Chapter 19
NINETEEN
ANTHONY
We make it back to New York, and Lucien has a car waiting for us.
The city hits me the way it always does after time away, loud and gray and indifferent, the skyline familiar as a face I've known all my life but haven't missed.
With the clear to proceed, we head back to Isabella's apartment.
Not only to get what she needs for the coming days, but to see if my team and I can find any trace of bugging or disturbance in her home.
I run through the variables in the car. Rodin Dragunovik, living one floor below the woman he is surveilling, plays the devoted boyfriend for two months.
Patient. Methodical. The kind of operation that takes serious resources and serious discipline.
I want to know why a man like Rodin embeds himself that deeply into someone's life. What is he hoping to achieve?
With Rodin Dragunovik no longer living in the building, we are free to enter and do a sweep before leaving for good.
"Where was his apartment?" I ask.
"Number forty-two on the fourth floor."
I turn to three of my men before we reach the lobby.
They're already reading me, already primed.
These are not men who need lengthy instruction.
"Go to apartment forty-two and leave no trace unturned.
If Dragunovik has left anything there, I want it found.
Check for surveillance equipment, anything planted, any sign of what he was running out of that room.
Photograph everything before you touch it, and bag anything that could be useful.
And I want it swept for bugs. If he was listening from down there, I want to know what range he had.
" I hold the eye of my best man. "You find anything, anything at all, you call me before you move it. Understood?"
"On it, boss." They peel off toward the elevator without another word.
We enter Isabella's apartment. I walk in ahead of her by half a step, an old habit that never changes.
I enter the space, having never been here before.
It's homey, earthy, warm in a way I don't expect. There’s a sizable balcony, and the rooms are generous.
There are books stacked on a side table and a throw blanket folded over the arm of the sofa, and a candle burned low on the windowsill.
The place has the feeling of a life genuinely lived in rather than performed.
It suits her. More than suits her. It is her, the version of her that exists when nobody is watching.
Even though she won't be coming back here after today.
She will live with me now, and she can make our space her own.
I find I want that. More than I expect to.
"Does anything look out of place?" I ask as I move through the rooms. I turn to the two men who have followed us in.
"Check for bugs. Every room, every fixture, behind the artwork, under the furniture.
Check the phones, the smoke detectors, the plug sockets.
Don't assume anything is clean until you've inspected it. "
She stands beside me and looks around the open living room. "No, it all looks as it should. I can't see anything out of place." She moves into a room off to the side, and I follow.
It's an office. Small, well-ordered, the desk clear except for a lamp and a closed notebook. It's the kind of room she keeps separate from the warmth of the rest of the apartment. She checks the drawers, moves with purpose, and then stops.
She frowns.
"What?" I ask.
"This drawer. I always keep it locked, and it's unlocked."
I move beside her in two steps. I join her at the desk, investigate the drawer, and feel around the wood. I check it thoroughly. It's empty, no bugs. "What do you normally keep in there?"
She clasps her stomach and leans on the desk for support. Her face is as pale as a ghost. I reach for her. "What's wrong? What was in the drawer, Bells?"
She meets my eyes, and I see fear moving in the green depths. Not the contained, manageable fear of a woman who’s been through hard things before. Something rawer than that. Something personal. "Family documents and a phone, but they're not here anymore."
I say nothing for a moment. I think about Rodin Dragunovik. How long before the bastard managed to get a key? How many times did he walk in and out of this apartment like he owned the place? Did they have dinner here? Did he sleep often in her bed?
Anger takes hold, and I clamp my jaw shut, lest I say something I shouldn’t.
What do the Russians want with the Romero family documents?
The phone, I can understand. They're easy enough to break into and have the data pulled.
But a will or information about the Romero family wouldn't give the Dragunoviks anything they don't already know from their own intelligence.
So what is in that drawer that's worth taking?
"Is there anything on the phone that they could use against you?"
Her eyes widen. She opens her mouth as if to say something before my phone rings.
Lucien. I hold up a finger to Isabella and step toward the window, keeping her in my peripheral vision.
"Lucien. We're back in New York. What's happening on your end?"
"Plenty." His voice is clipped. "We've been tracking Dragunoviks movement in the city, and something's off, Anthony. They've been pulling resources. Not redistributing them locally. Pulling them. Out of New York entirely."
I keep my eyes on the street below. "Where are they going?"
"North. That's the clearest picture we have right now. Out of the US, we think. Possibly as far north as Canada."
Canada.
"Reall?" I repeat, keeping my voice flat. "What's up there?"
"That's what I'm trying to find out. Whatever it is, it isn't small.
The resources they've redirected suggest they're looking for something specific.
Or someone." A pause. "It feels like a search operation, Anthony, not an offensive one.
They're not mobilizing for a fight. They're looking for something. Maybe something they lost."
Or something they found out about.
I turn and look at Isabella across the room.
She's leaning against the desk, arms folded across herself, watching me with that still, careful expression she wears when she already knows the conversation she's listening to isn't going to end well.
She looks, in this moment, exactly like a woman with a secret that is running out of places to hide.
"Keep our people on it," I say to Lucien. "I want to know the moment you have a location. A city, a town, anything. And I want eyes on Rodin Dragunovik.”
"Well, that's the other thing. He's still in New York, but in hiding. Waiting for our meeting, I assume, but he's gone to ground, so I can only assume he's been notified that we know the game is up."
"When’s the meeting?" I ask.
"Forty-eight hours."
I end the call.
The apartment is quiet, save for my men moving through it distantly, methodically, unhurried, doing what I pay them to do. Outside the window, New York goes on at its usual pace.
I cross to Isabella. I take my time, not because I don't know what I'm going to say, but because I want to watch her face before I say it. Before she has time to school her features.
"That drawer," I say, keeping my voice even. "The cell phone." I stop in front of her. "Was there anything on that phone? Anything at all that could lead someone to a location? An address they wouldn't find through the family?"
Something moves across her features, and I know she's frightened.
But why?
I hold her gaze and wait, and I watch her fight the truth that she's going to have to spill, sooner rather than later. I say nothing because sometimes silence is the only interrogation that works on a woman like Isabella Romero.
To force her would mean the opposite of what I want her to do right now.
"Bells…I can't help you if I don't know what you're hiding."
Tears well in her eyes, and guilt kicks me square in the guts. Isabella never cries, never shows emotions. I pull her into my arms and hold her close. “It’s okay. Well get through this, I promise," I say, hoping my words come true.