Her Silver Fox Mountain Men (Lucky Lady Reverse Harems)

Chapter 32

32

Oliver

I t’s the call I’ve dreaded from the minute I heard about Elise’s surprise move.

“They left about ten minutes ago,” Sheriff Van Pelt says as we get out of our cars and rush up the front steps of Rustic Union Bank. “I’ve got my deputies combing the town and its surrounding areas… they’ve been alerted of the danger.”

The whole building has been cordoned off.

An ambulance is parked at the base of the steps, lights flashing. The bank personnel and the customers have all been evacuated are lined up close to the street corner, where one of Van Pelt’s deputies is taking statement after statement. The rest of the crime scene unit is inside.

“Where is my daughter?” Lev demands, storming ahead accompanied by Andrei and Michael. The three of them look pale, sweaty, and scared, threading a fine line that will descend into chaos unless they get a grip on their emotions.

“Right through there. She’s stable,” the sheriff replies.

We follow him across the main hall and through the corridor, finally reaching the vault room. There’s a dead guy on the floor with his back against the wall. Andrei is the first to recognize him. “Shit, that’s Dmitri.”

“Kara’s guard,” Michael tells me.

“Where the fuck is Piotr?” Lev asks, though I’m not sure who’s expected to answer at this point. Standing by the door and shaking like a leaf is Steve, the bank manager. “Who did this?”

“I don’t know,” Steve mumbles, but the sheriff interjects.

“Your daughter is right over here,” he says.

Inside the vault room, we find Kara on a mobile gurney, flanked by two paramedics while one of the deputies takes photos of the entire scene, causing white flashes to cut across my field of vision over and over again.

“Kara, honey,” Lev says and rushes to her side.

She’s barely awake; an oxygen mask covers her face. Her brown coat is loose, layer upon layer of bandages pressed into her wounds. There’s plenty of blood and torn fabric—the paramedics had to move fast in order to get the bleeding under control from what I can tell.

“What the fuck happened here?” Andrei asks.

“He got her,” Kara whispers, the steam of her breath fogging up her oxygen mask. “Igor shot me and took Elise. He’s got the evidence, the ledger…”

“We have to get her to the hospital,” one of the paramedics says.

“Mike and I will go with Kara,” Andrei says, staying close to the paramedics as he takes Kara’s limp hand in his. “You stay with the sheriff and the guys. Get Elise back. Get Igor under control.”

“Will she be alright?” Lev asks the paramedics.

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” one of them replies. “But both bullets went through and through and missed any organs or major arteries. Overall, she’s lucky.”

“Papa, find Elise,” Kara manages, struggling to stay awake. “Find her…”

“I will, darling.”

They wheel Kara out of the vault room, a heavy silence remaining in her wake.

The sheriff gets all the information he can out of his deputies while Lev starts making frantic phone calls.

“What a shit show,” Van Pelt says as he joins us. He keeps going over his notes with a deep frown and a grim look on his face.

“What?” James asks.

“The bank manager says Kara and Elise came in here accompanied by two men, one of them being the dead guy sitting right over there,” the sheriff replies, pointing at the man in the hallway. “The other one helped Igor and his two guards take the bank manager hostage, forcing him to bring them down here. He then left with Igor, the guards, and Elise.”

“They were fast and discreet,” I conclude. “I’m guessing nobody upstairs had any idea about what was going on down here.”

“That’s right.”

“Dmitri and Piotr,” Lev says, getting off the phone. “That’s Dmitri, dead. Piotr must’ve been working with Igor the whole time. My own family, right under my damn nose. It’s unbelievable.”

“But it’s reality,” Roman coldly reminds him. “Igor has Elise and the evidence she kept against him. The clock is ticking, and we need to find her before he…” His voice trails off.

I know what he was about to say. We’re all thinking it. We just can’t bring ourselves to say it out loud.

“The twins and Janice are in the safe house. Kirby’s with them,” James confirms upon checking his phone. “We need absolutely everybody’s help to find Elise.” He looks at Lev. “What can you tell us about Igor?”

Lev gives us a startled look, the realization gradually sinking in. “It seems I don’t know my own son as well as I thought—”

I cut him off. “Lev, I need you to fucking focus. Elise is pregnant. We have to find her.”

