Chapter 33 - Daniil
The short drive into town seemed to take forever.
Leave it to my family to want a secluded place to stay, but it still hadn’t kept us safe from our enemies.
The car Paisley took had a tracker on it, so I found it easily, left in the parking lot of one of the resorts.
It cost me a hundred bucks to learn she wasn’t checked in there, but that she had called a taxi.
Memories of our first night together assailed me. Sweet and wild, but also leaving a bitter taste in my mouth now. Why did she leave? Why didn’t she trust me with the truth?
If the truth was something that made me hate her, I almost didn’t want to know it, but I headed to the hotel where I first laid eyes on her, dressed in a prim skirt and jacket in a sea of women who flaunted more skin than fabric.
Her blonde hair seemed to glow under the dim overhead lights above the bar.
The crowd around her faded into the background as she turned and our eyes met.
When I entered the bar now, still rollicking with people trying to squeeze out the last bit of fun before last call, I imagined I’d see her again, the exact same as that first day.
I wanted it so badly. To take her in my arms and assure her there was nothing she could say that would change my feelings. To make everything all right, no matter what she might have done. Even if it meant screwing over my family with someone who worked for the Collective?
If I saw her sitting at that bar, safe and sound and smiling at me, yes. Maybe. I swore under my breath, searching the crowd for any sight of Paisley, the woman who had me tied up in knots that might never come unraveled.
She wasn’t there. The realization hit me like a blow, like a punch I wasn’t ready for by someone who really had it out for me. She wasn’t there.
I was acting like a complete idiot. Like someone who wasn’t trained from birth to be coldhearted and distant.
Another hundred bucks to the greedy woman behind the check-in desk and I was still out of luck, because Paisley hadn’t checked in there, either.
She wasn’t waiting for me, wasn’t hoping I’d find her.
That should have made me give up this chase, but I still had the unshakeable feeling something was wrong.
More wrong than a mere bomb set off in a house full of children, if that was possible.
It was the same overwhelming feeling I got when I jumped over the bannister to shove her out of the way, half a second before the explosion.
I just knew something was going to happen and I needed to protect her.
I could have looked like a damn fool and would have never lived it down if nothing had happened.
Paisley would have despised me for embarrassing her so badly.
But something did happen. Those packages did explode. All because I read the look of fear on my woman’s face. Yes, she was mine. Enemy or not, she was mine, and I had to be the one to find her.
So, even though I wasn’t convinced she was innocent, and was just as pissed off as anyone else in my family, that sense of urgency to protect her made me pull my phone out of my pocket and scroll to a name that made acid rise in my gut.
It would take much too long to go from hotel to hotel, bribing the workers to find out if she had checked in to any of them. This was the only way, even if it gave me indigestion.
Anatoli answered right away. “Where the hell are you?” he asked.
None of his damn business. I forced myself to answer in a civil tone. “Looking for Paisley, what do you think?”
“Our people will track her down. You’re causing a rift for no reason.”
Our people, as if he was one of us. “I need to be the one to find her and deal with her,” I said. “And I need your help.” God, that was hard to say. Anyone but Paisley would have been twisting in the wind before I asked Anatoli for a favor.
“So you really did get involved with her,” he said, mocking disappointment oozing from his voice.
I forced myself to relax and unclench my fists. “That has nothing to do with it. I’m not convinced she’s guilty.”
“And I’m not convinced she’s innocent,” he answered.
“Aleks is on a rampage, Katie’s blaming herself for trusting anyone outside the family.
Mila and Nat woke up to feed the babies and now they’re furious and upset too.
You know as well as anyone what Mila will do if your current fling is the one who set off that bomb. ”
Mila was the youngest of the American Fokin siblings, and no one in their right mind would want to be on her bad side.
She was the fiercest new mother I had ever met, followed closely by Nat, who inherited a righteous sense of vengeance from her father, Aleks.
The message was clear. If I sided with Paisley, I was out.
Suddenly I had a very good idea how Masha must have felt when she was fighting with us to accept Anatoli.
“I get it,” I said. “If Paisley is guilty, I’ll be the one to make her pay. It has to be me.”
He was quiet for a moment, finally saying, “What do you need?”
I breathed a sigh of relief, telling him I needed security cameras from outside the resort where she’d ditched the car.
“I was told she took a taxi, so a direction would be useful. Track her credit cards or bank activity. And get me every last number you have that’s connected to that nanny agency. Can you do that, and quickly?”
He huffed. “Of course. But are you so certain of this woman that you’re willing to cut a deal with me? I feel quite confident that she’ll be found within a couple days and Aleks’s men will take care of her.”
I was confident of that too, which was why I needed to find her first. Aleks’s people had a very bad habit of shooting first and asking questions later.
But I bristled at the slimy bastard trying to cut a deal with me in exchange for his help.
Was that how family acted? I was right not to trust him.
“What the fuck?” I asked. “What the hell do you want?” When this was over, I fully planned on informing Masha of this, in hopes she might finally see the light about her husband.
“I want you to stop treating Masha like a traitor for marrying me,” he said.
I went silent, wincing at his quietly spoken request. “I haven’t been doing that,” I sputtered.
Anatoli snorted. “Really? You haven’t been avoiding her like the plague, canceling dinners and meetings you know she’ll be at, ducking out of rooms when she enters?
