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And the back of his vest says SWAT.
Quickly, I move back up the stairs, down the hallway, and drop my gun in Eve’s nightstand.
The last thing I need is to give the SWAT members a reason to shoot me.
I’ve just closed her nightstand drawer when I hear footsteps pound up the stairs and down the hallway.
I don’t have time to formulate a plan or what I’m going to say. I don’t have time to explain to Eve what is going on. For all she knows, we are being attacked by a rival mafia. I don’t have time for anything. By the time I look up from the nightstand, four men are moving in formation towards my bedroom, guns drawn. “Get down on the ground!”
Milaya is screaming in the other room, and I want to run in there and wrap my arms around her and her mother, but I lay face down on the floor.
“What is this about?” I yell over the wail of the alarm, but no one answers. “Who authorized this raid?”
They pull my arms behind my back and handcuff me. One of the men drives his knee hard into my spine.
“Is anyone else in the house?” her barks.
“My wife is unarmed,” I say immediately. “She has our infant daughter.”
They talk amongst themselves, but the words are lost in the chaos.
“What is this about?” I ask again. “Why are you here?”
Part of me wonders if this is an official raid or whether I’m being tricked by mafia members in SWAT gear. It would be an elaborate rouse, to be sure, but this feels too chaotic.
The alarms are blaring so loud my head is starting to hurt. “For the love of God, can I turn off the alarms?”
Two men drag me to my feet while two others go ahead to lead me down the hallway and the stairs.
“That is not our concern.”
* * *
Ilook into Milaya’s room as we pass her door, but I don’t see Eve in there. I don’t know if she has been taken, as well, or if they are in the safe room.
“On what grounds am I being taken in?” I ask as we walk outside away from the alarms and my head finally clears. “Where is my wife?”
The men roughly duck my head down and shove me into the backseat of an SUV. “You’ll have to talk with my supervisor.”
I continue asking questions for the duration of the short drive without any response until I’m finally let out of the backseat and led, handcuffed, into an all gray building.
The building is marked with signs denoting it as the official FBI headquarters, which offers a strange kind of comfort. It means, at the very least, that Eve isn’t being kidnapped and taken to some mafia clubhouse.
The very idea of it sends prickles of rage through me.
I’m led through a side door and down a long hallway with identical doors on either side. They walk the length of it—though, based on what I can tell, every single other room is empty—and deposit me in an interrogation room at the end of the hall.
Like the exterior of the building, the walls have been painted slate gray and the only furniture is a metal table and chairs bolted into the floor.
“What am I doing here?” I ask as one of the men unlocks my handcuffs.
“Waiting,” the man says, sliding the cuffs off and backing away towards the door.
I roll my wrists, easing the discomfort, and turn around. By the time I do, the metal door is already closing.
I walk towards it and try to look through the small window to see where the men are going, but it doesn’t offer enough of a view and the room is entirely soundproofed.
There is no clock on the wall or windows. Nothing by which I can tell that the outside world still exists at all.
