Page 183 of Sexting the Pakhan

When I open the door, stale air and disuse come out to meet us.

Good. No one has touched it.

We get the girls inside without waking them properly. Zoya takes Mila. I take Nadia because she wakes enough to insist she can walk, then immediately falls asleep again against my shoulder, light and warm and trusting in a way that makes my chest hurt.

Zoya sees it. She says nothing.

Inside, the place is basic but usable. Old furniture. Dry blankets. Bottled water still in date. A gas stove. A working lock on the back door. I check the windows while Zoya settles the girls in the larger of the two bedrooms, then I drag a chair to the front window and sit with my leg stretched out and my gun across my lap.

Zoya comes back out a few minutes later. “They’re asleep,” she says.

I nod.

She folds her arms. “What now?”

I look at the dark outside, then at the dead signal on one of the bait phones, then back to the quiet road beyond the trees.

“Now,” I say, “I have to figure out which one of my men betrayed me.”

Before time’s up.But that part I don’t say out loud.

25

ZOYA

The cottage has exactlythree useful food items by the second morning: salt, tea bags, and a jar of something that expired during a previous government. So naturally, I end up in a grocery store with my children and a man who was shot three days ago.

The grocery store is twenty minutes away in a neighboring town, far enough that I tell myself this is safe, normal, practical. We need milk, bread, fruit, painkillers, proper bandages, something for the girls that isn’t stale crackers, and coffee before I start threatening the furniture.

Ruslan insists on coming.

I say absolutely not.

He says if he’s going to hide in a cottage with no security and no clear line to his people, then he’s not letting me walk into a public place alone with the girls.

I tell him he can barely walk.

Ruslan looks me over as I get out of the car and says, “You look ridiculous.”

I glare at him over the oversized black sunglasses that take up half my face. “That’s the point.”

He shuts the car door and takes in the rest of me: floppy sun hat, loose cardigan, long skirt, and the most forgettable shoes I own.

“You look like you’re hiding from paparazzi in 2007,” he says.

“I am hiding,” I say.

“You think the hat helps?”

“The hat absolutely helps.”

Mila appears beside me holding the edge of my cardigan. “Mama, you look glamorous.”

I point at her. “Thank you.”

Nadia gets out on the other side and adjusts her own little cap with deep seriousness. “You look suspicious.”

I point at her too. “Less helpful.”