Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73372 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 245(@300wpm)
Alexei's mind was doing what it always did: sorting, connecting, building the architecture of a threat. Lyon. A mid-level fence named Roux, found eighteen months ago. Prague. A retired SVR officer, found twelve months ago. Istanbul. A shipping magnate with Bratva ties, found six months ago. Each one dead in a chair. Each one with a letter they shouldn't have read.
And then Pavlov. In Saint Petersburg. In a townhouse. In a chair.
And Alexei had walked in and taken the letter from Kotov's evidence bag and unfolded it and read it.
"He knows who reads the letters," Alexei said. His voice was level. His pulse wasn't. "How?"
"We don't know yet. My theory is that each scene is monitored. A camera. A contact. Someone who reports back. But sir, there's more."
"Go on."
"The intervals are shrinking. Lyon to Prague was six months. Prague to Istanbul was six months. Istanbul to Saint Petersburg was four months. He's accelerating."
Alexei stood. The casino floor spread below him, bright and buzzing, a thousand people feeding coins into machines and not knowing the world had just rearranged itself.
"You're telling me I'm a target."
"I'm telling you that in every city, the person he selected is dead within four months." Kotov's voice was stripped. "And you read the Pavlov letter three days ago. If he's chosen you, sir, the clock is already running."
Three days. He'd read it three days ago, standing in a charred room in Saint Petersburg, and he'd felt nothing. No fear. No dread. Just the blankness where purpose used to be.
The blankness was gone now. Filled in. Shaped like a girl at a desk in a clinic three floors below him, answering intake forms and spilling coffee and not knowing that the man she'd given everything to had a death sentence in his pocket.
"What do we know about the killer?"
"Almost nothing. Male. European, probably Russian based on the letter's Cyrillic phrasing in the earlier scenes. Well-funded. The accelerant alone would cost more than a car. And sir, he's not doing this for money or territory. There's no financial motive in any of the kills. My profiler thinks it's—"
"A game."
Silence. "Yes, sir."
A game. A man was playing a game with corpses and letters and the people who read them, and Alexei had walked into the latest round without knowing the rules, and now the clock was running.
Four months. Maybe less, if the intervals kept shrinking.
He thought of Mia in the chair that morning, asleep, her foot hanging off the bed. He thought of her at the clinic, behind the intake desk, open and warm and visible to anyone who walked through the door.
He thought of a blond man leaning against her desk, making her laugh.
His blood went cold.
"Kotov. I need everything you have on every person who's entered Monaco in the last two weeks. Russians, Europeans, anyone with travel patterns that match the killer's timeline. I want names, photos, and backgrounds on my desk by tonight."
"That's thousands of people, sir."
"Then start now."
He hung up. His hand was on the desk, and it was trembling, and the tremor was different from the ones Mia noticed. This wasn't want or surrender or the loss of composure. This was tactical. This was the vibration of a machine recalibrating, the gears engaging, the engine of the man he'd been for twenty-two years roaring back to life.
But the engine had a new fuel now. Not vengeance. Not purpose. Something hotter and more dangerous than both.
Her.
Someone was playing a game with the people who read the letters. Alexei had read the letter. Alexei was a target. And Mia was in his orbit, in his home, in his life, visible and unprotected and laughing behind a desk three floors below the man who wanted to kill him.
He pulled his phone from his jacket. His fingers moved before his brain could intervene.
Come home early today.
He hit Send. Then he turned the phone face-down and breathed.
Mia's reply came in thirty seconds.
Everything okay?
And underneath it, a second message:
Also, you sat in my chair for four hours. We're talking about that later. Just so you know.
His mouth twitched. The first real movement his face had made all morning. He killed it. She wasn't here to see it, and even if she was, the twitch was a vulnerability, and he'd already given her four hours of vulnerability, and that was more than he'd given anyone in his adult life.
He typed: I'm fine. Come home early.
Her reply: That's not an answer and it's not an answer. But okay.
He put the phone away.
He had four months. Maybe less. A killer he couldn't see, a chain he couldn't break, and the only leverage the man would need was sleeping in his guest room with a Rottweiler and a bare foot and no idea that the person she'd come back for was marked.
She needed to be protected. Legally. Formally. In a way that put the full weight of the Almazov name between her and whatever was coming.