Page 6 of Captured By the Pakhan

I nod. Crossing my arms, trying to feign indifference. "Did you see any of their faces?"

"No."

"How many were there?"

"I don't know."

"Did they come in the front stair or the back?"

"I don't—" He stops. His hands have gone tight on the blanket and his voice rises in frustration. "I don't know. I don't know."

Stop, I yell at myself. He is not a witness. He is my son and I am standing over his bed at three in the morning demanding a statement.

This is what I do — this is what I have always done — I come into a room and the temperature drops and everything in it becomes something to be managed.

His mother used to say that.

"You should sleep," I say. Pivoting from interrogator to empathizer as best I can.

I stand there a moment longer, and then I turn for the door, leaving is the only thing I have ever been able to give him that he actually wants.

"Papa."

That stops me just shy of the doorway. He has not called me that in at least a year. I look back at him over my shoulder and wait for him to continue.

"Don't punish the woman."

The woman.

I assume he means the housekeeper I’d hired eight months ago on the strength of a childcare certification and four years of competitive judo. The woman I paid a great deal of money to stand between this boy and precisely what happened tonight. She was in this house, in the east wing while a federal team walked my son's corridor.

I’d already decided she would no longer be employed by me past dawn.

Something must move in my face, because Sergei's grip tightens on the blanket again.

"Please."

He rarely asks me for anything, the small tone in his voice pulls at my chest strings.

"If that is what you want," I hear myself say, "then she stays."

He lets go of the blanket.

I get out of the room before I can say anything else to him, and stand in the corridor with my hand flat against the wall for a moment. Steadying myself. Then I go down the stairs and head out across the wet grass to the cabin, and by the time I reach the door I feel myself again.

The cabin has one room and a generator and a tiny window. Andrei is inside with two others. And seated in the chair in the middle of the floor, wrists zip-tied behind the back rail, head down, is a figure in black tactical gear and a face cover.

Small. Slighter than I expected, even after reviewing the video footage.

“Is he awake?"

"If he isn’t he will be now," Andrei says, wringing his hands together. "Nothing on him. No ID. No phone, no wallet, no dog tags. Side arms a Glock 19, Colt LE6920."

“Hmmm,” I grumble. “FBI then.”

Andrei nods in agreement.

I pull a chair across and sit down in front of our prisoner, close enough that our knees would touch if either of us leaned forward.