“Sure,” I said, perfectly agreeable.
He came in close. His pistol hung at his thigh, safety on because they get lazy with safeties when they think the room is theirs. The runner hung back a step, watching my hands instead of my eyes. Good training. The third man said nothing.
The lifter reached for my shoulder. I angled my neck down. I could have given in to the urge to aim for his groin, fold him like a bad suit, and watch the color leave his face. My right knee trembled with the promise of it.
Don’t. Be smarter than that.
His hand touched my shoulder. I moved then. My left elbow flared into his wrist, displacing the grip, my right palm slid up with the spring and hit his carotid, and my knee went not to his center, but to his thigh, a deaden-not-destroy strike that made his leg forget how to stand. He dropped, stunned, and I rolled with him, turning my back to the runner to wrap the spring once around his neck and squeeze just enough to send a message.
The runner lunged; I pivoted. The third man at the door drew his weapon but couldn’t fire without shooting his friend, and in that beautiful half-second of hesitation, I shoved the lifter sideways, kicked the aluminum plate up with a swipe of my foot, and winged it toward the camera lens. It struck with a hiss of static and shattered the lens into pieces.
It wasn’t freedom. Not yet. But it was a crack. And you give me a crack, I’ll carve myself a door.
“Enough,” a voice said from the hall.
Calm. Bored. A bit too posh.
The commander had arrived early after all.
I looked up as he stepped into the frame of the doorway, immaculate in a suit that probably cost more than a small house, eyes cold as the inside of a morgue. He scanned the scene and didn’t bother to hide his contempt or his satisfaction at my current situation.
“Mr. Dragunov,” he said lightly, like we’d just met for drinks. “We need to have a conversation about your family’s understanding of the word agreement.”
I smiled the way a wolf smiles when it’s tired of playing the dog. “We need to have a conversation about your understanding of the word guest.”
His mouth made a shape that wasn’t a smile. “Stand.”
“Make me,” I grinned.
“Oh,” he said softly. “I intend to.”
I stood anyway, not because he told me to, but because I do my best work on my feet.
“Start talking, Mr. Dragunov,” the suit said again, softer now, savoring his position of power.
I tilted my head, let my gaze drift past him as if I were bored with his face and interested in the paint on the far wall. “Maybe we don’t need to talk,” I mumbled, more to myself than to him. “Maybe you didn’t get all of us.” I let the words trail off, like I’d meant him not to hear. “But I’m sure you got Katya too, didn’t you?”
He didn’t blink, but his shoulders shifted half a centimeter. It was a tiny tell that had big meaning. A smirk played at the edges of my lips, but I quelled it almost immediately.
The suit’s smile didn’t move. “We have what we need,” he replied in a bored tone.
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I don’t answer questions, Mr. Dragunov; I ask them.”
“You should try it. Builds character.”
His eyes cooled. “What it builds is leverage, Mr. Dragunov. Which you lack.” He let the sentence hang, studied me like a surgeon studies a chart before deciding where to start cutting.
I lowered my gaze to the floor and made a small show of it—chin down, breath through the nose, shoulders loose—like I was practicing surrender.
“Your elder brother,” he said casually, as if tired of humoring a child, “is unreachable.”
I wasn’t surprised. It was simply confirmation of what I already knew.
He went on, because men like him always do when they think they’ve won. “According to our intel, he went out of the country, so if you were hoping for a rescue from him, you’ll be waiting a long while.”
I smoothed my expression before it could betray me. Mikhail was off somewhere in London, meeting with ARCHEON’s director. I hadn’t expected him back yet. He probably didn’t even know Revenant was holding me prisoner at this point.
