Two Hands

For three days, you and Kirill Sokolov don't talk about Polina Zhukova.

You talk about depreciation schedules. You talk about refrigerated trailer leases. At one in the morning on Tuesday you have a twenty-minute argument about whether a forklift counts as a vehicle for tax purposes, and you win, and he looks at you across the steel island like he's never been so offended or so entertained in his life.

You don't talk about the hand on his at his father's table.

You don't talk about the fact that you keep catching him watching you.

"You're doing it again," he says on Wednesday night.

"Doing what?"

"Counting."

"I'm not counting. I'm thinking."

"You're thinking in numbers. Out loud. Under your breath." He's sitting on the other side of the island, sleeves pushed up to the elbow, a glass of vodka he hasn't touched at his wrist. "It's very distracting."

"Then go somewhere else."

"It's my house."

"It's my thirty days."

"Twenty-six, Ethan," he says, and you look up despite yourself.

He's watching you with that stillness he has, the stillness of a predator or a man who's afraid if he moves he'll give something away. The lamp over the island turns his hair gold and puts shadows under those cheekbones, and he's so beautiful it's honestly rude. You look back down at your legal pad before your face does something stupid.

"I found something," you say.

He's off his stool and around the island before you finish the sentence.

You turn the laptop toward him. On the screen is a chart you built at midnight, six years of Amber Coast payments plotted month by month, a long jagged line like a heartbeat.

"Look here," you say, tapping. "For the first two years, it's small. Fifteen thousand a month, twenty. Steady. Careful. Same three fake vendors, same round numbers. Somebody being cautious."

"Oskar is cautious."

"Then, eight years ago in March..." You trace your finger. The line drops to zero. Flat. Nothing. "It stops. Completely. For three months."

Kirill goes very still beside you.

"And then in June it starts again. But it's different." You tap the spike. "Triple the size. New vendors. New banks. Odd numbers, like someone trying hard not to look round. Faster. Greedier." You look up at him. "It's like two different people playing the same song. One of them stopped. The other one picked up the instrument."

He's staring at the screen. At the flat stretch. At March.

"My mother died eight years ago," he says. "In March."

The refrigerator hums. Bogdan's radio, upstairs, has gone quiet.

"I'm sorry," you say softly. "I didn't..."

"You didn't know." He straightens. He's put his face back on, the smooth cold one, but his hand is braced flat on the steel and his knuckles are white. "So whoever started this stopped when she died. And someone else started three months later."

"Or the same person, after a break. Grief. Fear. I don't know yet." You hesitate. "But it's two rhythms, Kirill. I'd bet my license on it."

"You don't have a license anymore. Penmark suspended you."

"I'd bet your license on it, then."

That startles the laugh out of him again. It's getting easier to get. You're keeping count.

He drags the other stool around and sits beside you instead of across from you. Close. His knee almost touches yours. He smells like cedar and soap and the cold, and you have to read the same row of numbers three times.

"Can I ask you something?" you say.

"You can ask."

"Polina."

His jaw ticks. "What about her?"

"Your uncle said the wedding is next fall."

"My uncle says a lot of things." He picks up the vodka at last, turns the glass, sets it down again. "Polina is an arrangement. Between our families. It suits everyone."

"Does it suit you?"

"It suits my father," Kirill says, which is not an answer, and both of you know it isn't.

You look at him. He looks at the laptop. The silence between you is so loaded you could invoice it.

"You said you'd never lie to me," you say quietly.

"I haven't." He turns his head. His face is very close now. "I've just told you less than everything. There's a difference, Accountant."

"Is there?"

"In my family it's the whole language."

His eyes drop to your mouth.

It's quick. A flicker. But you see it, and he sees you see it, and the whole kitchen seems to tilt toward the place where your knees are almost touching. Your heart is doing something that would worry a cardiologist.

"Kirill," you say. You don't know what comes after his name. Maybe nothing. Maybe a question you don't know how to ask.

He lifts one hand. Slowly, like he's giving you every chance to move. His fingertips touch your jaw, barely, a brush of warmth along the bone, and his thumb rests at the corner of your mouth. He's looking at you like you're a column of numbers he's been trying to balance for a very long time.

"Tell me to stop," he says, very low.

You don't.

He leans in. You can feel his breath. Your eyes close...

The window explodes.

Glass sprays across the kitchen in a glittering wave. Something heavy hits the steel island with a crack like a gunshot and skids into the sink. You're off the stool before you know you've moved, and then you're not moving at all, because Kirill has you, one arm hauling you down behind the island and his whole body over yours, shielding your head with his chest.

"Bogdan!" he roars.

Pounding footsteps. The front door bangs open. Shouting on the street in English, then Russian, then nothing but a car engine screaming away down Frankford Avenue.

Your face is pressed into Kirill's shoulder. His heart is slamming against your cheek, as hard as yours.

"Are you hurt?" His hands are on you, fast, rough, checking your head, your arms, your face. "Ethan. Look at me. Are you hurt?"

"No. No, I'm okay, I'm..." Your voice is shaking. "Are you?"

There's a thin red line on his cheekbone where the glass caught him. He doesn't seem to notice.

Bogdan comes back in, breathing hard, gun held low against his leg. "Gone. Gray sedan. No plates."

Kirill gets up slowly and walks to the sink.

Lying in it, among shards of glass, is a brick. Wrapped around the brick with a rubber band is a sheet of paper. He pulls it free and unfolds it, and you watch his face go from cold to something far colder.

He turns it so you can read it.

Block capitals. Black marker.

THE ACCOUNTANT COUNTS UNTIL HE DOESN'T.