“Elise is what?” He’s stunned. Horrified. He now understands what’s at stake.

“What would be his next move? He’s got a ten-minute head start on us here.”

It takes Lev another handful of seconds, but I can almost see the clarity return to his cool, albeit tired, blue eyes. “Igor is a proud yet vindictive man. Same as I was when I was his age. He’s worse, though. Andrei often warned me about it, but I guess it’s the price I must pay for everything I did to keep my family in power.”

“Okay, he’s proud and vindictive. He could’ve killed Elise right here. He had the ledger; he had the evidence. But he took her with him instead. Why?”

“He wants to either convince her to stay with him or hurt her for betraying him. Or both. She is his wife after all,” Lev says with a heavy heart. “Either way, he needs someplace private to… gloat, I suppose.”

“Gloat?” James questions. “Why, because Elise has been, what, exactly, laughing in his face the whole time?”

“It may seem that way to Igor, yes,” Lev explains. “He’d take her away from here for sure, but he wouldn’t risk driving her out of town, not when he knows the cops and your people are looking for her and him. He’d keep Elise hidden somewhere in Rustic.”

“An abandoned warehouse or building, something like that,” Roman suggests.

Lev gives him a brief nod. “Yes.”

A click in my ear has my spine stiffening. “Shit, the earpiece,” I mutter and press one of the tiny buttons on its side. Elise’s voice comes through, and I freeze on the spot.

“Where are you taking me, Igor?” she asks. She sounds scared. Drowsy, confused.

“Guys, she’s online, main channel,” I whisper.

Immediately, a new sense of urgency comes over Roman and James as they patch into the main channel. Lev sweats bullets while the sheriff alerts his deputies to join the same frequency from their radios.

“Pay close attention to every goddamn sound and word,” Van Pelt barks through his radio. “We need to figure out where he’s taking her.”

“You betrayed me,” Igor tells Elise. An engine roars in the background. Voices murmuring. Men speaking in Russian. “You’ll pay for what you did, my love.”

“Where are you taking me?” she cries out.

“Relax,” he chuckles, but his voice sounds strained. “We’re going someplace private. You know you don’t double-cross a Konstantinov and get off easy.”

“They’re in a car,” I tell Lev. “His guards are with him. I can hear them in the background.”

“What is Elise saying?” he asks with a trembling sigh.

“She’s trying to find out where Igor is taking her. No dice, though.”

“He’s being cagey,” James confirms.

Roman shakes his head slowly. “He doesn’t know about her earpiece, guys. Wait,” he pauses and takes his phone out. I watch with bated breath as he flips through his contacts. “Tori, where are you?”

Last I knew, she was on her way over to the safe house to back Kirby up. As soon as we heard that Elise had been taken, we knew the jig was up. The bait fell through, so there was no point in keeping Tori around and in disguise anymore.

“Listen, I need you to tap into the comms system,” Roman tells Tori. “Do you have your laptop handy?” He closes his eyes for a moment. I can sense his torment. It echoes mine and James’s. “Okay, patch into the GPS locator system. Each of our earpieces is fitted with a tracker.”

“Holy shit, yes,” I gasp, surprised I didn’t remember this fun little fact sooner.

“Do you have her?” Roman asks Tori. “Alright, they’re still moving. Send us the coordinates as they go. We need to catch up with them.”

Lev joins us as we race out of the vault and up the stairs. Roman’s phone keeps pinging with coordinate updates. We rush to James’s SUV and pile in. In the meantime, I listen to Elise’s ragged breath and sobs as she keeps trying to reason with an obviously irate Igor.

“You can’t do this,” she tells him. “They know you took me.”

“They? Who’s they? Those Army Ranger losers you’ve been fucking?”

“The sheriff. Everybody. Even your family. Kara knows what you did.”

“Kara will be lucky if she doesn’t spend the rest of her life eating through a tube,” Igor grumbles. “Now shut the fuck up and sit tight. We’re almost there.”

“Your own sister—”

“I told you to shut up!”

I hear her whimper as he smacks her across the face. My blood boils. The rage is damn near impossible to control, but I take deep breaths to try and calm myself down. As James turns the engine on and shifts it into drive, I can feel the adrenaline and the anger coursing through me, igniting every cell in my body as I brace for what’s to come.