She huddled the cloak closer around her and hurried her steps, feeling the hunter ease his way nearer to her. It was like a blank space in the mass of people she had hoped to lose herself in. Sweat rolled down her back under the cloth, but if she so much as pushed the hood back he would spot her. She couldn’t take that risk.
She couldn’t remember how long she’d been running. There were a lot of things she couldn’t remember. Who she was, for starters. She knew her own name — part of it, anyway. She knew why the hunter wanted her, too.
She didn’t know how she’d lost her memory, or why she couldn’t speak.
She dodged sideways into a little alley running between two stores and leaned against the wall, panting. A shadow fell over her, and she jumped, staring up wide-eyed at the dark figure in front of her.
Dimitri was working in the store that night. He was pretty irritated with rude Americans, but he supposed he was intimidating enough to make men angry and women envious. He didn’t speak much, always listening and then reporting them to what they wanted.
The teenagers that frequented the store liked to do things in hopes to get a reaction from the tall dark and brooding Russian. They really got him worked up today. He felt like he needed to punch something.
As he left the store through the back entrance he found a girl, cowering in his shadow. He looked down, she looked so scared. “Hallo,” he said gently. “Ahre yoh lohst?” he asked, blinking at her. He may look imposing and scary, but he had a good disposition, he was always gentle with women, girls especially and even more so with ones that look like her.
Summer tried to press herself through the wall, gazing up at the man. His heavy accent took her a moment to decipher, since half her brain was caught up with the strangeness of the sense of him. He tasted … wild. Not like caveman wild, but like a wild animal, a little shy, a little dangerous. She let out a slow breath, and shook her head.