“You need time,” I say. “You’re smart, but you’re not a god. You still move bodies, money, and data through roads I know. You still use people I trained. If I decide to go for you full force, I cut your speed in half inside a week. You know that. You built half those routes yourself. So take the time and take the win. You hurt me. You say it out loud. Fine. You still care about your own skin. Don’t pretend you don’t.”
There is silence. Then a low hum, like he leans in toward his microphone.
“You’re offering a ceasefire,” he says. “From the man who razed three warehouses in one night to make a point. I should record this.”
“You are recording already,” I say. “You record everything.”
He laughs under his breath. “True,” he says. “You’re right about one thing. I do need time. I woke you up sooner than I planned when I took your girl. I thought you’d break slower. Instead you started cutting faster. That complicates some pieces.”
I do not let myself react.
“So,” he says. “Here is my counter. I show you where she is. I give you a path. If you reach her in time, she lives. If you fail, shedies. I still get my proof that you bleed. I still get my show. In exchange, you don’t touch anything with my mark for seventy-two hours. No seizures. No executions. No quiet disappearances. Seventy-two hours of your hands off my lines. You swear it on that little girl’s head.”
My stomach twists. He knows exactly where to press.
“Swear it,” he says softly. “Or walk out of that pretty blue house and wonder which field holds Raina’s bones.”
I want to tear the box off the wall and crush it. Instead I breathe once, slowly.
“Seventy-two hours,” I say. “No moves on your known lines. No strikes on your people who are already planted. That is what you want?”
“Yes,” he says. “And if you think about moving through a third party, remember I have eyes everywhere. I will know.”
“You know a lot,” I say. “You still don’t know how far I will go if she dies.”
“That’s exactly what I want to find out,” he murmurs. “But not today. Today I feel… generous.”
The word tastes bad.
“I swear,” I say. The words scrape my throat. “For seventy-two hours, I only move to protect my own house. I will not walk into your lines. I will not hunt your people. You have my word. Now show me where she is.”
A long breath comes through the speaker. Then a small click. A side panel on the box pops open. Kirill jumps back.
Inside the panel sits a small screen and a thin tablet. The screen blinks to life on its own. Static fills it for a second, then clears.
Raina appears on the screen.
She is not in the blue cottage. She sits in a metal chair in a smaller room. Her wrists are bound behind her with tape or rope. A strip of tape lies loose around one wrist, so she fought. Her head is tipped forward. Her hair falls over her face. She looks limp, but I see the faint rise and fall of her chest. She is alive.
The room around her has concrete walls. A low ceiling. A single small window high on one side with three metal bars across it. I hear a low, steady sound. Water moving through pipes.
At her feet, fixed to the floor, sits a black device with wires. A small digital timer on its face shows 04:59. The numbers change. 04:58.
The breath leaves my lungs.
“Bomb,” Kirill says in a low voice. “Homemade or military, I can’t tell from this feed. But that timer is real.”
Ilya’s voice comes from the box again, lighter now.
“Four minutes and some seconds,” he says. “Plenty of time for a strong man who knows his own ground. Too little for a man who doubts.”
“Where is this room?” I snap. “Tell me exactly.”
He chuckles. “You already know,” he says. “Listen. Water on both sides. Stone around. Narrow door with a rusty lock. It used to belong to the Baranovs. They used it to store cases of vodka and more delicate cargo in winter. You thought it was boring.You never noticed the good things. You always let me study while you walked ahead.”
My mind races. Stone room. Water noise. Old store space. Near a dam.
“The pump house,” I say.
