Page 41

“The last signal was a twist.” Anika deleted the first three letters. “Only the final three count.”

The concealed warning remained on the screen: DO NOT COME. THEY HAVE MY SON.

Maksim read it twice. “Whose son?”

“Hers.” Anika touched the first-person pronoun on the screen. “That was one of our rules. My always belonged to the twin sending the message, no matter who she pretended to quote.” Her voice cracked. “Alina has a son.”

The meeting had stopped being a simple trap. Someone was forcing Alina to use the money and her sister because they held a child Anika hadn’t known existed.

“Then the casino waits.” Maksim ran a hand through his hair, as devastated as the rest of us to discover Alina’s secret. “We identify the boy first.”

Anika turned on him. “We don’t abandon her because the plan changed.”

“We won’t.” He came around the desk and crouched in front of her. “If they have her child, storming the place could get both of them killed. We learn who he is and where Sokolov keeps him. Then we rescue him.”

Kirill crouched on the other side of Anika’s chair. “Did she ever mention a child? A pregnancy? Anyone she protected more than herself?”

“No.” Anika pressed both hands against her forehead. “She disappeared for weeks sometimes, but that was Alina. She always had another crisis, another man, another reason I wasn’t allowed to ask questions.” Her hands dropped. “A son isn’t a secret you forget to mention.”

“No,” I agreed. “It’s a secret someone forces you to keep.”

Anika stared at Alina’s frozen face while the countdown continued on the second monitor. “I didn’t know. She let me believe I knew every terrible secret she had, and I didn’t know my sister had a son. I’m going to the casino. We might learn something there, and I refuse to be the reason her son is in any more danger.”

19

KIRILL

The photograph of Mikhail Petrov appeared on Roman’s third monitor and I almost gave in and sagged with relief. I didn’t, but the urge lowered my shoulders and pushed a small puff of air past my lips.

I’d spent six hours threatening men who owed me favors, being somewhat polite to men who didn’t, and discovering that hospitals cared more about privacy laws than keeping their employees alive. I’d done all this while multiple computer programs I’d created did what they did best, which was scour hospital records for falsified information.

“Found him.” I pushed away from the computer screen, letting Anika and the others see my progress. “Once I found the record of his birth, the rest fell into place. This is the most recent image.”

Mikhail stood beside a severe woman on the steps of a private school, small hands wrapped around the straps of a blue backpack. Dark brown hair fell over his forehead, and the solemn expression on his small face belonged on a man reviewing casualty reports rather than a five-year-old waiting for school.

The image reminded me of Nora standing in her pajamas with a box of bandages. She’d inspected our injuries because no adult had taught her to be afraid of us yet. Mikhail had already learned the opposite lesson. His gaze tracked the armed man near the school entrance, and his small body angled away.

Five years old. He should have been worried about losing crayons and whether breakfast contained enough syrup. Instead, someone had taught him surveillance before he could tie his shoes.

Anika leaned over my shoulder. “He has Alina’s eyes.”

She touched the screen before catching herself and pulling her hand back. The motion carved a hollow space behind my ribs. Anika had learned her twin was a mother hours ago. Now she was meeting her nephew through surveillance photographs taken by strangers.

If she was anything like me, she needed information. So I gave her everything I could by bringing up the registration. “Mikhail Petrovanish. Born five years ago on August twenty-first. His current guardian is listed as Ekaterina Sokolova. They changed his last name enough to make him difficult to find, and this woman presents as his mother.” I tapped the keys and studied the image.

“Iosif’s sister.” Maksim stood at the window with both hands clasped behind his back. Dawn had begun turning the glass from black to gray, outlining him against the armed patrols outside. “She has no children.”

Anika sank into Roman’s chair. “The masquerade was September tenth.”

“He was less than three weeks old.” I studied the photograph again. The boy’s shoes were polished, his clothes expensive, and a man with a shoulder holster waited near the school entrance. “Did Alina disappear before the ball?”

Anika worried the silver ring on her finger. “She vanished for most of August. When she came back, she claimed she’d been on a yacht with a man whose name she refused to tell me. She’d lost weight and kept wincing when she sat down.” Her face crumpled before anger pulled it together again. “I thought she’d had some horrible vacation romance. She had a baby and never told me. How could I have missed this?”

I crouched in front of her, resting my hands on the chair instead of touching her. “You believed what she worked very hard to make you believe.”

“Stop making reasonable points. I’m trying to be furious.” Her chin trembled, and she gripped her hands so tightly together the knuckles went white, then red. “I need to be furious with her, and with myself. It’s complicated.” She sniffed a watery sound and blinked rapidly. “She was sick a lot and more frightened than usual. I thought it was just another of her games. I should’ve tried harder to get her to talk.”

Sighing, I patted her hands, unwilling to leave her without any comfort. “I have tremendous faith in your abilities, Anika. Be angry and sad and everything else, but do not blame yourself.”