Die for Me (Killing Eve #3) - Luke Jennings Page 0,12
and I can’t help but agree. It stinks.
In front of one of the fan heaters, everything has been sprayed with a fine mist of shit. The floor is slippery with it, as are the ceiling and light fittings, and a dozen of the most elaborate wedding dresses, formerly shell-pink, pearly white or ivory, are unromantically flecked with brown.
Villanelle’s improvised diversion has proved shockingly effective. When she was setting it up I was too tense to pay much attention, but I now see what she was up to. Having anticipated that one of the first things that the Prekrasnaya Nevesta workforce would do on arrival at the warehouse was to get the place warmed up, she packed the interior of one of the heating units with a week’s worth of her own shit, neatly knotted into six biodegradable bags. The bags would have melted fast, and the fans would have done the rest. The heater in question has been turned off, but it’s still steaming and dripping.
Disgusting, but classic Villanelle. A signature piece, you might say, charged with the brilliance and horror that she brings to her finest work. Even as I gag at the stench, I recognize the flair that drew me to pursue her in the first place. I also can’t help reading the scene as a personal message. If you’re hoping for happy-ever-after, she’s saying, then forget it, that’s all shit. She clearly meant it, because she’s gone. Given the choice between rescuing me and saving herself, she legged it.
Of course she did. She’s a psychopath.
The two women lead me to the center of the warehouse floor, where skullhead is waiting, and a chair has been pulled up for me. My rucksack is placed at my side. All things considered, I’m amazed at their civility and consideration.
“Ty kto?” I’m asked again, and again I stare back vacantly.
“Kto ona takaya?” Who is she? Skullhead points in the direction that Villanelle went, and I frown as if I don’t understand the question, or who he’s referring to.
“Ona bolnaya na golovu,” says the woman with the headscarf, and at her suggestion that I have mental health problems I gaze at her piteously and, to my surprise, discover that I’m weeping.
Once I’ve started, I can’t stop. I lean forward in the chair, bury my face in my hands, and sob. I feel my shoulders shake, and the tears run through my fingers. I’ve lost my husband, my home, and to all intents and purposes, my life. I’m trapped in a country I barely know, forced to use a language I speak poorly, fleeing an enemy I can’t begin to identify. Niko thinks I’m dead, but the Twelve will not be so easily deceived. The only person who could have kept me safe was Villanelle, and now I’ve lost her too.
How long I remain in this self-pitying state, I don’t know, but when I finally raise my head, the guy with the neck tattoo is lowering his phone. “Dasha Kvariani’s coming,” he announces grimly. “She’ll be here any minute.”
Wiping my eyes with the back of my hand, I look at the faces surrounding me. Whoever this Dasha is, her arrival is clearly not good news.
There are five of them. The four men are young, thuggish, and sharply dressed. They stop dead when they enter, pinch their noses, and glance at each other with disbelief. The woman ignores the smell and the milling employees, strides to the center of the warehouse floor, and looks about her. In these surroundings, she’s a vision. Black shearling jacket zipped to the throat, cool green eyes, lustrous chestnut hair cut in a chin-length bob.
She beckons to the men. Two of them approach me, preceded by a dizzying gust of cologne. The first pulls me to my feet and subjects me to a disdainful body search, the second empties my rucksack on the floor and separates the Glock and the magazines from the crumpled sweaters and dirty socks and panties. The woman glances at the handgun. Placing her hands on her knees, she leans forward and stares at me thoughtfully. Then she slaps me, really hard.
I almost fall out of the chair. It’s not the stinging force of the blow, it’s the assumption that I’m someone who can and should be hit that really shocks me. I gape at her, and she slaps me again. “So what’s your name, you rancid whore?” she asks. Russian insults can be colorful.
Something shifts in me and I remember Villanelle’s words. Her demand