Chapter 26 Sergei #2
His voice comes through the floorboards. I feel my jaw tighten.
Kirill meets my eyes. He’s ready.
I raise two fingers, then point up.
We move.
The man on the stairs climbs, silent and steady. He eases the door crack open a few inches. Ilya’s back is to it. He stands by the table, leaning over the laptop he left before. A small case sits open beside him. Wires and drives glint inside.
The guard pulls back and whispers, “He’s alone. Hardware on the table. Pistol at his back, under the coat. No visible second weapon.”
“Wait,” I murmur.
Ilya moves again. He crosses to the bed. The old blanket’s still there. He kicks it once with his boot, like he’s annoyed at the memory of Raina in it. Then he reaches for the shelf where the bomb box sat the last time.
He stops.
The box is gone. We took it when we swept the place.
He goes still. I can almost hear his brain adjust.
After a second he gives a small laugh. “You got smarter,” he says to the room. “Good. I was bored.”
He goes back to the table and pulls a different device from his case. It’s small and square, with two lights dark on the front. He sets it down, then pulls his phone from his pocket.
That’s enough.
“Go,” I say.
The man at the top of the stairs kicks the door fully open and steps out, rifle raised. “Hands up,” he barks. “Now.”
Ilya spins, eyes wide. For a second he reaches for his waistband. Then he sees the number of guns pointed at him as the rest of us come up. He freezes, hands lifting.
I step out last, gun steady. Our eyes meet.
He smiles, slow. “Seryozha,” he says. “You finally made it in time for once.”
I keep walking until I’m close enough to see the lines around his mouth, the old scar on his jaw from a bottle in a bar fight when we were twenty. “Drop the gun,” I say.
He pulls it from his waistband with two fingers and sets it on the table. Kirill steps in and kicks it away, then takes three more steps and scoops the bag with the hardware.
Raina’s voice crackles in my ear. “Status?”
“We have him,” I say. “He’s standing.”
“Copy,” she says. I can hear the strain in her voice. She wants eyes in here. She wants to see the man who took her. She’ll get that later.
Ilya looks around, calm now that the first shock has passed. “You brought Raina?” he asks. “She watching from the trees?”
“Shut up,” Kirill snaps.
Ilya doesn’t. He never did know when to stop.
“I thought you’d come alone,” he says. “You used to like that. Just you and the problem. No witnesses.”
“Times changed,” I say. “I learned to keep people where I can see them.”
He smirks. “And yet somehow, I walked your house for months. Interesting lesson model.”
I step closer. My gun stays on him. “It ends today,” I say. “On your feet or on the floor. That part’s still open.”
He studies my face. “You won’t shoot me yet,” he says. “You have questions. You want to know how far the rot goes. Who else I turned. Where the rest of the toys are.”
“I already know enough,” I say. “I know which accounts you touched. I know which properties you used. I know which of my men took your money and how they died. You’re what’s left.”
He tilts his head. “You think that’s all?” he asks. “You really think this game is just us and a handful of greedy boys from the block?”
Kirill shifts beside me, weight on the balls of his feet. “He’s stalling,” he mutters.
“I know,” I say.
Still, I ask one thing. “Why Nadia?” I ask quietly. “You had your chance to cut me before I ever had a child. You waited. You watched. You chose to hit there. Why?”
Something ugly crosses his face. “Because you don’t bleed for money,” he says. “You never did. You walked through numbers like they were dust. I watched you lose a warehouse and shrug. Lose a route and smile. Lose two men and pour a drink. You never cracked.”
His eyes sharpen.
“But when you held Raina, everything changed,” he says.
“I saw the look on your face when she was around you. You weren’t on my bingo card as someone who could ever fall in love, but here you were, looking human.
” He smirks. “Disgusting as that was, it was also new. That meant you finally had something that hurt.”
The room goes very still.
He smiles again, small and cold. “I couldn’t attack you where you were stone,” he says. “So I waited for flesh.”
Every piece of me wants to put a bullet between his eyes. But if I do it now, I prove his read right. I let him script my reaction. I refuse that.
“You’re done talking,” I say.
I nod at Oleg. He steps forward with a pair of cuffs. “On your knees,” he tells Ilya.
Ilya doesn’t move.
“I said on your knees,” Oleg repeats, low and hard.
Ilya sighs. “All right,” he says. He starts to lower himself.
Halfway down, his right hand flashes.
He slaps his palm flat on the small square device on the table. The two dead lights on its front go bright red.
Kirill lunges and grabs his wrist, wrenching it back. Oleg hits him from the side and shoves him down fully, driving a knee into his spine. The rest of us shift aim, fingers tight on triggers.
The device starts to beep.
Short, sharp pulses. Fast.
“Don’t touch it!” Kirill snaps when one of the men reaches.
“Bomb?” I ask, though I already know.
“Yes,” he says. His eyes cut to the corner of the room, then to the ceiling. He’s mapping blast lines in his head.
Ilya laughs into the floor. “You thought I’d come here naked?” he chokes out. “You taught me better than that.”
I step in and slam my boot into his ribs. The laugh breaks off into a grunt, but the smile stays.
The beeps speed up.
“Time?” I ask.
Kirill leans in, looking at the small display at the edge of the device. His face goes tight.
“Forty-five seconds,” he says. “Maybe less. I don’t know the wiring. It’s not one of ours.”
The room snaps into a new shape.
We’ve got a live bomb in the center. We’ve got a main door that leads to a lake and open ground, but also glass and wood.
We’ve got a cellar that might shield some of us, or might turn into a coffin if the charge sits under the floor.
We’ve got a prisoner who knows the design and won’t talk.
We’ve got a woman I love in the trees outside and a child in the city who expects us back.
My men look at me.
The device keeps beeping, faster, faster, a hard tick in the air.
Outside, through the wall, I hear the faint crackle of Raina’s voice in my ear. “Sergei? I heard something. What’s happening?”
I’m about to answer when the device lets out one long, steady tone that cuts through every other sound in the room.
Then the timer on its face flips from numbers to a single word:
ZERO.