[Security Blanket]
The Moscow police were... less than useful, Jayda learned. They took the note, dusted for fingerprints, asked the usual questions –things like "Do you have any enemies?" or "Have you noticed anyone following you lately?" and "Has anything like this happened before?" and other such useless things.
One of the officers present–called after Yuriy and the others wiped their fingerprints off of most of the surfaces in her apartment; they'd agreed that it would be best to at least have a police record of the incident- had interviewed her about Andreyev's murder earlier in the year. What was his name...? Anton? Yes, that was it. Anton.
If Jayda had a type, Anton was the opposite; top-heavy, pretentious, and thick as two short planks. The sort that had muscles on his muscles for no other reason than he worked out compulsively, had more than a few anger problems, and didn't understand the difference between calculus and algebra.
That's not to say he was a bad cop, per se, but Jayda was sick to death of the flirting. Was it even kosher to flirt on a crime scene? Probably not.
"If you feel at all unsafe, call me and I'll drop by and have a look around, alright?" Anton was saying. From anyone else, that might have been reassuring, but when it was thrown together with Anton's smarmy smile and the not-so-subtle way he leaned forward and crowded her space, it had quite the opposite effect.
Agitated and already deeply disturbed by the fact that her apartment didn't feel at all secure anymore, Jayda jerked her thumb over her shoulder, indicating her Russian neighbours, and deadpanned, "I'd feel safer with this lot, thanks. Don't worry about it –I'm fine."
False, angry bravado. Quite frankly, Jayda was about one sudden movement in her peripheral vision away from bolting and jumping on the first plane back to Canada.
Anton frowned, dark eyes showing a mix of disappointment and annoyance, and glanced over her shoulder. Jayda wasn't sure what her boys were doing back there, but Anton's pupils constricted rapidly, and his face grew a few shades paler. Suddenly, the detective who couldn't stay out of her personal bubble couldn't keep far enough away from it, because Anton stayed on the other side of the room for the rest of the perfunctory investigation.
A lower level officer –Jayda wasn't familiar with the rankings within the police- told the Canadian that they'd be in touch about the findings, and then the small crew of forensic specialists and detectives left.
As Jayda moved to clean the mess the police had left in their wake, she heard Yuriy and Ivan talking quietly by the front door. What they were deliberating, she wasn't sure, and Jayda had enough respect for her neighbours to refrain from listening in -despite the nearly overwhelming temptation. She had bigger concerns at the moment, like the way all of the shadows in every corner of her apartment seemed to shift and every creaking floorboard and squeaky door hinge set off alarms in her mind.
A thought, like a glint of silver in the dark, flashed through her mind as she surveyed her apartment. 'This was mine before, but now it isn't; this isn't my home anymore.'
Her shoulders were hunching unconsciously, an instinctive reaction to make herself smaller, to curl in on herself and pretend to be invisible. The initial paralyzing alarm she'd felt upon discovering that her apartment had been violated had faded now, leaving in its wake a thing with deep-roots and a insidiousness that threaded tendrils around her nerves and pulled them taut, fragile though they were. Jayda shivered and wrapped her arms about her middle in a vain attempt to stave off the cold, despite the fact that it was perfectly warm in her apartment.
"You going to be alright?" Ivan asked. It had gone quiet in the open space of Jayda's living room, so the abruptness of his voice jostled already frail nerves. To her credit, Jayda didn't jump, but there was no mistaking the barely contained flinch, even if her back was to the Russian.
Jayda turned to find that Yuriy had left –she could hear his voice drifting over through the hallway- and Ivan seemed to have stationed himself at the threshold of her apartment. He was eyeing her with a calculating sort of look –not quite like Sergei had, earlier, and not quite like Yuriy usually did, but somewhere in between. A sort of realization hit her then, though it was something she had always known in the back of her mind; her boys were smart. Not just smart-smart, though -the kind of smart that scared the bejeezus out of anyone with a dribble of sense.
Her boys. Jayda snorted inwardly, despite the state she was in. Fortunately for her, Jayda had been reliably informed by both of her parents that she didn't posses so much as a lick of sense, never mind a dribble.
Feeling her lips quirk upwards weakly, Jayda shrugged and shook her head. "Maybe. In a bit."
Ivan snorted and waved her over. "You need to get drunk."
"W-Wha-uh, I don't-uh-" Jayda started, thrown off balance.
She never got drunk. Ever. In fact, she'd never been drunk before. She drank, yes, but she never went farther than mildly tipsy –not at home, not at clubs, and never with her neighbours. She got cuddly and... excessively affectionate when she had too much to drink, and it didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that that wouldn't really be okay with any of her neighbour under any circumstances. While she'd never said anything about that to the quartet, they'd always left her alone when she stopped drinking before them. In fact, it had gotten to the point where they knew the exactly how much she'd drink before she turned her glass over on its coaster and stop for the night and would have a drink countdown -filled to the brim with Ivan's scathing mockery, of course.
"Don't question it –you're getting drunk."
"I really don't think-" Jayda tried.
Ivan interrupted her, grabbing her wrist with a grip that Jayda knew better than to even try and break. "Trust me, you need it."
"But-!" Jayda protested even as she was pulled out of her apartment and into the Russians'. There was already an impressive array of alcohol on the coffee table, shot glasses included, and Jayda was suddenly deeply concerned for the Russians' livers.
"Fine, don't get drunk –but you're staying anyway." Ivan argued back with the sort of finality that Jayda was used to hearing from Yuriy, out of the four. A well placed tug on her wrist as Jayda was led towards the couch had her half-falling, half-stumbling onto 'her spot' –the middle of the couch, between Ivan and Yuriy, seemed to be assigned to her at this point.
Jayda blinked, finding four sets of eyes on her as Ivan's words sank in.
"Oh." She said, comprehension dawning. Getting drunk wasn't the objective; keeping her within direct line of sight, however, was.
Why... well, technically speaking, Jayda supposed the 'why' was irrelevant. Regardless of whether they were doing it because they gave a damn or because they didn't want her flipping out in the middle of the night –or, god forbid, throwing her brand new sleeping schedule off. That last one alone might put Yuriy's blood pressure through the roof.
"And the light bulb finally blinks on!" Ivan proclaimed sarcastically, throwing his hands in the air.
Yuriy, to her right, sat with one arm running along the back of the couch, the lines of his body far more relaxed than they had been earlier, but not enough to fool Jayda. His eyes had lost the flinty quality they'd possessed before, but they were still sharp, still calculating, and his face was still a little too tense, too vicious. Things were not all better, would not be all better for some time, and Yuriy was not a happy camper. Jayda suddenly wished she'd never run to them –to Yuriy- because they'd already done so much for her, had been so tolerant of her when it was almost against their nature to let others in. Guilt showed in her eyes, she knew it did, and she knew it was entirely too visible to the leader of the strange quartet from across the hall.
She opened her mouth to say something –to apologize and apologize and apologize and probably not stop apologizing- but he pressed a glass of what Jayda guessed was probably a rum and coke into her hand and, in that familiar drawl Jayda had come to know so well, advised, "Get comfortable."
You're staying put.
