Chapter 9
MIA
His grip on her wrist was the only thing that told her which direction was alive.
She couldn't see him. He was in front of her, his hand locked on her wrist, and she could feel the heat of his body and the tension running through his arm like a current, and that was all.
The man she'd been screaming at thirty seconds ago, the man she'd accused of marrying her for strategy, had become a shape in the dark and a grip on her wrist and a wall between her and whatever had killed the lights.
Biscuit whined. Once. Low. From somewhere near the floor, near the study door, and then he went silent again, and the silence was worse than any sound.
"Don't speak." Alexei's voice was barely there. Not a whisper. Lower than a whisper. The voice of a man communicating through the minimum vibration of air required to carry meaning.
She didn't speak. Her heart was slamming against her ribs so hard she was certain it was audible, and her breath was fast and shallow and she was trying to control it and failing, because the anger had been replaced by something more primal, something her body understood before her mind caught up: they were not alone in this cabin.
His hand moved her. Backward. Slow. One step.
Two. Her bare feet on the cold floor, each step a negotiation with the dark, and his body stayed in front of hers, always in front, and she could feel the weapon in his other hand, the weight of it changing his posture, the way his shoulder dropped when he raised it.
A sound.
Not from them. Not from Biscuit. From the front of the cabin, from the main room, from somewhere near the door. A creak. Wood settling under weight. The specific, unmistakable sound of a floorboard accepting a foot.
Someone was inside.
Her hand found the back of Alexei's shirt.
Her fingers curled into the fabric, and the grip was the same grip from the first night, both fists in his coat, except that night she'd been pulling him closer and tonight she was holding on because the dark was enormous and the sound was real and someone was in the house.
The girl was afraid. He could hear it in her breathing, which was fast and ragged and poorly controlled. Fear had a sound, and hers was the sound of a small animal caught in the open, aware of the predator but unable to locate it. He found the sound beautiful. He always did.
Another creak. Closer. The main room was between them and the front door, and the study where they stood was at the back of the cabin, and the geography of the small house was suddenly the most important thing in the world: one way out through the main room, one window in the study that opened onto the mountain, and a man between them and every exit.
Alexei's grip on her wrist tightened. He was pulling her toward the window. She understood. The study window. The mountain. Out.
His mouth was at her ear. "When I open the window, you go through. You run downhill. You don't stop. You don't come back for me."
"No."
The word came out before she could think. Not brave. Automatic. The refusal of a woman whose body had decided something her mind hadn't been consulted on.
"Mia—"
"I'm not leaving you in a dark cabin with someone who kills people."
"This isn't a discussion."
"You're right. It isn't. I'm staying."
His grip on her wrist was painful now. She could feel the war in him, the same war she'd felt every time he'd tried to protect her by pushing her away, and this time the stakes weren't a closed door or a continent.
This time the stakes were a man with a star-shaped pour pattern and a letter written in blood.
"You don't know what he—"
"Hello, Mia."
The voice came from the doorway of the study.
Warm. Easy. The voice of a man who made you trust him from the first sentence, who sat across an intake desk and answered questions with candor and brought coffee for the counselors and tipped his glass at the roulette table with a smile that cost nothing and opened everything.
Morgan.
The sound that came from her chest was involuntary.
Not a scream. A recognition. The sound of a woman whose brain was rewriting every interaction, every session, every "same time Thursday" and every "I like you, Mia" and every warm, disarming smile, and the rewriting was happening at the speed of horror.
"I'd apologize for the power," Morgan continued.
His voice was conversational. Relaxed. The voice of a man at a dinner party, not a man standing in a dark cabin with a weapon and a plan.
"But the darkness is so much more honest, don't you think?
We spend our lives in the light, performing.
The dark strips all of that away. You become what you actually are. "
She was shaking. Not the hero — the hero was still, the kind of still that meant danger, the kind that meant the man in front of you had been dangerous for a very long time and had simply been choosing not to demonstrate it. But the girl was shaking, and the shaking was exquisite.
