Chapter 15 #2
“Separate rooms,” I tell Boris. “No shared transport, and nobody compares accounts.”
He relays the order, then reads the first interview summary when it reaches his phone.
The captives know dead-box locations and delivery times, but none admits to knowing a handler’s name.
A senior captain takes possession of the building under the contractor’s unpaid debt.
For the first time since Pasha opened the war, one of his cells belongs to us intact.
The dead-drop team reaches the rail bridge before noon. We meet them under the tracks, where wind carries damp rust from the steel above us. The magnetic box contains no weapon or current instructions.
It holds one photocopied page.
I recognize Misha’s handwriting before Boris passes it to me.
The request is eleven years old: my brother asked for one evening without the full convoy, citing a restaurant reservation and the attention six armored men would draw. At the bottom, my signature approves a reduced team.
The copy includes a notation in Ivan’s handwriting: he objected to reducing the rear vehicle, then carried out my order after I overruled him. The ink beside his initials has faded to gray.
When I signed, Misha teased me; according to him, one dinner without men listening through earpieces might convince his date that our family could behave normally.
I told him normal was an expensive costume, and he left laughing with my approval folded in his pocket.
Without the armored rear team Ivan had requested, I trailed his car.
That team would have kept a man near Misha’s vehicle throughout dinner and inspected it again before departure.
The car bomb killed him before midnight.
Cold moves through my fingers despite the mild air. A high ringing wipes away the bridge for one blinding second, and my right side tightens where scar tissue pulls across my ribs.
Halfway through a breath, my lungs stop as damp rust gives way to remembered gasoline and the wind against my face becomes blistering heat. Before the bridge can vanish completely, I look down; under my shoes lies gravel, with Katie’s boots beside mine. No twisted car blocks the riverbank.
The page shakes once between my fingers, so I fold it along the old crease until it becomes still.
Someone preserved this page for eleven years or recovered it from a file accessible only to senior security.
Katie steps closer, but she doesn’t touch me with Boris and the guards in sight.
“Artur.”
I slide the folded page into my inside pocket. “The drop is compromised. Process the box and move the mechanic.”
Boris takes the order without looking at my face. Before we leave the bridge, I surrender the folded page, and he seals it inside his evidence case.
Katie waits until we are inside the SUV. “That was Misha’s request, and you approved it.”
“The signature is clear.”
My voice has become the one I use with captains who require distance, and Katie hears the change.
Her gaze drops to my right side. “The car bomb left the scars along your ribs.”
The shirt conceals them, but she has touched every raised line. She knows where the damage begins below my ribs before continuing toward my back.
“We have work to finish,” I say.
“I asked about you.”
“The answer won’t change the evidence.”
Her lips part, then press into a tight line. “I didn’t ask as an investigator.”
I look toward the windshield, where the copied request lies inside Boris’s evidence case, separated from my hands by steel latches.
If I tell Katie the story, I give her the moment every rule began. I also give her the part of me still kneeling beside twisted metal, unable to reach my brother through the heat.
She has already seen that man without understanding him: he appeared when I added guards after her apartment attack and when Sergei touched her face. During the fence alarm, he woke reaching for a weapon before his eyes opened. I have called each reaction security because the other name is guilt.
“Not today,” I say.
Katie hears the refusal in my formality and turns toward the window.
At the safe house that evening, I add two guards to the exterior team and move another vehicle to the rear road. Katie learns when she sees the updated schedule on the kitchen counter.
She reads every line before looking at me: the revised plan restricts the courtyard after dark. It also requires an escort between the house and vehicle, two rules that affect her directly but weren’t discussed in the bed where I agreed to share changes.
“We share schedules,” she says.
“The attack vehicles used a contractor connected to the casino.”
“That explains the guards. It doesn’t explain why you decided without me.”
“Security required an immediate response.”
Her mouth flattens. “Of course it did.”
She carries her water into the bedroom.
When I follow, Katie is lying on the right side of the bed.
My side.
She has arranged both pillows under her head, and my blanket lies folded under her feet.
“Move,” I say.
“Security required an immediate response.”
I look at the narrow strip of mattress she left me. “You are confusing retaliation with policy.”
“Then consult me before changing the perimeter or sleep on the policy side.”
The argument would be funny if the photocopied request weren’t locked inside the evidence case at the mansion.
I lie beside her with half of one shoulder beyond the mattress.
Katie switches off the lamp, and her back stays toward me, within reach but rigid under the shirt.
Sleep comes in broken sections.
Katie’s breathing steadies behind me while I stay near the mattress edge, refusing the comfort of turning toward her. Every time my eyes close, the folded request returns under Boris’s clear evidence sleeve.
Near midnight, Katie shifts against my back. Her hand rests between my shoulder blades for several breaths before she removes it; the touch leaves warmth where sleep can’t.
Heat returns first, followed by crushed metal pressing against my knees as I reach through darkness for a body trapped where the floor should be.
My hands strike wood under the bed.
I wake on the floor, reaching into the narrow space as if Misha is still under the wreckage.