Chapter 23
Lex
The Hunt
Earlier That Morning
Maeve is at the kitchen island in a borrowed sweater.
Eleni is in the guest room with Theodoros.
Cormac is in the SUV at the curb. Declan is en route from the warehouses.
Petrov is in the basement running the federal-side surveillance.
The day is mine to use. I have, I estimate, twelve hours before whoever has my daughter starts losing patience with whoever is holding her, which is the window in which I will need to find her.
I put on my coat. I check my Sig. I check the second Sig in the ankle holster I have not worn in three months.
I clip the knife to my belt. I take a third magazine for the Sig and a fourth for the second Sig.
I don’t say goodbye to Maeve, because the word goodbye is not a word the day will tolerate.
I touch her shoulder once at the kitchen island.
She nods without lifting her head.
I leave. Cormac drives.
"Talk to me," he says.
I tell him the architecture in nine sentences. The breach. The compromised camera loop. The federal access required. The Marshals' rotation, Andreev proposed. The text. The photograph. The phrase ‘we will be in touch.’ Cormac listens.
He’s been carrying his own version of this conversation for the last hour because Ronan has been on a phone call with him from somewhere over the Atlantic, and he mentions Padraig sent him a letter from Walpole prison last week that he has yet to read.
"What do you need from me?” Cormac says.
"Door cover."
"Done."
"Witness on the back end."
"Done."
"Cormac."
"Yes."
"I am going to do something today, and I want you to know that I am going to do it."
Cormac is quiet for a long second. Then he says, "Lex. I am Irish. We have our own version. You do what you have to do. I will tell you when you are wrong about it."
I nod once. We drive.
Petrov calls at 11:14 AM.
"Andreev," he says.
I do not respond. I let him keep talking.
"Marcus Andreev. Federal employee, witness intake, eight-year tenure. He’s been on the Marshals' rotation for Eleni's apartment for two months, ever since the protective detail was put in place after the contract on Maeve was confirmed.
He proposed the timing of the rotation two weeks ago.
The proposal was a small adjustment, twenty minutes earlier than the previous schedule, but the new schedule put the rotation gap during the exact window in which the breach happened. "
"Daughter."
"Sick. Cancer. Currently in an experimental treatment program at Dana-Farber. The treatment costs $80,000 per month and is not covered by federal insurance. Andreev has been paying out of pocket for the last fourteen months. The math is the math."
"Federal salary."
"Ninety-four thousand a year."
I close my eyes for half a second.
Andreev. The man at the desk, Maeve walked past on Tuesday morning when she asked about his daughter, and he said, ‘Anya,’ and she said, ‘I will be thinking about her,’ and told me he is one of the people she trusts.
The man whose grief I had been told about by Maeve at the breakfast table on Wednesday morning at the brownstone, with the particular tenderness she reserves for parents in worse circumstances than her own.
Andreev sold Maeve. Andreev sold Eleni. Andreev sold my daughter.
For Anya.
I file that information in the precise corner of my brain where I file the things I am going to deal with on the day I am not currently doing the task in front of me.
Today's task is Nora.
Andreev is tomorrow's thing. Andreev doesn’t know I know. Andreev is at his desk right now in the federal building doing the small, careful work of a man who has done something horrible and is waiting to see if anyone has noticed.
Nobody has noticed yet.
Tomorrow I will deal with him.
"Petrov."
"Yes."
"Surveillance. Continuous. Do not move on him. Today is Nora."
"Yes."
? ? ?
The kidnappers' first vehicle is found abandoned outside Worcester at 1:47 PM.
Declan calls it in. He’s been tracking the vehicle on the Mass Pike since 9:14 AM through a combination of license plate readers, Konstantinos’s contacts, and the patience Declan inherited from his father, along with the broken nose.
The vehicle was abandoned in a strip mall parking lot.
They have switched. The new vehicle is a 2017 silver Honda Pilot with a license plate Declan has already run.
"They are amateurs," Declan tells me on the phone.
"Tell me."
"They were Reznikov contractors. They have gone independent. The Reznikov organization is not financing this. These are two men who got told they were getting paid for a job and decided, when they had your daughter in their car, that they were going to be paid more."
"Names."
"One of them I know. Igor Volkov. Bag man. Low-level. Brooklyn. He’s done two pickups for us in the past, contract work. The other one I do not know yet."
"How long?”
"They will reach out. They are amateurs, and they are panicking. They will set up a meeting soon at a place convenient for them, likely somewhere outside Worcester they have used before. I am working on which warehouse”
"Find it."
"I am."
Declan finds it at 3:01 PM. The negotiation lasts six minutes.
The warehouse is empty except for the two of them and my daughter, who is in a back office I can see through the glass partition. Nora is in a folding chair. Brontos is on her lap. She’s awake. She’s not crying. She is looking at the ceiling and counting something I cannot see from this angle.
Igor Volkov is on the warehouse floor.
The other one is to his left. The other one is taller and is not as good at this as Igor, and Igor is not good at this either.
They are wearing coats that are wrong for the weather, and it’s obvious they have not slept in twenty-four hours.
Additionally, they are holding sidearms they have not fired in the last decade, and they are, by every measure of operational readiness, not in a position to do this work.
Igor speaks first.
"Konstantinos."
"Volkov."
"Two hundred and fifty. Cash. Clean transit out of the country."
"Where is the daughter?”
"Behind that door. She’s fine. She’s not been touched."
"I see her."
"Two-fifty, Konstantinos. We are not going to negotiate."
