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He wrapped his arm around my waist to keep me from moving forward. “Just hold on and be quiet.”
We waited for a breathless second, listening for any slight sound, but everything was silent. Not even the scuttle of a cockroach or rat.
“No one’s here,” he said.
“He could be unconscious.” I broke free and hurried forward into the dark corners of the basement.
With yet another sigh, Mikhail followed me, flashing the light in all directions but only showing bare walls and dusty floors.
“Leo?” I called in a low voice, then again a bit louder. His name echoed back to me, but it seemed like Mikhail was right.
“Look,” he said, a few feet away from me.
He cast the light to the floor to reflect off a damp stain. The entire place had various damp stains, but this one chilled me to the bone. Blood, not old and dried up. Freshly spilled. As he moved the beam of light along the floor, I could see it was an alarmingly large stain.
“He was here,” I said. “But where is he now?”
His flashlight beam continued to dance along the floor, and he swept it back and forth, seeming to follow something. “There are spatters,” he said. “Leading this way. Damn it, this place is so filthy we didn’t notice.”
He took my hand and tugged me back toward the stairs, taking them two at a time. We had to shield our eyes from the blast of brightness at the top, but after a second, he leaned over, ambling and looking for more of a trail.
“There’s none by the front door,” Mikhail said, moving slowly down the hall, back toward the offices.
I followed suit and began peering carefully at the floor in the main lobby and found a few drops by the emergency stairwell leading up. I shouted excitedly, and he came running.
“The stairs might be dangerous,” he said, not a lick of hope in his eyes that I would volunteer to return to the parking lot with the guards.
“Let’s be careful, then,” I said, heading into the stairwell.
The stairs were sturdy, just crowded with litter. Empty cans and smashed bottles, moldy fast food wrappers, and cigarette butts were the only things inhibiting our ascent. None of it looked recent. Even the squatters had long given up on this derelict building, making it the perfect spot to indulge in a bit of torture. Or hide… No, I wasn’t thinking like that. I’d become paralyzed if I thought that way.
Every few feet, one of us spotted more blood drops, so we kept moving up. On the third floor, another short stairway led to the roof. Pausing at the metal door, Mikhail pulled out his gun. Then we both jumped when his phone rang. He swore, pulling it out to silence it.
“It’s Andre,” he said, answering it. “What?” After a short pause, while he listened, his eyes grew round. “What!? Yes, we’re at the roof level now. Jesus Christ.”
It was killing me only hearing half of the conversation, and the look on his face as he listened to whatever his guard told him didn’t bode well. He ended the call and gave me a long look.
“There’s something on the roof,” he said.
“Yeah, no shit.”
He shook his head. “You need to get back downstairs and stay with the men.”
I tried to push past him, panic fueling me to get through that door. “No way,” I said, my voice coming out a squeak.
He gripped my shoulders. “Evelina, let me take care of this. You need to use your head right now, not your heart.”
For a flash, I wondered if this was why he pulled away from me on the drive over. I had to get my mind right, stop being a mess of emotions. “You can go first, but I’m not going back downstairs.”
“Get your gun up and stay behind me,” he ordered, all business as he turned to crack open the door.
No one jumped him, so he pushed it open far enough to get through. I followed, and having seen a movie or two in my lifetime, I propped open the roof access door with one of the many bottles lying everywhere so we wouldn’t be stuck up there.
“Fuck,” he muttered as soon as he was around the door.
Fear kept me rooted to the spot, but only for a blink. Then I moved to his side. “Leo,” I shrieked, making Mikhail slap his hand over my mouth, the other around my middle to keep me from leaping forward.
Leo was still in the chair from the video, still slumped over. Unconscious, only unconscious. But the chair was at the very edge of the building, teetering over the side in a bizarre, alarming manner, seeming to defy gravity. I struggled to get free to race over and jerk my brother back to safety. The building wasn’t a highrise, but a thirty-foot drop in his condition would end him.
