Page 75 of Emerald

I don’t even want to look back to see how close the linebacker is getting. I just race down the steps, out to the open parking lot behind the station.

And here’s where fate ceases to be my friend.

The platform was shoveled and salted, but the parking lot is full of snow. It’s thick and soft. My feet sink down into it. It’s like trying to run through sand, but much more slippery.

The linebacker is gaining on me. I can hear his hoarse breath, chugging closer and closer. I try to sprint faster, but I’m tiring out, I can’t get purchase. It’s like a nightmare where a monster is chasing me, and my legs are getting heavier and heavier.

There’s only two or three cars in the lot, no people around. Pointless to scream for help.

No time to get out my phone, to try to call Ivan.

The linebacker tackles me, and my head strikes the ground.

* * *

When I wake,I’m lying on a soft bed in a cool, dark room.

For a moment, I think that Ivan must have been waiting at the Tosno station. He dealt with the linebacker and brought me back to the monastery.

However, as soon as I sit up, that illusion is dispelled.

This is no monastery.

It’s a house, modern in the extreme.

I’m sitting on a platform bed, in a dim and highly luxurious room, decorated in shades of gray and blue. Several architectural prints hang on the walls, and a sleek chandelier dangles from the ceiling.

Yet I notice at once that this room has no windows, not a single one. The drapes hang across blank walls. Along with the digital panel on the wall that controls the light and temperature, I’m quite sure this room is rigged to record video and sound.

I’m in a cell again. Not as obvious as the ones in Ivan’s catacombs. But a cell nonetheless.

My head is throbbing, particularly the spot on the left temple, just above the hairline, where my skull struck the snowy ground.

I’m lucky the snow was so thick. If the parking lot had been bare cement, that idiotic goon might have brained me. When apparently his instructions were to bring me back here.

Raising my hand to gingerly touch the lump on my head, I feel a strange jingling on my wrist. I look at my arm and see that I’m wearing a diamond tennis bracelet.

Glancing down at my body, I discover that the simple slacks and blouse I wore to meet with Alya have been replaced with a ball gown. Deep burgundy in color, off the shoulder, with a sweetheart neckline and a slit up the thigh, cascading down into tiers of ruffles.

Someone has put a bracelet on my wrist, earrings in my ears, and shoes on my feet. They’ve re-dressed me, all the way down to my underwear.

What. The. Fuck.

I swing my legs off the side of the bed and stand up.

Doing so sends a spike of pain shooting through my skull. A wave of nausea washes over my body, making me sway so I almost have to sit down again. I’m unsteady on my feet, especially in these ridiculous shoes. I hate high heels with a passion. I agree with the feminist who said that men invented high heels so women couldn’t run away from them.

In point of fact, the dress and the shoes are hobbling me, and weighing me down. I’m tempted to strip them all off again. I’d rather be naked, like I was at Ivan’s house. That was more honest, as well as more practical.

But I’m quite sure that Remizov is watching me. And I’m not sure I want to start antagonizing him. At least, not yet.

I do intend to go find him, however.

He didn’t bring me here and dress me like this for no reason.

He wants to use me as some kind of bait or pawn against Ivan.

Well, if that’s his plan, we might as well get on with it.

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