Unfortunately for them, I did my best work when I was pissed.
I pushed forward again, digging my fingers into a patch of slick moss to pull myself along. The pipe answered with a groan of shifting metal. Water dripped somewhere ahead, the sound echoing like the tick of a clock.
It didn’t help that Viktor’s name kept circling in my head. Viktor in a cell. Viktor with his wrists bound. Viktor smirking at his captors even as they hauled him down a corridor. Viktor thinking he could talk his way out of anything because he’d never learned the definition of restraint.
And now me—crawling through a drainage pipe like a feral cat even though he was still caught.
I grumbled under my breath and tried to ignore the heat pooling in my stomach at the memory of his hands sliding under my shirt the night before, his mouth tracing my throat like he was memorizing the taste of my skin. Now was absolutely not the time for nostalgia, lust, or murderous affection.
The pipe narrowed and I had to drop my head lower, pushing with my toes until my boots found traction on the damp metal. The smell thickened with rust, mildew, and something rotting. The ambience of this pipe was just so delightful. The sound of my breathing grew louder, echoing back in an unforgiving rhythm.
The eldest Dragunov flashed in my mind: steady, stoic, predictable Mikhail. He was probably marching straight into ARCHEON headquarters right now with his coat buttoned and his jaw set, ready to barter, threaten, and negotiate like the dutiful eldest son he was raised to be.
If I knew Mikhail—and unfortunately, or rather, fortunately, I did—he’d be sitting across from some ARCHEON official right now, listening in silence, calculating how many concessions he could give before drawing blood. It was both his greatest strength and his most irritating trait: the ability to bury emotion in favor of strategy.
Sure, he was predictable, but I had to admit that he kept people alive. He did whatever he had to do to keep us all alive.
Still, if he found out we’d been captured and thought I needed rescuing, he was going to be disappointed. Forced confinement just ticked me off. It didn’t break me.
I shoved myself over a raised seam, bit back a groan, and felt warmth trickle down my shin. Probably blood from a cut. Maybe a bruise. Nothing fatal. I was just fine. I inch-wormed onward.
Andrei, though… God help me, if he realized Viktor and I were missing, he’d try something heroic. The youngest Dragunov brother with the fast smile and the even quicker repartee. He could charm his way into a fortress, but he’d never walk out without setting half of it on fire.
And that made him dangerous.
The pipe widened around a slight curve, and a faint patch of dim light appeared ahead. A grate. An exit, maybe.
I sighed with relief.
I reached it, braced my palms against the slick metal, and pushed. The grate groaned once, shifted a centimeter, then stuck. Rust clung to its hinges. I gritted my teeth, shoved harder, and felt it give beneath my weight with a loud, grinding crack. It toppled outward and clattered loudly onto the concrete below.
I winced and whispered, “So much for stealth.”
I didn’t stop though.
I lowered myself through the opening and landed in a crouch on a maintenance walkway, the air cool and crisp against my skin. Somewhere above, machines hummed. Somewhere below, pipes rattled. Somewhere in the building behind me, Viktor was probably cracking jokes through clenched teeth while calculating how many screws were in his cell door.
I rubbed the grime off my palms and looked down the dimly lit tunnel stretching ahead.
There was no cavalry coming for me.
If I wanted Viktor back, if I wanted out, if I wanted to get to Kara and the Markovs and help Mikhail before ARCHEON boxed him in, I had to move fast.
Which meant I needed help.
I needed Andrei.
Again.
God willing, we’d get through it without getting shot at this time.
But that was probably unlikely.
CHAPTER 4
Southern China, present day
Andrei Dragunov
