Page 11 of Vicious Doll

"And you're not concerned because...?"

"Because is Mikhail." He glances at me, those cold eyes assessing how much I need to know. "Insurance policy. In case Killion put tracker in you."

I straighten, suddenly alert. "What are you talking about?"

"Standard Dollhouse protocol." He gestures vaguely at my body. "Subcutaneous tracking implant. Usually shoulder blade or lower back. Primitive but effective. Mikhail has signal jammer, creates electronic noise. Buys time."

I resist the urge to claw at my own skin, to search for the foreign object potentially buried in my flesh. Just another violation to add to the list. "And you didn't think to mention this earlier?"

He shrugs. "You did not ask."

"And you wanted Killion to track me," I surmised, feeling like meat all over again.

"Yes." He doesn't bother denying it. At least there's that. "Was test."

"I'm getting real tired of being used as bait," I grumble, shooting Volkov a dirty look. "If you've got a hard-on for Killion, you ought to figure that shit out on your own. Leave me out of it."

"Not hard-on," Volkov returns with a curled lip. "Not anymore."

Oh, the plot thickens. I want to ask more on that score but it probably wasn't the time to start delving into the dark and kinky spaces formerly occupied by Volkov and Killian.

But I'll put a pin in it for later.

I close my eyes, counting backward from ten before I put a bullet in his face. "Okay, so we have temporary cover. How long before they track us the old-fashioned way? Bribes, informants, facial recognition?"

"Long enough." He taps ash from his cigarette with mechanical precision. "We have what they do not."

"Which is?"

"Direction," Volkov says simply. "They hunt blindly. We hunt with purpose."

We turn onto an even narrower road, this one little more than tire tracks through scrubby forest. Pine branches scrape against the car's roof like skeletal fingers, leaving trails in the early morning condensation.

After another fifteen minutes of kidney-punishing terrain, a structure materializes from the mist—not the relative luxury of the previous safehouse, but a squat concrete bunker that looks like a Soviet architectural wet dream circa 1962.

"Please tell me that's just a scenic lookout point and not where we're staying."

"Cold War relic," Volkov says, something like fondness in his voice. "KGB listening post, abandoned after Berlin Wall fell. Now personal project."

The car stops, engine ticking as it cools. Behind us, a battered Lada pulls in—Mikhail, I presume. The man who emerges is built like a refrigerator with a beard, all muscle and scar tissue wrapped in a canvas jacket that's seen better decades.

The bunker's interior is a shock after its grim exterior—not comfortable by any stretch, but humming with technology that belongs in a spy thriller, not this Communist-era tomb. Monitors line one wall, servers stacked in climate-controlled cases, satellite equipment that looks cobbled together from military surplus and custom-built components.

"What the hell is all this?" I ask, taking in the electronic wonderland.

"Hobby," Volkov says, dropping his tactical bag on a metal table that's seen better days. He moves to a complex-looking setup of monitors and begins typing rapidly. "In my line of work, information is more valuable than bullets."

Mikhail grunts something in Russian, then disappears into what I assume is a supply room, returning with a first aid kit that looks better stocked than most emergency rooms.

"Take off pants," he orders in a voice like gravel being crushed. "Need to clean wound before infection sets."

I raise an eyebrow. "What, no dinner first?"

He gives me a look that suggests humor died in his world around the same time as Stalin. I sigh and drop my blood-crusted pants, wincing as dried fabric tears away from half-congealed scabs.

While Mikhail works on my leg with the gentle touch of a butcher deboning a cow, Volkov hunches over his equipment, fingers flying across keyboards, eyes scanning data streams that make no sense to me. The tech looks like what would happen if Radio Shack fucked the NSA and had a baby with developmental issues—part cutting-edge, part jury-rigged, all deadly serious.

"What exactly are you doing?" I ask through clenched teeth as Mikhail irrigates my wound with something that feels like liquid fire.

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