Chapter Nine

I kept very still for a moment, breathing heavily, taking stock of my body and fighting back the insane urge to laugh – yeah, that was definitely shock. My neck ached a little and I'd bumped my forehead somewhat against the window as we'd spun, but otherwise there didn't seem to be too much wrong – which was pretty good, considering we'd just hurtled into a building at high speed.

A car door slammed nearby and the reality of the situation fell upon my mind again. I glanced over my shoulder to find the car that had been chasing us had stopped and three men were approaching us slowly, warily. They were holding guns.

'Kirill?'

I turned to him and, with a cold flash of fear, saw that he was slumped over the steering wheel, his face turned from me. With shaking hands I undid my seatbelt and leant over. I felt his neck and found a pulse, quite strong – perhaps he had just been knocked out momentarily. I pulled him into an upright position, a little scared by how slack his face was and by the blood running from a cut on the side of his head.

'Kirill? Wake up!'

I shook him, probably harder than I should have, and his eyelids fluttered. A second later his eyes were staring into mine, confused and troubled – but I was so relieved that I could have kissed him.

A man came into view then through Kirill's window, a huge fellow with an ugly face characterised by a very crooked nose. He jerked open Kirill's door and turned the engine off, pulling the keys from the ignition.

Kirill turned and blinked at him in surprise and I could tell the exact moment that he recollected what had happened. A wave of horror and anger washed over his features and he dived for the gun on the floor but the other man was quicker – Kirill was pulled from his seat by the large man and a fist smashed into his jaw. I was sure that a blow with that much force had to have knocked him out and his name burst from my lips in a desperate, furious scream.

My door opened then and I turned to find two younger men reaching for me. They grabbed me by each arm and pulled me out with a jerk – I might have weighed as much as a pillow for all the difficulty they had with their task. I would have fallen but for their cruel grips which only tightened as I struggled, trying to kick their knees in. If only I'd paid more attention to the hit-men I'd once socialised with back when I lived with my father – they'd always been talking about their favourite techniques of inflicting as much pain as possible.

'Stop it!' one snarled.

'Let go,' the other snapped. 'I've got her.'

The first speaker obeyed and let go of my arm. I turned to the one still with a grip on me but he was quicker, bending the limb he held behind my back and grabbing hold of my throat. He squeezed and I felt that sick, instinctive panic that comes with strangulation, and my free hand rose to claw at his. He didn't let go.

'Don't fight, bitch, or I'll strangle you,' the man hissed.

He loosened his grip and I gulped in air, obeying because I had no wish to have the life choked from me. The one holding me seemed to be in charge and he ordered the other young one, a tall, scrawny man with reddish blonde hair, to get behind the wheel and start the engine.

'Leave him, Dimitri,' he called next to the huge man. 'We've got what we came for.'

I watched in horror as Dimitri delivered a last kick to the fallen figure of Kirill, whose body upon the pavement jerked from the force of the blow. The man holding me pushed me towards the waiting car and I threw caution to the wind, struggling as hard as I could to free myself.

'Kirill! Kirill!' I screamed.

'Shut up!' the man growled in my ear, shaking me by the scruff of my neck as if I were a recalcitrant puppy. 'Move!'

He was forcing me towards the car in the middle of the street, heedless of the one or two horrified bystanders who had happened upon the scene, and I could no longer see Kirill. Then there was a shot, screams, and the man holding me jerked and grunted, his grip on me tightening to the point that I cried out in pain.

Three more shots followed and then a great weight came down upon me and I fell to the ground, hitting my head anew. The man holding me landed on top and stayed there, unmoving. Something warm dripped onto my hand and I knew with sick certainty that it was blood.

There were more shots, some from behind, some from in front, and I was impressed that Kirill had managed to get his hands on a gun so quickly after being belted around by Dimitri. I crawled out from under the body of the man and blinked at the scene before me.

The gangly youth with the reddish hair was kneeling behind the open door of his car, gun in hand, looking panicked as Kirill grappled with the huge man in a leather coat. Never before had I seen him use any other weapon but a gun, but now I saw that he was just as deadly with his bare hands as he was with a weapon. He was obviously pained, obviously still groggy from being knocked out, but he had the upper hand and wasn't going to give up.

I was frozen between the two cars, watching, and I noted that we'd attracted a crowd. No doubt the screech of tyres and the sound of a smash had brought out the ten or so people who shivered in their bed clothes or clutched dressing gowns around themselves as they watched, wide-eyed, the fight before them. Several ducked away as I watched, back inside, and shut their doors. I could certainly understand why, as Kirill kicked his large aggressor to his knees and, grabbing a fistful of the man's hair, slammed his head hard against the crumpled BMW.

Kirill bent to pick up his gun and, as he straightened, the youth still taking cover behind the car door fired his own weapon. I gasped and felt a wave of cold fear spread down my back as Kirill's body jerked, and I knew he was hit, but he didn't hesitate as he brought up his gun and dispatched the other with one sure bullet to the forehead. There was deadly still and quiet on the street then beside the wrecked BMW, but the approaching wail of police sirens could be heard in the background.

I could hardly believe all this was happening, but now really wasn't the time to succumb to hysteria. I ran to Kirill who was clutching his upper arm, inspecting the wound with a grimace contorting his handsome face. He spared me only a cursory glance.

'Are you all right?'

I nodded. 'You?'

'Yes.'

Liar, I thought – his face was white, his eyes very dark against the bloodless skin, but he turned without another sound and retrieved his first gun and our bags from the BMW.

'Come,' he said briefly.

He headed for the nearest car, a dark blue Audi with a man standing spellbound at the driver's side. He leapt away as Kirill approached, eyes on his gun, and made no sound or movement of protest as the Russian appropriated his vehicle.

I hurried to the other side and slid in, closing the door as Kirill took off. People dived out of the way as we headed off down the street at a fearsome pace, leaving behind two cars and three bodies. I shook my head as I took a last glance in the side mirror – this was unreal. My life had been turned upside down in a matter of days, ever since Kirill had walked up and sat beside me on that train carriage. Did I regret the changes? Strangely, not as much as I had a few hours earlier. But I didn't have time to find the reasons as to why that was.

'We have to get out of here. Now,' Kirill said through gritted teeth. 'I know someone who will fly us out but it's some distance away. Can you drive?'

I glanced at him in surprise, thinking that he had to be feeling bad indeed to ask me to take over. He had blood spilling from a cut above his eyebrow, though, so perhaps it was not so much the pain of his bullet wound as the inconvenience of having to hold his head on an angle to avoid obscuring his vision. The seats of the stolen car were rapidly turning dark as the blood soaked into the grey material.

'Of course.'

'I'll pull over once we're outside Paris,' he said.

We drove on in silence, my thoughts full of fear and blood and anger.

AN: Thank you so, so much to everyone who has been reviewing! You guys are why I keep writing this story.