Ten Thousand Skies Above You
Page 41

I’m dumped into a chair. The unpleasant screech of duct tape accompanies the pressure of it being wrapped around me, keeping me in place. If I knew what they wanted, I’d beg, I’d bargain—
Then it hits me. Maybe this isn’t random.
A criminal operation—a professional one—that could be run by someone with a lot of money. A lot of influence. Someone who could get others to do his dirty work.
But no, I tell myself. He’s in love with my sister—for real, I’m sure of it. Conley wouldn’t do this, unless—unless he realized I suspected him—
“We’ve got her,” says the man just by my shoulder.
Someone responds: “I see that.” Only three words, but I recognize his voice.
Because it’s Paul.
15
I CAN’T SPEAK. CAN’T SWALLOW. CAN’T BLINK.
The unbearable terror of the past hour expands, explodes. Every thought I have vaporizes. Nothing remains but the hard truth: Paul kidnapped me.
Who is he in this world? How can he be a part of this?
I hear him take one step closer, as if he’s approaching. Yet he speaks to the others in the room instead. “She’s just a girl. I checked. She’s not even as old as I am.”
“Leonid said to pick her up if we had the chance,” says one of them—the one who grabbed me, I think. From the sharper diction of his words, I can tell he’s pulled off the ski mask; I hope he stays behind me, because I don’t want to see his face. I can’t see his face. “We got the chance.”
Paul swears under his breath; I remember enough Russian to know he’s angry. Furious.
And I’m not the one he’s angry with.
He didn’t mean for this to happen. That has to be it. Someone else, this Leonid person—that’s who kidnapped me. Paul’s mixed up with some seriously terrible people, all right, but apparently he never meant for me to be hurt.
Besides, a splinter of my Paul’s soul is within him. The guy I love is in there, just beneath the surface. I tell myself that he’s influencing this Paul’s actions. Playing a part in his decisions. My Paul will protect me.
So this will turn out okay. He’ll get me out of this. And now I have the chance I need to retrieve the next piece of Paul’s soul. But the terror of the past hour will take a long time to subside. My breaths come shallow and fast, my ribs straining against the duct tape every time I inhale.
He comes closer, and I feel his hand tug at the bottom of the black sack over my head. One of the men says, sharply, “What are you doing?”
Paul says, “The rest of you stay behind her. She already knows what I look like.”
Then he lifts the edge of the bag. In the first instant, the light seems overwhelmingly bright—but my eyes adjust, revealing a dimly lit basement, and Paul standing in front of me. He’s no monstrous version of himself, amused at my terror or eager to be cruel. Instead, he looks at me with much the same expression my own Paul would have in this kind of situation: worried for me, angry with my kidnappers, and determined to find the best way out.
Really, the only different thing about him is the clothing. Even if Paul could afford a slim-cut leather jacket like that, he’d never wear such a thing. Designer jeans, either. The outfit suits him, though, in a strange way.
“You’ve put us in a difficult position,” Paul says to my abductors, then goes silent again, obviously thinking hard.
Analyze your surroundings, I tell myself. My terror-fogged brain clears as I focus on each element in turn. The chill of this room. Cement floor, with a drain at the center. Cinderblock walls. Pipes and some rebar stretch along the ceiling, confirming my earlier instinct that this was a basement. While the rest of the guys remain out of sight, I can see their shadows reflected on the floor. The swinging light overhead distorts their shapes, but I can tell all of them are as big and bulky as the men who abducted me.
As for Paul—I now notice he’s been inked, a few blue-black lines apparent at the open collar of his shirt. It seems so incredibly unlike him to get a tattoo. His light brown hair is combed back and slicked with something that makes it seem darker. But he is still, fundamentally, the same.
“None of you have ever seen her before?” Paul glances around the room; nobody speaks. Finally he addresses me. “Who are these mutual friends?”
My mouth is so dry from fear that I have to swallow before I can say, “What are you talking about?”
“Your message.” The dry humor in his voice is familiar. “You said mutual friends thought we should go out.”
“Obviously I had the wrong Paul Markov.”
Paul remains suspicious. “Did Tarasov tell you to make contact?”
“Who?” I can’t remember a Tarasov from any dimension.
His frown deepens. “Derevko, then. Or Quinteros?”
“I don’t know who any of those people are. Is this—is this because of that Facebook message?” Who the hell attacks someone because they messaged them on Facebook? “Like I told you, I made a mistake.”
Paul inclines his head, like It’s possible. Obviously he’s still unhappy with the situation, but not . . . shocked. How can he not be shocked? These guys showed up with a kidnap victim. Namely, me.
This is obviously a criminal organization. I mean, they had a van, people watching me, waiting to see if they could kidnap me, all because I tried to get in touch with Paul in the most innocuous way, plus none of the others seem to have been born in the United States and holy crap I’m mixed up with the Russian mob.
How did Paul get mixed up with them?
He steps farther back, as if to study me from a distance, then leans against the cinder-block wall, like he’s completely at ease.
But he’s not. The tension in the way he holds his shoulders might be invisible to anyone who didn’t know Paul as I well as I do. Deep inside, he’s unsure of himself. Questioning what to do next.
I cling to this scrap of knowledge the way I’d grab a life preserver in the ocean. Is that uncertainty part of this world’s Paul, or the soul of my Paul coming through? It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is I know this man.
“Listen,” I say, as calmly as I can. Paul responds to logic. “You said you researched me. So you know I’m eighteen years old, I live with my parents, and I’m not mixed up in . . . in whatever you guys are mixed up in.” Time for a little creative invention. “Some friends of mine told me about a Paul Markov. Actually, now that I think about it, maybe I got the last name wrong. Obviously you’re not the person I was looking for.”
Paul inclines his head slightly. “Persuasive,” he says. That’s not the same as I believe you, but it’s a positive sign.
“She knows your name, and she’s seen your face,” says one of the guys standing behind me, and the fear inside me once again boils over into panic. Every trashy true-crime TV show I ever watched has made it clear that they never let you see their face unless they plan to kill you, and while Paul would never do that, I don’t feel good about the others—i.e., the guys in the room who are bigger, and stronger, and who probably own guns.
Yet they seem to defer to Paul.
Quietly he says, “The police would investigate the murder of a young woman from the Upper West Side. They wouldn’t care very much about a kidnapping that resulted in no injury. Probably they wouldn’t even believe any abduction took place; they’d think it was a story she made up. Cover for sneaking out to a party, maybe.”