Page 16 of Sexting the Bikers

I’m small. Petite. I’ve squeezed through tighter spaces for worse reasons. If I can just pry it open and get inside, I can scout. Get a better idea of the layout. Maybe even find a way out. But not now. Not in the fading evening light.

Nightfall. That’s when I’ll move.

Still…I need to know if it’s even possible.

Dragging the chair from the writing desk, I climb up and examine the vent. It’s old. Screwed in loosely. No alarm, no sensor I can see. I fetch a nail file from my luggage—thin, sharp—and get to work.

A few minutes later, the grate hangs loose.

I push it aside and slip in carefully, pressing my elbows tight to my ribs. The metal’s cold against my skin. It smells like dust and time and something faintly chemical—probably from whatever overpaid interior designer “sanitized” the ductwork.

I start to crawl.

The space is tight but manageable. My breathing echoes too loud in my ears. Every movement feels exaggerated, dangerous. But I keep going.

I’m just starting to ease around a turn when I hear voices.

I freeze.

The words echo softly, bouncing off the vent walls and filtering up from below.

My stomach drops. That has to be the study. The vent must run right above it. I inch forward slowly until I find a thin slit in the paneling—just wide enough to listen through.

Laughter.

And then I hearhisvoice.

Bakum Novikov.

Calm. Relaxed. Like he’s telling a joke over drinks with friends.

“Tomorrow morning,” he says, his tone smooth. “We gather them all—her uncle, her cousins, her precious little extended bloodline.”

Laughter again. Another voice I don’t recognize—deep and cruel. “All of them?”

“All of them,” Novikov says. “The girl’s the bait. We wipe the Riazanovs clean off the map. No one can survive, and you must ensure it, Henson.”

Something cold slides through my chest.

I stop breathing.

My entire body locks up, wedged in this metal coffin of a vent, limbs shaking, heart hammering against the steel.

I want to scream. I want to fall apart.

But I don’t.

I stay still. And I listen.

My hands are shaking. I don’t even realize it at first—my palms pressed flat to the vent walls, my knees locked, every muscle in my body wound so tight I could snap in half.

The words keep ringing in my ears.

The girl’s the bait.

My breath catches. I can’t swallow around the knot in my throat. My arms start to give out beneath me, and I have to inch backward, slow and careful, before the whole vent betrays me with a single echoing sound.

I slide back the way I came, fingers slipping against cold metal, legs cramping, lungs still too tight to pull in a proper breath.