I don't answer. I don't need reassurance. I need a location.
My phone rings again.
Same number. Same burner.
I answer. This time I don't speak. I wait.
Three seconds. Four.
"Kolya." Viktor's voice comes through warm and unhurried, the voice of a man calling his nephew on a Monday morning. "I think it's time we talked."
I press my back against the wall. I close my eyes. I let every part of me go still except for the part that is listening, truly listening, to everything underneath his words.
"I'm listening, Uncle."
"Good." A pause. The clink of glass. He's drinking. He wants me to hear him drinking, to know that wherever he is, he's comfortable. Settled. In control. "I want you to know that she is safe. She is comfortable. She has not been harmed."
"Put her on." My voice is flat, but rage threatens to coat my words and I have to physically work to keep it far away from this conversation.
"Not yet. First, we talk."
"There is nothing to talk about until I hear her voice."
Silence. I hear him breathing. Measured, calm. Then, further away, a sound. A door opening. Footsteps on concrete. A chair scraping.
Then her voice.
"Nick."
One word. My name in her mouth. My chest cracks along a fault line I didn't know was there.
"Sadie." I keep my voice even. I keep everything in me pressed down flat so that what she hears is steady and certain. "Are you hurt?"
"No." A pause. "My insulin."
"I know. I'm coming."
Viktor's voice replaces hers. "You see," he says. "Safe and comfortable. As I said."
"She needs her insulin, Viktor."
"And she'll have it. As soon as we come to an understanding."
My hand tightens on the phone. Dmitri is watching me from across the hall. I hold up one finger. He nods and pulls out his own phone, silent, already working on tracing the call.
"What understanding?" I ask. I keep the question flat. Give him room to talk. The more he talks, the more he gives me.
"A simple one. The kind your father would have appreciated." Another clink. Another sip. "You step aside, Kolya. Publicly. You announce that the succession was premature, that the family needs experienced leadership during the transition, that you're deferring to your uncle out of respect for tradition. You do this quietly, with dignity, and the girl comes home within the hour."
"And if I don't?"
His voice drops half a register. The warmth thins. "Then there will be no more conversation."
The line goes dead.
I lower the phone.
Dmitri crosses the hall in three strides. "The call bounced through two relays. I couldn't get a fix, but the signal strength suggests he's within a twenty-mile radius. North of the city."
