Bit of Kolya #TeaserTuesday

So apparently there’s this tradition on Twitter.

Here’s the first part of Kolya. Hope you like.

(Yes, I know the first paragraph is confusing. It’s a first draft.)

One minute Kolya was dying, heels drumming the wall, too-short nails clawing at the hand clamped on his throat, vision darkening on the leer of his john, watching him die and getting off on it. The next minute he was in the bathroom, head spinning as he gasped sweet, mouthwash-tinged air, then coughed as if his lungs had already forgotten how to handle it. Coughing hurt. Kolya staggered to the sink and drank from the faucet and that helped.

An assassin. He’d seen only glimpses, but he knew the john was dead. Stabbed with a sword, for fuck’s sake, and down and dead, and the assassin had tossed Kolya in the bathroom rather than do the same to him. Who would kill a syndicate man? Unless it was a hit by another? But then Kolya would for damned certain be dead too. So–Kolya threw himself at the door.

Locked from the outside somehow, and that was fine by him. He didn’t want to get in the assassin’s way, just figure out what the man was doing. Kolya pressed his ear to the door and heard nothing but a muttered curse. If he wasn’t tossing the rented room–

“Don’t touch the computer!” Kolya yelled, knowing he was too late. “They’ll know!” Fucking hell! He’d never make it out alive. Better to have died on the sword than to live long enough for the syndicate to catch him. “I’ve got what you need!” he shouted. Maybe he even did. “Get me out of here!”

A whisper of movement, and then a low voice. “You have the schedules?”

“I have everything.” Aim high, Gevinni would say. Always a chance the sucker would go for it. “Get me somewhere safe and I’ll give it to you.” Unless he decided to just take– “It’s encrypted. You’ll never get it on your own.”

“You are safe. Give me the information.”

“I’m not an idiot! You killed a syndicate man! They’ll never believe I didn’t help–they’ll spend a week killing me!”

“The police–”

“If the fucking police were any good you wouldn’t be here!”

The door opened; Kolya stumbled into the assassin’s arms. Rock hard, the man was–he tucked Kolya under his arm like luggage and headed for the door. No sword. Had he left it?

5,106 in three days. Whee!