Thirty Days

"No."

The word comes out before you've finished thinking it, which is how you know it's true.

Kirill Sokolov doesn't blink. He seems like a man who has heard the word no very rarely and has always found it interesting.

"No," he repeats.

"I'm a forensic accountant. I find fraud. I write it up and I hand it to people with badges." You make yourself hold that ice-blue stare. "I don't work for the people I'm writing about. That's kind of the whole job."

"The people with badges," he says, "have been trying to read our books for ten years. You're the first person who actually did." He tilts his head. "That makes you a very interesting man to a lot of people. Not all of them as polite as me."

"Is this polite?"

"You're sitting in a chair. Not in a trunk." He stands, buttoning his jacket in one smooth motion, and he is very, very tall. "Bogdan will take you home. Think about it."

"I don't need to think about it."

"Everyone needs to think about it, Ethan." He's already walking away, past the gold mirrors, his reflection following him across a dozen frames. "Even you."

Bogdan drives you home in silence. At a red light on Delaware Avenue he does a clue in his crossword without looking at it. Seven letters, unwelcome guest. He writes INTRUDE and then frowns and crosses it out.

You're halfway up the stairs to your third-floor walk-up when you see your door.

It's open. Not kicked in. Open, a neat four inches, the way you'd leave it if you'd just stepped out for the mail.

You didn't.

Inside, your apartment has been taken apart with surgical care. The couch cushions are unzipped. Every book is off the shelf and fanned open on the floor. Your desk drawers are stacked on the bed like trays. The kitchen cabinets are open, the freezer is open, and the ice cube trays are lying in the sink.

Your laptop is gone. Your backup drive is gone. The legal pad where you scribbled the Amber Coast numbers at lunch is gone, along with the pen.

Whoever did this wasn't looking for money. Your mom's watch is still on the dresser.

They were looking for you. For what you know.

Your phone rings and you nearly throw it across the room.

"Howard?"

"Where are you?" Your boss sounds like he's whispering in a closet. "Listen to me. Your report is gone."

"What do you mean, gone?"

"Gone from the server. Gone from my inbox. Gone from the backups. IT says the file never existed." He swallows audibly. "And the managing partner just called me at home to say you're on administrative leave, effective immediately. Pending review."

"Review of what?"

"He didn't say." A long breath. "Kid, I don't know what you walked into, but you need to stay somewhere else tonight. Okay? Somewhere that isn't there."

He hangs up. You stand in the wreck of your living room with an ice cube tray at your feet, and you count. Out loud.

"One. Two. Three. Four."

It doesn't help.

When you open the door to the hallway, he's there.

Kirill Sokolov is leaning against the peeling wallpaper opposite your apartment, under the one flickering bulb your landlord refuses to fix, looking like an expensive watch ad that got lost in South Philly. His overcoat is dark. His expression is darker.

"They got here before me," he says.

"Who's they?"

"That's what I'm hiring you to find out." He looks past you into the apartment, taking in the drawers, the books, the freezer standing open, and a muscle moves in his jaw. "They took your laptop."

"And my backup drive. And a legal pad."

"Then they know what you know." His eyes come back to yours. "And they know you're the only one who knows it."

Your hands are shaking. You shove them in your pockets.

"Why should I trust you? For all I know, your people did this."

"My people would have taken the watch," he says flatly. "To make it look like a burglary." He nods at the dresser through the open door. "This was someone who didn't care what it looked like. Someone in a hurry."

That's annoyingly logical. You hate it.

"Terms," you say.

The faint not-smile again. "Go on."

"I don't say yes to anything without terms."

"Thirty days," Kirill says. "You find who stole from my family. You get full access to our books, every company, every account. You report to me and only me. I pay you three hundred thousand dollars." He pauses. "And you live at my house."

"Absolutely not."

"Your apartment has a door that opens with a credit card and a landlord who sold your spare key for forty dollars." He says it without heat. "Mine has Bogdan."

Bogdan, at the top of the stairs, lifts one hand in a small wave.

You look at your ruined living room. You look at the man in the hallway who could, apparently, have you killed with one phone call and has decided not to.

"One more term," you say. "Mine."

His eyebrow lifts, the one with the scar.

"Nobody gets hurt because of my numbers." Your voice wobbles, and you let it. "If I find who did this, you don't make them disappear. You don't put anyone in a river. I'm not finding people so you can bury them."

For a long moment he just looks at you. Something unreadable passes behind those pale eyes.

"I won't lie to you," he says finally. "So I won't promise that."

"Then no deal."

"I'll promise to try." Quietly. "That's more than I've promised anyone in a long time."

It isn't enough. It's also, somehow, the most honest thing anyone has said to you all day.

"Thirty days," you hear yourself say.

"Thirty days." He holds out his hand.

You shake it. His palm is warm and dry, and his grip lasts one second longer than it needs to.

In the back of the car, with a duffel bag of clothes on your lap and Bogdan's crossword glowing on the dash, Kirill finally tells you the rest.

"Our bookkeeper is a man named Oskar Belenko. He's kept the family's books for thirty years. He taught me to read a balance sheet when I was twelve."

"Okay."

"Your report reached Schuylkill Trust's compliance desk at 9:15 tonight." He's watching the river slide by, black and glittering, the Ben Franklin Bridge lit up blue. "At 9:20, Oskar left his office at our warehouse. He didn't take his car. He didn't take his coat. Nobody has seen him since."

Your mouth goes dry.

"So either he's the thief and he ran," you say slowly, "or..."

"Or someone made sure he can't tell me who is." Kirill turns his head, and in the passing streetlights his face is all shadow and edges. "Which means you're the only man alive who has seen the whole hole, Ethan."

He lets that settle.

"That makes you the most valuable man in Philadelphia." A beat. "And the easiest to kill."