Page 27 of Captured By the Pakhan

I watch my son. Four years. Four years of the room going quiet when I enter it, a child who I have kept alive and secret and entirely alone, and it takes eleven days and a woman I caught burglarizing my house to bring back the life in him.

I owe her something for this, I think.

By nine he is fading. He argues about it, which is new. Ultimately he loses, and Raven takes him up to bed.

I stay in the kitchen and wash a pan by hand that could go in the washing machine, because it is something to do with my hands while I think. When she comes back down twenty minutes later I am still standing there with the water running.

"He's out." She stops in the doorway, leaning against the frame.

"Good."

"He wants to make it again tomorrow. With less pepper this time. He was very clear about the pepper."

"There will definitely be less pepper."

She nods. Then moves as if she is about to go and I hear the words fall from my mouth before I’ve fully thought them out.

"Have a drink with me."

She stops. I stand in my kitchen with a wet pan in my hands and understand, several seconds too late, that I didn’t ask her to come to my office to discuss her employment.

"It's about the job," I add. “There’s whiskey in the office.”

"Sure it is," she says, then goes to get the whiskey.

Chapter 8

Raven

Yaroslav Estate, 9:40 PM

His office is the one room in this house that tells the truth about him. Everywhere else is cedar and stone and a decorator's idea of a family. This is dark wood with no photographs and a desk the size of a dining table. One wall of is lined with books that have all actually been read judging by the spine wear, and theres a single chair on the visitor's side positioned about a foot further back than it needs to be.

I pull it forward, sit in it, and put my feet up on the corner of his desk, making myself at home. It's been a night, he can deal.

He notices. But he doesn't say anything about it.

"What’s your preference? Whiskey? Gin?"

"Whatever's open."

He pours two tumblers of dark liquor and hands me one before sitting down on the edge of the desk rather than behind it. Which puts him about four feet away and above me, I move my feet and sit up properly. Hating that I move on instinct alone.

"Tell me how it is going." He instructs. “You’ve been here a week.”

"You want the version I'd give a supervisor or the honest one?"

"I have a policy against lies and fluff. Give me the honest version."

I turn the glass around in my hand, fidgeting with it. "I'm bad at this. Not the security piece — that’s all fine, your perimeter's better than most federal buildings and your indoor coverage has four gaps I'd have informed you of on day one if anyone had asked my opinion on it.”

I glance up at him over the brim of the tumbler as I take a sip before finishing. “It’s the rest of it. He's ten but yet, he isn’t. He’s too smart for his own good, he challenges me at every turn, and yet, I enjoy his company. But I have no instincts for this. Hell, I gave him tradecraft advice when he came to see me in the cabin."

"I’d argue that you have better instincts than you give yourself credit for.” He pauses for a moment, sipping on his own glass. “Anyway, I didn’t hire your instincts?”

"Then why did you hire me?"

"Because, for reasons unknown you risked your own life for my boy. And I’m willing to bet you’d do it again. You did actually, when you came back across that lawn. You didn’t know what the repurcussions of your attempt to leave would be, and yet here you are.”