"Alexei." Morgan's tone changed. Fractionally.
Still warm. Still easy. But underneath it, something that recognized an equal.
"I've been looking forward to meeting you properly.
The clinic was convenient, but it lacked intimacy.
And this cabin is so much better. Your wife's phone has a tracker on it, did you know that?
Very thorough of you. The problem with trackers is that they broadcast to whoever knows where to listen, and I have been listening for weeks. "
Alexei didn't answer. His body hadn't moved. His breathing hadn't changed. The hand on her wrist had loosened, not from relaxation but from preparation, the way a man's grip adjusts when he's about to use his hands for something else.
"You read the letter," Morgan continued.
"In Saint Petersburg. I was watching, of course.
I'm always watching. You opened the evidence bag and you unfolded the paper and you read every word, and your face didn't change.
Not even a little. I admired that. Most people react.
You didn't. You just folded it and put it back and asked for a copy. "
Mia's brain was working. Fast. Under the terror, under the adrenaline, the part of her that had spent weeks across a desk from this man was sorting through everything he'd told her during intake.
Every detail. Every answer. The roulette.
The aesthetics. The anticipation, not the result.
The dopamine. She'd thought he was describing gambling. He'd been describing killing.
"The anticipation," she breathed. "That's what you told me. The moment before the ball drops."
Silence. Then, from the dark, a laugh. Genuine. Warm. The laugh of a man who had been seen and appreciated it.
"You were always the clever one, Mia. I told Alexei that. Well. I told you that, in your clinic, and you wrote it on a form and filed it, and isn't that wonderful? My confession, in triplicate, in a drawer."
Alexei moved.
Not slowly. Not with the lethal economy Mia had always associated with him, the speed that made speed irrelevant.
This was different. This was fast. Explosive.
The weapon in his hand, his body uncoiling toward the doorway, and there was a sound, hard and physical, the impact of two bodies colliding, and Mia was thrown backward by the force of Alexei launching forward, and her back hit the desk and the files scattered and her hands found the edge and she held on.
The fight was sounds. She couldn't see it. Grunts, impacts, the crash of a body hitting a wall. The table in the main room overturning. Glass breaking. Alexei's breathing, harsh and controlled. Another sound she couldn't identify, wet and sharp.
He was faster than expected. Stronger. The hero fought with the economy of a man who had been trained by violence, not for it, and every strike was aimed at ending the encounter, not prolonging it. Disappointing, in a way. Morgan preferred opponents who savored the process.
But then, Alexei Almazov had never been interested in process. He was a man of conclusions.
Mia pushed off the desk. Her hands were shaking and her vision was useless and the sounds from the main room were the sounds of two men trying to end each other, and she was not going to stand in a dark study and wait.
She moved toward the sounds. Her bare feet on the cold floor, her hands out in front of her, navigating by touch and terror. The doorframe. The main room. Her shin hit the overturned table and pain shot up her leg and she swallowed the cry and kept moving.
A grunt. Alexei's voice, strained, the sound of a man exerting force. And then a different sound. A gasp that wasn't Alexei's. The specific, expelled-air sound of a man whose body had just received something it couldn't absorb.
"Mia, get back—"
She didn't get back. Her hand found the fireplace.
The embers were still warm in the grate, and beside the grate was the iron poker, and her fingers closed around it with the grip of a woman who had never held a weapon in her life and was holding one now because the alternative was standing in the dark while the man she loved fought alone.
Ah. The girl had a poker. That was unexpected.
That was, in fact, the first unexpected thing that had happened all evening, and Morgan felt a pulse of genuine appreciation.
Not for the threat — the poker was irrelevant against a man of his capabilities — but for the courage.
The girl was afraid and armed and moving toward the fight instead of away from it, and there was something almost sacred about that kind of stupidity.
She swung.