Devil's Lair (Molotov Obsession #1) - Anna Zaires Page 0,55

chemically induced non-worry dissipates, my head clearing more by the second. I don’t understand what she means, not fully, but I don’t doubt that she’s sincere, that her warning is meant to protect me.

Drawing back, Alina lights a third joint and extends it toward me. “More?”

“No, thanks. I, um…” I clear my throat to rid it of residual hoarseness. “I actually need the Wi-Fi password. That’s why I came out here to look for you. Also, Nikolai wanted you to set me up on your videoconference platform—if you’re feeling up to it, that is.”

She takes a deep drag and slowly blows out the smoke at my face. “I suppose that can be arranged.” Handing the joint to Lyudmila, she rises to her feet. “Let’s go.”

And with a gait that’s only slightly unsteady, she leads me back to the house.

When we get to the living room, I hand her the laptop and watch, with no small degree of amazement, as she navigates to the settings and inputs the password, her elegant fingers flying over the keyboard. If not for the strong smell of pot clinging to her hair and clothes—and if I hadn’t personally witnessed her smoking the majority of those two joints, plus however many she’d shared with Lyudmila prior to my arrival—I would’ve never known she’s high.

She’s just as unerring with her installation of the videoconference software and setup of the account, her red-tipped fingers moving at a speed that would do a hacker proud.

“You’re really good at this,” I say after she hands the laptop to me and explains the basics of the software. “Did you major in computer science or something along those lines?”

“God, no.” She laughs. “Economics and PoliSci, same as Nikolai. Konstantin’s the geek in the family—the rest of us are proficient at best.”

“Gotcha. Either way, thanks for this.” I close the laptop and tuck it under my arm. “I’m going to head to bed. Are you…?” I wave in the general direction of the front door.

She nods, one corner of her mouth lifting in a half-smile. “Lyudmila’s waiting for me. Goodnight, Chloe. Sweet dreams.”

30

Chloe

Back in my room, I take a shower to clear the remaining haziness from my mind and change into my pajamas. Then, brimming with anticipation, I get comfy on the bed, open the laptop, and bring up a browser.

I start by looking for news coverage of my mom’s death. There isn’t much, just an obituary and a short article in a local paper reporting that a woman had been found dead in her East Boston apartment. Neither goes into details, tactfully omitting any mention of suicide. I’d already read both the article and the obituary when I stopped at a library in Ohio a couple of weeks back, so I don’t spend much time on them. Instead, I make a note of the reporter’s name and look up her contact info, then log into my Gmail and send her a long, detailed email outlining exactly what happened on that June day.

Maybe I’ll have better luck with her than with the other journalists I’ve contacted so far. None of them have bothered to reply—probably dismissing me as a mental case, just as the police had. But those were reporters at major news outlets, and they undoubtedly get harassed by all sorts of crazies. In the movies, it’s always the small-time reporter who gets intrigued enough to investigate, and maybe that will be the case here too.

One can always hope.

Next, I type Mom’s name into Google and see what else I can pull up. Maybe somewhere out there is a mention of her leading some secret double life, something that would explain why someone would want to kill her.

And maybe pigs will hop on a spaceship and fly to the moon.

I find exactly what I expected: a big fat nothing. The only thing my search brings up is Mom’s Facebook profile, and I spend the next half hour reading her posts while fighting back tears. Mom didn’t love the idea of putting her life on display, so her friend count is in the low double digits and her posts are few and far between. A photo of the two of us dressed up to go clubbing for my twenty-first birthday, a snapshot of the bouquet of flowers her co-workers at the restaurant gifted her for her fortieth, a video of me feeding lettuce to a giraffe during our recent vacation in Miami—her profile barely touches on the highlights of our lives, much less