And still, Yuri’s eyes followed her everywhere.
The doctor had noticed the port wine birthmark on her neck. She lifted Sveti’s hair to examine it, mouth pursed, eyes squinted, and murmured again into the recorder, speaking louder over Rachel’s incessant whimpering. Sveti tried one of the words Arkady had taught her.
“Birthmark,” she said. “Just birthmark. No hurt.”
The lady blinked, as if a plastic doll had just come to life and spoken to her, and continued on with her examination. Listening, poking, prodding, palpating. The lungs, the heart, the throat, her belly. Then the blood taking. The hot, dark blood snaking through the plastic tube. So hot, it felt like it burned the bluish white, goose-pimpled skin of her arm. Sveti wished she could put her shirt back on. She felt so exposed, with her hair twisted back and those hateful breasts sticking out.
The doctor lady would not meet her eyes. Would not acknowledge that she was there. It made Sveti want to scream with frustration to see the woman talking away into the stupid shiny rod, ignoring her. While evil gathered around her like a wave, rising. When it broke they would all be crushed, all of them. She stared at Rachel on the floor, playing listlessly with her tiny toes, gray with dirt.
Her desperation swelled up until she couldn’t contain it. She grabbed the woman’s silk clad arm. “Help me,” she pleaded. “Help us. They do something bad to us. You got to help us. Please.”
The doctor jerked her arm back, but Sveti wouldn’t let go. Her blackened nails dug into the fine fabric as she pleaded incoherently in her broken English. The doctor lady said something sharp and tried to shake her off. She clung harder. She remembered no more English, it was coming out in Ukrainian now, pouring out in a garbled rush that she had no power to stop. How afraid she was, how alone, how the little children needed her too much. She was breaking inside, something horrible waited, something evil—
The lady was screaming now, mouth distorted, eyes wild, clawing and slapping to get free. Rachel was screaming, Sveti was screaming, everyone was screaming. Sveti flung herself off the table at the woman as she tried to get away, clasping her around the waist, and the doctor slapped at her face, and they were both crying, yelling—
The door burst open. “What the fuck is this?”
Marina and Yuri dragged them apart. Marina helped the sobbing, babbling lady doctor out of the room and cast a slit-eyed, malevolent glance back as Sveti as she slammed the door shut behind her.
Leaving her with Yuri. Fear exploded inside her.
He smacked her in the face. She hit the wall. The world spun, tipped and settled itself sideways. Then the tip of his boot smashed into her thigh. The pain made her shriek. He undid his belt, yanked it out, doubled it. “Idiot girl,” he raged. “The doctor came here to help you. And how do you thank her? You attack her! You are an animal! Filthy…dumb…animal!” The blows rained down. He shouted hoarse insults that she couldn’t understand. She cringed in the corner, making herself small as possible. Rachel shrieked her shrill, tea-kettle wail.
Slowly, Sveti became aware that the blows had stopped. She tasted blood in her mouth. Yuri was no longer bellowing.
She peered up from behind the hands she’d clasped over her face to protect it. He was staring down at her body, panting. Face red. His thick mouth slack and wet. He had that look on his face. That look that froze her blood, made her belly turn over with a greasy flop of dread.
At the same time, she realized she still had on no T-shirt. Not even Sasha’s strip tied around her ribs. Just those dirty cotton pants that hung down low over her bony hip bones.
Oh, no, no, no. Rachel’s tiny, tear-streaked face was scarlet, mouth huge, the sound huge, the sound of terror and utter despair—
The door sprang open again. “Yuri. Come,” Marina snapped.
“Later,” he rasped, his eyes still fixed on Sveti. “Close that fucking door. Later.”
“Now.” Marina’s voice had the iron ring of command. “You have to take this stupid American bitch back to the hotel. The worthless cunt is falling apart. I don’t want to watch. Get away from that girl.”
“She can wait,” Yuri snarled. “Close that door.”
“No! Do not touch her. Go buy it outside if you want it, pig. Go to that truck stop on the interstate.”
“Why not?” Yuri sounded petulant. “What difference does it make? They won’t know. What do they care?”
