Chapter 10 Luka #2
Misha glances at me, then back at the screen. We do not need to say anything. We both read the same thing. They were here recently. And they were in a hurry.
“Door is locked,” someone says next.
“Breaching,” another responds.
A muffled thud. Then the metal gives way.
The camera rolls forward into darkness. Light flares as their lamps come on, the beams cutting through dust motes in the air. The warehouse interior takes shape. Rows of shelving and pallets. A few scattered crates. In the center, there is a cleared space.
“Clear the corners,” Albert instructs over comms. “No one assumes an empty box unless I say so.”
I watch the men fan out. Left. Right. Their lights sweep over the concrete. The place is cleaner than I expected. No obvious chaos or bodies.
“Pakhan,” a voice calls. “You need to see this.”
The camera tilts down. There is a mattress on the floor without a frame, just padding thrown flat on the concrete.
A thin blanket. A plastic cup overturned on its side with a dried ring of liquid spread beneath it.
And near the mattress, next to a rusted metal chair, is a small pile of clear vials glinting in the light.
The man carefully picks one up between his gloved fingers and brings it closer to the lens. I lean in. I have seen these before.
“Zoom in,” I tell Misha.
He taps a key, and the image tightens, the text on the side of the vial becoming clear enough to read. Medication name. Dosage. Manufacturer. Most of it is unimportant to me, but one detail is not. The label includes the word “anticonvulsant.” Seizure control.
My molars grind once. Hope’s file from the hospital flashes through my memory. The note on her chart. History of seizures. Medication list.
“Check the others,” I order.
The men obey. One by one, the empty vials come into view, each with the same label. The dates printed along their edges are recent.
“Some of them still have residue,” one of the enforcers notes. “Looks like whatever was in them was given here, on-site.”
“They did not just pass through with her,” Misha says under his breath. “They treated her here.”
I wrap my hand around the edge of the desk. The wood bites into my palm. Hope was here. Not a possibility or a probability. A fact.
“Search the rest,” I instruct. “Every shelf. Every crate. Check the office if there is one. If they left anything behind, I want to see it.”
They move, sweeping the warehouse in a methodical pattern. I force myself to breathe slowly and think past the roar in my head.
Hope was here. She needed her medication, which means they have not let her crash. They are not careless with their leverage. They intend to keep her alive for now. It is a twisted kind of mercy, but mercy all the same.
“Office in the northwest corner,” someone reports. “Door was locked. We are in now.”
The view shows a small room with a battered desk and a bank of old monitors. The screens are dark, but one of my men steps toward the corner where a security system sits.
“Looks like they tried to wipe it,” he says. “Hard drive is gone. Cables cut.”
Of course it is.
“Check the trash,” I respond. “Drawers. Under the desk. Ceiling tiles if you have to. They always miss something.”
It takes three minutes.
“Got something,” a voice finally says. The camera focuses on the man’s gloved hand. He is holding a small, torn piece of paper. “Printer scrap. It fell behind the cabinet.”
“Bring it closer,” I demand.
He lifts it to the lens. Most of the page is blank except for the bottom corner, where a few lines of text remain. A fragment of a shipping manifest that never made it to the trash properly.
I read the visible parts aloud.
Departure: Dock 32. Destination: coded.
Dated two days ago. My eyes narrow on the last line.
Crew lead identifier. Initials: V.S.
Misha exhales softly. “That is one of Sokolov’s lieutenants. Viktor Semyonov. He did runs for their human cargo routes back in the day. Mostly Eastern Europe and the Baltics. He went quiet after Thomas Bellamy disappeared. I thought he retired.”
“Apparently not,” I grind out.
If Viktor is involved, this is not simply Ray pulling old strings. This is Sokolov infrastructure leaning in. Men who know how to move people without leaving traces. Men who have done it for years.
“Can we trace the route from the manifest fragment?” I question.
“I doubt it,” Misha answers. “The critical fields are missing. But we know the departure point. We know the timeframe. We know Viktor’s name. That lets us lean on every man who has ever worked a ship with him.”
