“I know why she did it.”
“Still, she lied to you. She made it look like she betrayed you and your gang, and when you found out, she let you think it.”
As it turned out, Tanechka was playing an elaborate con to save her mother. Pretending to betray us when she wasn’t. “I should have believed in her.” I force myself to feel the daggers of what I did.
“You’re no psychic, Viktor.”
I stare ahead grimly. “My faith in her should have been strong enough to withstand anything.”
“Your gang, the only family you ever knew, made you kill her.”
“I should have believed.”
Aleksio squeezes my shoulder again as if to say, I am here no matter what. He is a good, strong brother.
Cellphone service is shit out on the iron range of northern Minnesota, but Aleksio and his guys have satellite phones. Planes, equipment, hired muscle—we have so much now, thanks to the money our father hid for us. As if he knew what would happen. That we would return to avenge his death.
We leave our SUVs at the edge of Pinder’s property, then trudge through the heavily wooded area.
The trees blaze yellow and red; the sky is a vibrant blue. Tanechka loves nature, loves being outside. She always noticed the sky. Look at the clouds, she’d say. Always telling me to look at the clouds or the sun or stars or something. Always looking up.
She can’t see the sky where she is now.
“We could find him today,” Aleksio says. “Today!”
I grunt. I do not have such high expectations.
It makes me angry that they took him to a mental hospital for being wild. A boy who grew up wild is not crazy. There were some children like this in Siberia.
Our brother would be twenty now.
Distant gunshots. It’s hunting season, which is convenient, considering we are a group of men wandering the woods with guns, except our guns are not quite the same as other guns. And we do not wear blaze orange. We ignore the “No Trespassing” signs and head in.
I would not want to be the one who tries to stop us.
The cabin we located via satellite is many miles in. We hike until we reach a ridge that’s near enough for a visual.
I look through the field glasses, and my heart sinks.
You can see from the foliage alone that the place is abandoned. Roof collapsed. Tall weeds in front of the door. I hand the glasses to Aleksio without a word. He looks. Says nothing. Simply gets back on the satphone to Carlo’s party on the west side of the area. “We’ll go first, move in carefully,” he says. “You watch, ready for anything.”
“I don’t think people are there.”
“Could be arranged to look abandoned,” he says.
I nod. Aleksio is a smart, careful leader. I do not think this is mere appearance, though.
We cast around for traps as we move through the trees and thick underbrush. Finding none, we approach the cabin itself and push open the door with a long branch. It gives.
Aleksio and I go in together, weapons drawn. The place smells of rot, mold, and dung. I turn on my flashlight. Papers all around. Warped husks of furniture with the stuffing pulled out. There are even a few small trees growing through the floorboards, straining up toward the holes in the ceiling.
And then I see the cage that takes up half of the main room. The bars are heavy and thick, running from floor to ceiling. Inside is a sleeping pad, a broken toilet, and a sink.
A cell for a lone prisoner.
The door hangs open. The area around the latch is blackened, as if it were torched open.
“Blyad!” I walk right in, right through the cobwebs. I don’t care. “Blyad!”
We search the place. There are dusty books everywhere—philosophy of the ancients, mostly. Some evolution, anthropology. Spiral-bound notebooks with the pages stuck together.
“Fuck,” Aleksio says, reading one. “Some numbers and then, ‘This is how much he’ll rattle the cage even while the bars are electrified. Subject shakes bars until unconscious even when I smile, giving the appearance of enjoyment.’ What the fuck? Subject?” He throws the notebook. “Fuck you!”
I pick up a chair and smash it into the iron stove again and again, until I’m holding only bits. Our brother. Kept in a cage. “I am going to peel Pinder’s skin from his fucking face while he watches!”
Kiro was here. Kept in a cage. He could see out the windows to the outdoors. Like a taunt.
It’s Tito who finds the bloodstain on the floor near the cage. What happened? Is this Kiro’s blood? Pinder’s? And what of the torch marks on the door to the cage?
Yuri tosses me one of the philosophy books. There are little marks in the margins all the way through. I check another. They all have marks, horizontal lines and here and there, exclamation marks. “Did he read books to him? Marking his reactions?” Yuri asks. “Teaching him?”