Chapter Fourteen
~ Vadim ~
I liked to know where my people were.
The kitchen was empty. Not silent—nothing in this house was ever truly silent—but empty. On the counter: a half glass of water, condensation running down to the marble, a trail of fingerprints just above the rim.
A book face-down on the island, one of the paperbacks he raided from the library, its spine broken in the middle like someone had tried to snap it for kindling.
The overhead light was still on, throwing a hard shadow under the faucet. I traced the arc of the shadow to the nearest possible exit and said, “Iren,” loud enough to carry, but not so loud it would register as an order.
Nothing.
I checked the next room, the atrium. He liked the atrium.
Liked the way the light came in through the glass roof, the way it softened the outlines of everything even when the weather was like it was tonight—black, not even a moon to eat the dark.
The benches were empty. The plants had all been rotated, watered, turned for even growth.
There was a tiny sliver of a footprint in the dirt near the fountain. The water burbled.
I called again, “Iren.”
Nothing.
Third choice was the library. He would camp in there, pull books down like he was prepping for some post-literacy apocalypse, annotate his margins with highlighter from the office supply closet.
The house smelled of paper and oil and the faint, persistent ghost of his cologne, which he applied with a hand so heavy I wanted to throttle him some days.
It was not a large room, not by the standards of the estate, but every surface was covered in books: shelf, table, ottoman, even one on the armrest of the reading chair, open and face down like he’d been interrupted in mid-sentence.
On the floor, near the window, was a book splayed open, the pages ruffled as if it had been dropped. I picked it up. A dry history of nineteenth-century anarchist movements.
Not his usual.
The gym: empty. Bedroom: empty, sheets rumpled, the black hoodie he wore most days dropped in a puddle beside the hamper. I called once, just to hear the echo, “Iren.”
The room did not answer. I checked the en suite. The toothbrush was dry, towel stiff, air still damp from a shower but not recently. Maybe an hour. Maybe two.
The east wing sitting room was last. He hated it—the décor was funereal, the chairs made for torture—but sometimes he’d squat there with a mug of something he didn’t want to explain.
I opened the door. The mug was on the side table, still steaming, the scent of ginger and maybe lemon, but no sign of him. I left the door open, walked the length of the corridor, checked the windows.
Each time I said his name, the volume dropped. Each time I failed to find him, my stride lengthened, my posture went from calculated relaxation to the automatic, involuntary parade-rest I fell back on when something didn’t add up. My jaw tightened so hard my ears rang.
I did not like this.
I did not like what it made me.
I found Lin in the east corridor, between the guest wing and the old servants’ stairs. He did not startle when I came up behind him. He did not need to. He read my face in a single glance: the flatness of my mouth, the unblinking stare. He stood with hands folded, almost an invitation.
“Is he with you?” I asked.
Lin shook his head, once. “Not since afternoon.”
“Report,” I said.
He gave it, as if waiting for the question. “Last visual at 5:11, atrium. He crossed to the west hall, then entered the staff kitchen. He did not leave by the door or by the service stairs. At 6:08, the camera at the south vestibule registered a shadow. Negative confirmation on who.”
I stared at him. “Did you see it?”
“No,” he said. “But there is a discrepancy in the log.”
Lin was too precise to allow a discrepancy. He would log an earthquake as “vibration, source unknown,” then correct it once the planet stopped moving. A discrepancy meant he had already rechecked the footage and found nothing to fix.
I walked past him, toward the atrium.
It was still empty.
I went to the main boardroom and pulled two guards off the perimeter, the men on first rotation. They did not question the order. I told them to sweep the upper floors. They did. I waited.
I did not pace, because pacing is a form of weakness, but I did tap the second finger of my left hand against my thigh, counting out the steps I would take when I started pacing for real.
They came back, both empty-handed.
I went to the stables. The night air stank of hay and ammonia, the horses restless but not frantic. No footprints in the sawdust, except for mine. I called once, low, “Iren.”
Even the horses ignored it. I checked every stall, every loose tack room, every inch of the hayloft. No one.
I doubled back, cut through the pool room, checked the spa, the showers, even the fucking sauna. He wasn’t there. I hit the command center next. Yuri’s chair was empty. I scanned the log. No unusual entries. The monitors were calm, every camera showing the same blank, anonymous landscape.