“Do it,” I say. “I want every contact, port, and warehouse he has used in the last ten years. If he has a favorite pattern, we will find it.”
Misha nods, already pulling his own laptop closer.
We did not get Hope out of this yard today, but we can still pull threads. Threads lead to men. And men talk when persuaded correctly.
I look back at the screen showing the vials on the concrete.
At the dent in the mattress. At the overturned plastic cup.
Sage sees her sister as she was. Laughing, rolling her eyes, clutching a coffee to her chest. Every new image that attaches itself to Hope in my mind looks nothing like that.
Pale, restrained, and drinking water in a warehouse lit by a single bulb.
I do not know how to give that to Sage without breaking something in her that will not heal.
“Pull back,” I order. “Your sweep is done. Mark the site. I want men rotating through covertly for the next forty-eight hours in case someone is stupid enough to return. Albert, keep me updated on the SUV. If they make contact with anyone we recognize, I want a full report.”
“Understood,” he replies.
The feeds start to blink out as the teams withdraw. The warehouse fades back into darkness, leaving only my reflection on the black screens.
Misha closes the laptop halfway and studies me. “What do you want to tell Sage?”
“The truth,” I breathe.
He lifts a brow. “All of it?”
I think of Sage in that bed. The tremor in her hands earlier. The way her voice caught when she asked, on the drive here, if I truly believed we could find her sister.
“She deserves the truth,” I say slowly. “But not in a way that makes her drown faster.”
“You will have to walk a very fine line,” Misha murmurs.
“I have done worse.”
He studies my face a second longer, then nods. “I will start working on Viktor’s pattern. We will have something more solid by tonight. Maybe sooner if one of his old captains decides he likes breathing more than he likes loyalty.”
“Good.” I pick up the phone from the desk. “Keep me updated.”
He leaves the study, closing the door softly behind him. Vega lifts his head and nudges my leg once, as if to say that whatever game of ghosts I intend to play now, I do not play it alone.
I give him a brief scratch behind the ear and step back into the hallway.
The house is quieter now. Staff move around, but they do it in the way my people learn from the beginning. Efficient and intentional with no wasted sound.
I find myself back where I started, outside Sage’s door. Vega settles beside me again as if this is exactly where we belong.
I listen until the same soft whir of the air system reaches my ears. No voices or movement. She is still asleep. Anya would tell me to leave her that way and let her rest. She is right. Sage needs every scrap of sleep she can get.
But there is a part of me that wants to open the door anyway.
To sit on the edge of the bed and tell her what we found.
To tell her that Hope was in that warehouse.
That they gave her medication for her seizures.
That she was moved but not discarded. That every piece of information brings us closer.
Close. That word again. Close is not enough. Close is not a girl back in her sister’s arms. It is not a future that does not end in a body on a slab or a name carved into stone.
My hand lifts, fingers hovering just short of the door. I picture the look that would move over her face when I speak the words. The way hope would flare, bright and fragile. The way it would shatter if the next call that came in was not that we had found Hope, but that we had lost the trail again.
I do not lie to the people I claim as mine. I also do not hand them knives and call it comfort.
“Soon,” I murmur under my breath, not sure if I am speaking to her or myself. “I will tell you when I can put something in your hands that does not feel like broken glass.”
Vega noses my knuckles, warm and insistent. I rest my palm briefly against the door. No knock, just contact. A silent acknowledgment that I am here, even if she does not know it. Then I turn away.
There are men to squeeze, routes to trace, and one Sokolov lieutenant who does not yet understand that his initials on a torn piece of paper signed his death warrant.
I walk back down the hall with Vega at my heel and let the promise settle in my bones.
I will find Hope and pull her out of whatever cage they have put her in.
And when I put her back in Sage’s arms, it will not be because I stumbled into it.
It will be because I tore this city apart piece by piece until there was nowhere left for Ray or his Sokolov friends to hide.