Page 53 of The Enforcer’s Pawn

Small, furious, starving, and hunted into a corner, Cara O’Connell finds one reckless spark and aims her mouth at the Pakhan. Every man in the office suddenly remembers he has hands.

Yuri freezes over his keyboard. Petrov stops with one paper half lifted. Leonid’s pen rests against the folder without making another mark. Abramov watches Maksim, since security chiefs survive by reading the man everyone else fears reading wrong.

Maksim gives Cara nothing.

His face stays composed. He says nothing, which makes her words sound even more reckless.

I look at Cara.

She sits in Yuri’s chair with her chin raised and her fingers near the locked Volkov laptop, trying to look difficult enough to survive.

Her color has gone wrong. Her mouth is brave, but her eyes have gone blank in a way I don’t like.

Then she lifts herself from the chair. Her hand finds the table.

Maksim looks at Cara, then at me. That’s all, and I understand it. He has seen the same thing I have.

Her fingers grip the chair. Her focus keeps slipping.

Maksim won’t warn her like a worried man. He gives the problem to me with one glance because in this house, even concern has rank.

I step closer to her chair. “Don’t stand.”

Cara hears the order and does exactly what I expect.

She stands.

“I’m fine,” she says, because women like Cara would argue with a bullet if it came in rudely.

It happens.

Her knees fail. One second, she is upright, and the next, her eyes lose focus. I catch her before her head can hit the floor.

The office breaks into movement around us. Abramov reaches the wall panel and presses the medical call. “Dr. Yelena to command. Now.”

Petrov clears the chair back. Leonid shuts the laptop with one hand and pulls the cords free with the other. Yuri stumbles aside, mumbling in Russian about nerves, shock, getting her head lower, and finding water. That word reaches me clean.

Water.

I lower Cara to the carpet. Her head rests against my forearm for one breath before I lay her flat. Her skin feels cold against my fingers.

“Water,” I snap.

Leonid brings a glass and hands it to me.

Lidiya appears first. Mrs. Wentworth arrives behind her with towels, her glasses swinging from their chain. She takes in Cara, me, Maksim, the open files, and the closed laptop in one sweep.

“She hasn’t eaten properly,” Mrs. Wentworth says.

“I know.”

Her eyes flick to me. She hears the part I didn’t mean to give away. I wet the corner of a towel and press it to Cara’s forehead. My hand shakes once before I make it stop.

Cara’s lashes move.

“Stay down,” I say.

Her eyes open halfway. “Did I die?”