The Favorites: A Novel(110)
Veronika Volkova: She should have been disqualified, then and there. But the Americans allow their athletes to get away with anything.
Ellis Dean: For once, Kat and Heath had every right to throw a fit. Someone had sabotaged them. And let’s be real: we all knew who the most likely culprits were.
Medics arrive to look at Katarina’s cuts—and now Dmitri’s bruised tailbone too.
Heath takes some first aid supplies, but waves off the medics so he can tend to Katarina’s foot himself. As he kneels in front of her, dabbing disinfectant on the gouges left by the thorns, Katarina continues to glare daggers at the Russians.
Ellis Dean: One thing’s for sure: when they took the ice, they were out for blood.
Chapter 75
I survived the short dance on adrenaline, spite, and a dry-swallowed dose of ibuprofen.
By the end of the night, we were in first place, a full two points ahead of the Russians, and my foot was so swollen I could barely get it out of my boot. Heath offered me some of his prescription painkillers to take the edge off, then realized he’d left the bottle back at our hotel—which we couldn’t return to until we sat through a barrage of questions from event officials about the “incident,” as they insisted on calling it.
Why hadn’t I checked my skate before putting it on? Why didn’t we report the bloody flowers right away, if they disturbed us so much? Had our bags been unattended at any point? Where? For how long?
As if it was somehow our fault. As if we didn’t know better than to leave our skates lying around in a place swarming with professional rivals.
Between practice and the short dance, our equipment hadn’t been out of our sight—with the exception of a ten-minute span where I’d taken a shower and Heath had gone to get us some food. He was adamant that he’d locked the door behind him. Which meant whoever did this had access to our room, or they’d bribed the hotel staff. The Kipriyanov family’s mob connections would’ve made that easy. Actually proving the Russian team was behind the sabotage would be much harder.
The officials pulled sympathetic faces and swore to conduct a “thorough investigation.” But the damage was done. The most important competition of my career was less than twenty-four hours away, and my foot was full of puncture wounds.
Clearly the hotel wasn’t safe, but we had nowhere else to go. We’d have to barricade the door and hope for the best. As we made our way back, Heath shouldered all our bags himself and let me lean on him to take the weight off my injured foot. No matter how slowly and carefully I walked, every limping step ended in pure agony.
The hotel lobby was deserted. The lights flickered as we made our way down the hall, turning the ambience that much more apocalyptic.
We reached our room. Heath dug into his pocket for the key.
“Wait,” I said.
The door was open, a sliver of darkness between the edge and the frame.
Fresh adrenaline flooded my body, washing away the exhaustion. We had closed and locked it before leaving for the venue. Someone had broken in again, and this time they wanted us to know.
“Stay here,” Heath said, but I was already pushing past him, nudging the door open the rest of the way. I threw the light switch, but the burnt-out bulb hadn’t been replaced.
There was enough illumination from the hallway to outline the stain the broken vase had left on the carpet, the shapes of our luggage next to the coatrack in the corner, the crooked stem of the lamp beside the bed—and something else.
A still, dark shadow spread across the mattress. Shaped like a body.
Chapter 76
Red and blue lights flashed over the freezing pavement. I sat on the curb with my knees pulled under my chin and tried not to think about it.
But the smell was all over me. That thick, metallic reek, blended with the aroma of roses.
This time, there had been no flowers. No thorns. Only petals—ripped out and scattered like in a honeymoon suite. My free dance dress was draped over the bed, covered in rose petals.
And soaked through with blood.
Animal blood, the Sochi City Police thought. Maybe cow or pig, from a butcher shop. A tasteless prank, certainly, but no one had been hurt. Nothing had been stolen either. Two officers stood and watched as Heath and I searched every compartment in every piece of luggage; all our possessions were there, undamaged, including Heath’s costume for the free dance. It was a shame about my pretty dress, but couldn’t I wear another one?
We tried to tell them about the rest of it, to explain the pattern, the escalation from the strange flowers to the wounds on the sole of my foot to this horror show in our hotel room. I quickly reached the limit of my patience, but Heath kept appealing in Russian to the cops, the night shift clerk, the hotel security guard, even a few other guests who’d ventured out to see what was causing all the commotion. None of them had witnessed anything suspicious.
“Seriously?” I said when he relayed this to me.
“So they say.”
“And the police, what are they going to—”
“What do you think?”
They weren’t going to do any more than the Olympic officials. Ask a few questions, write up a report, send us on our merry way.
Heath offered his hand to help me up. The pain in my foot thrashed like a live wire, searing the entire left side of my body. A ruined dress was the least of my problems. How the hell was I going to make it through the free dance like this?