1. Rowan #4
The estate lights sweep across the windows in intermittent bands as we pass the last checkpoints. As soon as we clear the perimeter, Ivan exhales through his nose. It is quiet, but in the confined space of the back of this SUV, it sounds close to a scream.
“A waste of time,” he mutters.
I glance at him without moving my head. “You knew they’d push back.”
His gaze stays fixed on the window next to him, or maybe on the reflection of his own face in the glass. It’s hard to tell in this light.
“I knew Volkov would. He always does.” A flicker of irritation crosses his face, quick but unmistakable, tightening the corner of his mouth before smoothing out again. “But Malyshko… surprised me.”
My brow raises without meaning to.
His surprise is what confuses me more. Out of any of them, Malyshko has always been the more cautious one, careful in a way the others mistake for passivity until it is too late.
He is not the type who lunges at the first opportunity presented.
He waits and watches, letting everyone else exhaust themselves before deciding which pieces are worth preserving and which are ripe for removal.
If anyone at that table was going to resist Ivan trying to drag the Pact out of the underworld, it was always going to be Nikolai.
Unless… Ivan believed the current crisis would make him more receptive.
If so, that was a severe misread.
Silence stretches for a heartbeat. Then he continues, “They’re afraid because they can’t see past the next election. If we anchor ourselves inside the system as it stands now, we will control the country no matter who sits in office.”
That is what Ivan has always wanted. He wants a system that cannot spit him out when administrations change and loyalties curdle and public outrage starts sniffing around old arrangements.
He wants a seat at the table so deeply bolted in place that whoever wins the election is forced to sit across from him, no matter what.
I open my mouth to answer him, cut off by glass exploding inward in a glittering storm.
The SUV lurches sideways so hard, my body jerks with it before my brain can catch up.
Tires shriek against asphalt, a high animal scream swallowed almost instantly by the deeper, uglier roar of impact against a solid structure.
My shoulder slams into the door, bone and metal colliding in a burst of blunt force that rips the breath from my lungs.
The world snaps sideways again when the other side of us is hit. My head cracks against the window frame. Pain flares white-hot behind my eyes, a white burning to black so quickly, it feels like being dropped beneath deep water. Something hot runs along my temple, blood or sweat or maybe both.
Darkness rushes in, a black tide folding over my senses and pulling them under before I can claw at any one detail long enough to keep hold of it. For one endless second, there is nothing. Then the ringing starts.
I come back gasping.
Air tears into my lungs so sharply it feels wrong, poisoned. Smoke hits my throat on the inhale and I choke on it immediately, coughing hard enough to send another spike of pain through my skull. My eyes snap open to a world gone crooked and fractured.
The windshield ahead is a shattered spiderweb, every crack glowing faintly where stray light from the road catches in it.
The body of our driver hangs from his seatbelt, unmoving.
Beyond it, the dark is smeared and broken, impossible to read.
The hood is crumpled upward at an angle it should not be able to hold, steam or smoke hissing from somewhere underneath in frantic white bursts.
The cabin stinks of deployed propellant, scorched wiring, and the coppery tang of blood.
For one disoriented moment, I don’t know which way is up.
The interior lights flicker, turning the back seats into strobing shadow.
Broken glass litters everything—across my lap, in the seams of the seat, caught on the sleeves of my jacket like shards of frozen rain.
The side window beside me is gone, or mostly gone, and what remains clinging to the frame are jagged pieces that look like teeth.
Night air drifts in through the opening, viciously cold and carrying the smells of engine smoke and burning rubber.
My head snaps toward the seat beside me.
Empty.
For one dizzying second, my brain refuses to make sense of it. The dark leather seat is there, blood smeared across the door and the handle in a way that makes my stomach lurch. But there is no Ivan.
Adrenaline slams through me like a freight train.
I twist toward the ruined door, shoulder already braced against the bent frame before I’ve consciously decided to move. The metal groans when I shove at it, and something in my ribs lights up so viciously, it nearly buckles my knees even from a seated position. I grit my teeth and push harder.
The door gives with a shriek of torn metal.
I half-fall, half-climb out onto the road, one hand catching against the mangled door frame to steady myself.
My boots hit uneven asphalt slick with scattered glass and some fluid leaking from the vehicle.
The world tilts for a second as I reorient myself, darkness from the wreck swimming at the edges of my vision, but I force it still.
The SUV is crumpled nose-first against a concrete barrier, front end folded in on itself like a punched-in ribcage.
One headlight is gone entirely. The other flickers uselessly into the dark at a crooked angle, casting a shattered white beam across the roadway and turning drifting smoke into ghostly ribbons.
Behind us, one of the other convoy vehicles sits sideways across the lane, its front quarter smashed, horn blaring in a mechanical scream. The third is nowhere I can immediately see, swallowed by darkness and the curve of the road.
Twenty yards away, Ivan stands alone in the middle of the road.
He is half-turned from me, coat whipping faintly in the cold, one arm low at his side, the other just beginning to lift.
The beam from our ruined SUV cuts across him in pieces, painting him in violent contrasts.
And then I see them—two figures moving toward him from the dark shoulder of the road where another car lies ruined, guns already raised.
There is no thought after that.
My hand is already on the Glock holstered to my hip as I move forward.
I don’t remember drawing it. One second, it is under my jacket, the next, it is in my grip, the weight of it slotting into my palm like a missing piece.
I lunge away from the wreck, ignoring the pain spidering through my body with every stride.
The first shot cracks through the night like a clap of thunder. The recoil punches into my hand and forearm, the feels of it familiar. For a fraction of a second, the muzzle flash whites out the darkness in front of me.
Then the first man jerks back.