Mikhail
The man collapses halfway through my speech.
One moment, everyone is listening to me, their half smiles frozen on their faces, the way important people show you that they are Definitely Listening, and then he’s standing beside the donor tables with a glass in his hand. The next, the glass strikes the floor and his body follows it.
The room reacts exactly as it has been trained to react. Hospital staff rush toward him. Event security pushes the crowd backward. Reporters lift their cameras. Politicians attempt to appear concerned while making certain they remain visible.
My government protective detail closes around the stage.
They are not the only security in the building.
The hospital has contracted its own team for the opening, and Arkady has several of my men positioned throughout the event under the respectable fiction that they belong to my security and operations staff.
Sergei is near the main entrance. Two more men are watching the service corridors.
It is excessive. It is also the only reason Taylor is here.
I stop speaking. Taylor stands near the side of the stage with a folder against her chest. My mother is beside her, dressed in dark blue and watching me with the expression of a mother who believes she personally invented whatever competence her son displays.
One of the physicians drops beside the fallen man. Someone calls for a crash cart.
My government detail immediately closes around the stage. “Governor, stay where you are.”
I barely hear him. Because across the room, between two bodies shifting out of the doctors’ way, I see a face that should not be here.
Viktor Orlov.
For months, men have searched apartments, warehouses, hotels, properties held under other names, border crossings, businesses, relatives, mistresses, drivers, every person who has ever owed him money and every person to whom he has ever owed a favor.
Nothing. He disappeared so completely that some of my men began to believe he had left Russia. And he is thirty meters from me.
For one second, he looks directly at me. Then someone moves between us. My blood turns cold. Orlov has remained hidden for months because he knows what happens if I find him. He would not expose himself at a public government event merely to watch me cut a ribbon.
I look at Taylor. Two men in hospital security jackets are moving toward her and my mother.
“Arkady.”
“I see it.” His voice changes.
So does the room. The emergency lights activate. Red flashes along the walls. An alarm begins screaming overhead, followed by a distorted announcement warning of a possible gas leak and ordering evacuation from the public hall.
People surge toward the main entrance. My protective detail moves toward me.
The two men near Taylor do the opposite. They guide her and my mother toward the private treatment wing. Taylor resists. Even from the stage, I recognize the set of her shoulders. One of the men grips her arm. The world narrows.
I look back toward Orlov. He’s already moving. Not toward an exit. Toward the private wing.
“Taylor!” She turns at the sound of her name.
The man holding her jerks her backward. I step down from the platform.
A government security officer blocks me. “Sir, we need to move you through the eastern exit.”
“Move,” I growl.
“The area may be compromised,” he argues.
“It is.” I shove past him.
Behind me, Arkady is shouting into his radio.
By the time I reach the place where Taylor stood, the private-wing doors are closing. Everything inside me becomes still as panic swallows me whole.
I hit the doors hard enough that one rebounds from the wall. Beyond them, the corridor splits beneath pulsing red lights. There is no sign of Taylor. No sign of my mother. No sign of Orlov.
“Find them,” I tell Arkady, who is already beside me. I point toward one of his men. “Get an administrator.” He grabs a hospital administrator by the elbow and pulls him toward us. “How many exits are there from this wing?” I ask him.
The man stares at the gun now visible beneath Arkady’s jacket before looking at me. “There are two public corridors, the service elevators, and access to the ambulance level, but—”
“Seal all of them.”
“We cannot shut down an active treatment wing.”
“Then clear it.”
He stares at me. Behind us, my men stop pretending. One removes his hospital credential and draws his weapon. Another crosses the room toward the service stairwell. Sergei takes control of the public entrance while the government officers turn toward him in confusion.
“No one leaves,” I say.
The commander of my protective detail catches up with us. “Governor, you need to come with us.”
“No.”
“The building is under emergency evacuation.”
“The emergency is false.”
“You do not know that.”
“I saw Orlov,” I say. Arkady looks at me sharply. The commander does not understand the significance of the name. “He went that way.”
