Death of a Nightingale Read Free Page A

sports victory. Presumably basketball—she suddenly saw how alike they were physically: broad shouldered, yes, but primarily tall, and youngerthan she had thought at first; she had been fooled by their height.
    Yet another young boy emerged from the house. He seemed more low-key than his peeing buddies, just as tall but a little skinnier, a little more awkward. His dark hair looked damp and spiky, and he wore glasses. A girl tottered after him in high heels she could barely manage, the strap of her pink blouse falling halfway off one shoulder.
    “Robbie, don’t go yet!” she shouted shrilly.
    “I need to get home,” he said.
    “Why? Dammit, Robbie … You can’t just … Robbie, come onnnn!”
    One of the three at the hedge quickly zipped up and tried with similarly incoherent arguments to convince Robbie to stay, but he shook them off.
    “I’ll see you guys,” he said and started walking with long, fairly controlled steps down the street in the direction of Natasha. The girl stood looking after him, her arms folded across her chest.
    “Robbie,” she wailed, but one of the guys by the hedge put an arm around her and pulled her along with him back into the house. Robbie continued down the sidewalk as if he hadn’t heard her.
    Natasha was about to back up so that he wouldn’t notice her, but he didn’t go all the way to her corner. Instead, he stopped at a dark blue car not far from her.
    “Whoo-hoo,” one of the remaining party boys commented. “Does Daddy know you’re driving his Audi?”
    “They’re skiing,” said Robbie. “They won’t be home until Thursday.”
    He remained standing with the keys in his hand as if he didn’t feel like getting in while they were looking on. Not until they had followed their friend and the girl into the house did he unlock the car.
    He was so tall. There was no way she’d be able to hit him and get away with it, and she no longer had a cobble or any other weapon. But he had a car key. And a car.
    Without a car, she couldn’t reach Katerina. Without a car, they couldn’t get away, and they had to. In her mind, she once again heardthe voices from the parking lot outside police headquarters. There was nothing recognizable about them, and what they had said wasn’t alarming in itself. “It has to be today. Understand?” Ordinary words, not threatening—but spoken in Ukrainian. She felt a fresh rush of panic just thinking about it.
    She glided up behind the rangy young man and placed her hand on his, the hand in which he held the keys.
    “Not good,” she said in English. “Not good to drive after drink.”
    A good guess—the short delay in his reaction revealed that he had been drinking. Not as much as the others but probably still quite a bit. He stared at her as if he was trying to remember how they knew each other. She took the keys out of his hand, opened the door quickly and got in.
    “Hey, wait …” He stuck his leg in so she couldn’t close the door and quickly grabbed the wheel. “What are you doing?”
    Driving, she told herself silently. Driving to Katerina. But clearly he wasn’t planning to just let her do so.
    “Robbie,” she said again in English. “Bad for you to drive. Let me. I take you home.”
    He looked at her through slightly foggy glasses. Using his name had had an effect. He thought they knew each other even though he wasn’t sure how. And he was drunk. More than it had appeared at first.
    “Okay,” he said slowly. “You drive, er …”
    “Katerina,” she said with her most dazzling smile. “Don’t you remember? It’s Katerina.”
    H E DIDN ’ T FALL asleep in the car as she had hoped. Instead he directed her through the suburban streets, closer to the lake that separated her from Katerina, and finally got her to turn into a drive and park in front of a garage and a yellow brick house with old ivy growing all the way to the roof. The branches from the large silverbirch at the entrance were weighted so heavily with