Chapter 9
Adam heard her scream from halfway across the yard.
Every instinct inside him went savage. He broke into a dead run toward the house while security men shouted behind him.
The moment he hit the backdoor and saw it swinging slowly off its hinges, he knew.
Her guard lay crumpled beside the table in a pool of blood.
“Millie!” Adam roared as he tore through the house room by room, searching even though he knew she was gone. Panic clawed at his chest so violently he could barely breathe. He had promised to protect her. Promised she would be safe with him. And he had failed.
Outside, floodlights cut through the darkness while men spread across the ranch yard with rifles and flashlights.
His brothers were out there along with all the remaining security detail.
Adam dropped to his knee beside the dead guard long enough to close the man’s eyes before fury unlike anything he’d ever known before took hold of him.
“Find her,” he ordered in a deadly calm voice that silenced everyone who had run in behind him.
“I don’t care what it takes. Lock down the roads, call the sheriff, call every Sullivan employee we have. Ricard Sokolov just declared war.”
Millie complied with his instructions to keep Ricard from shooting her as they ran through the forest toward the road.
He held her arm with his left hand and in his right, he kept his Makarov ready to fire.
Once they hit the road, they ran to a waiting SUV.
Viktor slid behind the wheel.
Ricard shoved Millie into the backseat and climbed in after her. “Go. Viktor. Go.”
“Which way do you want me to head?” Viktor looked into the rearview mirror.
“To the hunting lodge.”
“We are closer to it here than we were in downtown Steamboat Springs.”
“We still have to hurry.”
“I will get us there, Boss.”
Millie sat rigidly in the backseat of the SUV, as close to her door as she could get, while Viktor drove over the curving mountain roads at dangerous speeds.
Ricard grabbed her by her arm and pulled her back toward him. “Get over here. I don’t want you doing something stupid like jumping out of a moving car.”
That was exactly what she was planning to do. She kept her eyes forward, her hand on her belly. Her pulse raced and she couldn’t stop shaking.
When Ricard finally noticed her hand resting protectively over her stomach, his eyes narrowed. “Are you ill?” he asked suspiciously.
Millie forced herself to shrug. “Carsick.”
His gaze lingered for several seconds before he finally returned to look out the windshield at the road in front of them.
She silently thanked God he hadn’t figured out the truth.
Adam had followed the tire tracks away from the ranch long enough to know that the breach was from the unsecured north ridge.
The place he’d been sure was too rugged for someone of Sokolov’s city boy constitution to make it up and down again.
Then they disappeared in the gravel road at the bottom of the hill.
He wasn’t sure which way they went. Too much traffic had passed.
Defeated, he turned around and walked back to the ranch.
As the hours dragged before dawn he didn’t sleepw. Search teams continued to comb the surrounding mountains. The sheriff’s department set up roadblocks. Benjamin coordinated with private security contacts across Colorado, while Gabriel worked nonstop tracing phone records and traffic cameras.
Adam stood in the barn, staring at Venus, when Daniel approached quietly by his side and set a hand on his shoulder. “We’ll get her back.”
Swallowing hard, Adam rested a trembling hand on the stall door. “I know,” he said roughly. “Because if we don’t, there is no place on earth that Solokov can hide from me.”
Adam decided to go visit Dmitry Petrov. He knew he had connections to the Bratva. The fact that he was supposed to be retired meant nothing. People didn’t retire from the mafia, Russian or Italian. The connection was a lifelong commitment.
He walked back to the house from the barn and checked on his brothers before heading to the garage.
Benjamin reported that the sheriff had no leads. Ricard had not tried to get out of town.
That meant he was still here in Steamboat or the surrounding area, somewhere. But where?
Adam pulled up in front of Dmitry’s two-story home. The outside was wood siding and there was a river rock chimney.
He walked up to the door and rang the doorbell.
A middle-aged woman with graying black hair answered the door.
“Mrs. Petrov?”
“Yes.”
“My name is Adam Sullivan and I’d very much like to talk to your husband. It’s a matter of life and death.”
The woman’s brows went up, but that was the only reaction to his statement.
“Wait here. I’ll go see if he’s receiving.”
