Alexei called back two days later.Nathan was at Frank's when the phone rang — the payphone outside, the one he'd been using since he threw his own in the dumpster. He stepped outside and picked it up."It's me," Alexei said."What did you find?""A lot. Not all of it good.""Start talking."Alexei took a breath on the other end. Nathan could hear the sound of traffic behind him, which meant he was calling from a street somewhere, probably walking."Sergei Voronov is real. He's been in this business for thirty years. Started in Moscow, moved to Europe in the nineties, came to this country about a decade ago. He runs operations in four cities now. Real estate, shipping, a few things that don't have clean names.""Anything that would explain why he wants Dmitri's network?""Foothold. That's all. Dmitri spent two years building infrastructure in this city — properties, shell companies, local connections. S

Nathan drove back into the city without stopping.He didn't go to Frank's. He didn't go to the cousin's apartment. He didn't call anyone. He just drove until the river was out of sight, then pulled into a parking lot behind a strip mall and sat in the car with the engine off.The man on the container had known Sarah.Not the way Nathan knew her — not the way you know someone you've built a life with. But he'd met her. He'd sat in a diner where she worked. He'd been served coffee by her. He'd heard her voice.That meant the man had been in Sarah's life before Nathan ever was. Before the army, before the trial, before Ryan, before any of it. Back when she was just a girl in a small town doing a job that paid minimum wage.Nathan had never been able to picture that part of her. She'd told him about it once, in passing, a few months after they met. She'd said she worked at a diner for two years after high school, saving up to move. She'd said it like it was nothing. He'd never asked for d

Thel yard was exactly what the name suggested — a stretch of dead ground where the train tracks crossed over the highway on a rusted trestle, surrounded by empty lots and a few abandoned warehouses that nobody had bothered to tear down.Nathan got there before sunrise. He parked a quarter mile out and walked the rest of the way along the tracks, keeping his hands in his pockets, watching the light come up gray over the trestle.The quiet man was already there.He was standing on the platform of the old loading dock, coat off, hands loose at his sides. He looked smaller in the dawn light — less like something out of a nightmare and more like what he actually was, which was a middle-aged man who had spent his life doing things he didn't talk about."You came alone," the man said."You said sunrise.""I didn't say alone.""You didn't say not to."The man studied him for a moment, then nodded, like that had been the right answer.Nathan climbed onto the platform and sat down on the edge,

The quiet man drove.Nathan sat in the passenger seat of a plain gray sedan with no markings and no history, watching the city pass by outside the window. They went north, then east, then north again — a route that seemed designed to shake anyone following them, though Nathan hadn't seen a tail in the first ten minutes."Where are we going?" he asked."An industrial park near the county line. Nobody works there anymore. The buildings are empty but the utilities are still running because the owner never bothered to shut them off.""How many are guarding them?""Three. Sometimes four. They rotate.""Are they Marchenko's people or Sergei's?""Marchenko's. Sergei doesn't know the three were taken. He thinks Dmitri is just being difficult about the properties."Nathan looked at him. "You've been lying to your own client.""I've been doing my job and not asking questions. There's a difference."They

Nathan got to Dmitri's building just after nine.The doorman let him through without a word. The elevator ride was the same as every other time — same slow climb, same bad music, same feeling of being inside a box that didn't want to let him out.Dmitri was waiting in the hallway outside the penthouse. His face was pale, and he was standing with his arms crossed the way a man stands when he doesn't know what else to do with his hands."He's inside," Dmitri said."How long has he been here?""Forty minutes. He hasn't said much. He just asked me to call you and then sat down."Nathan walked past him into the apartment.Erik Voss was sitting at the table.He wasn't wearing the coat. He wasn't wearing the gloves. He was sitting with his hands folded in front of him in the daylight, and for the first time since Nathan had met him, he didn't look like a man who lived in the shadows. He looked like a man who had made a decision."You came back," Nathan said."I did.""You said you were leavi