Page 57 of The Last Dance

Lin followed, two steps behind, silent and observant, the way only a man who had lived his life cleaning up the mess of better men could be. He did not ask questions. He did not try to reassure me. He simply moved, matching my pace, cataloguing my failures as I made them.

I went back to the kitchen. The glass of water was still on the counter, but the condensation had evaporated. The book was still on the island, its spine facing me like a dare. I opened it to the page he’d marked. It was blank. He never left blanks.

I pressed the comm. “Yuri.”

He answered instantly. “Yes.”

“Iren is not in the house.”

A pause, just long enough for him to process the implications. “Are you certain?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll mobilize,” he said.

Lin met my eye, and in that look I saw the thing I did not want to name: the knowledge that sometimes, even the best defense is not enough. He said nothing.

I went to the front door, opened it, and listened. The estate was as quiet as it ever was. The only sound was the click of the lock behind me. I walked the drive. Found nothing. I walked back to the house.

Lin waited in the foyer, as if he had not moved at all. He said, “Shall I prepare the command room?”

“No,” I said. “Not yet.”

He watched me, waiting for the rest.

“Get every man out of bed,” I said. “No one sleeps until he is found.”

Lin bowed his head, a formality I had never seen before. Then he disappeared, silent and efficient, to carry out the order.

I stood in the center of the hall. For the first time in my life, I understood why men prayed to things that could not answer. Because the only thing worse than being alone is being alone and responsible. I went to the nearest window and looked out at the dark. I pressed my hands to the glass, left two perfect prints.

The night did not blink.

I turned and went to the command room. I did not pace, but the sound of my own heartbeat followed me all the way down.

I stood in the center of the command room, eyes fixed to the incident board, hands clasped behind my back, the muscles in my neck locked into a grid of tension that made it hard to swallow. I waited for the world to catch up.

It didn’t.

Yuri found me four minutes later. He did not knock, did not call ahead. He appeared in the doorway, suit impeccable, hair in place, expression a level above calm—so far above it that the only word left was vacant.

“Show me,” I said.

He crossed the room in three steps, tablet already unlocked, thumb scrolling to the right camera, the right time stamp. He handed it to me, steady as a surgeon.

The image was black and white, a grainy overhead of the east tree line. It was the same gap Iren had pointed out days before, the one I had reinforced with two more cameras and a motion sensor, but not before the original flaw had been mapped and filed by anyone who cared to know it. The time stamp at the bottom read: 7:07:14.

In the upper right corner, a shape: small, feminine, head uncovered. Sasha. Even in that lightless void, she moved as if every camera was a personal spotlight. Behind her: two men, both in civilian dress, one carrying a coil of rope or cable, the other something I could not ID at first glance.

They slipped through the tree line in silence, boots leaving no visible trace, and paused at the edge of the clearing. Sasha turned, gestured once, then all three moved as one to the side entrance, bypassing the tripwire alarm and slipping into the shadows at the edge of the staff kitchen.

The next segment picked up at 7:18:53. Eleven minutes later. The three shapes returned to the tree line, but now one of the men carried something over his shoulder—a dead weight, limbs loose, head slumped. I knew the shape of that body. I had mapped it a thousand times in my mind. It was not an abstraction.

The clip ended with the three vanishing into the trees, the ripple of motion barely enough to move the leaves. At 7:20:01, the feed went blank. No sign of pursuit. No sign of struggle.

Iren was gone.

I watched the footage once. I did not watch it again. I handed the tablet back to Yuri and looked him in the face. “Where are they now?”