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Nothing.
The Moskvitch didn’t follow.
A delivery van, puttering with an open back showing two crates of cabbages, rumbled by.
The black car didn’t. It wasn’t a tail.
I let out a breath.
I reemerged three blocks ahead and spotted Eszter’s car again near a crumbling statue of Saint Stephen, pigeons perched like judgment on his outstretched hand.
They were heading north, past the river’s commercial lanes, away from the government offices. There was no reason to go that way unless one sought privacy.
I fell in behind them again, this time farther back, almost out of sight.
We passed train yards and narrow footbridges, an old steel tram rusted and forgotten near the edge of the city’s industrial fringe.
Brick buildings became sparser.
Streets grew darker, even in the dim daylight.
The noise of city life faded into the bones of a nation still healing.
Then a gate appeared. It was iron, wide, and topped with spikes not meant for decoration. It surrounded a large wooden house where a wealthy merchant or Hungarian official likely once lived. There were no wealthy merchants in Stalin’s Russia, only comrades who shared the bounty of the state. The house now belonged to the communal good.
The sedan paused only long enough for the guards to open the gate. One of them had a clipboard. The other fiddled with a submachine gun slung across his chest.
The car passed through, swallowed by leaf-bare trees and thick shrubs.
The windows of the house were dark, an old world dressed in fear.
I kept going, driving past, watching from the corner of my eye.
I noted the corner café with its closed blinds, the burned-out cobbler across the street, the alley just wide enough to ditch a car and disappear on foot.
I kept driving until the neighborhood blurred behind me, and my heart stopped slamming against the inside of my ribs.
36
Thomas
Iheardhisfootstepsbeforethe key turned.
I was on my feet before the door opened.
The moment the door closed behind, my arms were around Will, pulling him close, willing him into me. The cold on his coat bled through to my skin, but I didn’t care. I gripped him like the ground itself had fallen away and he was the only steady thing left.
He didn’t speak.
Neither did I.
I kissed him like we were already out of time.
His lips were stiff and chapped. The stubble of his jaw scraped mine. I twined my fingers in his hair and clutched the back of his neck like I’d been reaching for something solid all night and only just found it.
When we broke apart, his breath ghosted over my lips. I could taste the street on him—smoke, iron, adrenaline. His eyes shimmered with a kind of exhausted triumph. Mine shimmered with relief.
I pulled him close again, pressed my forehead to his, and whispered, “Tell me you got something. Tell me this is all worth it.”