Chapter 19 · Old Employer

A fist closed on the back of my collar and hauled me two steps into the dark before I even got my knife hand free.

"Miss me, Volkov?"

Sokolov's voice. Twenty years of it in my ear, same flat rasp he used the night he handed me Kade's file and told me to break the man's mind before I touched anything else. I twisted, got my forearm under his jaw, and he let me — laughing, the bastard, like this was a reunion instead of a knife against my kidney.

"You're supposed to be dead," I said. "I filed the report myself."

"You filed a lot of reports you didn't mean." He stepped back into the light of the service hallway, hands up, empty, which meant nothing — Sokolov never carried the weapon that mattered. "Word is you're on Kade's payroll now. Guard dog for the man you were sent to gut."

"Contract's contract."

"Contract's a leash you put on yourself." He smiled, and I hated that I still knew every tooth in it. "I've got the order, Dimitri. Signed, dated, your voice on it agreeing to snap his neck the first night alone in a room with him.