” Every word was like another unexpected punch, and I really didn’t need it right now.
Maybe I had been a little standoffish, but only because I didn’t trust Anatoli.
“I don’t like seeing my wife upset, Daniil,” he said.
And I didn’t like seeing my favorite cousin’s hurt looks whenever I did the things that Anatoli accused me of.
She was like a little sister to me. Mat, Rurik, and I had doted on her since she was born, including her in almost everything we did.
She was as tough as nails, scrambling back up after every time she got knocked down.
And if she couldn’t defeat whatever was bothering her, one of us stepped in.
Now I was the asshole who needed a good kick in the head. And the man I despised for taking her away from us was the one trying to bring us back together.
“That’s all you want?” I asked suspiciously, to hide how crappy I felt about myself.
“That’s it. You can keep treating me like shit all you want, just stop it with Masha.”
He already knew how badly I needed his help, because I would have called anyone else if I had the option.
He knew CJ would laugh in my face, not only because she adored every one of those kids, but because her dog’s fur had been singed in the explosion.
He could ask for anything he wanted, and the fact he was only asking that I stop acting like an ass to Masha finally won me over.
“Done,” I said. “It should have been done long before this,” I conceded.
He promised to send me what he already had right away and start finding the taxi she took from the resort and track it. My butt was barely in one of the plush armchairs around the fireplace in the lobby when several phone numbers came through.
The first was the office number for the nanny agency, which I didn’t bother with since it was after hours.
I hung up as soon as I heard a lilting, cheerful voice go into a spiel about how trusted they were.
Sure. The next was an emergency number, which led to an answering service.
I just about scared the young woman who answered half to death, but wrung a promise from her that I’d be receiving a call within a half an hour.
A half an hour felt like an eternity, especially if Paisley was in trouble. The third number rang to a personal voicemail of someone called Marlowe. I left a menacing message.
“If you have anything to do with Top Nannies or know Paisley Moore, you need to call me back right away.”
That did the trick and within five minutes my phone was ringing.
“How did you get this number?” a scared, sleepy voice asked. “What’s happening with Paisley?”
“Do you work with the agency?” I asked, not usually keen on threatening women, but keeping my voice as dire as possible to keep from wasting valuable time.
“I’m the founder. Please, tell me if Paisley’s all right.”
She sounded truly desperate and I eased up a bit. “Why is she working as a nanny for the Fokin family in Aspen if she’s not an employee of your company?”
The sound of gulping filled my ear before she answered, tears in her voice now.
“It was an emergency. She’s the most trustworthy person I know, and she worked for me many times before I started this agency.
Any background check you run on her will come out squeaky clean.
I’d be shocked if she’s ever even had a parking ticket. ”
I could believe all that, but was it because I wanted to? Marlowe pleaded with me to tell her if Paisley was all right again, outright sobbing now.
“Tell me about Axon,” I said, confusing her enough that she choked back her tears.
“Uh, it’s the accounting firm Paisley works for. I don’t really know anything about it except that she doesn’t much like the management there.”
That was a start, but when I asked if Paisley had ever mentioned any specific people she didn’t like, the nearly hysterical Marlowe couldn’t recall any.
She admitted to knowing Paisley since they were kids, and reiterated that Paisley was fully qualified to work as a nanny despite forgoing the usual background checks.
Did I believe her? Or assume she was part of this, whatever this was? Her tears could easily be fake. Fucking hell, this was another dead end. I was no closer to finding Paisley and if this woman on the phone was legit, I had upset her needlessly.
“I promise you I’m going to take care of your friend,” I said. One way or another.
“But tell me what’s going on,” she pleaded, right before I ended the call.
The tenacious young woman called back several times in a row, so I temporarily blocked her, feeling a twinge of guilt.
“Damn it, Paisley,” I muttered. When did I ever feel guilt?
It was only a couple minutes later that Anatoli called back. “There’s a charge to her bank card from the airport,” he said. “She took a plane back to LA, should be there by now. I’m starting on LAX security cameras, shouldn’t be too much longer until I spot her.”
As I put him on speaker to search for the next flight to LA, he rattled off some technical aspects about his miraculous software that I didn’t give a crap about as long as it worked.
But apparently he was able to utilize a picture of Paisley he’d gotten from Katie’s phone, and it would weed out anyone on the camera feeds who looked like her.
“If she gets in another taxi, we’re golden,” he said. “I’ll be able to track it.”
“If not?”
“Then it all depends on if I can get a clear view of the car’s plate.”
Now he didn’t sound so excited and confident anymore, but I had a starting point. “Damn it,” I said, realizing there were no more flights until the next morning.
“What?” he asked, then laughed. “You want another favor?”
I groaned. I had been meaning to buy my own jet for a while now.
Ever since we decided we were going to make Los Angeles our homebase and Mat had moved further up north, Rurik and I were tossing around the idea of going in on one together to make the trips easier.
I wished I had made that a priority now.
“I’ll call my pilot,” he said without me having to ask. Was I going to have to go beyond acceptance and start actually like this guy? “You can be wheels up in less than an hour and I’ll keep you updated when I find anything else.”
I choked out my thanks and headed for the airport, not about to waste anymore time.