Page 34 of Captured By the Pakhan

He thinks about it for a genuinely long time, the way he thinks about everything.

"Loud," he decides. "But not the bad kind."

Ilya leaves for the city at eleven and doesn't say goodbye to me, which I notice, and I'm annoyed at myself for noticing.

The tablet is at 2:40 in the afternoon.

Karina, propped against the coffee machine, screen up, unlocked because she's been checking a delivery schedule and has stepped into the pantry for what will be somewhere between forty and ninety seconds.

I don't hesitate. Hesitation is what gets people caught.

Message app, new thread, and I've got Foster's cell memorized the way I've got about eleven numbers memorized, and my thumbs go:

RW ali

That's it. That's four characters, and I get four characters, because a hand closes around my wrist.

Andrei doesn't squeeze. That's the thing about him — the grip is exactly firm enough to stop the motion and not one ounce past it, and somehow that's worse than being hurt.

He takes the tablet out of my hand. Backs out of the app. Deletes the draft. Puts it back against the coffee machine at precisely the angle Karina left it, which means he clocked the angle on the way in.

Then he lets go of my wrist and stands there.

I don't apologize, because I'd do it again in nine seconds.

"Are you going to tell him?"

"No."

That lands wrong. That lands so wrong that I actually take a second to take it in.

"Why not?"

"Because he would not punish you," Andrei says, "and I would have to watch him not punish you, and I would then have to decide what I think about that." He straightens his cuff. "I do not wish to decide what I think about that yet."

"Andrei—"

"Next time I tell him." He's already walking. "There will be a next time. I know this. So does he."

Karina comes out of the pantry with a box of something, finds me standing alone in the kitchen with an untouched tablet, and asks if I want tea. I say yes, because what else is there.

The rest of the day is normal in a way I don't trust.

I'm learning about this house. It has a resting state that feels like an actual home — Sergei doing schoolwork at the kitchen table, Karina complaining about the light, dogs somewhere off east, bread in the oven — and every single time I relax into it I remember that four of the six men on this property are armed at all times. The man who owns it moves weapons in shipping containers and told me so over whiskey while I sat in his chair.

You are getting comfortable.

I run the fence line at four, alone, and Andrei lets me, which is its own piece of information.

Eight days ago that would have been unthinkable. Eight days ago, he was four steps behind me at all times and told me as much, like a looming threat. Now I walk out the door, and he watches me go from the terrace with a cup of coffee, and the leash has gotten longer without anybody announcing it, and I don't know whether that's trust or a better cage.

The seam is gone.

I check it properly because I owe myself that much. Grigor now walks the shed at random intervals, and he walks it with a second man, and neither of them stops in the lee of the building, and there are two fresh cigarette ends thirty feet further out in a place with a clean line of sight to the north face. Somebody had a conversation with him about where he's allowed to stand.

The north camera bank has been reseeded. I can tell because the sweep no longer repeats itself at the hour — I lay in the dark for two nights confirming that, which is a thing I did before I stopped to ask myself why I was still confirming it.

And there's a new pole at the top of the north slope with a housing on it that wasn't there Tuesday, covering the exact two hundred meters of open lawn I crossed at 1:52 in the morning.