Arkady’s radio crackles. He listens, expression hardening. “Cameras are down in the private treatment wing, ambulance bay, and service garage. All of them.” He turns to the administrator. “How many ambulances are there?”
The man swallows. “Seven were approved for the event.”
“Hospital property?”
“Two.”
“And the other five?”
“Private contractors.”
“Open every ambulance,” I order. “Search the service garage. Disable every vehicle until Taylor and my mother are found.”
The government commander steps forward. “My officers will secure the ambulance bay.”
“No.”
His expression hardens. “Governor, this is now an active security incident.”
“Your officers watched them take Taylor.”
“We were responding to a medical emergency.”
“You were responding to bait.”
My fingers close around the grip of my gun. Behind us, the supposed dying man is already sitting upright. I can see him through the open doors now, surrounded by physicians. Recovered. Too quickly. The collapse was staged. The gas leak was staged. Every second of confusion was purchased.
Arkady speaks into his radio. “Move now. Pakhan wants every ambulance opened.” The word cuts through the corridor. Pakhan.
For half a second, no one moves. Then a camera clicks behind me. Another. A reporter has followed the confusion through the doors. The hospital director looks at Arkady. Then at me.
The government commander stares at me. Voices rise almost immediately.
“What did he call you?”
“Governor Korolev, are these men part of your office?”
“Are you connected to organized crime?”
Arkady looks at me. He knows what he has done. More importantly, he knows I can still correct him. I can call it a misunderstanding. A joke. A title used improperly by an overzealous subordinate. I can order my men to stand down and allow the government detail to take control.
There are enough cameras here to preserve the lie if I act quickly.
Taylor is somewhere beneath this hospital.
Thirty-seven weeks pregnant. My mother is with her.
And I do not know whether they are still inside the building or already being loaded into one of five ambulances belonging to private contractors.
My political life can survive uncertainty.
Taylor cannot survive delay.
“Do it,” I tell Arkady. He turns immediately.
The government commander steps into my path. “You will order those men to stand down.”
“No.”
“You are obstructing government security.”
“There has been an abduction inside a government event. Two guests were taken during a staged medical emergency. Secure the crowd. Verify every identity. No one leaves the property until every vehicle has been searched.”
“You do not have jurisdiction over my officers.”
“No. But you do. So perhaps use it.”
Arkady is already moving. “Take half the men to the elevators,” I tell him. “Send the rest to the ambulance bay.”
“And you?”
I look farther down the corridor. The private wing splits ahead. Left leads toward the service elevators and ambulance level. Right leads toward the unfinished surgical section.
That is where Orlov went. I saw him. Not toward freedom. Deeper into the hospital. He has hidden from me for months. He would not walk willingly into a building full of my men, cameras, police, and government security unless today mattered enough to justify the risk.
And Orlov has never trusted another man to control what belongs to him. He came to watch. He stayed to make certain the extraction succeeded. “The unfinished wing.”
Arkady studies me. “You think he stayed.”
“I saw him go that way.”
“I’m coming with you.”
“No. Find Taylor,” I say. His jaw tightens. “Arkady.” He looks at me. “If she reaches one of those ambulances, I need you there.”
That decides it. He turns and runs toward the elevators.
The unfinished surgical wing is dark.
Plastic sheeting hangs over open doorways and unfinished walls. The emergency lights do not reach this far. Dust lifts beneath my shoes as the noise of the hospital recedes behind me.
I draw my gun.
Somewhere beneath us, men are tearing open ambulances and searching service corridors. Somewhere inside this building, or already beyond it, Taylor is being moved by men who know exactly what she means to me.
Orlov knows which vehicle. Which exit. Which route. That’s why he stayed.
Behind me, the hospital roars with alarms, reporters, officers, and men who no longer bother hiding what they are. My political life may already be over. Taylor is somewhere below us. My mother is with her. My child is inside her.
Orlov believes that gives him control over me.
He is about to learn the difference between having power and surviving it.