“You could give her a disease,” Marina hissed. “Remember? What happened with the other one?”
Yuri wiped his scummy wet lips with the back of his hand. Sveti could smell the foulness of his breath even from where she lay on the floor. “I don’t have any diseases,” he said, his voice sullen.
“I will not bet my life on that, you dog,” Marina snapped. “They would kill us both. Idiot. Step away from the girl. Now.”
Yuri muttered something filthy and sullen, and backed away, staring fixedly at Sveti. Marina shoved him out the door, and glared down at the girl, who had dragged herself into a crouch, wrapping her arms tightly around her knees. Marina grabbed the limp T-shirt from the examining table and snapped it smartly into Sveti’s face.
The unexpected blow made her whip her head back, bonking it hard against the painted white cinder-block wall. Her eyes welled full again.
“Stop whining.” Marina knelt down and stuck her face into Sveti’s. “And stop trying to lure him with your scrawny little tits, you stupid tart. Or there’ll be trouble. Do you understand?”
“But I don’t want—I wasn’t—”
Crack, a hard backhand slap connected. Sveti’s head hit the wall again. “Do you understand?”
Yes. Sveti’s mouth formed the word, but made no sound.
Marina tossed the shirt in Sveti’s face, and heaved her big, solid block of a body to her feet. “See that you do. Now get that whining brat out of my sight. I’m sick of looking at her.”
She stumped out, slammed the connecting door. Locked it.
Sveti pulled the tattered T-shirt over her shivering self, wondering how it was possible to hate someone so much and still be so grateful to her. She tried to get to her feet, but the thigh Yuri had kicked buckled under her. She finally just crawled over to Rachel, and pulled the little girl onto her lap.
They huddled there for a long time, clutching each other, until it was impossible to tell who was comforting who.
The batwing flutter of a shadow across her face jolted Becca out of the doze that had overcome her. It was that big black SUV. Adrenaline jolted through her. A Mercedes, she noticed now. Too late to catch the plate number, damn. The vehicle had already turned perpendicular to hers, and pulled to a stop in front of the hotel’s back entrance.
It pulled away again, leaving Diana behind, clutching a white box to her chest. The SUV accelerated away, as if it were glad to be rid of her. Diana stared after it, looking dazed and lost. Her eyes looked huge. The raccoon effect of tear-smudged makeup. Becca was very familiar with that particular fashion statement these days.
She firmly squashed a niggling feeling of sympathy for the woman. Save it for someone who deserves it, she lectured herself. If Diana was in cahoots with that poisonous snake Mathes, who was involved with that monster Zhoglo, then she was up to no good, and that was that.
Diana stumbled over her feet on her way to the rear entrance. She seemed baffled by the fact that it was now locked, and stared blankly at the door for several seconds before fishing out her key card.
Becca chewed her knuckles and thought it over. At this point, it was unlikely that Diana would leave the hotel again. Whatever she’d been planning to do, she had done. There was little else that Becca could usefully do here—other than call Nick, come clean, and hand the whole thing over to him. Which meant she needed a phone.
But she was unwilling to leave and lose track of Diana again, after all this chasing around, losing her and pinning her down again. The pay phone in the corridor of the hotel had a clear view of both entrances. She would hang around the door and wait for an opportunity to slip in after the next legitimate hotel guest.
God, this skulking and loitering made her nervous. She sauntered towards the hotel, fishing out her dead cell phone for cover, and wishing, for the first and only time in her life, that she smoked. Just to have a believable excuse for lounging around in doorways.
Before she got halfway across the parking lot, Diana exploded out the back door and hurried to her car. No white box. She did not appear to see Becca at all—even when Becca abruptly changed course and headed back to her car. Diana was swept up in her own inner drama, thank God.
Becca pulled out after her, her heart thudding, and forced herself to keep a discreet distance. She didn’t have far to go. Diana pulled over at the nearest roadhouse bar, a seedy windowless cement building with a neon sign that read Starlight Lounge.
