“Already looking,” he says in my ear. “No live signals from this node now. He cut off.”
I put the hair tie in my pocket and walk back to the table. The laptop looks cheap. Generic. I open it carefully.
The screen shows a blank login field. No helpful feed. No message.
“Take it,” I say. “We try to lift from the drive later.”
Kirill slides it into a bag.
On the chair I see a small dent in the cushion, like someone sat here not long ago. I check the floor. There are marks near the door. Boot prints. One larger, one smaller. A drag where a foot slipped.
“He moved her,” I say quietly. “We are late.”
Something beeps softly.
All of us freeze.
The sound comes from the small shelf by the bed. A black box sits there, no bigger than my hand. A red light glows on its face. As we watch, it flashes.
“Motion sensor,” Kirill says.
It beeps again. The red light shifts to green.
Then a tiny speaker on the box crackles to life.
“Welcome,Seryozha,” a familiar voice says, clear and calm. The sound fills the room.
My spine goes rigid.
The men look at me. They hear only the distorted edge. I hear something else under it. The cadence. The way certain consonants hit.
I know this voice. I heard it on a winter night years ago when we shared cheap vodka and dreams on a broken bench behind our old building. I heard it in a dark stairwell when he begged me for a bigger cut. I heard it full of anger when I told him no.
Only one person ever called meSeryozhain that exact way. Not my mother. Not my aunt. Not my crew.
The box crackles again.
“You always were good at following crumbs,” the Courier says. “Too bad you never learned to share.”
My hand closes into a fist.
Now I know which ghost I am hunting.
21
SERGEI
The box on the shelf crackles again.
“You always were good at following crumbs,” the Courier says. “Too bad you never learned to share.”
My men glance at each other. They hear a distorted voice. I hear more. I hear a boy from my old block, grown into this cold stranger. I hear years I thought were buried.
I step closer to the box. My throat feels tight, but my voice comes out flat.
“Hello, Ilya,” I say.
The room goes very quiet. Kirill looks at me fast. Oleg’s grip tightens on his rifle.
