Chapter Ten

Kirill stopped the car once we were clear of the city, heading north along an autoroute. He pulled off the main highway onto an exit, then a dirt road, driving for another few minutes before taking the stolen Audi onto the grass verge and killing the engine. Fields surrounded us, bordered with hedges, full of cattle grazing peacefully as the sun rose.

'Are you sure you're okay?' I asked.

'Yes.'

'I don't believe you. Take off your jacket, let me see your arm.'

He eyed me for a moment – irritated, I thought, and exasperated with me; well, nothing new there – before slowly pulling off his coat and jumper, clearly favouring his left arm. He held it out in my direction and looked straight ahead through the windscreen.

I pushed back the sleeve of his dark shirt slowly, carefully, my fingertips becoming coated with the blood that had soaked into and spread through the cloth. He had very spare limbs – there was muscle, bone, tendons and veins outlined starkly beneath his skin, which showed that he had recently been wearing a t-shirt in somewhere very sunny; had my father sent him somewhere tropical recently, perhaps?

I tried not to stare at the swell of his biceps, the sharp lines and contours of his shoulders, had to resist the impulse to trace those winding veins and old scars…

That crash had definitely done something to my head. I bit my lip and concentrated on the wound above the elbow which did not seem deep, thank goodness – it appeared that the bullet had clipped him rather than hit him. I wondered what it felt like to be shot.

'Do you have a first aid kit?' I asked.

'No.' His tone implied that I was wasting valuable time.

I felt it was a stupid omission from the baggage of someone with a job like his, but I certainly wasn't going to tell him that. I reached behind my seat for my bag and withdrew one of the shirts he had bought me; serviceable white cotton. It would do well enough as a bandage.

'Do you have a knife?' Scissors didn't seem at all his style.

He leant down, reaching his good hand towards his foot and straightening with a wickedly sharp blade, short and strong. I raised my eyebrows but he was staring straight ahead again and didn't say anything as I cut the sleeve from the shirt into strips.

I bound the wound as well as I could and wished for some painkillers for myself, for my forehead was throbbing and developing into a real headache.

We switched sides then, Kirill taking the opportunity to fit fake numberplates, and it was only when I passed him to take the wheel that I realised that one side of his face was encrusted with dried blood. It was a dead giveaway.

'What?' he asked, sounding annoyed, as I peered at his face in dismay.

I gestured. 'Blood.'

He flipped down the sun visor and slid back the cover on the mirror, surveying himself dispassionately. He muttered a curse and leant back to withdraw a bottle of water from within his bag. He offered it to me first – I declined – drank from it himself, then used the remainder of the shirt I had cut up as a wash cloth and towel. Wondering what I myself looked like, I checked in the mirror to see that I had a sizeable lump on my head from the car crash and my face appeared tired, pale and frightened.

'What are those?' Kirill asked, surprising me.

'Sorry?'

He reached out a long finger and touched my throat, very gently. Despite myself I shivered, imagining how easily he would be able to snap my neck with those strong hands (and stopping myself entirely from thinking what else he could be touching on my body like that. Ick, Katya, this really wasn't the time to start reverting back to a hormonal teenager's reactions). I shifted the angle of the mirror and lifted my chin, turning my head to one side to see what he had meant. There were several scratches and faint bruises, and I certainly knew what from.

'He choked me,' I replied briefly.

He said nothing, but then I hadn't really expected him to. He was very good at making his non-replies feel slightly insulting, even though I knew that was ridiculous, at least in this particular scenario. Still, my nerves were on the raw and after what had just happened it was perhaps understandable that I wasn't really thinking straight; he said nothing as I turned the car around rather too fast, wheels spinning through the dirt, and we raced back towards the autoroute.

We drove in silence for a while and I found my unreasonable anger wearing off to be replaced with tiredness; after all, we'd each had only a handful of hours of sleep. Thinking about the past was slightly more pleasant than worrying about the future, and I wondered if that car crash had brought back Kirill's memories of the last such incident, the time Bourne had almost killed him. That reminded me.

'Do you know who those men were?' I asked as I changed lanes to overtake a slow-moving blue sedan. 'Was Bourne with them?'

He had his head tipped back, leaning against the headrest, eyes closed. That worried me. Was there any way I could get him to a doctor?

'No,' he snorted, not opening his eyes. 'Bourne works alone.'

There was enough derision expressed in those four words to tell me that he thought my idea laughable, and once again seething I decided to employ his own tactics and remain silent. It worked; after a while, he spoke again.

'They worked for a rival of your father. Like Lucas did.'

