Chapter 4: The Call
The door closed with a soft, final click, sealing Natalia inside a world of sleep and temporary peace. The corridor outside was a different universe—a stark, buzzing tunnel of unnatural light and echoing quiet. Raziel took three steps away from the door, his back to it, a human barricade. He could still feel the ghost-weight of her in his arms, the delicate bird-like structure of her shoulders. The memory of her pout, that fleeting, miraculous rebellion against the horror, played on a loop behind his eyes.
It was immediately followed by the image of the barbed wire glinting in the nurse’s tray.
The clash was vertigo. He pressed the heels of his hands against his closed eyelids, seeing bursts of color in the darkness. He needed to do this now. Before the team assembled, before the procedural machine clicked into gear. There was one person who had shared the last three years of hell, who had sat across from him in countless late-night kitchens, drinking whiskey in silence because words were useless.
Nikolai.
Natalia’s father. The only other person whose grief matched his own, a raw, open wound that never scabbed.
Raziel pulled his phone from his pocket. The sleek black device felt alien, a tool from a life that no longer existed. His thumb hovered over the contact listed simply as Nikolai. For a long moment, he stared at it. Delivering this news would make it real in a way that holding her hadn’t. It would shatter the suspended animation of hope and loss they’d been living in. It would change everything.
He tapped the screen and put the phone to his ear. It rang once, twice. Nikolai was an early riser, a habit from his old life on a farm outside Minsk. He’d be awake, sitting in his small Florida apartment, probably staring at the same framed photo of Natalia he kept on the table next to his chair.
“Raziel?” The voice was gravelly with sleep, maybe worry. Calls at this hour were never good. “What is it? You have news?”
Hearing the old man’s voice, laced with a familiar, weary dread, cracked something open in Raziel’s chest. He leaned his shoulder against the cold hospital wall, his head dipping. The words, rehearsed a thousand times in his head, clogged in his throat.
“Raziel?” Nikolai’s voice sharpened. “Talk to me.”
He swallowed, forcing air past the obstruction. The words came out raw, stripped bare, in Russian. “She’s alive, Nikolai.”
Silence.
It wasn’t empty. It was a vacuum, sucking all the sound from the world. Raziel could hear the old man’s breath stop. He could picture him, frozen in his chair, the phone pressed so hard to his ear it would leave a mark.
“Say it again.” The command was a whisper, a plea.
“She’s alive. I found her. I’m with her now.”
A choked, shattered sound came down the line. It wasn’t a sob. It was the physical rupture of three years of held-breath agony. Then another. Raziel listened, his own eyes burning, as Nikolai Volkov broke apart five states away.
“Moya doch… my girl…” The words were wet, mangled. “Where? How is she?”
“In a hospital. Up north.” Raziel kept his voice low, steady, an anchor line. “She’s… she’s here, Kolya. She’s real.”
“Is she… does she know you?”
“Yes.” The affirmation was the firmest thing he’d said all night. “She knows me. She held my hand. She… she pouted at me, like she used to when I’d tease her.”
This elicited another heaving breath from Nikolai, this one edged with something like a disbelieving laugh. “A pout. Bozhe moi. A pout.” He collected himself, the practical father surfacing through the emotional wreckage. “What did he do to her, Raziel? Tell me. Do not soften it.”
Raziel looked down the empty, too-bright hallway. He spoke in a flat, professional tone, the only way he could get the words out. “Malnutrition. Severe dehydration. Trauma to her feet… from running. She’s covered in old bruises, scratches.” He paused. The next detail required more air. “He had a collar on her. Barbed wire. Embedded in her neck. They just removed pieces of it.”
A string of vicious, guttural Russian curses filled his ear, the language turning ugly and dark. Nikolai had fought in Afghanistan. He knew what barbed wire did.
“I will kill him,” Nikolai snarled, the violence in his voice pure and father-deep. “Where is he?”
“We don’t know. Not yet. She was found alone, wandering a rural highway.” Raziel pushed off the wall, starting a slow, pacing path of two meters, then back. “She’s not speaking. Not really. A whisper. She’s… far away, inside. But she’s in there. I saw her.”
“I am on the next plane.”
“Nikolai, wait.” Raziel stopped pacing. “It’s a… delicate situation. The hospital. The investigation. She’s fragile. Seeing you… it might overwhelm her.”
“She is my daughter.”
“And she is my heart,” Raziel shot back, the possessiveness sharp and immediate. He moderated his tone. “I’m not saying no. I’m saying not yet. Let me… let me get her stable. Let me be the one constant for a few days. Then you come. I need you to be ready for how she looks.”
