Page 62 of Mission Shift

I eyed him for a second. “We good?”

His smirk returned, lazy and unreadable. “For now.”

Good enough. I took the plate and settled into a seat at the table, cutting into the meat. I was starving. Nik sat across from me, forking a tomato with one hand, his other already wrapped around a tumbler of vodka over ice.

For a while, we just ate, lost in our own thoughts. But the silence couldn’t last.

As we neared the end of our meal, Nik finished off his drink and pushed back his plate. “All right,” he muttered, grabbing thelaptop that had been sitting idle on the table. He flipped it open, his fingers moving quickly across the keys.

“Let’s start with the obvious,” he said, his voice all business now. “They drove her back into Russian territory. When I planned the exchange, I worked directly with her father and a man named Taranov, the warden of the prison. Let’s hash out ideas based on what you experienced and anything she might have mentioned. Where do you think they took her? And if you had to guess, what will their next move be?”

“She pissed the hell out of not only Taranov but every guard she came across at the prison. Not to mention she shot the guy at the gate—twice,” I said, swallowing my last bite of steak.

He kept his eyes on the screen. “Hmm, definitely some retribution would be in order. They’d want blood for what she did. Taking her back to the prison makes the most sense—it’s the easiest place to hold her until they decide how to make an example of her.”

My stomach twisted at the thought. I knew exactly how that place worked. And Daria…she’d be considered a traitor—a worthless bitch with a smart mouth.

Nik must have read the unease in my expression, because he said, “Yeah. I know. If she’s back there, it’s bad.” His fingers sounded like gunfire against the keys.

I ran a hand through my filthy-ass hair, trying to shove down the frustration clawing at my ribs. “Okay. Say they did take her back there. What are our options?”

He stopped typing and scrubbed his hand over the stubble of his beard. “I could bribe someone for her release?”

I shook my head. “Not a chance. We’re dealing with her father, the Kremlin, and the Bratva. Everyone involved is either too powerful or too scared to take a bribe.”

He scoffed. “Yeah, they’re not exactly the types to accept a politely worded email and a wire transfer. Maybe if I throw in alet’s play nicefruit basket, they’ll reconsider?”

I wasn’t in the mood to laugh, but my mouth twitched despite myself.

“Blackmail then?” he continued. “Daria’s father? Prison officers? Someone in the FSB?”

I considered it, but the idea didn’t sit right. “You’d have to find something big enough to make them blink. And the people we’re dealing with don’t blink, no matter how much nasty shit they have haunting them.”

He nodded absently, running his finger along the edge of the laptop. “Yeah. It’d be a long shot to find something motivational enough for the bastards running this show.”

I exhaled slowly, forcing my brain into pure strategy mode. “What about a transport hit? If they’re moving her, we could intercept.”

He glanced up. “That’s assuming we know the route, timing, and security details—and assuming they don’t put a bullet in her head the second shit goes sideways.”

I clenched my jaw. “Still an option.”

“Difficult,” he countered, “but possible.”

We sat in silence for a moment. I turned over a bunch of ideas in my head. None of them were good. None of them were safe.

“Infiltration,” he finally offered. “If we can get a fix on her location, I could get people inside.”

I nodded. “That might work, depending on the security and how much time we have.”

He frowned. “We’re already out of fucking time. Every second we waste, they’re deciding how to dispose of her.”

I rolled my shoulders back, fighting to keep my rising panic in check. “What about a full-scale war? Volkovi Notchi versus the Tambovskaya Bratva. Burn half of Russia down.”

Nik actually considered it for half a second before shaking his head. “Suicidal.” Then, with a small smirk, he added, “But it would be fun.”

I stared at the back of the laptop. We were throwing ideas at the wall, but nothing stuck. Nothing felt like a real plan.

Nik kept typing, the glow of the laptop casting shadows over his face. Then he froze mid-keystroke, his body going rigid as his eyes scanned the screen.

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