Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 90084 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90084 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 450(@200wpm)___ 360(@250wpm)___ 300(@300wpm)
Maybe it’s what I love about Karine. She has a little of my darkness in her, but she’s still more human than I’ll ever be. Because she’s something like me, we can have this relationship. And I get to experience normal humanity through her sweetness.
Still, I wonder if I should’ve just killed the kid for her, just so she understood the depth of my obsession.
I give Anton everything Arsen told me. He writes it down without comments and proceeds to pass it along as instructed. I stay in the basement and drink my coffee, staring at the TV without seeing it, ready to catch a few hours of sleep when my phone starts to ring.
It’s Karine. I answer immediately. “How is your mother?”
“She’s gone.” Her voice is frightened and I’m instantly on edge.
“What do you mean?”
“She’s missing, Valentin. I got here a few minutes ago and when I went in to visit, she wasn’t in her room. The nurses looked all over the place, but she’s gone. Right now, they think she got transferred somewhere else, but, Valentin, I don’t think that’s what happened.”
“I’m coming,” I tell her. “Stay there. Delay them if you can.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just do it.” I hang up the phone and rush up the steps. I find Anton on the phone in the back yard. “Soldiers. I need soldiers right now.”
I fill him in as we rush over to the hospital, but I’m running on a hunch and not much else. Once we arrive in the parking lot I send him and the soldiers to sweep through as much of the hospital as they can without attracting too much attention, starting with the parking garage and the exterior.
“What are we looking for?” Anton asks.
“Armenians.”
I hurry inside and take the elevator up to Miriam’s floor. I find Karine waiting outside of her room, pacing back and forth, while the nurses and doctors studiously ignore her. When she spots me, she comes running and throws herself into my arms.
“They still can’t find her,” she says, barely holding back tears.
An ugly, raw feeling enters my chest.
My wife, my malishka, my everything, is hurting right now.
And I am going to burn the fucking world to the ground.
I start by interrogating the nurses. They’re pushy and arrogant, but I gradually break them down until one woman finally admits that nobody has checked on Miriam for at least a few hours.
“I saw her last night though,” one woman says, an older nurse at the end of her shift. “She was there at around four in the morning. I poked my head in just to check like I always do.”
“And it’s your normal policy to ignore your patients?” I ask, glaring at the doctor on duty.
He glances around and stammers something worthless.
The nurses sent to check the other areas of the hospital return shortly after that and deliver the news I expected.
Miriam is nowhere to be found.
“I need security footage,” I growl at the doctor. “I need it right fucking now.”
“I can’t, I mean, that’s not my job.”
“Then call the hospital security team and get them down here.” I don’t want to deal with law enforcement, but these rent-a-cops will be good enough for now. “Why the fuck are you still standing there?”
The doctor flinches, clearly not used to someone speaking to him like that, but he finally obeys. I move Karine back into her mother’s old room and sit her down in a chair. “Stay calm. I’ll handle this.”
“They have her,” she whispers, shaking and biting her lip to keep from crying.
I know who she means. And I don’t say anything, but she’s right.
They fucking have her.
Security is a pair of shaved-head white guys with guts and bad attitudes. I tear into them until they take me back to the surveillance room. It’s basically a closet filled with monitors showing dozens and dozens of different cameras. Meanwhile, I’m getting text updates from Anton: nothing outside, nothing in the parking garage, nothing on the lower floors.
“Okay, this is the hallway outside Mrs. Vardanyan’s room at four in the morning. There’s the nurse going into her room.” The security jar head points. “Now, let’s see what happens.”
He speeds it up. People move down the halls, but nobody goes near the room. The time slips back in the upper left corner, then suddenly several bodies zip through the frame and disappear into Miriam’s room.
“Rewind,” I order and he does it.
Four men appear. They’re wearing black slacks and jackets.
Just like the security guys sitting in front of me.
“I don’t know them,” the security man at the monitor says, sounding nervous.
“Keep watching.” I glance at his partner, and he seems just as concerned. I’m halfway waiting for one of them to draw on me, but neither does.
Instead, we stare at the silent hallway on the monitor, until the four security guards re-emerge.