Then I felt it. Thread-thin and barely there. A pulse so faint it was more memory than movement, tapping against my fingertip like a whisper.
She was alive.
My hand didn't move. Didn't adjust. Didn't telegraph the relief that would've sent me to the floor if I wasn't already on my knees. My fingers stayed exactly where they were, covering the evidence of her heartbeat, and when Viktor leaned in over my shoulder, what he saw was a body going still. What he saw was death.
Putting the back of his hand near her mouth, he checked her breathing and felt nothing. The drug was doing exactly what it was supposed to do.
He looked at her eyes. Pupils fixed. Unresponsive.
He straightened.
"It's done," he said.
There was something in his voice that I hadn't expected. Something almost gentle, like he was giving me permission to grieve. Like he understood that what had just happened in this room had cost me everything, and he was acknowledging the price without apologizing for demanding it.
I didn't look at him. I couldn't.
"I'll handle the body," I said. "And the building."
"The video?"
"You'll have it within the hour."
He nodded. Pulled another cigarette from his coat. Lit it. Took a long drag, the ember flaring orange in the dim warehouse light.
"You did what was necessary, Milo. Remember that."
I rose to my feet and said nothing.
He walked to the door, his footsteps fading until he reached the entrance. A few seconds later, a car door opened and closed. The engine started. The headlights swept across the warehouse windows as he pulled away.
The crunch of gravel grew fainter.
And fainter.
And then there was nothing but silence and the woman on the floor and me.
I didn't move for thirty seconds.
Then I crouched beside her body and picked up her limp hand, holding it in mine. I wanted to check her pulse again, make sure it was still there, but they were watching.
My vision blurred and I blinked hard and fast. "It's over," I whispered so the camera wouldn't pick it up. "It's over, little bird. And I'm here. I'm right here."
She didn't respond. She couldn't. The drugs had her down deep, somewhere below consciousness, somewhere below dreaming, in the dark space between life and death.
I gave myself ten more seconds. Ten seconds to kneel beside her and hold her hand against my mouth and breathe her in and fall apart.
Then I got to work.
Reaching into my inside jacket pocket, I found the remote for the video camera and paused the recording. Then I went out to my car and moved the substitute body from the trunk into the warehouse. Positioned her in the center of the room, rightnext to where Raven had fallen. She had the same general build. Same hair. It was enough to fool them from a distance.
Then I picked up Raven and carried her broken body out to my car. She weighed almost nothing. Or maybe she weighed everything. I held her against my chest with one arm under her knees and the other supporting her head, and her face rested against my shoulder, and the blood from her split cheek soaked into my shirt, and I walked through the night carrying the woman I'd broken.
I laid her in the backseat of the car. Carefully, this time. The way I should have done it hours ago. I positioned her on her side so she wouldn't choke if she vomited, and I grabbed a blanket and folded it under her head because the seat was cold and hard and she'd been on a concrete floor and the least I could do—the absolute fucking least—was give her something soft to rest on.
Last, I pulled another blanket over her that I always kept there. Even if the Russians found me on a traffic camera driving out of here, they wouldn't see anything strange.
Back inside, I knelt back down by the body with my back to the camera, moved her until she was lying exactly where Raven was, and unpaused the video recording. Then I got up and started taking care of the body.