See if he’s receiving? Who does he think he is the pope?
She returned a short time later and opened the screen door to let him in. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll take you to him.”
Adam followed quietly, taking in the artwork on the walls. Other than the fact that some of these paintings probably cost millions of dollars, no outward sign of Petrov’s wealth was present.
He was like Adam in that respect. The most obvious sign of Adam’s wealth
was the helicopter and private plane. The copter was a definite luxury, unlike the plane which was a necessity for them to do business.
Dmitry Petrov was a short, overweight man with thick gray hair. He had brown eyes that sized a person up as soon as they entered.
He stood when Adam entered and extended his hand. “Mr. Sullivan. So nice to finally meet you. Please have a seat.” He reached for a box on the corner of his desk. Cigar?”
“Thank you, but no.”
“Very well.” He closed the humidor and sat back in his chair. “What can I do for you, Mr. Sullivan.”
“Please call me, Adam.”
“Very well and I am Dmitry.”
“I need your help. Someone in your old line of work, has taken my wife from me and I need to find him. Do you have any idea where he would go?”
Dmitry steepled his hands. “I must assume you are talking about Ricard Sokolov. Am I correct.”
Adam nodded. “You are, as usual, well informed.”
Dmitry waved his hand dismissively. “He came to see me to gain my help in that endeavor. I told him he was in error pursuing the woman, but it sounds like he did not heed my advice. I even introduced him to Janine Smirnoff hoping he would forget about Milena.”
“It didn’t work and if he has hurt her in any way, then I’ll kill him. Otherwise, I’ll turn him over to the Routt County Sheriff who will probably turn him over to the Colorado Bureau of Investigations.”
Dmitry tilted his chair back. He rested his still steepled hands over his chest. “I did not give him the help he sought. I told him his plan was unwise. He is obsessed with the woman. Determined to marry her and then succeed his father-in-law as head of the family.” He paused.
“He would not have lasted long in that position. He is not smart enough to become Pakhan.”
“What is Pakhan?”
“Aren’t you familiar with the Russian mafia?”
“Not very much.”
“Pakhan is the head of the family just as a don is in the Italian mafia. I am no longer associated with the organization, but as I’m sure you know, or you would not have come to me, I used to be..”
“That is exactly why I came here. I figure if anyone can help me, it would be you.”
“Why should I help you, Adam?” The old man narrowed his gaze.
Adam ran a hand behind his neck. “Because Sokolov is a volatile man and untrustworthy. No one wants that kind of man having any more power than he currently does. And he probably shouldn’t ever be trusted with the power he does have. Because he kidnapped my wife.”
Dmitry leaned forward and clasped his hands on the desk in front of him. “So far I agree. But what can I do about it? Sokolov is not one of my men. I have no power over him.”
“But you know where he might be, don’t you?”
“I might have an idea.”
“Where? Please help me.”
Dmitry is quiet for a moment, seemingly thinking about his answer.
“I’ll help you Adam and tell you what I know because you asked and because Ricard Sokolov is the worst kind of man, if you can even call him a man.
I received him here because of who he works for, not because I like him.
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer, is a true saying.
” Dmitry sat forward and pulled a yellow pad of paper from one of the drawers in his massive desk.
Adam hadn’t really paid attention when he walked into the room, but it was definitely a man’s room.
From the huge mahogany desk to the luxurious sofa against one wall and matching wing chairs around a mahogany coffee table, the room spoke wealth.
He could afford those things but he’d never really wanted them.
Everything he wanted was already at the house and had belonged to his parents.
He watched Dmitry make a drawing of a map until it was complete.
“This map will take you to my hunting lodge. Sokolov will be there but for how long I’m not sure.
You should also know that the road that goes in front of the cabin continues on to Oak Creek from where he can easily make his way to Denver.
Whether he’s taken this road or not I do not know.
As I told him, it is very dangerous. Some sections you are literally driving over a rock slide.
Whether he will risk it or not is unknown.
I’ve been on it, and I would not risk it again, but Ricard is a wild card, there is no telling what he will do.
Adam took the map and stood. “Thank you. I appreciate all your help.” He might be working with Ricard, but I have no choice but to take the info at face value.