Page 13 of The Harbinger
What if she thought I was a thief? After everything she’d done for me and now, I’d left with the one thing she’d trusted me with. She’d never forgive me.
My heart took on a new beat, stealing my breath as I ground my back molars and worked up the courage to ask. “Can I have my ring back? It’s important to me.” My heart pumped chaotically as he looked at me over the top brim of his phone.
“Why is it important?”
“Because it is.” Because she trusted me with it and I’d lost it to a man I didn’t know the next day.
“No.” He looked back at his phone. “Get some rest.”
I inhaled through my nose, fighting the urge to raise my voice and demand it back, but my stomach rumbled like old creaking floorboards, making my words catch in my throat.
Sacha didn’t seem like a man who put up with much. If I pissed him off, what would he do to me?
I swallowed my sparring words and settled on something more important. Sustenance. “Can I…”
Sacha kept his focus on his device, the rest of my question sticking to the roof of my mouth. Maybe he didn’t want to be bothered. He seemed like a man whose business kept him busy.
“If you need something, ask.”
My fist twisted around the blanket at my throat, cinching it tighter. “Do you have anything to eat?” I said, spewing the words before he changed his mind, and I’d lost the courage.
Ivan scoffed, and I sunk in my chair as fire licked up my throat to my cheeks.
Did I say something wrong?
I hadn’t eaten in well over twenty-four hours, not including the leftover broth given to me by a chef that I threw up all over the alley.
Sacha snapped his fingers. “Yey nuzhno yest’.”
What did he say this time, and why did he keep me in the dark?
Was it because he was the type of person who never had to explain his actions or because he wasn’t used to being questioned about everything? Did he have someone to answer to, or was he the boss?
The roar of applause from the television behind me filled in the dead space between us, along with the slight hum of Vlad and Ivan playing a card game with the two other men equal in size and intimidation across from them.
“Awck,”Ivan said as he threw his cards onto the table. Vlad glanced at me from the corner of his eye, his glance darting to Sacha, then back to his cards in hand as though he had something to say but couldn’t. Or maybe he didn’t want to.
Maybe my presence on this plane made him as uncomfortable as I was.
My stomach grumbled again as the attendant stepped out from the front, the salty aroma of food following her. She reached through the small aisle between us and pushed a button on the top of a shelf, slightly higher than our armrests.
A long horizontal panel flipped open on the top, and the edge of a table extended straight up from its hiding space. With a whirring of motors, it leaned away from the wall and lowered until it rested flat between us, the end free floating.
“Wow.”
Without another word, she disappeared into the front of the airplane.
My mouth watered like a dog ready for chow, my stomach eating at itself.
Ranger. Have you seen him? I’ve looked everywhere.
I groaned as the little girl’s voice sent shock waves of electricity down my spine. I pressed my palm to my forehead, leaning my elbows on the table. The little girl’s voice had come to me like a ghost from my past, giving me snapshots of a life I couldn’t remember living.
“Posheveli rukoy.”
“She said move your hands out of the way,” Sacha said.
I tipped my head back against the chair’s headrest and dropped my hands to the side.