I can feel her eyes on me. “That’s nice,” she says. “You ruin cartoon baby animals for me? Thanks. Is there anything else you’d like to ruin?”
I’m glad she’s annoyed, because I said too much, and I would hate if she gave me sympathy on top of everything else. I take her cuffed hands and turn them over, ignoring the zing of electricity between us. I inspect her fingers and spot a jagged scar on the pinky. “This is a very distinctive scar,” I say. “We’ll start with this one. Or maybe the one with the ring.”
She goes white and tries to take her hand back, but I don’t let her. “What?”
“Send it to your father.”
“You can’t.” She tries to pull her hand away.
“This is a very recognizable ring. You think he’d recognize it?”
“You wouldn’t.”
“If we find Kiro, we won’t have to.”
She looks over at the files. “If I help you find Kiro, will you let my father and me go?”
“If your help gets us Kiro,” I say, “we’ll let you go.”
“What about my father?”
“Let’s put it this way—a lot of people are going to start hunting Kiro. And if somebody gets to Kiro first and manages to kill him? And your father was holding out? If you love him, you don’t want to know what we’ll do to him then.”
“Unlock me.”
I unlock her cuffs, trying to handle her as an enemy. But no enemy has ever sent a white-hot flash of desire through me.
She rubs her wrists and motions for a box. I slide it over. She pulls out a folder and opens it, studying the papers inside. She pulls one out. “These parts that are blacked out? That’s done as part of a process known as de-identification. These files are de-identified. Anonymized.” She stuffs it back in and riffles through.
How the hell does the spoiled mafia princess know this?
She examines a paper. “I don’t know what Illinois law was twenty years ago, but there would’ve been protocols in place to make it hard for people like you to trace these kinds of things. And that’s how they did it. They still do stuff like this today, but with computers. They make it so you could never identify families and children from just the files. There’s probably a key to the code offsite, or maybe on a computer. Some trustworthy person holds it. You need both pieces—the key to the code and the file—if you’re going to read it.”
“Like an armored car?” Tito asks. “Where you need the two keys?”
“Exactly,” she says.
I feel this rush of pride. Clever Mira. But when she turns to me, I frown. “Who would have the key to the code?” I ask.
“I don’t know. Somebody who worked there when Kiro was brought in. Probably not the lowliest person, but probably not the highest, either.”
“We don’t have time to find people who worked there two decades ago,” I say.
She twists her lips, lost in thought. In a flash I’m back with her in the shade of the fort, watching her draw her horses, lips twisting. Concentrating.
“I have a man,” Viktor says. “His father was a KGB code breaker. He could get his father to look at this.”
I turn immediately to Mira, to see what she’ll say. “A KGB code breaker, you say.” She tips her head. “Well…if that’s all you got…”
I try not to smile.
Viktor scowls. “They are masters at code breaking, the KGB—”
“She’s kidding,” I say. “Let’s do it. Quick.”
She glances at me, and I look away. Our connection burns worse than Konstantin’s cigarette.
We send a group to make copies of the files and get a set of them to the guy, keeping the other set for us. I send another guy to book a suite of rooms at one of the waterfront hotels. It’s not safe for her to know where any of us live, and we need to stay mobile and central to snatch up Kiro.
It’s night by the time we reach the hotel, one of many in a row of glittering lakefront establishments. “I’ve missed Chicago,” she says.
“What, Paris and Milan don’t measure up?”
“Well, they’re not home.”
Mira walks through the hotel lobby with me, behaving perfectly, thanks to the gun in my suit jacket pocket. She’ll make a break for it soon, but not in a way that will endanger the public. She’s a woman with a code, too. She always was. I tell myself it’s easy to have a code when it doesn’t cost you anything. When your code doesn’t push you places you don’t want to go.
The first time Konstantin made me kill a guy, I was twelve and shaking like a motherfucker, and I didn’t get him square between the eyes with the first shot like I should’ve; I got him in the shoulder and then the gut, and he was on the ground begging for his life, pleading. He was a killer who deserved to die ten times over, but you don’t know what it’s like to have a man plead, arms stretched out like you’re either God or the devil.
I raised the Glock, dropped out from inside myself—like I wasn’t even home—and blew his head off.
Just do it. That’s how you do the hard things—you just do them.
The six of us set up in the central suite, which is a kind of generic living room with a great view of Lake Michigan, now appearing as a dark expanse dotted by lights, the moon a crescent with a corresponding streak in the waves.
Stupidly picturesque. Like somebody else’s view.
We split up names and start going through Facebook pages, looking at photos. Like we’ll get lucky and recognize Kiro. It’s stupid, worse than a needle in a haystack, but this is what desperate people do.
Mira wants to help, but there’s no way I’m giving her an internet connection. So she sits across the room in an overstuffed chair looking at the view. Is she looking for a way out? I’d be. If she got a weapon off of one of us now, would she use it? Mira was anti-gun as a kid. But people who are threatened can surprise you.
We send guys out to run down leads. It’s not looking good. Mira thinks we should try to get the Worland employment records from the year Kiro was adopted out. “We can get the key to the code that way—I’m sure of it.”
Yeah, it’s the way we’d go if we had all the time in the world. But we don’t.
It’s just her and Viktor and me when the call comes in. Viktor’s man can’t crack the thing—something about the code being one-to-one.
My heart sinks.
This means we have to go at Aldo Nikolla with everything. Because Kiro is in some serious danger, and that asshole knows where he is. Even Mira has to know he was holding back.
She’s pale. Yeah, she knows. This is a woman who listens and observes, something the surveillance photos never showed. Something those plastic smiles never revealed.
I click off the call.
She stands. “Dad wouldn’t gamble me like that.” It’s more a wish than something she actually believes. I hear it in her voice.
“Kitchen stores won’t be open this time of night, but restaurants are.” Viktor’s talking about getting a knife. A cleaver, probably. He grabs his jacket. Unlocks the door.
She flies for it, but I’m ready. I catch her, fit my hand over her mouth, and pull her onto the couch, keeping her head against my chest, mouth sealed nice and tight. I pull out my piece and put it to her temple. She needs to see I’m serious. “Are you going to scream?”