands up, silently letting me know the room is clear.
There’s blood everywhere. Bodies, too, but I force myself to focus on the blood. It’s splattered up the wall and across the ceiling, but mostly it’s puddled on the floor. Stains spread in the carpet, and I know the hotel will have to rip up the carpet to get rid of it all. There’s so much it might even be leaking into the room below us.
I wonder what those people thought was going on. We haven’t heard a whisper from any other room since checking into the hotel, so it’s well insulated. But insulated enough to drown out a gun fight? I half expect police to storm the room, guns blazing, before we can leave, but there’s nothing but the eerie silence and the metallic tang of fresh blood.
Yuri bends down to grab a duffel against the wall—blood is speckled across the strap even though the bag was around the corner from the gunfight—and then slowly turns the door handle with his left hand, his right clutching the gun he used to kill the intruders.
The hallway is clear, and despite the noise and chaos, there doesn’t seem to be anyone around. Yuri grabs my hand and pulls me behind him down the hallway, the duffel banging against his thigh. I realize I didn’t grab anything for myself, but then realize there wasn’t much to grab. The only clothes I had were the ones Yuri bought for me, and I haven’t seen my purse or my phone since he grabbed me off the street.
Suddenly, Yuri stops, and I crash into the hard muscle of his back. I cry out in surprise, and Yuri spins around, claps a hand over my mouth, and spins us into an alcove along the hallway. There’s a large potted tree and a storage closet, and Yuri throws open the closet and shoves me inside. When he pulls the door shut, it’s pitch black.
“More men,” he explains in as few quiet words as possible.
I feel in the darkness until my hand wraps around his elbow. His hand rests over mine, warm and comforting, while we wait. It feels like an eternity, though it’s no more than a minute or two, before the footsteps in the hallway become louder, and we hear them move past the alcove. When they disappear again, I risk speaking.
“Why aren’t the police coming?”
“The Society owns everyone,” he whispers. “Probably paid off security at the hotel.”
“So, we’re on our own?”
Yuri doesn’t answer, but I know that we are as he pushes open the door and checks both ways to be sure the hallway is clear. We move past the elevator and go for the stairwell. I have no training, but I know the stairs are the right choice because if anyone is coming up or down the stairs, we can duck out on any floor to escape. But we don’t have to. We make it to the first floor without running into anyone.
Before we open the door, Yuri wraps a hand around my arm and pulls me close so our chests are almost pressed together. “I don’t know who will be on the other side of this door. The lobby might be overrun with them.”
“Guess we should open the door and find out,” I whisper back.
Just as the words leave my mouth, Yuri bends down and crushes his lips across mine. The kiss is hungry and desperate, and it has a sense of finality to it that makes me want to cry. But I fight back tears, run a finger across his square jaw, and break away.
For one moment, he looks dreamy and untethered, lost in the kiss. But he quickly recovers, gives my waist one final squeeze, and pushes through the door to the lobby.
Everything looks completely normal, just as it has every day before, and I do my best not to look suspicious. I keep my head forward, only my eyes scanning the periphery of my vision. Yuri stays close to my side, but keeps his hands free in case he needs to fight or defend us.
The woman behind the front desk smiles absently at us before returning her gaze to her desk and whatever work she has there, and the doormen each shift into position, ready to open the glass doors for us. The hotel seems to be running like usual, as if the shootout a few floors up never happened.
I feel Yuri relax next to me the closer we get to the doors, and it isn’t until the doors are pulled wide and a rush of warm air from outside blows my hair back that I shake my head and see a shadow over my shoulder. I turn around and see one man dressed in all black following twenty feet behind us. Then, splitting off from the first as though a replicating shadow, a second man in black appears.
“Yuri,” I whimper, reaching out to grab his hand. “There are two men behind us.”
“They’re following us?” he asks without turning around.
I hum a yes.
“Don’t worry.” The words sound measured and even, but I get the sense Yuri is trying to comfort himself as well.
I don’t turn around again until we’re standing in front of the hotel near the valet desk. The men are closer now, both of them locked on us like hunting dogs.
“What are we going to do?” I whisper.
No one is manning the valet desk, and even if they were, we don’t exactly have time to wait.
Yuri doesn’t answer and looks around, and I can tell he’s thinking. Then, a black car pulls up in front of
