He came back that evening.
Jane had spent the hours between Irina's departure and his return doing several productive things: she had mapped the room in exhaustive detail, tested every window again (still no luck), made an inventory of items that could theoretically be used as weapons (lamp — heavy, unwieldy; letter opener on the desk — actually useful; a very solid-looking candlestick — promising), and she had also, when the productive things ran out, sat on the window seat and watched the snow and allowed herself exactly twenty minutes of feeling the full weight of the situation before she folded it away and returned to planning.
She was sitting at the desk, reading one of the books she'd found on the shelf (in English — that detail was not lost on her; the shelf contained approximately fifteen books in English, which she suspected had been placed there deliberately and recently), when the door unlocked.
Dimitri entered carrying, of all things, a chessboard.
Jane looked at him. At the chessboard. Back at him.
"You kidnapped me," she said pleasantly, "and now you want to play chess."
"I want to talk," he said, setting the board on the low table near the fireplace and sitting in one of the chairs flanking it with the ease of a man fully at home in every room he entered. "And I find conversations go better with something to do with the hands."
"Is that a Russian cultural thing or a you thing?"
Something flickered in his expression. "Probably a me thing."
Jane stood, crossed the room, and sat down in the opposite chair. She told herself this was purely strategic — information was useful, and conversation was how you got information.
"Fine," she said. "Talk. But I want answers, not deflections. Where exactly are we? Why did you take me? What do you want?"
He set up the pieces with the automatic, practiced ease of someone who had played ten thousand games. "We are at my family estate. Approximately three hundred kilometres southeast of Moscow."
"Family estate," Jane repeated. "How charming. Presumably the family tradition of abducting women from London is a longstanding one."
The corner of his mouth moved. "My father was many things. A kidnapper wasn't among them." He pushed a pawn forward. "As for why — I wanted you somewhere safe while I handled some complications in London."
"Safe," Jane said flatly. "'Safe' isn't a word I'd use to describe being drugged and transported across international borders against my will."
"The anaesthetic was the cleanest available option for the transit," he said, in the tone of someone reporting a logistics decision. "You weren't in danger at any point."
"You say that like it makes it fine." Jane moved her own piece. "What complications in London?"
He looked at the board. Then at her. "There are people who would use proximity to me as leverage. Your family, your friend — they could become targets."
"And the solution to that was kidnapping me yourself."
"The solution was removing you from the equation until the equation was solved."
Jane stared at him. "That is genuinely the most insane thing I've ever heard, and I once sat through a three-hour lecture on postmodern epistemology."
He looked at her with the expression of a man encountering something unexpected. "You're not afraid."
"I'm absolutely afraid," Jane said crisply. "I just don't find it useful."
He was quiet for a moment, looking at her with those storm-grey eyes, and Jane had the distinct and unsettling impression that she had just moved a piece he hadn't seen coming.
"Your move," she said, nodding at the board.
He moved.
They played for an hour. Jane lost, but only on the third game, and she made him work for it.