Page 161 of Marrying the Savage

I don’t raise my voice. I don’t need to.

The men in the room become still in a way that tells me they know exactly how close we all are to something irreversible.

I turn to Nikolai. “Seal the building.”

“Already sealing it.”

“Mikhail?”

“Two minutes out,” Nikolai says.

“Make it one.”

I walk toward the side corridor, stepping over glass, blood, and torn fabric. My wounded arm throbs beneath my sleeve, but pain is irrelevant now. The corridor is empty. The service door at the end is closed. There’s a scuff on the floor near the handle, black against polished stone, as if someone’s heel dragged hard.

My mouth goes dry.

I open the door. A narrow passage stretches beyond it, lit by harsh white lights. Storage rooms on the left. Service elevator at the far end. Rear exit beyond that. For one hopeful second, I thought she was hiding there. Sofia is nothing if not resourceful, but no, she isn’t here either.

Mikhail turns to the manager, who is trembling beside the counter. “CCTV.”

She points upstairs with one shaking hand. “Security room. Second floor. Back staircase.”

We move. The security room is small, overheated, and unorganized. A frightened guard sits in front of a bank of monitors, and Mikhail removes him from the chair by the shoulder before the man finishes saying he does not know what happened.

Nikolai takes the controls.

“Gallery feeds first,” I say.

He pulls them up. We watch the fight from above. Dmitri entering. His men drawing. Nikolai breaking one man’s hand. Me following Dmitri into the staff corridor. Marina dragging Sofia behind the fallen rack.

Then the camera angle loses her behind the coats.

“Next,” I say.

Nikolai switches to the side corridor. The feed shows the empty hallway for three seconds. Then Sofia hurriedly enters, one hand against the wall, hair loose, head turning back toward the gallery as if she’s checking whether anyone has followed. She reaches the service door.

Before she can open it, a man comes out from the storage room beside her. He clamps a hand over her mouth and grabs her around the waist.

A second man appears immediately, catching her when she kicks backward. She fights hard enough that one of them jerks in pain, and for a second she nearly twists free. Then the first man locks an arm around her throat and drags her into the storage room.

My hand closes around the back of the chair. The metal bends under my grip.

“Storage room feed,” I say.

“There isn’t one,” the security guard whispers.

Mikhail looks at him, and the man shuts up.

Nikolai switches to the service passage beyond the storage room. The door opens. The two men drag Sofia out between them. Her feet hit the floor twice. She kicks, claws at the wall, tries to hook her fingers around a metal shelf, but they tear her hand free and pull her toward the service elevator. And that’s where we lose her trail.

“Find my wife,” I say. “Tear the city down if you have to.”

23

SOFIA

For one wonderful, stupid second, I think I’ve escaped.