Page 11 of Kept in the Dark (Hitmen of Ulysses #2)

For the first time that I can remember in a long time, I left witnesses.

Depending on how quickly he can get medical care, Kyle may survive. A knife to most places in the abdomen is a slow death of leaking fluids that can be remedied with prompt attention.

Still, there are two possible outcomes—either I killed Kyle, or I did not.

In the first scenario, Nicole watched me kill him, so I cannot simply allow her to walk free.

In the second, I saved her from an attack, but Kyle becomes my loose end.

He might be Felix’s man. Or, there is always a chance he says the wrong thing to the wrong person and they identify me as a person of interest when Viktor Volkevich ends up dead.

Plan for the worst, hope for the best. I need to lie low until I can discover whether Kyle is alive .

But what do I do with Nicole?

I cannot believe that I brought her with me. I cannot believe I did not just leave her in that maze. I cannot believe I am considering continuing to protect her.

It is tempting to blame her for my mistakes—she is the exact sort of distraction I try to avoid—but it is not her fault. It is mine. The only good that comes of a mistake is the opportunity to learn from it, and I cannot do that if I do not accept responsibility.

That does not change the fact that she remains a problem for me now.

There is one way I normally deal with problems. A knife to the throat or a bullet to the brain are both merciful deaths—quick but messy.

That particular line of thought terminates at a single, inconvenient conclusion: I will not kill this woman.

The reasons I should far outnumber the arguments in her favor.

But somehow, she has become… important to me.

Her innocence will make her difficult to deal with, as will the fact that she is clearly very smart.

But I am drawn to her—why else would I have acted so rashly?

—and even worse still, I think I might like her.

No good will come of this, only more problems. I know this.

“Thank you for doing that, Lev. For getting us out of that maze. For saving me. That was… um, thank you.”

At her wavering voice, I brace myself for tears.

In my experience, women always cry eventually.

But when I glance over, I see she is staring at her knees and rubbing the center of her chest absently.

When she realizes I am looking, she stops abruptly and twists her hands together in her lap, like she has been caught at something.

“Why did you do it?” she asks after a moment, when it becomes clear I will not respond to her softly spoken, heartfelt thanks.

“What?”

“Save me. It would have been easier for you to get out alone. Why save a person who’s basically a stranger? ”

I let out a longer sigh than I mean to, but it is a damn good question. “I do not know,” I admit through my teeth.

I do not have the energy to try to handle her emotions for her—I can barely handle my own—and there is too much fog in my brain to think of a better excuse. The pain in my side is subsiding, but it is still somewhat distracting.

Interestingly, the terrible answer makes her relax a fraction. The shift in her body language is minute, no more than a slight rounding of her shoulders and a loosening of her jaw. I do not understand this response, and it makes me scowl.

She is… so calm. Perhaps I was too hasty to assume she is innocent—the only people this calm in the middle of this much danger are used to it because they are dangerous people.

Innocents always lament their terrible luck.

They demand to be returned to the safety of their homes.

They cower, make threats, and sometimes get violent in self-defense.

Nicole does none of that; she sits silently with a distant look and pensive frown.

“I hope everyone’s okay. Do you know what happened?” she asks after a moment. “Like, who was shooting?”

“Why have you not asked me to take you home?” I fire back, answering her question with my own.

“I… what if…” she sucks in a breath and it breaks in the back of her throat, a sound similar to a choked sob. “I’m scared that Kyle knows where I live.”

All the muscles in my arms tense at the same time, making my shoulders bunch and my jaw flex. The leather covering the steering wheel squeaks under the force of my grip.

He did something to her—something to make her so afraid she would not go home for fear that he might be there. If I ever see him again, I will ensure his death is slow.

“If he is alive, he could easily find out,” I caution her .

The deepening of her anxious frown makes me feel strangely churlish, but it does no good to ignore the truth when the stakes are this high.

She pulls her lower lip into her mouth and chews at the inside of it. “ If ?” she repeats. “Do you think you killed him?”

Either she is an exceptional actress, or her response is genuine. It would be difficult for anyone hardened by the life we lead to recreate the mixture of tentative hope and guilt in her expression.

“I do not know.” I wish I could stop saying that.

What do I do?

