Chapter 27 #2
“Less than a million.” Again, she couldn’t meet his gaze. And the hardest question to answer was yet to come.
“So you took the money for yourself?” Morrison asked.
“No! I would never do that.” His question, flung at her like the accusation it was, stung more than he would ever know.
By now, Kyle probably regretted sticking up for her at all.
“What did you do with the money?” Morrison held up the paper on which she’d written the Chicago bank’s address. “Is there any left in this bank?”
As four sets of eyes focused solely on her, she swallowed so hard they had to have heard.
“No. I moved it.” At this point, there was no reason to hold anything back.
“About a year after I left Chicago, I started thinking about all that money sitting there doing nothing. I also came to realize just how difficult it is to set up an entirely new life and how expensive it is. Then, when I was forced to move around the country to keep hidden, I met so many other people struggling just to put food on the table for their children. So, right before the annual fee was due on the boxes for the next year, I took a risk and went back to Chicago. I emptied out both boxes and started giving the money away to places where it would do some good.” The house was so quiet she could have heard a speck of dust land on the table.
“And before you ask, I won’t tell you who I gave all that money to. Ever.”
So many others had helped her, assisting her in creating a new life. It had taken time to find the courage to start helping others. There was no way she would allow these men or anyone else in the FBI to undo all the good she’d accomplished.
Kyle must have sensed she wouldn’t budge on this point. Instead of insisting she divulge to whom she’d given the money, he sighed. “You said there’s less than a million dollars left. Where is it now?”
She grabbed Morrison’s pad and pen from the table and wrote down an address and a box number. “In a bank box in South Orange, New Jersey. I can get it for you.” Now that she knew people had died because of that money, giving the rest of it to charity wasn’t an option.
“No need,” he said. “We’ll get a warrant and serve it on the bank tomorrow. But we need to get the ledger. Today,” he emphasized, his voice devoid of emotion, as if he needed to divest himself of whatever feelings he may have had for her. The key word being had. “Where is it?”
“Like I said, it’s hidden. I’ll take you to get it.” The last thing she wanted was the church to be besieged by federal agents. “I never understood why Yuri wanted me to keep a ledger at all. Isn’t it a paper trail that could be used against him?” Or me.
“Even organized crime keeps ledgers like any business does,” Morrison said, leaning back against the cushion. “That’s how the big bosses know how much is owed to them. To keep crews from shortchanging them, the need for management outweighs the evidentiary risk.”
“We still have a problem,” Kyle said, massaging his chin and frowning.
“Even if we had every penny of that ransom money, we still can’t prove where it came from.
It’s still all speculation. Lebedev won’t talk.
Yuri certainly won’t, either. We have no witnesses, no physical or forensic evidence, and no digital trails.
No body, no crime. We don’t have probable cause for a search warrant.
The only information we have is that Yuri and Lebedev drove off in Lebedev’s truck right before the last kidnapping, disappeared for two days, and maybe dumped the bodies in a lake. At best that’s all hearsay.”
A lake?
Bits and pieces of a road trip taken long ago skittered to life. Something so seemingly inconsequential couldn’t possibly have relevance. Or can it? “Where is this lake?” she asked.
“We don’t know.” Kyle sat back, crossing his arms and narrowing his eyes on her. “Do you know?”
Did she? In all likelihood, no. Then again…
“This might be nothing. The day Yuri took me to see our new house we drove outside Chicago to look at another property. He said he and Nikki bought it and were going to build houses there. As far as I know, they never did.” Or, Yuri had never told her they had.
“There weren’t any buildings there yet, but there was a small lake. ”
One by one, Kyle exchanged undecipherable looks with his boss and brothers. “Do you remember where this property was?”
She thought for a moment, unable to recall a town name. “Not the town, but I might be able to figure out the route we took to get there.”
Kyle stood and disappeared into another room. He returned carrying a laptop. Without asking him to, Jack relinquished his seat on the sofa. Kyle sat beside her, his arm brushing hers, their first physical contact since…
Making love. Don’t think about that now.
After setting the laptop on his knees, he opened up a mapping app. In no time, she was staring at an enlarged map of Chicago’s suburbs. “We drove close to two hours south of the city.”
“On I-57?” Kyle’s warm breath so near her cheek made the hair at her nape tingle.
“No.” Using her finger, she traced the road they’d been on for most of the trip.
“We spent a lot of time on Route 1. Can you enlarge the map? And scroll south.” He did as she asked.
“There!” She pointed to a pushpin for the Rocky Ridge Pet Resort.
“I don’t specifically remember the name of that place, but if it’s the same road we were on, there should be another dog kennel immediately to the south.
” At least, there had been ten years ago.
Kyle dragged the cursor, bringing up farmland to the south.
