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I cross the basement toward her.

“Viktoriya?”

She doesn’t respond. She just watches me with hollowed-out green eyes and holds the girl in her lap a little tighter.

I crouch down in front of her. Up close, she’s in worse shape than she looked from across the room. Based on her selfies, I was braced for a spoiled girl, torn open by fear and outrage. Her lips are cracked, swelling shadows her cheekbone, and there’s a bottomless vulnerability in her eyes.

“We need to go,” I say. “Right now. Can you stand?”

I reach for her, but she cringes away from me. The girl she’s protecting has dark, curly hair and a grayish complexion. I hesitate and then hold two fingers to the girl’s throat. Nothing. When I ease her eyelid back, her pupil is a tiny black pinpoint.

Overdose.

Nobody’s coming for this one. Whatever she was before this place, she didn’t deserve to end up dead on a basement floor. I file that away under somebody else’s problem and reach for the one I’m here to save.

“Viktoriya, I need you to—”

I hear a sound from the stairs.

In the next instant, I’m on my feet and facing the doorway with my gun raised. I fire two shots as the man comes through the doorway, and he goes down. A floating gang member. I must have missed him.

Viktoriya is still clutching the girl, but she’s staring in horror at the man crumpled at the bottom of the stairs.

I reach for her again.

“Viktoriya.” Firm now, because we’re out of time. “We need to move.”

She looks down at the girl in her arms with hollow eyes and shakes her head. “I can’t leave her.”

I will carry her out of here over my shoulder if I need to. Clients get pissy if their loved ones are returned to them with tales of manhandling and cruelty, but sometimes it’s the only way to ensure that they get them back at all, and that I get paid.

“She’s dead. Now get up.”

“She’s not dead.” Viktoriya clutches the girl tightly. “She was breathing just a moment ago.”

“She’s not breathing now. The men holding you gave her drugs, right? They gave her too much. Her heart stopped.”

I’ve seen overdoses before. I know what they look like at the point of no return, and this girl has the look. The bluish-gray complexion. The clammy skin. She’s not just unconscious. She’s gone.

“Try again.” She looks up at me, tears brimming in her green eyes. “Please. Check her pulse again.”

“She’s dead,” I say. “We need to—”

“She’s not dead!” Viktoriya shrieks.

“Chert tebya poberi,” I grind out. Devil take you.

Just to prove the point, I press two fingers to the girl’s throat once more. I’m going through the motions impatiently while glaring at Viktoriya, so it’s a shock when I feel it. Faint and thready and barely there, but unmistakable.

A heartbeat.

She sees it in my face, and her eyes light up. “You feel it, don’t you? She’s alive. You can save her.”

The pulse is so faint it will probably stop on its own in the next minute, and reviving an overdose victim in a dirty basement is not what I was paid for.

“Her name is Emily. Please.”

I bite back a curse.