I stand there for one hard second, breathing fast, and feel anger settle in properly.
By the time I get back to the house, Sergei Markov has arrived.
He must have been called the moment the first shot hit. He’s striding across the lawn path with two of his men behind him and murder on his face. He sees me coming in from the side path and his expression gets even harder.
“What happened?”
“Someone got inside your perimeter and opened fire on lunch,” I say.
He frowns. “That’s not possible.”
“And yet, it’s what happened,” I shoot back at him.
His men spread out at once. One moves toward the lawn. Another checks the wall line. Useless now, but they need to be seen doing something.
Sergei looks past me toward the shattered table. “My grandchildren were here.”
“Yes,” I say. “They were.”
He hears the meaning in that and doesn’t like it. Neither do I.
Because there was a security lapse, yes. That much is obvious. But something under it doesn’t sit right. A Markov compound is not a pier restaurant. You don’t just wander into a house like this with a rifle and a guess.
I don’t say it. Not yet.
But the thought is there.Who could get a shot off inside the Markov compound unless Markov security let them?
Sergei’s jaw tightens. “You have something to say?”
“No,” I tell him. “Not until I know whether your men are incompetent or disloyal.”
That gets a real reaction.
One of his guards takes a step forward. Sergei lifts a hand and stops him without taking his eyes off me.
Then he says, very softly, “Careful.”
I’m about to answer when Mikhail arrives. He moves quickly, takes in the broken glass, the overturned chairs, the spread of food and dirt across the lawn, and comes straight to me.
“You all right?”
“Yes.”
“The children?”
“Alive.”
Mikhail nods once and immediately starts doing what Markov’s men should already have done properly. Angles, lines, shell casings, likely entry and exit points, wall height, gate access, roofsight. I join him because I trust my own eyes more than Sergei’s people.
We find very little.
That bothers me more than finding nothing would have.
Two shell casings near the west hedge. Cheap rifle ammo. Nothing professional. A scuffed patch by the service path where someone pivoted hard before running. No blood. No dropped gear. No obvious entry wound in the wall, which means they likely came through a gate or were already inside the grounds before they fired.
Mikhail crouches near the west hedge, glances once toward the lunch table, then back at the line of sight.
“It’s obvious who they were shooting at,” he says quietly.
