Chapter 17
Maya
Iwas used to dealing with blood on my hands.
It was part of the job. But normally the blood on my hands was there because I'd been trying to heal someone.
Now though, as I lay in bed in turmoil, I could feel blood on my hands again. Not because I was trying to heal someone, but because of inaction. Kostya shifted next to me.
Frank's text was burned into my brain.
Police came to the store, asked about you. Now there are men watching the bodega.
Of course it could be a trap.
Kostya had said it was textbook extraction protocol. Probability suggested he was right. But probability also said that sometimes the unlikely thing was the true thing. Sometimes a scared kid really did need help. Sometimes waiting for morning meant finding a body instead of saving a life.
I'd spent six months watching people die because they'd waited too long to seek help, because they'd hoped things would get better on their own.
The gangbanger who'd bled out because his friends debated for three hours whether to bring him to me.
The woman who'd lost her leg to infection because she'd been too afraid to trust anyone.
Wait and see was how people died in my world, and Frank had already been waiting for far too many hours.
Mrs. Zi's face floated in my mind—weathered hands that shook with arthritis but still folded dumplings with mechanical precision. Seventy-three years old. What was the probability she could defend herself if Brand's people came for her?
The Hippocratic Oath I'd taken felt like a living thing in my chest.
First, do no harm.
But wasn't inaction its own kind of harm?
Kostya shifted in his sleep, pulling me closer, and my resolve almost crumbled.
His chest was warm against my back, heartbeat steady against my spine.
This man who'd fed me when I forgot to eat, who'd bought our kittens an entire pet store, who'd made up elaborate backstories for stuffed animals just to make me laugh.
He'd be terrified when he woke up and found me gone.
Furious. Would probably tear the city apart looking for me.
But he'd also understand, eventually. Once I proved Frank was telling the truth, that the danger was real, that my instincts had value too.
I began the extraction.
First, the breathing—maintaining the same rhythm I'd held for the last hour, the cadence of sleep he'd expect if some part of him was monitoring.
Then the pressure—shifting my weight incrementally, millimeter by millimeter, transferring it away from where our bodies touched.
His arm grew heavier as his muscles relaxed further, responding to the absence of resistance.
The hardest part was the final separation. That moment when I had to slip out from under his arm entirely, leaving cold air where warmth had been. I moved in one fluid motion, the way I'd learned to handle surgical instruments—no hesitation, no tremor, just smooth execution of planned movement.
He made a sound, low in his throat, and my whole body froze. But his breathing stayed deep, and after three seconds—I counted them—his arm settled onto the mattress where I'd been.
The loss of his heat felt like grief.
Zmeya's eyes caught the darkness, twin points of green light watching me dress. She made a small chirp, questioning, and I pressed a finger to my lips. Malysh uncurled from his spot at our feet, both kittens now alert to their mother's strange behavior.
"I'm coming back," I whispered, so quiet it was barely sound. "I promise. Take care of him for me."
Zmeya meowed, soft but disapproving, and I had to turn away before the accusation in those green eyes changed my mind.
The practical preparations came next. Medical kit from his bathroom—basic supplies, nothing that would be missed immediately.
Bandages, antiseptic, the things Frank might need if he was hurt.
Cash from Kostya's desk drawer, three hundred dollars in twenties that he kept for emergencies.
This qualified, even if he wouldn't agree.
My phone sat on the nightstand, and I stared at it for a long moment.
He'd installed tracking apps that first night, security measures he'd said, and he was right.
But tracking worked both ways. If I took it, he'd find me before I could help Frank.
If I left it, I was cutting my last lifeline to safety.
I left it. The decision felt like stepping off a cliff.
But I took his jacket.
The black tactical one that smelled like him—gun oil and soap and something uniquely Kostya. It was too big, swallowing my frame, but the weight of it felt like armor.
The compound's patrol schedule was burned into my memory. Four days of watching had taught me the rhythm—seven-minute rotation on the east side, guards switching at 1:20, 1:27, 1:34. The service entrance had a twelve-second blind spot when the cameras panned. I'd timed it obsessively.
