8. Kristina

8

KRISTINA

My face was pressed into the floor: all I could see was clean, charcoal-gray carpet, still with that new-car smell, and polished leather shoes. Then there was a deafening sound I remembered from the war, like a thousand firecrackers being set off right inside my eardrums. The windows didn’t break, they exploded, thousands of little pebbles of safety glass tinkling as they cascaded down.

But they didn’t hit me. A huge, warm body was pressed to every inch of me, coming up over my head and reaching back past my feet. I could feel the hard bulges of his biceps as they pressed my arms to the floor. I could feel his hot breath on the top of my head and the beat of his heart as his chest pressed into my back.

I was utterly terrified. But it was the safest I’d ever felt.

When I was a child, the President of Italy bought me a teddy bear. A huge, ludicrous thing, much bigger than me - it was almost five feet tall and incredibly soft. I named it Barnaby and used to curl up in its lap and fall asleep cuddling it. But what I used to dream about, what I used to try to simulate, by wrapping its paws around me, was it cuddling me. Even before the war, my mother never really seemed to do that.

When I was ten, I came home one day to find that my mother had thrown Barnaby away. He was childish, she said. It was time to grow up. And of course I had to be brave and not cry because I was a princess. But I’d lost that feeling of someone wrapping me up and holding me close and I’d been missing it ever since.

Until now.

I squeezed my eyes closed and, despite the danger we were in, there was a part of me that just wanted Garrett to keep holding me that way.

There was an explosion that I realized must be a tire bursting. I felt us swerve and then suddenly the car was rotating in a way it wasn’t supposed to. My legs tipped up, my head down and the road noise dropped away completely. My stomach lurched and my fingers clawed at the carpet. All four wheels must be off the ground: we were flipping.

The ceiling became the floor and then we landed hard on our roof. Garrett fell first and then gave a soft grunt as I fell onto his chest. The car skidded along on its roof, orange sparks flying. I was lying face up on top of Garrett. Above me, I could see the others still strapped into their seats. Oh God! They didn’t get down on the floor! What if they— A drop of something warm and wet hit my cheek. Blood! One of them’s bleeding! But it was too dim and everything was rattling around too much to tell who.

The movement of the car slowed. Stopped. We came to rest, rocking slightly.

“Who’s hurt?” I said, my voice tight with panic. “Caroline? Emerik? Jakov? Mr. Buchanan?”

One by one, they called that they were okay. Everyone was panting and shaken and trying to figure out how to get out of their seats while still buckled in upside down. Beneath me, Garrett gently eased my head to one side so that he could look around.

Then I remembered there was one more person in the car. “Director Gibson?!”

Nothing.

Garrett tried. “Gibson?”

Silence. Then, “I’m—”—a pained intake of breath—”I’m okay. Bleeding but okay.”

I let out my breath. Everyone was alive. Then I started to think about what had just happened and a cold sweat broke out right across my body. It isn’t over. They tried to kill me again.

Garrett suddenly stiffened beneath me. “We have to move,” he snapped.

I looked around in panic. Was the car on fire?

Then I saw what he’d seen, in the car’s wing mirror. Four men, dressed in black and carrying assault rifles, were approaching the car.