Page 84 of Night Shift

It was time for me to try to escape through the window. I carefully peeked outside, only to find there was a guy dressed in black just to the right. There was nowhere for me to go. The sounds grew closer, louder. They were storming through the house in a wave of violence. My breath caught, and every muscle tensed for the inevitable.

All I could do was wait, trapped, while they moved closer and closer to my hiding place. The office door loomed as my last barrier.

As I stood there frozen, indecisive, and scared, my heart pounded to the beat of the advancing footfalls—a rhythm of impending doom. Clutching the tablet like a lifeline, I edged away from the office door.

In a moment of reckless courage, fueled by my escalating fear and the urgent need to assert some control over the rapidly deteriorating situation, I used the tablet to access the security camera mics and shouted, “Who’s there?!” The words sliced through the house. For just a moment, all movement in the house stopped. Then the intruders resumed their search with a fury. My breathing became uneven as the familiar panic crawled up my throat.

I grabbed the phone attached to Atticus’s ancient-looking fax machine, hoping there would be a signal. Hearing the tone, I dialed nine-one-one.

Despite the obvious danger, my need to confront the unknown and demand answers overpowered my instinct to remain hidden. “I called the police! They’re on the way,” I shouted at the tablet. My voice was laced with a bravado I didn’t feel. Perhaps this would make the intruders hesitate. My feeble threat hung in the air, a last desperate attempt to wield the prospect of law enforcement against these intruders, even though I knew it wouldn’t do any good.

Suddenly the lights flickered and died, plunging the room into darkness. “Great. Just great,” I hissed. They’d cut the power. That meant the fax machine was dead too. Atticus had mentioned that he had a backup generator. For a few breaths, I waited for the power to shift over and the lights to come back on, but they never did. When I checked the tablet, the camera feed had gone black.

The full weight of the situation crashed down on me like a tidal wave. This was no random break-in. They were here for me. My father’s dealings, his shadowy connections, had finally caught up to him, and I was the price for his sins.

The footsteps paused, and the intruders started talking in low voices, speaking in a language that was both familiar and foreign.

As I listened, I was struck by a chilling familiarity. The harsh, barked commands and the gruff exchanges… These weren’t just any intruders. The accent haunted my mind, taking me back in time. It was unmistakably Russian. I recognized the tone and cadence all too well—not from crime dramas or any fictional world of espionage but from something far more mundane and yet profoundly ingrained in my memory. My hometown. My neighbors, the Ivanovs, had spoken this familiar language, and they were from Russia. Atticus had been right—it was the Russian mafia that was after me.

It was only a matter of time before they found me. My thoughts turned to Atticus, to the promise of safety that had been so cruelly snatched away. I wondered if he would ever forgive himself if he knew that, in these final moments, his fortress had become my trap.

Each breath I took threatened to give me away. They would surely find me any minute now.

The quietness of the room shattered in an instant as the door was kicked open with violent force. The door exploded inward, sending splinters flying. The sound reverberated ominously through the hallway, heralding the nightmare that was about to descend upon me. Standing before me were two shadowy figures. The light filtering through the window allowed me to discern the moment they zeroed in on me. For a second, they stood there scowling at me, their eyes cold and unyielding.

As the men advanced, I stumbled back, my heart pounding in my ears. I barely had time to react, to brace myself, before the first of them was upon me. He clamped a rough hand around my arm and yanked me out from behind the desk.

In the whirlwind of terror and confusion, my head snapped to the side as a sharp sting blasted my cheek—a brutal introduction to who these men were. The back of the man’s hand snapped back, his knuckle striking my lip. My mouth was flooded with the taste of iron. The blunt pain reminded me of my drunken father’s fists.

“Who the fuck are you?” I gasped out.

In response, one of the men, his face a mask of cold indifference, grabbed my chin, forcing me to look at him. With his other hand, he casually patted the emblem on his jacket—a stylized trio of snarling wolves. The emblem spoke louder than any words could. That symbol branded my assailants perfectly. Atticus and I had come across information and news articles about them during our research about the illegal drug trade that operated out of Tacoma and Aberdeen.

The realization hit me like a physical blow. These men were Volkovi Nochi.

Out of pure desperation, I kicked out at the guy who was holding my face, hitting him in the knee, and then started struggling to get away.

Grunting in pain, he bent over to grab his knee as the other man seized me by the scruff of my neck.

“Enough, you little bitch!” he barked, his voice laced with cruel amusement. Then, without warning, he punched me in the kidney. “We don’t have all day for this.” I sank to my knees as the pain tore through my back.

My arms were roughly wrenched behind me, my wrists bound with a zip tie. I fought against it, but the plastic bit into my skin with every futile twist and pull.

The Russian assholes dragged me through the house. By now, I’d stopped struggling, my body limp from the shock and the realization of my helplessness. There was a clear path of destruction in every room we passed through, a demonstration of the ruthless message they wanted to send.

The place was unrecognizable, a shell of the home it had been mere minutes ago. Pictures had been torn off the wall, furniture upturned. Atticus’s precious memories and possessions lay in ruins. Unbidden, a flashback of my apartment assaulted my mind.

When they finally dragged me through the door, I blinked against the bright daylight. They shoved me into the back of a van, and the door slammed shut, echoing like a death knell.

As the van pulled away, I lay on the floor reeling from the pain of their punches and trembling from the terror. The ties that bound me were a cruel, painful reminder that I was now a captive to the whims of those who had torn through my life, leaving nothing but devastation in their wake.

After a few minutes, the van came to a stop, and I attempted one last flight for freedom, lunging for the back door handle. Then there was a sharp crack at the base of my skull before darkness claimed me.

I was slipping in and out of consciousness. It was to a world unmoored, a reality where time and space seemed fluid, indistinct. One thing I was certain of—I was still in a moving vehicle. The hum of the engine was a constant undertone to the throbbing pain in my head.

The interior was cramped and dimly lit, the only illumination coming from a flickering overhead light that cast eerie shadows on the faces of my captors. Occasionally I could make out a muffled conversation in Russian, coming from the front seats, before I fell back into darkness once more.

I had just come to again when the van came to an abrupt stop and the back door was yanked open, flooding the space with harsh daylight. Rough hands grabbed me, pulling me out of the vehicle and onto my feet. The dramatic change in environment made my head spin. I squinted against the brightness, my eyes slowly adjusting to take in my surroundings.

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