Page 32 of Property of the Bikers

And when it’s done, what’s true in practice will be true on record, and Viktor Sokolov’s custody paperwork will have the same relationship to this compound’s decisions as the weather does, which is that it exists somewhere out there and we note it, and we don’t adjust our position based on it.

I look at the window. Through the glass, the compound runs its Monday night, the perimeter lights holding their line along the fence, the dark mountains sitting where they always sit.

The child in that parking lot in Billings would be twelve years old now.

I don’t know where he is.

I know where this one is.

That’s the difference.

Chapter Fifteen

MIRA

Jax doesn’t come on Tuesday morning, and Maya appears instead.

She arrives at half past eight with a plate, her accounts folder, and the settled energy of a woman who has somewhere to be after this and is allocating her time accordingly. She sets the food on the table, opens the folder across her knees, and starts reading, and we exist in the same space without either of us needing to fill it, which is one of the things I’ve come to appreciate about her.

I eat and look out the south window.

A prospect is moving between the workshop and the storage building, breath fogging in the cold. Two men stand at the gate in their regular positions, shifting their weight against the temperature. The mountains loom behind everything, white at the peaks now, so clear this morning that the ridgeline looks like it was cut with something sharp.

Eleven days.

I finish eating, push the plate aside, and pick up the gas station phone. Checking it has become a morning habit without me deciding to make it one. Doc’s messages, weather alerts, and the check-in confirmations that come through at thirty-minute intervals from whoever is on duty overnight.

I scroll through, and then I stop.

I open the browser.

I know I’m not supposed to do this. Reeve was specific about outside contact, about digital footprints, about the various ways a person can be located through the accounts they access and the servers those accounts live on.

I know all of that. I open the browser anyway, and I navigate to my personal email, the address I’ve had since university, the one I used for the translation work and the conference correspondence, and the personal life that existed before Seattle and Viktor, and a folder tied with a black ribbon.

I tell myself I’m checking for anything urgent.

I scroll past forty-three unread emails, and I’m about to close the browser when I see Dmitri’s name. Not once. Four times, on four different dates over the past eleven days, the most recent sent yesterday evening.

I look at the screen for a moment.

Then I open the first one.

Mira. I heard you left Viktor. I don’t know where you are. I just want to know you’re safe. Can you call me? Or email back. Just let me know you’re okay.

Dated the day after I left Seattle.

I read it twice. It sounds like a brother who is worried. It sounds genuine. I know Dmitri’s writing patterns. He’s always been like this, short sentences when he’s anxious, longer ones when he has time to think and isn’t.

I open the second email. Three days later.

Mira. I know you’re not going to respond. I know you’re angry with me, or scared, or both. I just need to know you’re alive. Viktor’s been asking questions, and I’ve been telling him nothing because I don’t know anything. That’s the truth. Please just tell me you’re safe.

I sit with that one.

Viktor’s been asking questions. Dmitri’s been saying nothing.

I open the third email. Five days after the second.