39. Viktor
VIKTOR
The car ahead of us takes the turn onto the service road too fast, tires screaming, and I match the speed without hesitation, my own vehicle fishtailing slightly before the road straightens out again.
“They’re heading toward the industrial district,” Sergei says from the passenger seat, eyes fixed on the taillights ahead. “Nothing out there but warehouses and the old airfield.”
“The airfield.” The word lands heavy in my chest, immediate understanding following right behind it. “They’re taking her out of the country.”
I press the accelerator harder, closing the distance, and the car ahead swerves violently, someone in the back seat firing blind through the rear window. The shot goes wide, cracking against the road beside us, and I don’t slow down, not now, not with Ginger somewhere in that vehicle.
We lose them at a fork in the road, two paths splitting toward different sections of the industrial sprawl, and I make the only choice available, following the fresher tire marks still visible in the road dust.
It’s the wrong choice. Or it would be, if we hadn’t found the other car first.
A second vehicle sits abandoned near the fork, engine still ticking as it cools, driver’s door hanging open. One man remains beside it, clearly left behind in the chaos of splitting up, patting down his jacket for something that isn’t there anymore.
I’m out of the car before it’s fully stopped.
He goes for a weapon and doesn’t reach it in time. I have him against the hood of his own abandoned car within seconds, forearm braced hard across his throat, close enough to feel him shaking.
“Where?” I say, voice low, controlled in a way that costs me everything I have to maintain right now. “Where are they taking her?”
“I don’t know anything.”
I press harder, and he makes a choked sound, eyes going wide with genuine fear rather than practiced defiance.
“You have exactly one chance to be useful to me instead of disposable,” I tell him. “Where?”
“The hangar.” The words come out fast, desperate, self-preservation winning over loyalty the way it usually does when a man realizes exactly how alone he actually is. “Private airfield, north end, hangar three. There’s a plane waiting. They’re supposed to have her in the air within the hour.”
“Whose plane?”
“I don’t know, I swear, I just drive, I don’t know who arranged it.”
I believe him, mostly because men this frightened rarely have the composure left to lie effectively. I release him into Sergei’s custody, already moving back toward the car, adrenaline burning through every ounce of exhaustion I should be feeling after tonight.
“Hangar three,” I tell my other man, already turning the car back toward the main road. “North airfield. We have less than an hour.”
The drive there stretches into the longest twenty minutes of my life, every red light an obstacle I run through without slowing, every mile marker a fresh wave of fear that we’re going to be too late, that Ginger’s going to be somewhere over an ocean before I ever get close enough to stop it.
I keep running the math in my head, distance against minutes, refusing to let myself land on the version where the numbers don’t work out in our favor.
Every siren I hear in the distance makes my chest seize, wondering if it’s already too late, if somewhere above the city a plane’s already climbing with my daughter locked inside it.
My phone rings halfway there. Dimitri.
“House is secure,” he says, breathless, clearly running toward his own car as he talks. “Harper’s safe, in the safe room. I’ve got two men on her personally. I’m coming to you now, where are you.”
“North airfield, hangar three. They’re trying to fly her out.”
“I’m fifteen minutes behind you. Don’t go in alone if you can possibly help it.”
“I’m not waiting fifteen minutes, Dimitri.”
“I know. Just try to still be alive when I get there.”
He hangs up, and I drive faster.
The airfield comes into view exactly as the informant described, a scattering of hangars along a cracked runway, most of them dark, hangar three lit from within, a private jet visible through the open bay doors, engines already spinning up, the whine of them audible even from this distance.
I don’t wait for backup. I can’t, not with those engines already turning, not with every second bringing that plane closer to leaving the ground with my daughter on it.
I park short of the hangar, approaching on foot, Sergei and Dimitri’s second man flanking me, weapons drawn.
Four men guard the plane itself, positioned loosely, clearly not expecting pursuit this fast, and that miscalculation is the only advantage we have.
We take the first two before they fully register we’re there, close range, efficient, no room for hesitation with Ginger’s life measured in minutes now instead of hours.
