Roman

I looked at Ellie, my throat seized with worry, but kept my expression blank. The last thing I needed was for her to panic. I didn't think she would, but she was a mother, and her child was in danger. I thought she was a fighter, not a worrier, but I hadn't seen any proof. I motioned with my eyes for her to stay behind me. She nodded, the only sign of her fear the slightest of tremors in her hands. I was impressed.

I crept towards the house, checking that nobody was watching. I didn't see so much as the twitching curtain of the neighborhood gossip. Good. The last thing I needed was the place turning up.

I checked my weapon one last time, making absolutely, abundantly clear something I already knew – that the gun's safety was on. My son might be in there. And the good Samaritans who'd taken him in when I hadn't been there for him. I wasn't going to be the one to put all that at risk. But my gut was telling me what I already knew to be true – danger lay ahead.

"Stay here," I whispered to Ellie. "I'll call you when it's safe." I glanced at her, but even as my head strained to look over my shoulder, I knew what I was going to see. She shook her head resolutely, her jaw clenched shut. I was about as likely to convince her to stay behind as a high tide was to knock over the Statue of Liberty. She was coming, whether I liked it or not. In this case – not. I was nervous, both of her getting hurt, which I didn't know I'd be able to bear, and of what she might see inside.

I sighed but didn't try to fight her. My stomach was a nervous sea of acid, rumbling every time I took a step. I kept moving forward, eating up the newly cleaned flagstones that made up the path to the front door. I stepped over a shard of the broken plant pot. It was a good ten feet away from the door. However the scuffle had started, it had got violent. I pointed down, glancing at Ellie as I moved forward. She nodded, and stepped lightly over it.

I crept up to the door, nerves growing in my stomach with every inch. The crack in the opening was only a couple of inches wide, but it felt like a chasm. Two inches that might mean everything for me. Two inches that might change my life forever.

I paused, sniffed. Something wasn't right. My stomach growled. I doubted anyone would be able to hear it, but to me it sounded like a bomb going off. I tested the wooden door, shifting it a fraction of an inch, checking whether the hinges were oiled. The last thing I wanted was to give anyone inside even a second's warning. This was going to be tight, even without my enemy having even the slightest advantage. My heart skipped a beat, but it moved silently.

I pushed against it, harder this time, and after fashion and opening. The hinges didn't betray me, and I slipped through, weapon high and at the ready. I pointed it ahead, moving the barrel in an elegant dance that took it to every point of the compass in half a second. "Clear," I muttered, as quietly as possible. Ellie followed.

The sense of foreboding was rising in my stomach. Something was wrong. The house didn't feel occupied, not fully. There wasn't so much as the squeak of a floorboard, or hiss of breath – the usual rhythm of life. Kidnapped?

The house's layout was simple, probably the same as hundreds of units in the neighborhood. Stairs next to the front door, a short corridor leading to a door both left and right. An over-burdened coat rack on the wall to the right, a bright yellow raincoat that seemed entirely out of place in the otherwise plain neighborhood now lay on the floor. I took another experimental sniff of the air, and figured that the door to the right was the kitchen. It smelt of baking. Something sweet. I inched forward, but the further I delved into the house, the more I dreaded what I was going to find.

I grabbed Ellie's hand and pulled her close. I walked through into the kitchen, cleared it in an instant. Empty. No threats, no targets. Like the rest of this house. It linked to the living room. I didn't have a chance to prevent Ellie seeing it, as seen that I knew would haunt her for the rest of her life. I was no stranger to death, to violence, but it shocked even me.

Devastation. Blood spray patterned the walls in an elegant, bone-chilling display. A man lay on his back, slumped over a woman, his hands open in one last, desperate attempt to beg for his life. No, not his – his wife's.

Ellie shrieked, and I pulled her into my chest. I didn't want her to see it, to relive it forever. The scene told its own story, at least to someone who knew how to read it. The couple had retreated to a corner, the man with his wife behind him, just like Ellie had followed me. The woman's face, what little I could see of it, was streaked with tears mixed with black trickles of makeup. They had known they were going to die. Ellie's tears wet my shoulder, her body shook with shock, and fear. Not fear. I knew what fear felt like, and it wasn't this. She was stiff with anger, with rage, with the desire to strike back and hurt whoever had done this, to ruin them.

The man had died protecting his wife. Backed into a corner, his last act had been to throw himself towards the weapons that had streaked fire, sending bullets tearing through his body. Two bloody holes peppered his chest, and blood had bloomed forth, soaking his white and blue check shirt. It now lay dark, one color, and sticky with a life force that was now congealed in a thick puddle on the floor. One final bullet marked his forehead, a thin trickle of blood the only sign marking an otherwise still face.

"They're at peace now," I murmured as Ellie fought her way out of my embrace.

Her face was black with thunder, and tears streaked her face in a chilling reminder of the woman lying in her death throes on the floor. "This is my fault," she said, weeping silent tears. "They wouldn't be dead if it wasn't for me."

"It's not," I protested, gripping the handle of my gun so hard I could barely feel my fingers. "It's not your fault. You didn't do this. You didn't kill these people. Victor Antonov killed these people, or ordered their deaths, not you."

Ellie's eyes flickered, as though something had broken free in the depths of her brain, a shard of memory, or understanding. "Victor…" She breathed. "I know now," she said.

"You know?" I said, my forehead wrinkled with confusion.

"It doesn't matter, I'll tell you… After," she said, her own brow furrowed. "I'm not sure yet."

I didn't press, just glad that her mind wasn't entirely focused on the horrible for her. Glad that she was distracted from the enormity of it. The living room stank of death, oozed that cloying, sweet scent that didn't make any sense. It was too early for decay, for rot to have set in, the bodies were still warm. Yet something had changed, almost as though the universe was recognizing the horror of what it had seen – and was protesting it.

The house was empty. I didn't know how I knew, but I knew. Years of experience, perhaps. But that meant something terrifying – horrifying. Victor's men had made it here before us, and that meant they had our son. I'd known the second I saw the broken plant pot, but there's a difference between knowing, and knowing. The creeping realization that I had failed my son, and failed his mother hit me like a battering ram to the gut. I wanted to sink to my knees, to vomit, to weep.

But instead I clenched my jaw, shut my eyes tight to ward off any stray tears, and let my head sink to my chest as I processed it. It was a moment to myself – the acceptance, and resolving never to fail this way again. But in my grief, my self-involvement, I didn't feel Ellie's hand breaking from mine. My ears barely registered the sound of her footsteps padding against the carpeted floor, the creaking of stairs, or the sound of a door pushed too energetically and impacting the drywall.

But the heart-wrenching sound of the choking, guttural sob echoing through the house was enough to slap me out of my reverie. My eyes snapped open and I sprinted into the hallway and up the stairs. There were three rooms up there, a master bedroom, a spare, and a converted office. An office, that is, converted into a baby's bedroom. The desk now changing station, littered with nappies, wipes, baby powder and the other detritus of the whirlwind of motherhood.

A wooden cot, painted a light, delicate baby blue, stood in the center of the room. Ellie stood there, staring at it in silent agony, her body racked with physical sobs that didn't make so much as a sound – and more powerful for it, her hands pressed tight against her mouth.

"What is it?" I said. I wanted to scream with her, to beat my palms against the wall and howl my pain to the skies. But I'd made a promise. And I was going to carry it out.

She pointed at the cot. "There," she croaked. "Inside."

I saw it, a glinting flash, something shiny. A DVD, mockingly tucked into the baby's bedclothes.

A message.