Chapter 4 #2
Margot is still curled on her side in the holding suite.
She hasn’t moved. Her boots are still on.
She positioned herself against the wall where nobody can approach from behind.
She checks corners, camera angles, lock mechanisms, and the distance to the nearest door before she sits down in any room.
I’ve watched her do it three times now. She ran the same assessment in the interrogation room, in the corridor, and in the holding suite, the same routine she probably ran in every motel room and every temporary shelter she slept in since she left Grant.
She refused the food tray. She drank the water because dehydration is a more immediate threat than poison, but she left the sandwich untouched.
She’s using the same survival skills she used against Grant.
Only the captor has changed, and I’m not sure she sees a meaningful difference yet. I’ve given her no reason to.
“She stays under my protection, and she trains enough to pass one controlled contact as Katya. One message. One response. Enough to see who inside my organization moves when Kirill’s network hears Katya is alive.”
Nathan looks at me. “Protection or recruitment?”
I lift a shoulder. “Both. If I’m honest, it’s both, and I’d rather be honest about that now than pretend it’s only one.”
Nathan absorbs that without comment, which is more damning than argument.
Zavid makes a note on his legal pad. “I’ll document the operational justification and the civilian status. When Polina asks, and she will, I want the language ready.”
“Noted.”
“She’ll also want to know whether you’re planning to bring Margot into the family’s protected world or keep her at arm’s length.
” Zavid looks at me over the pad. “Those are different answers with different consequences. The first makes her visible. The second makes her disposable. Polina won’t accept disposable. ”
“Polina doesn’t get a vote.”
“Polina gets whatever she decides to take, and you know that as well as I do.” Zavid caps the pen. “Your mother survived your father by learning exactly how much power she could claim without triggering a war. Don’t make the mistake of thinking she stopped after he died.”
I nod, but the operational clock is moving faster than the family politics, and I can’t stop to address both.
Kolya shifts against the wall. “Josef already knows about the Katya resemblance. He called Nathan’s logistics line at three this morning asking whether the motel pickup was connected to the missing courier.”
I look at Kolya. “How does Josef know about the pickup?”
“He said one of his old port contacts heard about the vehicle package.”
“The vehicle manifest was internal. Access stopped at the pickup chain, the control room, and command-level review.” I keep my voice level because the implication is too large to handle with anything other than precision.
“Six people had access to that manifest. Everyone in this room and the pickup driver.”
Nadia pulls up the access log. “Josef’s warehouse account didn’t directly touch the manifest, but his back-channel contacts overlap enough with our internal routing that a careful listener could piece together timing from payment flows alone.”
“Or someone told him directly,” Nathan says.
“Hmm.” I don’t say who. The list is short enough that naming suspects would fracture the room, and I can’t afford that fracture.
I should act on Josef’s access. I should pull his communications, audit his warehouse accounts, and treat the speed of his knowledge as the warning it clearly is. I would do that if he were anyone else.
He isn’t, though. He’s my father’s brother.
He’s also the last connection to the old network’s financial infrastructure and removing him carries political costs that extend into the family structures that keep everything running.
I add that concern to the top of a list I’ll address when I have evidence instead of suspicion.
Kolya watches me without comment, his expression steady. He confirms facts without dressing them up, asks direct questions, and keeps his opinions clean enough to be mistaken for restraint.
Josef has motive, access through old channels, and the ego to think family blood makes him untouchable. He’s the most likely one to be trying to take me down from the inside.
I look at the monitor one more time. Margot hasn’t moved.
The bag strap is still around her wrist. On the screen, the holding suite looks like every other room in this building.
It’s clean, controlled, and designed by someone who decided what the person inside it could see, touch, and reach.
I built these rooms. I chose the locks, the camera angles, and the distance between the bed and the door.
I never imagined I’d spend four in the morning watching a woman sleep in one and trying to convince myself the room I’m offering her upstairs is meaningfully different than the traps she’s been escaping.
“Move her upstairs to a guarded bedroom. The one fourteen steps from my office.”
Nathan gives me a look. “Fourteen steps? You’ve counted?”
I shrug. “I like to know every distance. It helps me maintain security.”
“Sure.” Nathan stands and pushes in his chair. “Security. That’s definitely why. It’s not because you’re a control freak or anything, brother.”
I don’t respond because he’s right. Everyone in the room knows it, and lying to Nathan takes more energy than I have at four in the morning.
Nadia begins closing her databases. Zavid collects his printouts. Kolya reaches for the door, then pauses. “Do you want the asset briefed before or after she’s moved?”
“After. I want her settled before anyone else talks to her.”
Kolya nods once and walks out. I watch him go, waiting for the small internal scrape that tells me something is wrong.
Nothing comes.
That should reassure me, but his phrasing still bothers me. I eventually decide it’s because I don’t like how he called Margot an asset. I remind myself it’s his job to keep things compartmentalized, and I wouldn’t have a problem if he’d called someone else that in the same circumstances.
Part of me knows I should figure out why it’s different with Margot. Instead, I turn back to the monitor.