Chapter 21 #2
I run harder. The corridor branches ahead, and I take the right branch because the exit sign is on the right wall, green letters on white. It’s the universal signal for public access, people, witnesses, and safety.
My lungs are burning. The nausea is rising, but I swallow it down because vomiting in a corridor while Kirill’s men chase me isn’t how this ends. I think about Anya telling me to stay hydrated, Kimberly telling me to breathe, and the positive pregnancy test.
A man comes around the corridor junction in front of me.
He’s tall, dressed in dark clothes, and he’s reaching for my arm with both hands.
I don’t target his chest because Nathan told me not to target mass when outweighed.
I drive my knee into his knee, the lateral side where the ligaments cross, and when his leg buckles, I shove past him using my shoulder and hip, the technique Nathan showed me when he taught me to break through a grab without stopping.
“Stop!” His shout bounces off the concrete walls. He tries to grab my blazer from behind but misses by an inch, and I’m past him.
My pulse is thundering in my ears. My lungs are burning and the blade in my hand is wet with Kolya’s blood.
I note all that as the corridor ahead opens into a wider junction with a stairwell sign on the left wall.
Those are public stairs, and people should be on the other side of that door.
If I can reach them, Kirill’s men can’t take me without witnesses.
I’m four steps from the stairwell door when a second man cuts me off from the right.
He’s faster than the first, and he’s read my approach.
I try the knee strike again, but he catches my shin with his hand and redirects my balance so I stumble against the wall.
My shoulder hits the concrete hard enough to send a shock down my arm, and the blade clatters out of my grip and skids across the floor.
I push off the wall and keep moving. The stairwell door is right there. I can see the green exit sign through the reinforced glass window. Two more steps. I reach for the handle.
Kolya comes from behind.
He catches me around the waist with his left arm, his right arm hanging at his side, blood dripping from the cut forearm onto the concrete floor.
He doesn’t slam me against the wall. He doesn’t throw me to the ground.
He wraps his arm around my midsection and pulls me back from the stairwell door, keeping the pressure above my waistline, positioning his arm with care.
He’s avoiding my stomach.
He knows.
He knows I’m pregnant.
The realization hits me harder than the grab.
Kolya knows. He didn’t learn it from watching me or from Anya telling him directly.
He learned it from the records that cross his security console.
I haven’t had the prenatal lab work and imaging yet, but Anya changed the anti-nausea dosage and quantity.
She requested doubled vitamins and a separate folate under a general supplement order.
Nothing in those records said pregnancy outright, but Kolya knows how to read a pattern, and anti-nausea medication, folate, and extra vitamins within a two-week window tells a story.
His access is how he knows I’m carrying Valentin’s child. “The baby makes you valuable.” His voice is steady against my ear. “Valuable is different from safe. I’d rather deliver you intact.”
I try to twist free. His grip tightens on my upper body, still careful, still avoiding my stomach, and the care is the most terrifying part because it means he’s calculated my worth as a pregnant woman and decided I’m more useful alive and intact than dead.
“Stop fighting.” His mouth is near my ear. “You’ll hyperventilate, and right now, that’s a risk you don’t need to take.”
The two men from the corridor close in. One of them holds a dark hood. The other has zip ties.
I stop fighting but not because I’ve given up. Fighting costs oxygen, and I have more than myself to keep alive. The man holding me knows that too, which is why he’s counting on my compliance. He’s using my pregnancy as the leash he can’t put around my neck.
Kolya adjusts his grip. “Don’t fight the hood.”
The hood comes down over my face. The fabric is canvas, rough against my skin, and smells faintly of dust and traces of something chemical, like industrial storage.
I pull air through my nose because I have to stay calm.
Every person who has tried to keep me alive is in my head right now telling me the same thing.
The last image before the hood blocks my vision is the sign on the corridor wall behind Kolya’s shoulder. Cook County Courthouse Annex, Archived Evidence Storage, Restricted Access.
I walked into the building where my sister’s murder was sealed as Katya, and I’ll leave as a hostage. The blade is gone. Nathan’s training kept me alive for ninety seconds, and now I’m hooded in a corridor beneath the courthouse.
I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.
I think the words toward Valentin as hard as I can, though he can’t hear them.
The hood is in place now, so the corridor gets dark.
Kolya drops me hard enough onto the floor, and my butt aches at the impact.
Before I can even think about getting up and running, two other men pick me up, first under the shoulders, but then my world tilts as they turn me sideways to carry me.
I cry out, realizing no one has covered my mouth.
At first, that seems like an oversight on their part. It could be an advantage, allowing me to call out for help.
Slowly, it sinks in they don’t care if I scream. That means they’re taking me someplace where no one will hear me scream, or if they do hear, they won’t care.