Ah, Lucas. Someone I really, really didn't want to think about. But I couldn't stop myself from imagining his body still slumped where we had left it in a back alley of Paris, a dark bullet hole marring his deathly-white forehead… But surely someone would have found him by now. We drove in silence for another couple of kilometres after that, with me stealing glances at him a couple of times a minute as my irritation with him faded into concern. He looked tired, worn, pained – and his eyes stayed shut. At last I could bear it no longer.

'Kirill, are you okay? Really?'

His dark eyes snapped open and glared at me. 'Yes.'

I sighed and looked back at the road. He probably wouldn't tell me if an artery had been severed. Stupid, prideful men.

: - : - :

I thought he'd fallen asleep and was wondering how far I was going to have to drive when Kirill spoke, startling me.

'Pull in at the next fast food place.'

'Why?'

He sighed – me and my stupid questions, I supposed. 'We need a different car.'

There was a McDonald's about half a kilometre after that and I slowed, indicating that I was turning. I parked in the middle of the closest row to the place itself, following Kirill's directions, where our abandoned car would be sure of being surrounded by others that would hide it.

I looked somewhat enviously at a couple who were entering, thinking of the food inside that was disgustingly greasy but tasty and filling nonetheless. Kirill saw where I was looking.

'We'll get some food and clean up. Come on.'

I was surprised but wasn't about to argue. We took our bags and Kirill noted in annoyance that he should have made me put on gloves. Too late for that now, really – my fingerprints were everywhere by now, and there was no time to dispose of the car properly or wipe it down.

I followed Kirill across into the McDonald's, glancing around a little suspiciously. It was sparsely populated with people eating breakfast and no one seemed to notice our bruised and battered state. Perhaps Kirill was wiser in choosing black clothes than I had given him credit for – the blood hardly showed.

The person ahead of us moved away with their tray and it was our turn. The serving girl's hazel eyes found my throat and lingered there, then flicked to Kirill in a glance both accusatory and disgusted. I remembered the marks there from my attacker's strong fingers and found it somewhat amusing that Kirill should be blamed as an abusive partner when he had saved me from further rough treatment.

From the look on Kirill's face, he too was aware of the thoughts running through the girl's head, and he certainly didn't seem to find them funny. His frown deepened and his voice was rough with annoyance as he ordered in terse French, probably not improving his image with his curtness.

We sat down at a table against the glass window and Kirill surveyed the surroundings critically, murmuring that the view of the car park from the restaurant was well obscured. I felt better after eating and finished first, then stood up without a word to go to the bathroom.

I took my bag with me and, thankfully finding the restroom empty, brushed my teeth while assessing my reflection in the mirror. My hair was a mess so I re-braided it, wishing I could have a shower and wash it clean. My throat really was starting to bruise and I remembered all the crime shows I'd watched, where victims of strangulations always had a ring of blue and purple around their necks. I shuddered.

There wasn't much I could do about the lump on my forehead either, and I found that my cheek was a little grazed where I had fallen to the road. Still, considering the car crash and the scene that had followed, my body was in remarkably good shape. I washed my face with cold water and scrubbed it dry with paper towel, then watched as a little colour returned to my cheeks.

When I emerged from the bathroom it was to find that Kirill had been rather quicker than I and was back at the table, his cut entirely clean now and his short hair a little damp. He stood as I approached and we left without a word.

We walked slowly across the car park as a family emerged from their sedan, the children running towards the doors, the parents following tiredly. Only when they were gone did Kirill hone in on his target, a black Peugeot, and I fitted the magnetic false numberplates he handed me as he fiddled with the lock.

I had no idea how he did it, but he had the car unlocked and the engine started by the time I'd gotten the numberplates on properly. I got in hurriedly and he backed out of the spot, then paused and wound the window down.

'Do you still have the keys?'

I pulled the keys from the stolen Audi from my pocket and handed them to him. He threw them from the window into the now empty bay where the Peugeot had been and took off, winding the window back up again.

'We will be in Russia soon,' he said, ignoring the speed limit as we joined the light flow of traffic heading away from Paris. 'But you won't ever be able to return to France.'

I nodded, too exhausted to argue against what I knew to be true, and leant my head against the cool glass of my window. So I would be back in Moscow by nightfall. It certainly looked like the only place for me now that I had become such a target. Certainly, there were more enemies of my father there, but he also had many people working for him and I didn't have my prints all over a stolen car or a dead colleague abandoned in an alleyway. It seemed that my brief time of flying under the radar was over.

I meant to stay awake but I was tired, so tired, and the purr of the engine and the motion of the car lulled me to sleep.

AN: I know this chapter's a little slow after the excitement of the last ones, but hopefully no one fell asleep :) Thanks so much to everyone who has been reading, reviewing and adding this to their alerts and/or favourites!