I tried the utility corridor behind the east wing. It was silent except for the hum of the electrical lines and the soft, nearly subsonic tick of the backup generator. No one. Every door I opened and closed was one more confirmation.
He was not in the house.
I have lost men before. I have sent people into situations where I knew they would not come back, or would come back in a form that required a closed casket and a new line in the ledger. I have executed those men myself, when the situation demanded it. I have never lost a person I intended to keep.
My chest did not know how to process that.
Lin followed, two steps behind, silent and observant, the way only a man who had lived his life cleaning up the mess of better men could be. He did not ask questions. He did not try to reassure me. He simply moved, matching my pace, cataloguing my failures as I made them.
I went back to the kitchen. The glass of water was still on the counter, but the condensation had evaporated. The book was still on the island, its spine facing me like a dare. I opened it to the page he’d marked. It was blank. He never left blanks.
I pressed the comm. “Yuri.”
He answered instantly. “Yes.”
“Iren is not in the house.”
A pause, just long enough for him to process the implications. “Are you certain?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll mobilize,” he said.
Lin met my eye, and in that look I saw the thing I did not want to name: the knowledge that sometimes, even the best defense is not enough. He said nothing.
I went to the front door, opened it, and listened. The estate was as quiet as it ever was. The only sound was the click of the lock behind me. I walked the drive. Found nothing. I walked back to the house.
Lin waited in the foyer, as if he had not moved at all. He said, “Shall I prepare the command room?”
“No,” I said. “Not yet.”
He watched me, waiting for the rest.
“Get every man out of bed,” I said. “No one sleeps until he is found.”
Lin bowed his head, a formality I had never seen before. Then he disappeared, silent and efficient, to carry out the order.
I stood in the center of the hall. For the first time in my life, I understood why men prayed to things that could not answer.
Because the only thing worse than being alone is being alone and responsible.
I went to the nearest window and looked out at the dark.
I pressed my hands to the glass, left two perfect prints.
The night did not blink.
I turned and went to the command room. I did not pace, but the sound of my own heartbeat followed me all the way down.
I stood in the center of the command room, eyes fixed to the incident board, hands clasped behind my back, the muscles in my neck locked into a grid of tension that made it hard to swallow. I waited for the world to catch up.
It didn’t.
Yuri found me four minutes later. He did not knock, did not call ahead. He appeared in the doorway, suit impeccable, hair in place, expression a level above calm—so far above it that the only word left was vacant.
“Show me,” I said.
He crossed the room in three steps, tablet already unlocked, thumb scrolling to the right camera, the right time stamp. He handed it to me, steady as a surgeon.
The image was black and white, a grainy overhead of the east tree line.
It was the same gap Iren had pointed out days before, the one I had reinforced with two more cameras and a motion sensor, but not before the original flaw had been mapped and filed by anyone who cared to know it.
The time stamp at the bottom read: 7:07:14.
In the upper right corner, a shape: small, feminine, head uncovered. Sasha. Even in that lightless void, she moved as if every camera was a personal spotlight. Behind her: two men, both in civilian dress, one carrying a coil of rope or cable, the other something I could not ID at first glance.
They slipped through the tree line in silence, boots leaving no visible trace, and paused at the edge of the clearing. Sasha turned, gestured once, then all three moved as one to the side entrance, bypassing the tripwire alarm and slipping into the shadows at the edge of the staff kitchen.
The next segment picked up at 7:18:53. Eleven minutes later.
The three shapes returned to the tree line, but now one of the men carried something over his shoulder—a dead weight, limbs loose, head slumped.
I knew the shape of that body. I had mapped it a thousand times in my mind. It was not an abstraction.
The clip ended with the three vanishing into the trees, the ripple of motion barely enough to move the leaves. At 7:20:01, the feed went blank. No sign of pursuit. No sign of struggle.
Iren was gone.
I watched the footage once. I did not watch it again. I handed the tablet back to Yuri and looked him in the face. “Where are they now?”
He shook his head, just once. “No visual. Car is unregistered. They left by foot, then transferred to vehicle at the north perimeter. Spotters missed it.”
“Plate?”
“Stolen. We’re working the traffic cams now.”
“Cell?”
“Dark.”