“There it is! The Manor Kennel. The lake property was less than a minute after we passed the second kennel. There wasn’t a lot of acreage to build on, and when I asked Yuri about that, he said he bought it because he liked the lake. ”
Kyle kept scrolling south. Sure enough, an irregularly shaped green hexagon plot of land very close to the second kennel had a small unnamed lake. He gave his boss a quick nod. “Looks like it’s still vacant property. No farmland, no buildings.”
“If I’d dumped seven bodies in that lake,” Deke said, “I wouldn’t want to build on it, sell the houses, and take the chance some kid might go fishing and hook a corpse.”
“How is it you remember the pet resorts after all this time?” Morrison narrowed his eyes on her. The man might as well have a sign on his forehead that said: I don’t trust you.
Victoria understood his reluctance to believe anything she said. Federal criminal charges could be in her future. She had every reason to fabricate a story to give the appearance of being cooperative and sharing useful information.
“I always wanted a dog,” she answered honestly, “but we couldn’t have one in the place we were living in at the time. The kennels got me thinking about having a dog again, then not two hours later Yuri showed me our new house. I remember telling him that now we could have a dog.”
For a long moment, Morrison remained silent. Finally, he grunted and pursed his lips, giving her a slight nod and leading her to believe she’d passed his truth-test. This one, anyway.
Using the cursor, Kyle outlined the lake property in yellow, then handed his brother the laptop.
“Deke, can you find out who owns this property now and if either Yuri, Lebedev, or any of Semyon Novikov’s people ever owned it under their names or a company name?
Ten years ago, when we seized all their assets, this property wasn’t on the seizure list. See if you can find out who’s been paying taxes on it all this time. ”
“On it.” Deke took the laptop. “I’ll do a new search in FinCen.”
“What’s that?” Victoria asked.
“A financial database run by the FBI.” Kyle’s voice still held no warmth. “We can see if there are any accounts connected to Yuri or Nikolai that we might have missed and whether they’re linked to that property.”
Abruptly, he stood and tucked a hand behind his head, massaging the back of his neck. “I’ll reach out to AUSA Washington tomorrow, see if we can get Victoria immunity in return for her testimony.”
“Good.” Morrison also rose. “And now that she’s a witness in a Bratva homicide investigation, I’ll see if I can get HQ to approve official protection and a safehouse.”
“No!” Without thinking, she jumped up and latched onto Kyle’s forearm. When he flinched, she released her grip. The air between them was colder than ice. “I told you I won’t go into another safehouse.”
His nostrils flared, and his lean jaw clenched. “For now, she can stay here with me. That hasn’t changed. At least until we can make other arrangements.”
The icy bitterness in his tone sliced a jagged hole in her heart, because contrary to his words, everything had changed.
It was clear the last thing he wanted was to be anywhere near her. For him, this was no longer about the personal safety of a woman he cared about. Now she was nothing more to him than a witness.
“What’s going to happen to me?” she whispered. Could they really get her immunity? Or would they send her to jail for what she’d done?
“I’ll talk to AUSA Washington and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago,” Kyle said, adding, “It’ll be their call, but I’ll have to tell them who you are to Yuri.”
Her heart plummeted. There were three ways this could end. Prison, a new identity in another part of the country, or she could take control of her life…and run. This time, she’d be running from Yuri and the FBI, but it was better than being at the mercy of others for the rest of her life.
“Do you think Yuri will tell Nikolai Lebedev that Victoria’s here in the New York area?” Jack asked. “Lebedev’s on the hook for these murders, too. He’d also have a vested interest in wanting to keep Victoria from testifying about the ledger.”
Another reason not to stick around.
“Maybe.” Kyle nodded. “But Mike’s CI said Lebedev wants Yuri to fork over half the ransom money in his account.
I don’t see Yuri going for that. He spent twice as much time in prison as Lebedev.
I think he wants to keep all that money for himself.
To make that happen, he’ll have to hide the fact he knows where Victoria is. Even after he gets his money back.”
“Unless Lebedev gets to her first,” Jack said. “That way, he gets the ledger and the money.”
All eyes turned to her. My mistake.
There was a fourth way this could end for her.
“The only way for him to do that,” she said, acknowledging the obvious, “is for Nikki to kill me.”
Kyle shook his head. “The FBI won’t let that happen.”
The FBI won’t. It wasn’t lost on her that he hadn’t said he wouldn’t let that happen.
She’d thought her worst nightmares were behind her. I was wrong.
Yuri’s form of abuse was one thing, but she never imagined there was something far worse. This, she would never survive.
She looked into Kyle’s beautiful eyes. It was there, on his face and in the resigned demeanor of his entire body.
It was too late. She’d lost the only man she’d truly ever loved.