“There's Jarji,” I said.
“He stopped coming.” She fixed me with a stare, then looked away. Like her father, her eyes were blue.
“You want me to dance with you?” I asked.
Suddenly shy, she mumbled her response.
“All right,” I said. “I'll dance with you.”
Like all the others, the door to Tiasa's room was ajar, and once again, I saw only darkness within. I used the barrel of the AK to push it further open, stepped inside, reaching out for the switch and finding it.
I didn't want to see what they'd done to her.
I didn't think I had a choice.
I threw the light, and, in its way, it was worse than everything I'd seen before.
There was no blood. There was no body.
Tiasa Lagidze was gone.
They'd taken her.
CHAPTER Three
The regional head of the police in Kobuleti, Mgelika Iashvili, was in his late forties, tall and broad and thick through the neck and shoulders. Georgian pride runs to many things: their wine, their tea, their nearly four-thousand-year history. Stalin. They're also very proud of their weight lifters, and the rumor was that Iashvili had trained as a powerlifter for the Soviets back in the day, before everything had changed. Whether he still kept with it was unknown, but it did nothing to detract from his thuggish air, one that was well earned.
“And neither of you heard anything last night?” he asked. “Anything at all?”
Alena, at the stove and preparing tea, shook her head. She let her lower lip jut just enough beneath her upper to indicate both sincerity and bewilderment.
“I sleep very deep,” she lied. “Just ask David.”
“Like a log,” I agreed. In fact, the previous night had been the only one I could ever remember when I'd had difficulty waking her. “Are you going to tell us what this is about, Chief? Did something happen?”