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In the embrace of a man who is, in many ways, still my captor.
Plopping onto a bar stool next to Alina, I grab Nikolai’s phone and absentmindedly swipe across the screen again.
Yep, there it is, password requirement.
Whatever. I don’t even know why I want to get into it. What I really need is to speak to Nikolai, but I’m sure he’s got his hands full with Slava and navigating those tricky roads.
“Why do you keep doing that?” Alina asks as I swipe across the screen again. “Do you want to read his messages or something?”
I push the phone away. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.” What I want is Nikolai in bed next to me and Slava sleeping soundly down the hall, but neither is a possibility right now.
“Try 785418,” Alina says. At my startled glance, she explains, “I have a good memory for numbers, and I saw Nikolai put it in a couple of weeks back. He might’ve changed it by now, though.”
My fingers are already flying over the touchscreen. “I’m in!” I grin at her triumphantly. “We’re in.”
Then the implications hit me.
Alina has just helped me invade Nikolai’s privacy in a major way.
All of a sudden, I don’t feel right about this.
She must read it on my face. “He’s been glued to that thing for the past week,” she says, and I hear the frustration in her voice. “He hasn’t told me why, but it might have something to do with all the guards being placed on code red—and I don’t know about you, but if there’s a specific threat out there, I want to know what it is. I’m tired of being kept in the dark.”
Whereas I have willingly kept myself in the dark for weeks, again not even inquiring about the progression of our plans for Bransford.
My discomfort transforms into shame at my cowardice. Steeling myself, I hand the phone to Alina. “Here. You’d know better where to look.” I’ll apologize to Nikolai for invading his privacy once this crisis is past.
She nods, and I scoot toward her as her red-tipped fingers fly over the screen. The first place she goes is the inbox, where she rapidly scrolls through the subject lines, many of which are in Russian. Opening one message, she skims it, a tiny frown bisecting the space between her dark brows as her eyes move over the Russian text.
“Well?” I prompt when she closes out of the email and resumes scrolling through the inbox. “Anything?”
She looks up from the screen and blinks, as if she’s forgotten I’m there. “Not really.” Her voice is strange, though, tight and a little choked. So is the smile she directs my way as she adds, “Just the usual bullshit.”
“May I?” Not waiting for her reply, I snatch the phone back and skim the subject lines myself. My inability to read Russian is a serious hindrance, though, so I exit the inbox and check the texts instead. Nikolai uses an app I’ve never seen for that—encrypted, most likely—and most of those messages are in Russian as well.
So much for my grand hacking attempt.
I’m about to set the phone down when an icon in the upper left corner of the screen catches my attention. It’s one of only a few apps on this phone, and its prime location tells me it must be something Nikolai uses a lot.
Intrigued, I click on the icon—a tiny house—and a series of images, or rather videos, fills the screen. Each one is too small to see anything in detail, so I click on the one where I spot some movement.
Alina peers at the screen over my shoulder. “Is that—”
“This kitchen, yes.” In fact, I’m looking at the two of us sitting huddled over the phone. Frowning, I look up at the ceiling and over at the cabinets. The angle of the video suggests the cameras are high up and to the left of us, but no matter how hard I look, I don’t see them.
I close out of the kitchen feed and zoom in on another image, then all the rest in turn.
Living room.
Dining room.
Glass-walled terrace.
Laundry room.
Upstairs hallway.
Staircase.
Slava’s room.
My former room.
My heart hammers faster, an unpleasant tightness banding around my chest.
Sure enough, there it is, our bedroom.
“Is my room on there also?” Alina asks, her tone carefully level. She must not have known about the cameras either—and to think that just a moment ago, I felt bad for invading Nikolai’s privacy.
I return to the app home screen and carefully examine the collection of tiny camera views. “I don’t see it,” I tell Alina. “Here, take a look.”
She methodically goes through every feed. “None of my room,” she concludes, sounding relieved. “Nor of Pavel and Lyudmila’s. Which makes sense—it’s probably Pavel who installed the cameras. He’s good with security tech.”
“Installed when?” My best guess is this is an advanced version of a nanny cam, something Nikolai implemented when he decided to place the ad for a tutor. If so, the cameras would’ve been installed either shortly before or shortly after my arrival, when I was still a stranger and thus not to be trusted with Slava. Although why our bedroom, originally Nikolai’s bedroom, would be wired as well is a mys—
