Page 68 of Mission Shift

“Yes, sir.”

I didn’t resist when Oleg took my arm.

Didn’t argue.

Didn’t speak.

Because I wasn’t stupid.

For now, I would obey.

I would let them believe they’d broken me.

Because this wasn’t over.

Not by a long shot.

Chapter twenty

The night had stretched into early morning. It hadn’t even been twenty-four hours since Daria was taken, but it felt like an eternity—each minute dragging by hellishly slowly. The scent of coffee wafted through the house, mixing with a cloud of cigarette smoke—a vice Nik occasionally indulged in when he was deep in a job, he’d explained. I’d been spending most of my time with my elbows braced on my knees, my entire body humming with tension. My vision blurred at the edges from lack of sleep, but there was no chance in hell I was leaving this room.

Not until we had something.

“You always have access to this much classified intel?” I asked, my voice coming out rough due to the exhaustion that had settled into my bones.

Nik didn’t look up. “Always.”

I frowned. “And nobody’s caught on?”

His lips curled slightly, amusement flickering across his face even as he remained focused on his work. “Sometimes they know someone is in their systems. They just don’t know it’s me.” He cracked his neck. “And even if they did, there’s not a government on the planet that could catch me.”

Jesus.

I dragged my hands down my thighs, inhaling deeply as Nik continued running Daria’s data through multiple systems across Russia. Another program running simultaneously decrypted intercepted communications from the FSB and Bratva networks.

We had to find her.

Every second that passed was another she spent in hell.

That afternoon, a unique beep from one of the programs snapped me to attention.

Nik’s gaze narrowed as he scanned the flagged data packet.

“She was taken directly to Krestovskaya. This confirms it,” he muttered.

My stomach twisted.

I could still see the inside of that goddamn prison. Feel the cold concrete beneath my knees. Hear the taunts of the guards.

Daria had saved me from that place.

Now she’d been dragged back into it as a prisoner.

I pushed forward in my chair. “Is she still there?”

Nik’s eyes flicked between lines of encrypted text, and his brows drew together. His fingers stilled for a fraction of a second—just long enough for my gut to tell me something was wrong.

“She’s gone,” he said. “They moved her.”

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