Владимир Козаренко – Ocean Highway (страница 1)
Владимир Козаренко
Ocean Highway
Chapter 1. The Frozen Ring
February in Moscow was suffocating in a gray, slushy mire. Dawn didn’t even bother to break at this early hour; the sky merely shifted its hue with grim reluctance from a hollow, oppressive black to a dull, leaden gray. Looking out the window was physically painful. It felt as though the entire city had been smothered under a massive, dusty blanket, beneath which people, groggy and resentful, submissively crawled toward their unloved jobs.
The thermometer on the dashboard of my aging Opel Astra coupe stubbornly read two degrees below freezing. The cabin was warming up with agonizing slowness, the vents blowing barely lukewarm air that smelled faintly of cheap windshield washer fluid. Beneath the tires, a treacherous, slick mixture of ice, melting snow, and toxic road chemicals crunched loudly, coating the windshield in a thin, corrosive crust every five minutes. My low-profile sport tires—which I, out of sheer stupidity, had been too lazy to swap for practical winter studs—repeatedly lost their grip on the road. The Opel shuddered over every pothole, as if begging me to turn back into the courtyard and stay home today.
It was far too early. The MKAD highway seemed unusually empty at this hour, but this illusion of open space offered no comfort. I was catastrophically, hopelessly late for a site visit with our newest, most temperamental client. This man had already rescheduled the final interior design review three times, and if I failed to show him the completed floor plans today, my studio boss would simply grind me into dust. And losing my job was not an option. Absolutely not.
"Why is everything always so damn..." I muttered an expletive under my breath, stealing a quick glance into the rearview mirror.
My face in the reflection looked tired, to say the least. Against my pale, almost translucent skin, the dark circles from chronic sleep deprivation and late-night laptop sessions loomed stark and purple. Sighing, I clamped the steering wheel tightly with my knees, using my left hand to steady a small, suction-cupped vanity mirror, while my right hand dug into my purse for an eyeliner pen. I needed to draw the perfect winged eyeliner right now, on the fly, just to look somewhat like a successful, confident designer rather than a burnt-out freelancer under siege by depression.
In the back of my mind, the numbers of my personal financial disasters ticked like a countdown. My wallet was empty, with a week left until payday. My phone displayed three missed alerts from my banking app. The cursed credit card with its hundred-thousand-ruble limit, which I had opened last summer for a foolish trip to Turkey with Tanka, sat like a dead weight. Every month I threw my last remaining pennies at it, but the interest devoured everything, and the balance refused to budge. That card was strangling me like a noose.
One careful, precise stroke of the black marker across my upper eyelid. The car veered slightly as a tire caught a patch of black ice.
"Steady, Alina, stay the course, don't panic," I commanded myself, straightening the wheel.
Ahead, about fifty meters away, a massive, predatory silhouette was smoothly and silently braking near the shoulder. A new Porsche Panamera, it seemed. A true jet-black master of the universe, its lacquered flanks gleaming even in this murky Moscow morning slush. Just the sight of such cars always made my chest tighten—it was transport for beings from another planet, people who didn't know the meaning of words like "loan," "studio apartment rent," or "supermarket discounts."
I shifted my gaze back to the mirror to finish the sharp tip of my left wing. My hand trembled ever so slightly. In that exact millisecond, my Opel hit a deep ice rut hidden beneath the snowy mush.
The rear end of the car swung violently to the right. A panicked, frantic stomp on the brake did absolutely nothing—the sporty summer rubber simply glided over the ice like skis on grease. Time locked up; the wheels were frozen.
"No, no, no, oh God, please no!" I screamed to the empty cabin, dropping my makeup and grabbing the wheel with both hands.
The black eyeliner pen flew somewhere beneath the passenger seat. The seconds stretched, morphing into a viscous, slow-motion nightmare. Time seemed to mock me. Directly in front of my hood, the flawless, glossy black rear bumper of the Porsche grew with catastrophic speed. I could see the reflection of my jalopy's headlights in its paint.
