“She's Georgian, too?”

I nodded. The lies were so practiced they didn't require any thought on my part. “But she grew up in Moscow. She used to dance.”

Bakhar Lagidze's eyes lit up. They were blue, deep set in his lined face. His mustache, mostly black, had strays of gray emerging. I put him in his early forties, maybe five years older than I was.

“She should meet Tiasa! She's my daughter, she wants to dance, like the Bolshoi. Your wife teaches, right?”

“A little,” I admitted. Alena had begun taking on students, only a handful of them, since we'd last returned from the U.S. She'd posted flyers in the cafés in town, initially as a means of reinforcing our cover, establishing a meager supplemental income that we didn't really need. It was my suspicion that she enjoyed teaching, though she had yet to admit as much to me. “You should bring her by.”

“ Maybe Ia will bring her over.”

“Ia?”

“My wife.” Bakhar's smiled broadened, showing stained teeth and genuine pleasure. “Wonderful to meet you, David. Nice to meet the neighbors.”

“Good to meet you, too,” I told him.

It wasn't until I was home, under the needle-spray of the shower, that it occurred to me that Bakhar Lagidze had most likely done to us what we had done to him. He'd checked us out, just enough to be sure his neighbors didn't pose him a threat.

He'd been right.

The threat had come from another source entirely.

I stepped in blood when I stepped into the house. There was a lot of it, and I could smell it, along with the lingering of gunpowder. The moonlight outside wasn't enough. I was going to have to turn on a light.

When it came on, I could see the puddle, spent brass glittering in and around it. The blood broke into a smear, leading down the hall. Like our home, Bakhar's was only one story. Unlike ours, it was large, as befitted a family of four. On entry, the hall opened to a common room that doubled for dining, and then, off that, was the kitchen. Following the hall led to the master bedroom, and then the corridor went ninety degrees to the left, to the bathroom and the two other bedrooms.