Becca parked as near as she dared, and slumped in her seat. She held the phone to her ear and watched as Diana took off her glasses, covered her face with her hands, and wept for ten minutes. Then she sprang out of the car, lurched over to the curb, and vomited.
Becca flinched in involuntary fellowship. Ooh. Nasty. So Diana belonged to the Mighty Sisterhood of Stress Urpers. Bummer for her, that she’d chosen a life of despicable crime. If she kept this crap up, she was going to be hurling her hash left and right.
Diana dabbed her face with a tissue and stumbled into the bar. Becca got out of her car, feeling like a puppet being manipulated by an unfamiliar entity. She strode over to Diana’s car and peered in.
The passenger seat was cluttered: paper coffee cups, sunglasses, a comb, used tissues smeared with mascara, a ripped open package for a digital voice recorder. The plastic bubble that had held the small rod was empty.
A crazy, half-baked idea began to form as she stared down at the sunglasses. She gazed at her own reflection in Diana’s car window. Her own hair was slightly shorter and not quite as floofy, but—hmmm.
Half of her screamed no, stop, back it up, call it off. The rest of her shrieked go for it before you chicken out you pansy ass airhead, go!
She looked for a big rock, found one a safe distance from Urping Ground Zero, and screwed up her courage. This was going to be the hardest part. Going against all her social conditioning. If anyone saw her smashing in another woman’s car window, she would just start shrieking that bitch is screwing my husband!
She lifted the rock, fingers white, arm trembling…and hesitated. She reached out with her other hand. Tried the door.
Unlocked. For God’s sake, any stress urper should know that a woman who had just puked her guts out probably did not have the presence of mind to lock her car. Unless she was a superwoman. And superwomen did not urp. No siree, no superwomen in the Sisterhood.
Becca felt like a total idiot, jittery from having worked herself into such a state. No time for dithering, though. She grabbed the sunglasses and the lipstick. She was now officially a thief. It felt odd.
She raced back to her car. Tore out of the parking lot, zoomed back to the hotel, tires squealing. No time for cogitating or knuckle chewing. She had to be quick, decisive. And as cool and smooth as soft-serve vanilla ice cream. She switched on her dome light, yanked her comb out of her purse and tried to tease her hair out into Dianaesque proportions. She slicked on some of Diana’s crimson lipstick, and was startled by the harsh effect. She needed dramatic eye makeup to balance it out. Fortunately, she had Diana’s Zsa Zsa Gabor sunglasses. She stuck her black-framed specs in her pocket, and donned the sunglasses. She would be virtually blind, but hey. Vision, schmision.
She glanced in the mirror and winced. She looked like a celebrity battered wife, but whatever. Becca shrugged off her coat and marched around the building, then flounced in as if she owned the place, squinting to get her bearings.
There were two desk clerks. One was the redhead who had checked Diana in. She sailed past them, down the hall, into the stairwell, knees wobbling. Estimating the time it would take a guest to get to her room and discover she’d left her key card inside.
She swept out again, grateful to find the big-haired redhead busy on the phone. She smiled at the other, an older woman with gray hair.
“Hi. I’m Diana, in room 317,” she said. “I’m so embarrassed, but it looks like I’ve locked myself out. Could you do up a new card for me?”
The woman smiled, tapped into the computer, and nodded. “Sure thing, Ms. Evans. I’d be happy to do that for ya.”
Please don’t ask for picture ID. Please.
Fate was kind. Moments later, card clutched in her sweating hand, Becca floated down the corridor, disbelieving, over her own sprinting feet. Terrified that it had worked. She was getting ever more expert at digging her own grave. Look at those shovelfuls of dirt, flying wildly this way and that.
She let herself into Diana’s room. The door slammed shut behind her. She felt a moment of letdown. No immediate revelations. It looked and smelled exactly like a million other economy hotel rooms. Two beds, quilted synthetic spreads, bathroom near the entrance, TV, wall unit air conditioner, ugly art. Empty. No suitcase, no purse. The box, the box. She had to find that white box.
She found it in the bathroom, perched on the fake marble counter-top. She approached it with a feeling of dread in her belly.