Page 97 of Essence of Fear

He would pay for this.

He already was.

Instead of hello, Konstantin said, “Every man to the Compound, now.”

He didn’t even ask who it was—not that he would have needed to if he looked at the caller ID and saw Pav’s number. Did he even do that?

“Konstantin—”

“No time to talk,” Konstantin barked back. “We’ve had two attacks tonight. Every man to the Compound before the hour is out.”

Pav swallowed hard. “They took Vik.”

Silence echoed.

And then, “What?”

“Viktoria. They took her.”

• • •

It was pandemonium.

Chaos mixed with rage.

Pav stood silent in the corner as words were hurled, and anger spilled between men. He watched them all, their faces unimportant to him as he went over each and every mistake he had made in his lifetime. Every second that led up to this moment right here. He didn’t need others throwing his errors in his face, when he was quite aware of how and why this happened.

He was sorry.

They didn’t care.

He got it.

He understood.

“We decided,” Kolya hurled at him. “The hotel was the safest place as long as she stayed there!”

‘Kolya,” the man’s wife whispered. “Calm down for a second and—”

“No, he fucked up.”

“But did he?” Konstantin asked. “The attacks—the ones on our homes and the one on the loft—seemed very deliberate, didn’t they? As though someone knew she would be in one place, or the other. It would have needed to be someone who knew she left the hotel because they would check.”

“Are you saying …”

“A man of ours, yes,” Konstantin said.

“It still wouldn’t have happened, had he just kept her there, then,” Kolya said harshly.

“Or they would have made a bigger mess when they went in on the hotel, Kolya. Think about it. It was made very clear during our attacks that this came from Boris, so he clearly has access to something or someone that is helping him. If not tonight, then it would have been another night.”

“Konstantin is right,” Amelia said from her position on a couch in Konstantin’s office. “And it won’t help for the rest of us to fight with one another like a hoard of snapping turtles. All that does is take away more time we could be out there looking for—”

“You will not be going anywhere,” Konstantin barked at his wife.

Amelia’s burning gaze met her husband’s. “I didn’t ask, did I?”

“I decided.”