The Witness

scream.
    Korotkii spoke softly as he put the gun to Alexi’s temple, fired twice more.
    His expression never changed, held like a mask as he murdered. Then it sharpened as he looked up and toward the kitchen.
    “I don’t feel good, Alex. I need to lie down, or maybe we should—Who are you?”
    “Ah, fuck your mother,” he muttered, and shot Julie twice, where she stood. “Why didn’t we know he had his whore with him?”
    The second man walked over to Julie, shook his head. “This is a new one. Very young.”
    “She won’t be older.”
    Elizabeth’s vision grayed. It was a dream. A nightmare. Because of the drinking and being sick. She’d wake up any second. Huddled in the dark, she stared at Alex. There was hardly any blood, she noted. If it was real, wouldn’t there be more blood?
    Wake up, wake up, wake up.
    But the terror only spiked when she saw Ilya come in.
    They’d kill him, too. The man would shoot him. She had to help. She had to—
    “God damn it, what have you done?”
    “What I was ordered to do.”
    “Your orders were to break his arms and to do it tomorrow night.”
    “The orders changed. Our informant got us word. Alexi went to bed with the cops.”
    “Christ. Motherfucker.”
    Elizabeth watched in horror as Ilya kicked the dead Alex, once, twice, three times.
    One of them, she thought. He was one of them.
    Ilya stopped, pushed at his hair, then saw Julie’s body. “Ah, fuck. Was that necessary?”
    “She saw us. We were told his whore left with another man.”
    “It was this one’s bad luck he was looking for fresh meat. Where’s the other one?”
    “Other?”
    The beautiful dark eyes went to ice. “There were two. This one and another—short, black hair, red dress.”
    “Yegor.”
    With a nod, the big man drew a knife and started up the stairs. Ilya gestured, and, following orders, Korotkii moved toward the kitchen while Ilya walked to the terrace doors.
    “Liz,” he murmured. “It’s all right, Liz. I’ll take care of you.”
    He slid a knife out of his boot, held it behind his back, flipped on the outside lights.
    He saw her shoes, scanned the terrace, rushed to the rail.
    “There’s no one here,” Korotkii told him from the doorway.
    “There was. Find her.”

4
     
    S HE RAN BLINDLY, EYES WIDE AND GLAZED, BREATH RIPPING out of her lungs in sobs and gasps. She couldn’t release the scream clawing at her throat. They might hear. If they heard, if they caught her, they’d kill her.
    Like Julie.
    She fought her instinct to run for the street. There could be more of them, more like Ilya. How could she know the car she flagged down wasn’t one of them? How could she know if she beat her fists on the door of a house, one of them wouldn’t answer?
    She had to run, get away as far and as fast as she could. She had to hide.
    If there was a fence, she climbed it. If there was a hedge, she pushed and fought her way through. When the ground scraped and tore at her bare feet, she choked back the cries of pain. She hid from the moonlight, scrabbling like a mole for the dark places.
    A dog barked madly as she raced across someone’s yard.
    Don’t let them hear, don’t let them come.
    Don’t look back.
    Something tore into her side. For a terrifying moment as she pitched forward, she thought she’d been shot. But she lay on the ground, drawing her knees in, the harsh whoops of her breath scoring her throat.
    A cramp, just a cramp. But with it came a powerful surge of nausea. Pushing to her hands and knees, she gagged, wept, gagged, racked by dry heaves.
    Shock, she told herself as her teeth chattered. Sweating and shivering at the same time, dizzy, nauseated, rapid pulse. She was in shock, and she needed to
think.
    To warm herself, she rubbed her hands rapidly over her arms as she struggled to slow her breathing. She crawled over to retrieve the purse that had flown out of her hand when she’d fallen. She’d managed to hold on to it during the flight, so she comforted herself that she
had
been thinking on some level.
    She needed to call the police; she needed help.
    “Take out the phone,” she whispered, coaching herself. “Push memory one. Tell them … tell them…”
    “Nine-one-one, what is your emergency?”
    “Help me. Can you help me?”
    “What is the nature of your emergency?
    “He shot them.” Tears flooded her eyes, all but drowned her voice. “He shot them, and I ran.”
    “Ma’am, are you reporting a shooting?”
    “He killed them. He