Why is it so difficult to think?

Probably the bullet wound.

I need to get us somewhere safe. But I cannot bring her to the house, or I would put Wesley, James and Eleanor at risk. I do not know this woman. I do not know what kind of threat she might pose or how erratically she might act if she feels threatened…

“Hey, Lev?”

“What?” I snap, irrationally angry at the wrong name on her lips again.

“It smells very strongly of blood in here. I thought maybe it was from what I got on me, but… Are you bleeding?”

Oh. “Da.”

“Do you know where? Or what caused it?”

“I was shot.”

She inhales sharply, though not emphatically enough to be a gasp, and begins looking around at the passing scenery. “We need to stop. Is there a gas station or something up ahead?”

“We are not stopping for a graze; it is not bleeding very much.”

“Even a graze can trigger shock,” she admonishes. “You shouldn’t be driving.”

I refuse to respond to that ridiculous statement with anything more than a scoff .

As if I do not know my body well enough to know that I am in control of my faculties.

I have been shot many times. I know the signs of shock well, and I am not exhibiting any.

On the occasions when a bullet has hit me somewhere closer to something vital, it has triggered a kind of small panic, but I am usually able to ride it out.

“Please, Lev. If you pass out from blood loss, you might crash the car and kill us both.” After a few more seconds of silence, she makes a frustrated noise. “At least answer my screening questions?”

“Fine.”

It is an odd thing to watch such a shift in a person, but I feel as if I am witnessing a transformation. Gone is the frightened, worried creature, and in her place is someone very much in control, competent, and who knows exactly how to handle a medical emergency.

A golden woman in a golden dress with a low voice so calming that it could put me to sleep.

“How’s your heart rate? Is your breathing normal? Any feelings of weakness or fatigue? Pain anywhere other than the area of the wound, like the chest or abdominal region? Dizziness?”

As I answer her questions in turn, she clicks on the light over our heads and examines my lips and fingernails for any discoloration. She watches my chest rise and fall with a clinical focus, then places her freezing cold fingertips on my wrist.

When I remove my hand from the steering wheel, she pulls back with a small scowl. “Let me check—”

I crank the heat, then place my hand face up across the center console, wordlessly submitting to her demands and making it easier for her to take my pulse. “Just get it over with,” I grumble.

Her cool fingers find my pulse again, and she grips my much larger hand, holding it still with both of hers, one cradled around the back of it. I resist the urge to flex against her hold, just to see what she would do. Her touch is firm, but she uses light pressure. She treats me so… gently .

When we make eye contact this time, I freeze.

I had nearly forgotten, since so much of our time together has been in dim or nonexistent lighting where it is difficult to discern the color of things.

Now, even with pupils large from lingering adrenaline, her eyes shine.

They are the color I believe Americans would call hazel —almost a light tan, much like the rest of her coloring.

She is truly golden, like honey.

Her dress flashes as her chest rises and falls, and I follow the motion hungrily.

She swallows, and my eyes are drawn to the up and down movement of her throat.

The line from her ear down to her shoulder is long and elegant and completely bare of jewelry.

I can see a vein thrumming against her skin—what would her fluttering pulse feel like under my palm, or my lips?

The car swerves, and I jerk my hand away to right us on the road.

This is… unsettling. I am unsettled.

And aroused. I have never wanted to have a woman as badly as I want this one, right now.

Perhaps it is the adrenaline still coursing through my veins from the fight and the injury—an ancient instinct to fuck or kill.

Whatever the reason, this is terrible fucking timing.

I need what blood I have left in my head, not my cock.

I shift in my seat to adjust the hardening length discreetly, but there is only so far for me to go, even in an SUV with ample head space.

Fuck. This is going to be a long ride. But in the short term, there are things I must take care of.

“May I have your phone?”

After a second of hesitation and a hard look, she snaps open the small purse wedged between her leg and the center console and hands me her thin device. I roll down the window wordlessly and toss it out.

“Hey! What the fuck, Lev? You can’t just—”

“You can be tracked with your phone,” I explain gruffly, thinking of how simple it would be for Wesley or, I imagine, Felix. “If Kyle can find where you live, he can find you with that just as easily. We need to hide until we are out of imminent danger. And call me Dimitri.”