1:22 AM. Five minutes until the rotation. I stood at our bedroom door, hand on the handle, looking back at the bed where Kostya slept. Where the kittens now sat like tiny sentinels, watching me with eyes that seemed far too knowing for creatures so small.
This was insane. I knew it was insane. Walking out of safety into probable danger for someone who might already be beyond help. But that was the point, wasn't it? The might. The possibility.
I was a doctor. This was the whole point.
The doorknob turned silently. The hallway stretched ahead, dark and full of shadows.
I stepped into the corridor and didn't look back.
The east service door was exactly where I'd mapped it. The lock disengaged with a soft click that sounded like thunder in the silence. October air hit me like a physical blow, sharp and cold, carrying the smell of rain and rust.
For one moment, one heartbeat, I almost turned around.
But Frank was out there. And I was the only one who might care enough to save him.
I pulled the jacket tighter and stepped into the darkness.
The warehouse district at four in the morning was not a nice place to be.
A jagged skyline of rusted metal and shattered glass catching moonlight in all the wrong ways.
I'd walked twenty minutes from the compound, each step taking me deeper into the industrial wasteland that even desperate people avoided after dark.
Every survival instinct I'd developed over six months of hiding screamed at me to turn around. This was exactly the kind of place where bodies were found. Where screams went unheard.
The warehouse on 4th Street stood out even among its dead neighbors.
Three stories of broken windows and graffiti-covered brick, the kind of building that looked like it was actively decomposing.
The main entrance was boarded up, plywood sheets nailed over doors that had probably been beautiful once.
I circled the perimeter, staying in shadows.
The chain-link fence was mostly intact except for one section where someone had peeled it back, creating a gap just wide enough for a person.
The metal was bent outward, not in—someone leaving in a hurry rather than breaking in. Fresh scratches in the rust. Recent.
My hands shook as I squeezed through the gap. The fence caught the jacket, held me for one terrifying second before releasing with a sound like tearing flesh.
The side entrance was a metal door hanging off one hinge, darkness visible through the gap. I stood there for thirty seconds, listening. Wind through broken glass. The distant hum of the city. Something dripping. And underneath it all, so faint I might have imagined it—breathing that wasn't mine.
My hand found a chunk of broken concrete, edges sharp enough to cut. Pathetic weapon against anyone professional, but the weight of it made me feel marginally less helpless.
"Frank?" My voice came out as barely a whisper. I cleared my throat, tried again. "Frank, it's Dr. Cross."
Silence. The kind that felt alive, watchful. My grip on the concrete tightened until the edges bit into my palm. One Mississippi. Two Mississippi. Three—
"Dr. Cross?"
The voice was young, terrified, exactly how Frank sounded when he'd asked about my bruises weeks ago. It came from deeper in the building, past machinery that loomed like sleeping giants in the darkness.
Relief hit me so hard my knees actually buckled.
"Frank, keep talking. Are you hurt? Is anyone with you?"
"Just me." His voice got stronger as I got closer. "I've been here two days. Didn't know where else to go."
I found him huddled behind what looked like an old industrial press, knees drawn to his chest, making himself as small as possible. His face was dirty, clothes rumpled, but his eyes were clear. Alert. Alive.
Kostya had been wrong. This wasn't a trap. This was a terrified kid who'd run when danger came knocking.
"Thank god," I breathed. The concrete chunk fell from my hand, clattering on the floor. "I thought—everyone said—but you're really here."
I dropped to my knees beside him, medical instincts overriding everything else. His pulse was rapid but strong. No visible injuries beyond minor scrapes. Dehydration evident in his dry lips and the way his skin tented when I pinched it gently.
"We're getting you out of here," I said, reaching for the medical kit. "But first, tell me everything."
He leaned back against the machinery, and in the faint moonlight filtering through broken windows, I could see tears tracking through the dirt on his face. "They came to the store two days ago. Three men. They had your picture."
My blood went cold, but I kept my hands steady as I cleaned a cut on his hand.
"They weren't cops," Frank continued. "I could tell.
The way they moved, the way they looked at my grandmother like she was nothing.
They asked about a shadow doctor working out of a veterinary clinic.
Grandma played dumb, but they were getting dangerous.
Then they threatened us both. Said we had two days. "
"So you ran."