"Andrei," I say, my voice barely above a whisper.
He stops. Looks at me. Then at Ian, raising a questioning brow.
"She’s a part of this now," Ian says. The tone of it is not quite an apology and not quite an explanation.
Andrei's eyes come back to me. That flat, assessing look—the file being updated, new information being processed. Last time he saw me, I was a woman being held captive. Now I’m a woman in a garden in Japan at four in the morning who followed Ian outside in her pajamas because she refused to be left behind. Because the fear of not knowing is worse than any truth he could bring.
"Inside," Andrei says. One word. A decision.
We go inside.
9
RETH
Dear Sophia,
Forgive me.
Four words. Painted on the wall. In my blood. Then the poison takes me.
10
SOPHIA
Ian puts the kettle on with the automatic gesture of a man who needs something to do with his hands but then grabs two beers from the fridge. Andrei takes the beer and sits at the kitchen table. I sit across from him, and Ian glances my way, gives me a look, then grabs another beer, pops the cap, and places it in front of me.
Nobody speaks. The silence is suffocating, thick with everything unsaid, every terrible possibility I’ve been trying not to imagine for twenty-five days.
Finally, as he rolls his shoulders, Ian says, “Tell us, Andrei. All of it.”
Andrei's eyes find mine briefly. Hold.
I don't look away.
He nods once. Something that might, in another man, be the beginning of respect.
"Last confirmed contact was twenty-six days ago," he says. His accent is exactly as I remember it—flat, clipped,stripped of anything decorative. "He checked in. Said he was going to the estate." A pause. "To confront her."
Ian's hand on the counter tightens until the wood creaks. "Alone?"
"We offered a team. He refused." The residue of a lost argument in his voice. "Said it had always been him and her. Said bringing bodies in would tip her off before he could—" He stops. "He refused the team."
“Of course he did.” Ian stretches his arms, leaning his head down between them before cranking his neck, like he’s expecting the worst. “And after?”
"Nothing." Andrei's hands are flat and still. "We haven’t been able to contact him since.”
“Fuck,” Ian mutters, and my heart tries to claw up my throat, a wild, desperate thing battering against my ribs.
“We've been monitoring her channels, her people, the estate. No movement that suggests he got out." Andrei says it plainly, without softening. "If he'd gotten out, there would have been contact."
The kettle boils. Ian doesn't move to take it off. It screams quietly for a moment then clicks off on its own. The sound cuts through me like a knife, sharp and final.
“Something’s wrong,” Ian says, voice low. “He never goes this long without contacting at least one person on the team.”
Andrei nods, and I notice the way his expression falls. “There’s more.”
Ian stills, meets his gaze. “What?”
