Page 16 of Sexting the Pakhan

Unknown Number:What’s your friend’s name?

I blink.

Karina leans in. “Ooh.”

“No,” I say automatically.

She points at the screen. “Why not?”

“Because I’m not giving personal details to a random number.”

“That is very sensible.”

“I’m a sensible person.”

She lets that statement hang in the air long enough to make me glare.

I type:I’m trying to maintain at least the illusion of caution.

Unknown Number:Smart. Keep that.

That one makes me pause too. I like that more than I want to.

Karina notices my face again. “That was a good answer, wasn’t it?”

I nod.

“See?” she says. “Might not be a serial killer.”

“An incredibly low bar.”

“It’s the bar we have.”

I smile and shake my head, then type:I’ll let her know Mystery Number has approved my judgment.

Unknown Number:Mystery Number is flattered by the title.

I stare at that and laugh softly under my breath.

Karina studies me for another moment, then lifts her glass. “Well. Whoever they are.”

I pick up mine too. “To terrible ideas,” I say.

“To unexpectedly good ones,” she corrects.

We clink glasses.

3

RUSLAN

My knuckles are split,and the man on the floor is breathing hard through blood and broken pride. He’s still conscious, which means I haven’t gone far enough to kill him.

That isn’t mercy. I need him awake.

I stand over him in the basement room beneath Veles, my pulse steadying as I flex my right hand once. Blood smears across my skin, not all of it mine. The overhead light is harsh, yellow-white and unflattering, humming faintly above us. It catches on the concrete floor, on the steel chair bolted to the ground, on the face of the man who thought he could skim from one of my shipments and lie to me twice in the same hour.

That part always offends me more than the theft.