The remaining two open fire, and the world narrows down to exactly this: muzzle flash and concrete dust and the deafening chaos of a real firefight instead of the abstract concept of one. Sergei goes down hard beside me, a graze along his arm that has him cursing but still upright, still firing.
Something whines past my ear close enough to feel the heat of it, and for one fractured second, I think about Harper in that safe room, about the nursery with its pale yellow walls, about how close I might be to never seeing either of them again.
I push the thought away, because there’s no room for it right now, only the next shot, the next threat, the next second between me and the plane.
I take cover behind a fuel cart, heart slamming against my ribs, counting shots, counting seconds, every fraction of delay another fraction closer to that plane finding a way to still leave without us stopping it.
One of the guards breaks toward the cockpit, and I put him down before he covers half the distance, every shot exact, nothing wasted.
I put the last remaining guard down before he gets close enough to reach the boarding stairs, and for one terrible, suspended second, everything goes silent except the whine of engines and my own ragged breathing.
“Ginger!”
I run for the plane, taking the boarding stairs two at a time, weapon still raised, and find her exactly where I prayed she’d be, strapped into a seat near the back, a single man standing guard over her, weapon halfway raised before I put him down first.
Ginger screams at the gunshot, flinching hard against her restraints, and then her eyes find mine and everything in her face breaks open at once, relief and terror tangled together too fast to separate.
“Viktor!”
“I’ve got you. I’ve got you, you’re safe now.”
I cross the cabin in three strides, hands shaking as I work the restraints free, and the second she’s loose she launches herself into my arms, small and shaking and sobbing, and I hold her the way I’ve never held anything in my life, absolute, unwilling to ever let this feeling of her small heartbeat against my chest become something I take for granted again.
“You came,” she says, muffled against my shoulder. “I knew you’d come.”
“Always. Every single time, Ginger. I promise you that.”
I carry her off the plane, cutting the engines myself on the way past the cockpit, silencing that whine that’s been eating at my nerves the entire drive here, and by the time we reach the tarmac, the adrenaline’s finally starting to recede enough that my hands won’t stop shaking around her.
Dimitri arrives moments later, headlights cutting across the runway, skidding to a stop, taking in the scene, bodies and blood and the plane finally sitting silent behind me.
“She’s safe,” I tell him, before he can even ask. “She’s safe, Dimitri.”
Relief breaks visibly across his face, the first crack in his composure all night. “Pavel?”
“Not here. His men were running this alone.”
“He sent them without coming himself.” Dimitri’s jaw tightens, fury replacing relief almost instantly. “Of course he did. He’s never once put himself in the actual line of fire, not eleven years ago, not tonight.”
I hold Ginger tighter, feeling her heartbeat finally start to slow against mine, and I think about a man patient enough to watch from a distance for months, careful enough to never once risk himself directly, and I understand with sudden clarity that stopping him for good is going to require more than tonight’s victory alone.
“He’s still out there,” I say. “Which means this isn’t over. Not completely.”
“No. But she is safe, and that’s what matters most tonight.” Dimitri rests a hand briefly on Ginger’s back, checking for himself that she’s actually whole. “Let’s get her home. Let’s get her back to Harper before either of us thinks about anything else.”
I carry Ginger to the car myself, refusing to let go even for the walk across the tarmac, and somewhere behind us, the hangar sits littered with evidence of exactly how close tonight came to ending in a way neither of us could have survived.
Ginger falls asleep in my arms before we’ve even cleared the airfield gate, exhausted past the point of staying awake despite everything her small body just survived, and I hold her the entire drive home, watching the road, watching the mirrors, unwilling to fully believe we’re actually safe until I see Harper’s face myself.
Every mile closer to home, I run through the last hour again, the fork in the road, the informant’s fear, the exact second I saw Ginger’s face on that plane and understood we hadn’t been too late. I don’t let myself relax, not until I’ve counted every heartbeat still beating in this car myself.
Tonight, we won. Ginger’s coming home. But somewhere out there, Pavel Ivanov is still alive, still patient, still convinced that grief excuses whatever it costs to finish what he started.
This war isn’t over yet. Not by a long way.