Page 11 of Puck

She snorted. “You blew a guy’s head off right in front of me, and then I got behind the wheel with the blood still running down the inside of the windshield.”

I bobbled my head side to side. “You have a point.”

I held the knife in my uninjured hand and the lighter in the other, flicked the wheel to get the flame spurting, and held the flat of the knife blade in the flame.

Colbie touched my wrist. “Can I suggest you wait a second?” She pointed ahead at what appeared to be the local version of a convenience store. “If you’re going to do that, I’d suggest a bottle of vodka and something to bite down on.”

I eyed her, folding the blade away. “And you say this why?”

She lifted one shoulder in an elegant movement. “Call it common sense.”

“What I call is bullshit on that answer.”

She sighed. “Because I’ve seen it done, if you must know. I don’t give a shit how tough you are, it hurts like a bitch. Also, you need vodka or something to clean it.” She gestured at my finger. “What you have going on there is an infection just waiting to happen. What did you do, try to burn it closed?”

“Yeah, sort of.”

She made a disgusted face. “That was pretty dumb.”

I frowned at her. “Why?”

“Do you know nothing about basic emergency wound care?” She indicated my finger again. “The ash is going infect you. Like, if you don’t get an infection I’ll be shocked.”

“Yes, I do know a little about basic triage,” I said as we stood outside the front of the store. “I did a tour in Iraq and eight years in the FBI. I was just short on other options.”

But I decided she had a point as I pulled open the glass door, which sent a string of bells jangling. The glass was reinforced by iron bars, and the interior of the store was identical to any liquor store in any shabby end of town anywhere I’d ever been— everything packed in so tight there was barely room to move, lots of shelves stacked two deep with bottles of cheap liquor, and a counter at the end of the store with two-inch-thick bulletproof glass on the other side, all the high-end liquor and cigarettes behind the counter along with the bored-looking cashier.

“Give me some of those rubles,” Colbie said.

After I handed her a stack of notes, she grabbed a pint of vodka from the top shelf nearest us and took it to the counter, where she struck up a conversation in Russian with the cashier—a middle-aged man with silver-streaked brown hair and weathered, craggy features, cigarette dangling from the corner of his lips. After a brief flurry of exchanges, Colbie turned to me with a frustrated expression on her face.

“Good news and bad news. Bad news, it turns out we’re in Kiev, Ukraine.” She lifted the rubles. “Which means none of this currency does us any good unless we can get it exchanged somewhere, which is unlikely seeing as we have no passports.”

“And the good news?”

“Pretty much everyone in Ukraine speaks Russian, so I can still communicate easily.”

“But he won’t accept any of the money?” I asked.

Colbie eyed me, the oozing stump of my finger, and then turned to the cashier. She jabbered something in Russian, gesturing at me, and then grabbed my injured hand to show the cashier. The cashier shook his head, and Colbie responded with what seemed to be to be a plea.

“I need more money,” she murmured to me. “I think he’ll accept the cash we have, but it’s gonna cost extra.”

“Did you tell him it was a sex injury?” I quipped, peeling off more rubles, and a couple twenty-euro notes for good measure.

She snorted. “No, I didn’t say what happened, and he hasn’t asked.” She tilted her head at the window. “Don’t know if you’ve noticed this or not, but the neighborhood we’re in isn’t exactly the nicest. Don’t think folks around here ask too many questions.”

“Yeah, I noticed . . . that was actually a joke.”

She and the cashier went back and forth a few more times, and then the cashier finally nodded. Colbie slid the rubles and the euro notes under the glass, and then the cashier tossed a cell phone onto the counter, a cheap-looking model of a brand I’d never heard of before, encased in thick plastic packaging.

“Hey.” I poked Colbie in the ribs. “Ask him if he’s got any cigars.”

Colbie eyed me. “For real?”

I shrugged. “I never joke about cigars, guns, or sex.”

She rolled her eyes at me. “You just asked if I’d told the cashier your missing finger was a sex injury.”