I do not respond. I let the silence do work for me. The silence is something I have been using since I was twenty-two, and it has not stopped working in fifteen years. The silence makes Igor talk again, which is what I want.
"You hear me, Konstantinos? Two-fifty."
"I hear you."
"Cash."
"I hear you."
"And the country we choose."
"I hear you."
Igor exchanges a look with the other one. The look is that of a man who has just realized the room is not going the way it was supposed to.
Then Igor makes a mistake.
He looks at the back office door, where my daughter is sitting.
The look is a half-second long. It is the look of a man checking that his leverage is in the room.
The look gives me the angle I have been waiting for, which puts his sidearm in his right hand, pointed at the floor, and his eyes off me for the half-second I need.
I draw.
I shoot the other one first because he’s closer to the door, Cormac is at the door, and it’s the higher tactical priority. The round goes through the meat of his sternum at a downward angle that exits between his fourth and fifth ribs on his right side. He’s dead before he hits the concrete.
Igor turns. Igor is too slow.
I shoot Igor in the right knee. The knee goes.
Igor goes down. The sidearm clatters across the concrete.
I cross the warehouse in five steps, and I kick the sidearm into the corner, and I look down at Igor Volkov, low-level Brooklyn bag man, who has just spent the last fourteen hours in a vehicle with my almost-three-year-old daughter for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
Igor is bleeding. He’s in shock. He’s also still talking.
"Konstantinos. Konstantinos. We didn’t hurt her. We didn’t lay a hand on her. Konstantinos."
"Where did you get the photograph?”
"What?”
"The photograph you sent me. Where was it taken?”
"Back seat. Of the vehicle. After we left the apartment."
"Whose phone?”
"Mine. I sent it from a burner. The burner is in my coat pocket."
I take the burner from his coat pocket. I check the messages. The messages are clean. There is one outbound text. There is no inbound conversation with a handler. They went independent. The handler didn’t know they took her.
That is information I will need tomorrow.
Today is Nora.
"Volkov."
"Yes. Yes, Konstantinos."
"You took my daughter."
"I am sorry. I am so sorry. I have a daughter. I have a daughter, Konstantinos."
"You have a daughter."
"Yes. Yes. She’s in Brooklyn. She’s six. Her name is—"
"Stop."
Igor stops.
I look at him for a long second. I do not feel what I am about to do.
I do not flinch from it. I do not enjoy it.
I am the man I am, and the man I am has a daughter in a folding chair behind a glass partition twenty feet from this concrete floor, and the man I am has a woman he loves in a brownstone in Brookline, depending on me to bring our daughter home.
The man I am doesn’t have the luxury of letting Igor Volkov leave this warehouse to do this to someone else's daughter next month.
I holster the Sig. A bullet is too fast, so I take the knife off my belt.
I crouch in front of him so he can see my face. The pleading stops. Something in Igor goes still and cold — the part of a man that has always known the bill would come due.
I do it slowly because there is no fast way that is also honest. I take the blade across his throat in one deep, deliberate pull, and I hold his eyes the whole way, because the man who took my daughter does not get to die looking at the ceiling.
He dies looking at her father. The blood comes dark and fast. I keep my hand fisted in his collar until the fight goes out of his hands and then out of the rest of him.
It is quiet when it is done. I wipe the blade on his coat, and I stand. I am only a man in a warehouse with his daughter twenty feet away.
Cormac is at the door, covering.
Cormac doesn’t look away.
Declan is in the back office.
He kneels in front of Nora. He’s gentle. Declan, who has not been gentle with anything in twenty-six years, kneels in his coat in front of my daughter and says, "Hey, sweet girl. Hey. We are going home."
Nora looks at him. She’s not seen him in two days, but she remembers him from Cormac's apartment last week. She processes the information for one full second. Then she says, "Where is Daddy?"
My chest tightens.
Declan says, "Daddy is here. Daddy is just outside. Do you want to come with me to him?"
"Yes."
Declan picks her up. Brontos comes with her.
Her arms go around Declan's neck. He carries her out of the back office and through the warehouse. He carries her with the careful, frightened tenderness of a man who has not held a child in many years and is holding mine the way he’s going to hold one of his own when he eventually stops pretending he’s not going to.
He passes me on the way to the SUV. He doesn’t look at me. He doesn’t look at the floor. He carries her past me and out the door.
Cormac stays with me for two minutes.
I do what is needed.
Then I follow.
? ? ?
In the SUV, with Nora asleep against Declan's shoulder in the back seat with Brontos pressed to her chest, I take out my phone.
I dial Maeve.
She picks up before the second ring.
I say four words.
"I have her. We're coming home."
I hang up.
Cormac drives.
Declan is in the back seat with Nora. Nora's hand is in Declan's coat pocket. She’s fast asleep. The cabin of the SUV is warm. The dashboard light is on the side of Cormac's face.
Cormac glances at me. The glance is a long glance.
"Lex."
"Yes."
"Padraig has a parole hearing in March. He wrote me a letter last week."
"All right."
"I am telling you because today you did something for my family by being the man you are, and I want you to know my family has its own version of what you did today, and we have been carrying it for years, and the man you became today is a man my brothers will know."
I look at him for a long second.
"Cormac."
"Yes."
"Thank you."
Cormac nods once.
I look out the windshield. The interstate is dark. The dashboard glows. In the back seat, my daughter sleeps against my brother-in-law's shoulder. The interior of my chest is a place I do not have language for.
‘I would do that a hundred times to bring her back.’
‘Maeve too. Anyone of mine.’
‘The world burns before they do.’