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independence from Russia and established a democracy while she’d danced aimlessly and watched leaves swirl in the river. If only her parents could have lived to see the change. It would have made her father very proud.
    In places, the city looked fresher, full of sparkling windows in bright buildings that had once been dingy and sooty. In other places, Kiev looked worse than ever.
    “Is it better now, do you think?” she asked.
    His puzzled glance told her she’d been unclear.
    “Ukraine. Life here.”
    “I don’t know. We’re a country divided. Some people wish to draw close to Russia again, and others lean toward Europe. Too often, they disagree violently.”
    “Which side are you on?”
    “I try to stay off any side, keep my head down, do my job.”
    Of course he did. He would be a fence sitter.
    “What about Lisko?”
    “Oh, he’s a smooth operator. He’s on both sides at once, though neither knows it. He’s loyal to profits and his own power, and his only ideology is his family name.”
    “Whereas, I suppose a guy like you actually believes in justice. You were probably destined for this work--wanted to become an investigator ever since you were a kid, playing cops and robbers, or pretending to solve mysteries.”
    “Pretty much.” He leveled a good-natured and gorgeous smile at her. Fortunately, she didn’t go for golden guys like him. Otherwise, the electric hum he stirred inside her could be dangerous.
    “My turn?”
    She shrugged. “If you want.”
    “I’m guessing a girl like you just had to become a dancer. To push yourself to the physical limit, to defy gravity and physiology to be, what, the best? Or maybe because it was the only arena where you were encouraged to hone your sharp edges, rather than blunt them.”
    Regular seams in the asphalt of the highway caused the tire wheels to thump, thump, thump, like a slow and thunderous heartbeat, each one emphasizing the failure of her repartee. She wracked her brain but could not compose an appropriately sharp reply.
    “How’d I do?” he asked.
    You cut way too close to home , you presumptuous puppy, was on the tip of her tongue, but she swallowed it to say, “What makes you think that?”
    “Your nasty slipper, your battered feet, and your perfect thighs.” He didn’t glance away from the road.
    That hot, electric energy wafted through her again. “Oh.”
    “Also, my mom was a dancer. I understand what goes into that life, and you have it written all over you. Or am I wrong?”
    “You know you’re not, but guessing I was a dancer when you’re carrying around my shoe hardly makes you Sherlock Holmes.”
    “Guess not.” He chuckled again in that annoyingly self-effacing way. “So why dance?”
    “I was better at it than Sonya.”
    “Huh.” He nodded as if he were trying not say what a terrible reason that was.
    “I know it sounds petty, and it was. Completely. She was older, smart, and sweet, could sew, draw, and paint. She even knit tiny caps for newborns. My fingers were clumsy. I didn’t like to read much…”
    It had been so painful to grow up in her shadow, to sense how everyone at school and in the neighborhood had measured her according to Sonya and found her short. How their parents, with the same kindly temperaments as her sister, winced when Anya’s prickly side appeared, liked they’d been sent home from the hospital with the wrong child.
    “But dance, it was the one thing I could do better than her.”
    “Yeah. Maybe just a little petty.” He held up his finger and thumb as if he pressed a die between them.
    She laughed. “Let me finish. It became more than that. It became everything, and for a time, I had a chance at becoming a prima ballerina. But even then my parents always thought it was only about my rivalry with Sonya.”
    They hadn’t understood obsession any more than they’d comprehended her tendency to sarcasm, her acerbic comments--all had been labeled flaws with a cluck or a hush or a raised