The vibration cut through my concentration. I almost ignored it; we were in the middle of planning a war, and phone calls could wait. But something made me reach for it anyway. Some instinct that bypassed logic and went straight to my gut.
The screen showed Barbara’s name.
My heart slammed against my ribs, suddenly pounding so hard I could hear it over the electronics hum. She never called. We hadn’t spoken since that night in her bedroom, since I’d walked away cursing in Russian while her stepbrother’s name flashed on her screen.
Why was she calling now?
I pressed the phone to my ear, already moving away from the table. “Barbara?”
“I’m dying.”
Two words. Just two words in a voice so weak, so broken, I almost didn’t recognize it as hers.
The world stopped.
Everything just ceased to exist. There was only her voice, barely a whisper, carrying words that made my blood turn to ice.
“What?” I was already moving toward the door, my other hand reaching for my jacket. “Where are you? Barbara!”
Silence. Then a distant sound—maybe a gasp, maybe a sob, maybe her last breath. I couldn’t tell.
“Barbara! Stay with me. Tell me where you are!”
More silence. Then a soft sound. A phone hitting concrete. The line still connected, but no voice on the other end. Just ambient noise. Wind. Maybe traffic in the distance.
She’d dropped the phone.
“Fuck!” The curse exploded out of me as I fumbled with my own phone, nearly dropping it in my haste. “Fuck, fuck, fuck….”
“Kirill?” Timur’s voice cut through my panic. “What’s wrong?”
But I wasn’t listening. Couldn’t listen. My fingers were already flying across my phone screen, pulling up an app I’d installed weeks ago. A tracker. GPS monitoring software that I’d secretly installed on Barbara’s phone the day I’d started working on her mansion’s security system.
I’d told myself it was just professional caution. Just keeping tabs on a client in a potentially dangerous situation. Just making sure I could find her if….
If this exact scenario happened.
My fingers found her contact, and I activated the tracker.
Come on. Come on. Work, you bastard….
The screen flickered. Then a map appeared, zooming in on a location outside the city limits. An abandoned industrial area. A place where bad things happened, and no one asked questions.
The kind of place you went to die.
“I’ve got a location.” I was already halfway to the door. “I need to go. Now.”
“Wait.” Timur was moving with me, his hand on my shoulder stopping me just long enough to make me look at him. “What’s happening?”
“Barbara Davis.” Her name came out strangled. “She called. Said she’s dying. Dropped the phone. I have her location, but it’s fifteen minutes out and—”
“We’re coming with you.” Not a question. Not an offer. A statement of fact.
Andrei was already grabbing his jacket, his tablet forgotten on the table. “My car’s fastest. We’ll take mine.”
I should’ve argued. Should’ve said this wasn’t Bratva business, that this was personal, that they didn’t need to get involved in my mess. But the words wouldn’t come. Because all I could think about was Barbara’s voice—I’m dying—and thesound of her phone hitting concrete and the seconds ticking away while we stood here talking.
“Let’s go.” Timur was already out the door, moving with the kind of controlled urgency that came from years of combat experience.
