I open my eyes and turn. The laptop waits on the table with its clean, black screen and white symbol. Nadia’s sleeping form still glows in the small corner.
“You want my answer now,” I say.
“Yes,” he says. “You decide if you stand in front of Sergei and take the blow with him, or if you step aside and help guide where it lands. You decide if your daughter grows up in a house that is always under siege or if she grows up in a house that has learned how to disappear from fire.”
My legs feel both heavy and restless. I walk back to the table and sit. I place my hands flat on the wood so he won’t see them shake. My throat is dry again. I swallow and taste salt from earlier tears I didn’t notice.
He waits. I can feel his attention through the wire. Patient. Focused. Certain that he has set the board in his favor.
I look at Nadia’s image one more time. Her hand twitches in her sleep. She pulls the bear closer to her chest.
I draw a breath that feels too big for my ribs and lean toward the laptop.
18
RAINA
“Ichoose,” I say, and my voice sounds strange in my own ears. “But if I’m going to work with you, I deserve your truth. I deserve to know where I am.”
The line on the screen flickers once, then steadies. For a moment he does not speak. I imagine his hands on a keyboard somewhere, his eyes on my face, trying to decide how much to give.
“You’re safe,” he says at last. “That’s what matters.”
“That’s what matters to you,” I answer. “For me, it matters that I know where my body is when I close my eyes. It matters that if I die here, I know which ground takes me. You want my mind clear. Then give it something solid to stand on.”
There is a small pause. The camera field stays black. Only his voice comes through.
“You’re far from the city,” he says. “Far enough that your husband can’t reach you in an hour, even if he had a perfect map.You’re north of him. Past the ring roads and the main villages that cling to his routes.”
I picture maps in my head. The lines of the ring roads, the way they widen out. The routes we used for shipments, the ones we cut, the ones we never touched.
“Forest?” I ask. “Field? Coast?”
“Forest and water,” he says. “Old country. Old stories. The kind of place city men forget until they need a quiet house for hunting or hiding.”
My pulse jumps. There are only so many belts of forest and water north of Moscow that fit that description, and only some of those ever had strong enough connections to host a house like this.
“Which river?” I ask.
“You know better than to expect a name,” he says. “But you can guess. Thin river. Narrow lake. Old dam that no one maintains anymore. The road in is bad in winter and worse in spring.”
I let that sink in. The room around me feels sharper now. The painted wood, the stove, the window. I think through the list in my head. I know which of Sergei’s enemies held properties in those places. I know which of his own men used quiet cottages for rest or punishment. There is a patch of countryside that fits this too well.
“So I’m in one of the old cottage lines near a narrow lake,” I say. “North, not east or west. Not too close to the border, or you would have more patrol noise. Not too close to the big hunting estates, or someone would have seen something.”
I turn a slow circle in the room. The walls are paneled in painted wood, soft blue under the light. A carved frame hangs crookedly above the stove—a fox chasing a red sun.
My breath catches. I know this place.
I was here once, years ago, when the Baranovs still owned it. Sergei brought me on that trip because he wanted me to see the country he fought to control. I remember the narrow lake outside, half-frozen, the crooked birch by the path, the line of pines that leaned toward the water. The Baranov crest had the same fox and sun carved into every door. After their collapse, Sergei took the cottage deeds during cleanup, then forgot them.
So that’s where I am. One of the old Baranov cottages north of Klin, near the dam that always cracked in spring. The same road with three bridges, the last one half broken.
“You were always good with maps,” he says. “I knew you would enjoy the puzzle.”
“I don’t enjoy any of this,” I say. “But I need to know where my head is. You gave me enough. I’ll fill in the rest.”
He lets that go. He knows I will keep turning it over until I fix the shape.
