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He’s right within the hour.

The phone on my desk rings from a number I don’t recognize, and I let it ring twice before I answer, forcing my breathing into something even, something that won’t give away a single thing to whoever’s on the other end.

I glance once at Yuri, already stationed by the doorway with his laptop open, and give him a single nod before I lift the receiver, both of us fully aware of exactly what’s about to happen in the next few minutes.

“Artem Leonov.”

“I have something of yours.” The voice is unfamiliar.

“Who am I speaking with?”

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that she’s safe, comfortable, and will stay that way as long as you cooperate fully.” A pause, calculated, drawn out deliberately for effect. “Viktor wants specific things. Full withdrawal from the north shipping corridor. A stand-down on your operations through the port for the next six months. And a payment, to be discussed once the first two conditions are agreed to.”

I keep my voice level, giving him nothing. “That’s not how this works.”

“I’d think hard about how this works, given your current position.”

“I’m not negotiating the terms of my own operation with a man who won’t even give me his name.” I glance toward the doorway, where Yuri’s just appeared, phone pressed to his own ear, already tracking something on a laptop balanced against his forearm. He gives a small shake of his head. Not enough time yet. “You want this conversation to matter, put someone with actual authority on the line.”

“You’re not exactly positioned to make demands right now, given the circumstances.”

“I’m not making demands. Empty threats don’t move me, and neither does a man reading off a list someone else handed him.” I watch Yuri’s hand for any signal the trace has caught something. “Put Viktor on the phone if he wants this conversation to actually mean something.”

The voice hesitates, clearly not prepared for pushback rather than the panic he was probably expecting to hear on this end of the line. “I’ll relay that.”

“Do that.” I don’t raise my voice, don’t let a single note of the fear underneath the words leak through, keeping every syllable as level as I can manage. “And know this. Every hour she’s held is an hour I spend making your organization regret ever deciding this was worth the risk. That’s true whether we negotiate or not, and it stays true regardless of what Viktor decides to do next.”

The line goes dead before I can say anything further.

Yuri’s already moving toward me, laptop still in hand. “Got a partial trace. Not enough to pinpoint yet, but enough to narrow the search radius considerably. My people are cross-referencing it against known Sokolov properties now.”

“How long?”

“Hours, not days. We’ll have something solid before tonight.” His jaw sets, the same grim focus I’ve seen from him a hundred times before, though never quite this personal. “I’ve already got contacts moving on every warehouse, every safe house we know about tied to Viktor’s operation. Whatever resources you need pulled in, name them, and they’re yours.”

“All of them, every last one.” The words come out with a certainty that leaves no room for negotiation with me either. “Every asset, every contact, every favor I’ve ever been owed. I want every single one of them working this within the hour.”

“Already started.” Yuri’s already turning back toward the hallway, phone pressed to his ear again, barking coordinates to someone on the other end before he’s even fully out of the room and down the hall.

I move through the entire house fast after that, calls stacking up one after another, men mobilized from three different cities, contacts I haven’t spoken to in years pulled back into active use without hesitation.

The organization I’ve spent fifteen years building narrows down to a single purpose within the space of an afternoon, every piece of it redirected toward the same target.

I call in favors I swore I’d never call in, promises I made to men I’d rather not owe anything to ever again, and I don’t hesitate over a single one of them.

I don’t stop to feel any of it, not the fear still sitting cold in my chest, not the memory of Marek’s voice describing how hard she fought before they overwhelmed her outside that café.

There will be time for that later, once she’s home, once this is finished the only way it can end now.

I push the image of her fighting three men outside a café down somewhere I can’t afford to look at right now, filing it away with everything else I’ll have to sit with once this is over.

Right now, there’s only the work in front of me, and I intend to burn through every last resource I have until I find exactly where they’ve taken her.

34

HARPER

The first thing I do before my eyes even open is check my body, hands moving toward my stomach on instinct before I’m fully conscious enough to understand why.