The seatbelt slammed violently into my chest, knocking the remaining air out of my lungs. My Opel shuddered through its entire frame, its broken headlight let out a pitiful chime, and it came to a dead stop, its deformed nose wedged into that foreign piece of German luxury. A ringing, deafening silence settled over the cabin, punctured only by the rhythmic, monotonous thud of the wipers, which continued to smear gray road filth across the windshield.
I squeezed my eyes shut, terrified to open them. My heart was pounding somewhere in my throat, executing frantic flips. When I finally forced myself to look into the mirror, I wanted to howl. The right wing had turned out perfect, but the left one, due to the sudden jolt, had smeared into a thick black streak across my entire cheek all the way to my temple, turning me into a crazed, frightened clown.
"Well, so much for the client meeting," I whispered quietly, lifelessly, feeling hot tears of utter helplessness well up in my eyes. "This is it. I’ll be paying for that bumper for the rest of my life. They’re going to throw me in debtor’s prison."
Ahead, breaking the geometry of the gray landscape, the heavy driver’s door of the Porsche swung slowly open. From the warm, neon-lit interior, wrapped in a barely perceptible trail of incredibly expensive cologne, a man began to step out. His long, camel-hair cashmere coat looked as though he had just walked off a Milan runway, not gotten stuck on a filthy, exhaust-choked Moscow ring road.
I swallowed the lump caught in my throat, wiped a tear with the back of my hand—smearing the mascara even further—and reached for the door handle with a trembling hand. My brief, gray fairy tale was over before it could even begin. A harsh, merciless February reality was moving in.
Chapter 2. The Predator's Card
The cold Moscow air, thick with exhaust and road salt, instantly bit into my face the moment I forced open the warped door of my Opel. But the man standing in front of me seemed completely indifferent to the wretched February chill. He just stood there by the fender of his car, radiating a kind of transcendent, almost palpable internal energy. He exuded an absolute, unshakeable calm—the way people behave when their universe is never disrupted by minor inconveniences.
He was tall, lean, and incredibly well-built. The expensive camel-hair cashmere coat fit him flawlessly, accentuating a perfect posture, but even beneath the thick, elite fabric, I could physically sense the power of his physique. The broad set of his shoulders, his strong neck, his taut silhouette—that kind of definition isn't built by casual weekend trips to a fitness club. He was likely a professional athlete in the past. Or a man accustomed to training not just his body, but his own will to the point of exhaustion every single day.
When he turned smoothly in my direction, I met his gaze and nearly forgot how to breathe. He had striking, piercingly blue eyes. A true predator’s gaze—intelligent, icy, assessing, locking onto a target instantly and without miss. There wasn’t a shadow of anger on his well-groomed face; rather, it held a cold, high-bred curiosity.
I froze by the door of my dented Opel, which was dull with road grime, feeling like the ultimate fool on this planet. From the impact, my hand had slipped, and the thick black eyeliner had smeared in an ugly, ridiculous streak across my entire left cheek, ending forlornly somewhere near my ear. The picture was completed by my tangled hair and a down jacket that now felt like the pinnacle of bad taste.
"Well, well, auto-lady," his voice turned out to be surprisingly soft, deep, with a pleasant, velvety rasp, but an underlying metallic, distinctly masculine confidence rang clear through it. "Where are we rushing so desperately at this ungodly hour? And drawing wings on our eyes on the fly, no less? Do you always assault other people's bumpers when you're running late?"
"I'm so sorry..." I stammered, feeling a hot flush of shame wash over my cheeks. I wanted nothing more than to sink through this wretched, filthy asphalt straight into the underworld. Taking a timid step forward, I looked at the bumper of his Porsche. My hood had wedged underneath it, leaving a deep, jagged dent on the otherwise flawless glossy black paint, stripping the color down to the bare metal. "I... I lost control. The rut. Let’s call the traffic police... I mean, the police. Or maybe I can pay for the repairs in cash? Right now, on the spot?"