HE SAT ON THE FLOOR IN THE NEAR DARK, TABLE LAMP AT HIS SIDE, door at his back, attuned to movement and conversation in the hall, while his fingers traced up the plastic base to the bulb, to the metal guard that had, until a few hours ago, secured the shade, and back down again, biding time.

He’d been promised freedom.

The suit man’s bodyguards had brought him here instead, marching him through the same windowless walls and windowless hub to the same tiled, windowless room with the same single exit locked from the outside.

Not that he’d confirmed the door was locked.

Some things could be safely assumed.

The room had a bed now, a shoddy bargain-basement contraption topped with a foam mattress, which might, with luck, hold up a few nights before pancaking. Rough, overbleached sheets and a thin blanket had been dumped at its foot, and on the floor near the wall sat a liter of water and a Styrofoam takeaway box, which he assumed held something edible.

The bodyguards had had him strip, and they had examined his fingers and toes, and then taken his watch, wallet, and belt—shoes, too, though they’d eventually given shoes and clothes back—and had left him then, unsecured, alone, and had turned control of the building over to the crew who’d abducted him.

Two of them were in the hall outside.

They were on the floor now, the thug with the knife seated beside the door, the other somewhere along the opposite wall. They had been standing when they started, and they’d been generous with gossip at the beginning, too, speaking with the seditious freedom of men who had no expectation of being recorded or observed or understood.

They’d mocked him for the easy target he made, growing creative in the ways they could torment him, and griping about the limitations placed on them by their boss. And they’d moved on to verbally undressing Anna, crude and graphic in their descriptions of what they’d do to her if they could just convince Vadik to swap positons for a few hours.

The conversation had thinned and would stop completely as late night descended and the body’s need for sleep took over. He waited for that, killing time inside a mental maze that had twice shifted and shrunk in the past five hours.

He knew Dmitry was alive.

Knew Dmitry was aware of present circumstances, if not the particulars, knew that no matter how high Dmitry had climbed within the bureaucratic apparatus, this thing had come from higher still, and knew this abduction hadn’t been Dmitry’s doing.

Clare inside his head, Clare, who’d taught him to do better than believe, saturated that knowledge with doubt.

They give you just enough truth for wishful thinking to take over.