"Did Michel pick you up?"
She frowns. "Yeah. Of course he did."
So that's where Michel was.
"You always go around naked?"
"Hey, it's my place. Besides, Mike likes it." She coughs again. "You got any smokes? I'm out."
"No." I shake my head. "Sorry. I have to go."
I leave the apartment, feeling numb – completely numb, my knees weak. I walk back up the stairs. Go inside. Find my shoes. My backpack. My coat.
I leave, taking the stairs. Glance out the front doors to see a crowd of people around the car, its engine flaming, Vasily spraying it with a fire extinguisher.
I find a rear exit and try the knob. It opens. There's no one outside watching the door, so I open it and leave the building.
The streets bordering the waterfront are narrow, with old deserted warehouses and buildings that have been abandoned and are rusting with age and the salt air. I walk as fast as I can, my mind blank, just wanting to escape. I get about five blocks away and go down a narrow alley and stop by a trash bin and vomit.
A car drives down the street and I wave at it, hoping that the person will give me a lift but the car drives by and the driver doesn't even glance at me.
Although I've lived in Boston now for almost a decade, I don't know this area of town well, and have no idea how to get back to civilization. I just walk towards the city center, hoping that I'll find a telephone booth or someone who will give me a ride to Boston PD. I'll ask for witness protection.
As I turn a corner down another deserted street, I see Vasily's car coming in the other direction. I duck down the alley and run, searching for a door I can enter and a place to hide. I'm sure Vasily saw me. Now it's only a matter of time before he comes for me.
I find an open door and enter an old brownstone warehouse, and am assaulted by a stench so bad I think I must be in a garbage dump. On the floor are dozens of needles, bags of trash, filthy mattresses, used take-out containers. It is – or has been at one time a flop-house for addicts.
I climb the stairs, hoping to find a place to hide, but each level is wide open, the floors abandoned and empty. There's nowhere to go but up. Finally at the top floor, I see a ladder going up to a skylight in the roof and climb up.
"Eve!"
It's Vasily. I try the skylight and it opens so I climb out and find myself on a platform about a floor above the rest of the roof, twenty feet square. An old rusting HVAC system perches on one edge. I close the skylight and hide behind the old tin housing.
It takes about five minutes for him to find me. I don't know what I was thinking – there's no escape. I sit and shiver, my coat not warm enough against the unusually cool weather.
The skylight opens and Vasily pops out, glancing around in search of me. He walks over and kneels down beside me.
"Come," he says, holding out his hand. "You must come back with me before Julien returns or there will be paying hell."
"Hell to pay," I say. "I'm not going back, Vasily. Just let me go."
Vasily shakes his head. "If I did, Michel would surely send someone to kill me. Julien too."
"Don't tell him, then. Say you couldn't find me. It was the cleaners – they left the door open, not you."
"No, I am your protector. The bucks come to me. You are in danger now because of being Michel's woman."
"I'm not his 'woman'. Kate is." I can't believe that Michel lied to me about being celibate. He kept a woman in his home and now keeps her in the warehouse? A junkie?
Vasily frowns for a moment.
"Ahh," he says, covering his eyes with a hand. "You went downstairs. No," he says and shakes his head. "You don't understand. Kate is junkie friend of Michel's. From way back, when he was working as priest with street people. He," Vasily says and shrugs. "Michel keeps her supplied with good drugs, doctors, a place to sleep so she doesn't walk streets. Live in place like this.” He points to the building. “Now that the mansion is being fixed, she had to come stay at Julien’s."
"She said Michel was her lover. Are you telling me she and Michel aren't lovers?"
"Lovers?" Vasily makes a face. "Not lovers. You," he says and points to me. "You and Michel are lovers."
"Not anymore." Even as I say it, grief bites at my heart.