Page 73 of The Pakhan’s Hidden Heir

“Bastian? Are you there?” he asks when I don’t respond. I’m still shaking myself awake.

“I’m here.” I drag my palm down my face. “Tell me you’re certain.”

“There’s a woman here in Moscow, a Lada Vasilieva. She’s a known associate of Ms. Volina and we put a tracer on her phone months after Ms. Volina left town. It hasn’t produced anything until this evening.” His voice ticks up a notch. “This evening she took a call off of a number out of Siberia and we believe it may have been to Ms. Volina.”

I jerk myself to a sitting position and rub my eyes with one hand as I ask, “Where?”

“A town called Asino, out past Tomsk. She’s been living as Elena Marsh this whole time. Someone got her fresh papers.” He waits a beat before he says, “I have the address in front of me right now. But there’s more, and you’re not going to like this part.”

“Say it,” I grumble, but I’m on my feet now, swaying with the last bit of alcohol still in my system as I move toward my dresser to get clean clothes. This is the first thing that’s actually gotten me out of bed like this in years.

“She took the boy into a clinic yesterday afternoon. He hurt his ankle jumping off a swing, it’s nothing, a sprain.” He stops long enough that the hair on my arm rises. “Bash, that clinic belongs to Petrov.”

Dread sinks into the pit of my stomach as I start to imagine all sorts of evil.

How cruel a fate it is for life to offer me hope that I may yet see my son and the woman I mourn again, then to snatch it away so quickly by revealing they may be in the hands of my worst enemy.

“Wake the pilot.”

“Bastian—”

“Wake the pilot, Grigor. Get Akim on the line, tell him to gather four men and everything in the locker.” I haul my drawer open and slide my hand under the socks where my pistol sits. “Do they have the house?”

I don’t know how much intel we have yet, but I need eyes and ears in that town to make sense of what’s happening.

If Petrov knows where she is, and he knows that Felix is my son, there’s no telling what hell he’ll put them through.

“I know nothing, sir. I just know they’re hours ahead of us.”

I hang up on Grigor and start sending texts to my men, and we’re off the ground and out of Moscow within forty minutes.

The hours are torture that no amount of whiskey could alleviate. Besides I need to be fresh, not drunk.

If Petrov or any of his men are around, I need to be able to defend Raina properly.

There’s a vehicle on the ground with the keys already in it. Then it’s an hour of road through pine and down dirt roads. The whole time my heart is beating out of my chest.

This is the only real lead we’ve had since she left, and if it isn’t her I’ll probably do something I later regret.

But I can’t sit back and do nothing, not when there is a chance of finding her and bringing her back to me.

Her street is two muddy ruts with a row of houses set back off them.

The ninth one along is the number Grigor sent us, and there’s a black Mercedes parked crossways at the mouth of the drive.

It appears I’m not the only one who’s attention has been snagged by that visit to the clinic and the following phone call.

Raina could afford a car like that, but I’m not foolish enough to believe that she’d draw that much attention to herself over a car. Not when she wanted to stay hidden from me.

Akim stops us short, and I’m out the door with my gun in my hand. The minute the lock disengages.

It’s too quiet.

The eerie sort of silence that haunts you in your sleep. I creep up to the door and glance around, seeing my men coming up behind me. Two of them circle around the back as I grip the handle and look over my shoulder.

“Ready?” I ask Akim and he nods. “On three. One… Two… Three…” I open the door and burst through, gun up and ready, and the men inside turn and glare at me, raising their guns.

They have her on her knees in the middle of her own kitchen floor. One of them stands over her with her hair wound around his fist, her head cranked back so far her throat’s pulled tight.