Page 108 of At Midnight

The Last Time I Saw Flicka

Raphael Mirabaud

You know what I didn’t hear?

Little girls crying.

Raphael watched Flicka walk out of the warehouse, carrying his daughter. Her quick footsteps were drowned out by the stomping boots of the men converging around her.

The Monegasque snipers disengaged next, as Raphael expected. Their boots thundered down the metal spiralstaircases at the ends of the catwalks as they ran. He looked up from where he kneeled with his hands behind his head and watched them evacuate the high ground.

Engines roared outside. Headlights swept through the doorway where the men were retreating.

Flicka and Alina were gone and safe.

Safe from Piotr Ilyin, at least. Flicka had sold herself to buy safety for his daughter. His soul raged,and yet he was so deeply grateful to her that she had saved his baby’s life.

Something nudged Raphael’s knee.

He looked down. A tiny, six-wheeled drone like a flatbed tank repeatedly bounced off his leg. A small Beretta 92FS handgun and a cell phone were strapped to its back.

The number60was visible on the screen.

Then59.

58.

The numbers synced with his heartbeat.

While the Ilyin Bratva’smen watched the retreating Monegasque army soldiers, Raphael grabbed the cell phone and the gun and stuffed them in his pants pocket, returning his hand to the back of his head before anyone noticed.

He couldn’t shoot his way out yet, not with fifty men with Kalashnikovs all aimed at his head.

Not until the end of that countdown, he suspected.

The tiny drone zipped underneath the van the girlshad arrived in.

The two outer shells of the Monegasque formation retreated, guns pointing at all areas of the warehouse as they trotted backward. The last soldier filed through the doorway, and the rifle barrels withdrew as the door closed.

Piotr Ilyin’s men grabbed their guns and ran for the door, but Raphael could hear that the trucks were already driving out of the parking lot. He imaginedthat the last few guys were being hauled into the backs of the rolling trucks while their buddies aimed over their heads at any of the Bratva’s men stupid enough to leave the cover of the warehouse.

That’s how Raphael would have staged it, anyway.

30.

When the men returned, walking slowly with their guns held low and across their chest, he knew that the Monegasques had gotten away cleanly.

Good for them.

Piotr Ilyin turned on Raphael, his face a rictus of rage. “Did you plan this?”

He shrugged. “Flicka rescued herself.”

As I have taught her to do since she was twelve.

20.

Piotr snarled at him, but something caught his eye. His anger dissolved in incredulous, wide-eyed shock as he looked up. His head swiveled, surveying the entire warehouse.“Where the living hell are the girls?”