Die for Me (Killing Eve #3) - Luke Jennings Page 0,13

that I should be more like her. More like Oxana. She wouldn’t be slumped in a chair, tearfully waiting for the worst. She’d be ignoring the fear, sucking up the pain, and planning her next move.

I’ve never hit anyone in my life. So when I propel myself from the chair and punch Dasha Kvariani smack on the tip of her pretty nose, I’m almost as surprised as she is. There’s a biscuity crunch, blood jets from her nostrils, and she turns sharply away, clutching her face.

Everyone freezes, and the two men who searched me grab my arms. I’m so high on adrenaline I don’t feel a thing. Even my ankle is anesthetized. The Kvariani woman is swearing vengefully, in a voice thick with blood and mucus. I can’t follow all of it, but I catch the words “ogromnaya blyat oshibka,” which means “huge fucking mistake.” She issues a series of orders, and two of the warehouse employees slip away, one returning with a long coil of industrial twine, the other wheeling one of the tall, steel garment hangers.

The two men stand me in front of the hanger and bind my wrists behind my back with the twine, knotting it with practiced fingers. My confidence wavers, and I’m not sure that my bad ankle is going to go on supporting me for much longer. As my knees start to shake, the two men lift me by the armpits and stand me on the horizontal bar at the hanger’s base, a foot off the ground. Then I feel my wrists wrenched forcefully upward and suspended from the upper bar. I slump forwards, my arms vertical, pain knifing jaggedly through my neck and shoulders. I fight to retain my balance, knowing that if my feet slip off the bar both of my shoulders will be wrenched out of their sockets, but my knees are gluey and my sprained ankle is on fire.

The pain gets worse, and becomes inseparable from the sound of my gasping and sobbing. Dasha Kvariani steps in front of me, so that all I can see of her is her fur-lined ankle boots. Then a plastic bucket of water is placed beside one of the boots, her hands lift it, and a moment later I’m drenched, and gasping at the icy shock. I jerk and writhe so violently that the garment hanger tips toward the floor. I’m a split second from a smashed face when invisible hands catch the hanger and ease it back upright. There’s no feeling in my arms and shoulders now. I have to fight to breathe, dragging the air into my constricted lungs. I’m so cold I can’t think.

There’s a gunshot, shockingly loud, followed by a dimming of the lights and a pattering of falling glass. Then there’s a meaty crack and a thump.

“Dasha Kvariani. You’re looking good, suchka.” It’s Villanelle, her voice deadly calm. I’m so relieved I start to cry. She’s come back for me.

“Vorontsova?” Kvariani’s voice is thick and unsteady. “Oxana Vorontsova? I thought you were dead.”

“Wrong. Get her down from there right now, bitch, or you’ll be fucking dead.”

Hands untie me, and assist me to a chair. I sit there for a moment, dripping and shaking with cold. Villanelle is standing, legs apart, over the unconscious body of one of the thugs that tied me to the garment rail. He’s bleeding from a serious head wound inflicted, I’m guessing, with the butt of Villanelle’s Sig Sauer. I’m not sympathetic, and I’m pleased to see that the weapon in question is pointed unwaveringly between Dasha Kvariani’s eyes.

“Send someone to get her some dry clothes,” Villanelle orders, glancing at me, and Kvariani gestures to the pale woman, who hurries nervously away, glass from the shot-out ceiling light crunching and snapping beneath her boots.

“Can you please explain to me what the fuck you’re doing here?” Kvariani asks Villanelle. “And put the Sig away. We’re both Dobryanka graduates, after all.”

Slowly, Villanelle lowers the gun.

Kvariani points at me. “Is she yours?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry if we were rough with her. But I have to ask you again, Vorontsova, what the fuck is going on? The owner of this business pays me to make sure there’s no trouble here, and I get a call saying that two crazy women have covered the place in human shit, damaged machinery and destroyed hundreds of thousands of rubles worth of stock. I mean, what am I supposed to do?”

The pale woman returns, and leads me by the hand to a dingy women’s toilet. She’s