The silence on the other end was fraught. He could feel the old man’s struggle—the desperate need to see her warring with the dawning understanding of what ‘fragile’ meant in this context.
“Send me a picture,” Nikolai finally said, his voice drained. “A real one. Not a police photo. One from you.”
“I will. Later. When she’s asleep. I promise.”
“You will protect her.” It wasn’t a question. It was a testament.
“With my life. They’ve tried to take her once. They won’t get near her again. This floor is being locked down. My team is here.”
“Your team,” Nikolai said, a hint of the old mistrust creeping in. He’d never fully approved of the FBI, of the obsession that had consumed Raziel’s life. “This is the man you have been chasing?”
“Yes.” The word was ice. “And now he’s made it personal for the whole world. We have his victim. Alive. That changes everything. He’ll know that by now. He’ll be feeling… anxious.”
He said it like a profiler. But the undercurrent was a promise of vengeance so cold it could frost the phone line.
“Keep her safe, Raziel. I am trusting you.”
“I know.” The weight of that trust was heavier than any directive from the Director. “I’ll call you in a few hours. Try to rest.”
A bitter, wet laugh. “Rest. Yes. I will stare at the wall and pray until you call. Go. Be with her.”
The call ended. Raziel lowered the phone, his hand trembling slightly from the adrenaline drain. The conversation had taken less than five minutes. It felt like a lifetime. He stood in the buzzing silence, the echoes of Nikolai’s shattered relief mixing with the hum of the lights and the distant, mechanical beep of a monitor from another room.
He needed a moment. Just one. To let the mask he’d worn for Nikolai—the strong, in-control husband—fall completely away. He slumped against the wall again, this time letting his head thud back against it. He covered his face with both hands, his broad shoulders curving inward.
The sobs that wracked him were silent, violent things, torn from somewhere deep in his gut. They had no sound, just shuddering contractions of muscle, a torrent of heat behind his closed eyes. It was a release of three years of tensile-steel tension, the fear that had been a constant companion in his bloodstream, the grinding guilt that he hadn’t been there, the monstrous, unspeakable images his imagination had painted every single night. They melted now, replaced by new, real images—the pout, the bandages, the shocking lightness of her body.
He cried for her. For the years stolen. For the pain in her feet and around her throat. For the silent, haunted woman in the bed who used to laugh so easily.
He also cried for himself, for the man who had almost broken, who had come terrifyingly close to becoming something as dark as what he hunted just to find her.
When it passed, it left him hollowed out and strangely clear. He dragged the back of his hand across his eyes, took a long, steadying breath that filled his lungs. The composure settled back over him, not as a mask now, but as a necessary skin. He had a purpose. A singular, all-consuming purpose: her.
He turned and looked at the door to Room 3.
Elena was standing a polite distance away, holding two paper cups of coffee. She’d approached silently, giving him his privacy. Her eyes were red-rimmed but calm.
“Figured you could use this,” she said softly, offering one cup. “It’s terrible. Tastes like burnt plastic and regret.”
A ghost of a smile touched his lips. He took the cup. “Thanks.” The coffee was scalding and vile. He drank it anyway.
“Nikolai?” she asked.
Raziel nodded, staring at the brown liquid. “He’s… processing. Wants to come.”
“That’s good. He should. When she’s ready.” Elena sipped her coffee, leaning against the opposite wall. “Camille’s on the phone with the D.C. health unit. She’s pulling strings to get a mobile surgical team cleared for here, plus a psych consult she trusts. She’s fighting them on moving her.”
“Good.” He looked at her. “What do you see, Elena? When you look at her?”
Elena didn’t flinch from the question. She was a profiler too, but her focus was different. She saw the victim, not the predator. “I see someone who implemented a severe dissociative strategy to survive. The silence, the withdrawal… it’s a fortress. She didn’t just build walls, Raziel. She buried the central keep. What we’re seeing is the outer rampart. The pout…” She shook her head in quiet awe. “That was a scout from the inner garrison. Sent out because you, specifically, gave the all-clear signal. That’s huge. It means the core of her, the Natalia we know from the pictures, she’s preserved in there. But reaching her is going to be a siege measured in millimeters, like you said. And it’s going to be excruciatingly slow.”
“I have time,” he said, his voice quiet. “I have nothing but time for her.”
“I know you do.” She paused. “The barbed wire. It’s not just control. It’s a statement. He marked her as property, but it’s also… a perverse inversion of a necklace. A keepsake. He might have kept the piece he tore away.”
Raziel’s amber eyes went cold and focused. The profiling mind snapped back online, gratefully seizing on the analytical thread. “A trophy. But different from the others.” The unsub had taken jewelry from previous victims—earrings, rings. Personal, intimate, but removable. “This was integrated. A permanent modification. Or it was meant to be. He didn’t just take something from her; he tried to make her part of his… collection. He tried to reshape her.”
“And she ran anyway,” Elena pointed out, a note of fierce pride in her tone. “With that thing on her. Ran until her feet were hamburger. That’s not just survival instinct. That’s a defiance so deep it’s in her bones.”
Raziel felt a surge of profound, aching pride that tightened his throat. My brave, brave girl. He finished the awful coffee. “We need to get someone to the location where she was found. Before light. Go over every inch. Look for a discarded wire collar. Look for… anything.”
“The local cops have it taped off. Our guys are en route. Should be there in twenty.”
The door to the room opened quietly. Camille stepped out, her phone still in her hand, her expression one of tempered victory. “Okay. We have a deal. The surgical team arrives at 0700. They’ll set up a portable OR in a sterilized room down the hall. They’ll remove the remaining embedded material and close the wound. The psychiatrist, Dr. Arden, will be here at 0800 to observe, but she’s agreed to no direct interaction until Natalia indicates readiness, even if that’s days from now. Security is being upgraded. Two agents you’ve worked with before, Miller and Cho, are on their way to guard the stairwell and elevator bank on this floor. Officially, she’s a Jane Doe material witness in protective custody.”
Raziel absorbed it all, nodding. It was more than he’d hoped for. “Good. Thank you, Camille.”
She looked at him, really looked, seeing the faint tracks of moisture he’d missed on his temples, the raw intensity in his eyes. “How are you holding up?”
“I’m fine.”
“Bullshit,” she said mildly, but without malice. “You’re running on shock and caffeine. You need to sleep.”
“I’ll sleep when she does. In the chair.”
“Raziel—”
“Camille.” He cut her off, his tone leaving no room. “That’s not negotiable. The second she opens her eyes, she needs to see me. Not a nurse, not a friendly agent. Me. That’s the baseline. Everything else builds from that.”
Camille held his gaze for a long moment, then acquiesced with a slight nod. She was a trauma specialist. She knew the paramount importance of a secure attachment figure. Even if that figure was a sleep-deprived, emotionally eviscerated profiler who looked like he could snap a femur with his bare hands. “Okay. But at least eat something. Elena, can you…?”
“On it,” Elena said, already moving toward the staff lounge. “I’ll find something that isn’t gelatin.”
Camille’s phone buzzed. She looked at the screen, her posture shifting. “It’s Quantico. The ASAC wants an update. He knows we have a survivor from the Highwayman case.”
The Highwayman. The media’s catchy, stupid name for the monster who took women along remote roads. Raziel hated it. It romanticized something utterly vile.
“Tell him she’s alive, in critical but stable condition, and unable to be interviewed. Tell him we’re securing the scene and will issue a full briefing once the medical procedures are complete. Do not give her name. Not yet.”
“They’re going to want to know. The press will have caught wind of an FBI lockdown at a regional hospital.”
“Let them want,” Raziel said, a low threat in his voice. “Her name, her photo, her connection to me… that stays buried until I say otherwise. That’s not a professional request, Camille. That’s me telling you.”
She understood. Releasing Natalia’s identity would turn this into a circus. It would also tell the unsub exactly who he had lost—and whose wife he had taken. It would paint a target on her back brighter than a lighthouse beam.
“I’ll handle it,” Camille said, walking a few paces away to take the call, her voice dropping into professional, placating tones.
Raziel pushed the door open and slipped back into the room.
The dim stillness washed over him. The only light came from a small LED lamp on the floor, casting a soft upward glow that eliminated harsh shadows. Elena’s work. Natalia lay exactly as he’d left her, sleeping, her bandaged hand resting on the blanket. Her chest rose and fell in a shallow, even rhythm. He moved silently to the chair, the vinyl sighing under his weight as he sat. He reached out and slid his hand under hers, letting her fingers rest on his knuckles.
He watched her face. In sleep, some of the terrible tension had leaked away. The lines of panic around her eyes had softened. She just looked exhausted and heartbreakingly young. He studied the dressing on her neck, the bulk of it hinting at the damage beneath. He studied the stark angles of her cheekbones, the hollows at her temples. He committed the new map of her to memory, overlaying it with the old one.
He must have dozed. A shift in her breathing, a tiny hitch, brought him instantly alert. Her eyelids fluttered. Blue eyes, clouded with confusion and the remnants of sleep, found him in the near-darkness. There was no panic. Just a slow, dawning recognition.
He smiled. A small, tired, genuine smile. “Hey, baby. You’re okay. It’