Chapter 22
LEV
Icheck my phone between the Chairman’s talking points, and Mari’s text pops up.
Need to talk to you. Right now. Call me ASAP
Which was followed by:
It’s urgent.
I text back that I’ll call in ten and pocket my phone.
I turn my focus back to the men in the room. It’s our quarterly board meeting. Legitimate businessmen sit around a long table in a private room at one of the Chairman’s restaurants. I find these meetings needlessly boring, but they keep Levcon running smoothly. They legitimize our business.
We’re wrapping up, so I steer the room toward a close. One of the bankers passes out a timeline for our next development, and a lawyer nods like we’re all friends. When the meeting ends, everyone stands. I shake hands and give my men a look that sends them into motion.
“We’ll have a call next week to go over these numbers,” I say as a parting word before I push past Yuri.
He watches me carefully. “Problem?”
“I don’t know yet,” I say, pulling out my phone and hitting Mari’s contact.
It goes to voicemail after one ring. That’s unusual for her. I try again. It goes straight to voicemail. I refuse to panic. She’ll call me back.
Yuri and my guards move me along a private corridor to a service elevator. Outside, the car idles, waiting for us. Once inside, I try her again and it also goes to voicemail.
I know she’s at the office. Her own guards are with her. She wouldn’t be able to go anywhere without me knowing. Still, unease sits low in my gut, unfamiliar.
“Text her guards,” I tell Yuri. “I need to know her whereabouts in the next thirty seconds.”
He does it, but I’m too impatient. I’m already dialing my assistant.
She picks up immediately. “Good afternoon, Mr.—”
“Is Mari still in her office?” I cut her off.
“I saw her leave a few minutes ago,” she answers matter-of-factly.
This isn’t right. Mari wouldn’t just leave without talking to me. Whatever she found must have scared her. I look to Yuri, who’s still watching his phone for a response from Thom.
“Did she have her detail with her?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“She made them wait in the lobby,” my assistant confirms.
“I need you to pull security footage,” I say. “Confirm that she’s with them now.”
I wait a beat, listening to the telltale clack of her keys.
A moment later, she says, “It looks like she was with Mr. Sterling.”
I take a deep breath and look at Yuri again, who shakes his head. He dials Thom.
Yuri speaks in a low voice with Thom, and I wait, impatient for any update.
“When did you lose visual?” he asks, which spikes my blood pressure.
What the hell am I paying any of these people for?
“Right,” he says. “I need you to pull the lobby cam and send it to me right away.”
He hangs up and looks at me, his expression as apprehensive as mine.
“Marcus was in the elevator with her,” he says slowly. “He told Thom that he needed five minutes, but she never came back through the front.”
“And he didn’t think to call us?” I say, my jaw tight.
“He—”
“If you say he assumed, I’m throwing your phone out the window,” I say. “Take us through to the garage,” I tell our driver.
The driver takes the next right without asking. I call Building Security. “I want every bay camera in the garage and every elevator feed for the last thirty minutes,” I say. “Send it to Yuri. If you’re missing a single angle, you’ll be looking for a new job in the next hour.”
We hit the underground ramp too fast. The SUV leans. The security gate lifts for our plate. We punch into Level B and brake hard. I’m out the door before we stop.
I scan rows, corners, blind spots.
“Where’s Thom?” I bark when two guards jog over.
“Sir, he’s on Level A,” one says. “He and Jareth are in the lobby.”
“Did either of you watch the freight elevator?”
They glance at each other.
“We didn’t have word he was moving her that way.”
“You didn’t need word,” I snap. “You needed eyes.”
Yuri’s phone buzzes. He opens the file and expands it on his screen so I can see.
The parking-cam feed shows Marcus at the glass door with Mari at his side.
His hand is light on her elbow. He looks like he’s walking her to a car.
He glances once toward the booth. The guard isn’t there.
He swipes a card and walks her through to the staff bay.
The next camera shows a black SUV idling near a freight elevator.
They vanish through the door. Two minutes later, another SUV leaves Level C. No plate on the frame.
“Who was in the booth?” I ask the nearest guard.
He swallows. “Reece was there, but he—”
“Where’s Reece now?” I snap.
“On break,” he answers, his face going pale.
I stare at him until he looks away.
“Who was supposed to cover his break?” I ask, taking a deep breath.
“I don’t know.”
I step closer, my anger boiling to the surface. “I have given this team one very important job for the last few weeks,” I say, nearly growling. “You are supposed to have eyes on Mari at all times.”
“Sir, for all we know, she’s upstairs in his office safe and sound.”
He stops when he sees my hand move.
I don’t raise my voice. I don’t need to. “Say that again.”
He tries to square up like he’s brave. He isn’t.
“She could be with him upstairs—”
I put a round through his thigh before he can finish. The blast kicks off the concrete, bright and hot. He goes down hard, hands flying to his leg, sound tearing out of him. Blood spreads under him in a quick slick.
The other guards jump back, eyes wide, hands up. The driver flinches. I keep the gun at my side.
“Anyone else think I’m overreacting?”
No one speaks. Finally, they show some sense.
“Someone get Thom and Jareth down here now,” I say, sliding my gun back into its holster.
Yuri is already on his phone, voice low and clipped. He rattles off addresses, plates, names.
“Townhome. Office. The Petrov boutique. The Newark yard. Hit them all,” he says. “Street teams rotate cars. No marked units. If you see him, you don’t chase alone. Don’t be a hero. You call it, you hold the door.”
He ends one call and makes another. I hear him tell Legal to lock Marcus’s credentials and freeze every account he can touch. He calls IT and has them kill Marcus’s device tokens. He calls the garage manager to hold every exit. Then he grabs my shoulder and shoves me hard enough to move me a step.
“Back in the car,” he orders. “Now.”
“I’m not done,” I say.
“You can’t shoot all of your people,” he says, voice flat. “Save rounds for someone who deserves them.” He jerks his head at the driver. “Get him in the car.”
The driver hovers, waiting for permission that isn’t his to ask. I force myself to breathe. The guard on the ground sobs quietly through his teeth. Blood keeps pooling, but he’ll live.
I climb into the SUV, slamming the door behind me. The driver takes off, and I look over at Yuri, who’s sitting opposite me.
He speaks without looking up. “I’ve got teams to Marcus’s townhome.”
“He won’t be there,” I say. “He’s not that stupid. I don’t know how long he’s been planning this, but it’s definitely long enough to cover his bases.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Yuri answers calmly. “They’re going anyway. Sometimes the stupid thing pays.”
I stare out the window at the tunnel lights flicking by.
I count them, because if I don’t concentrate on something, I’ll rip the door off.
I force the voice in my head to shut up.
It says I should’ve answered her first text in one minute, not ten.
It says I should’ve held the board meeting at the office instead of at the Chairman’s restaurant. It says every choice was the wrong one.
“Call his wife,” I say. “Even if she doesn’t know anything, she could be leverage.”
“Daniella left him in the spring,” Yuri reminds me. “You knew that. She nearly took everything. At least, it looked like she did, but she probably didn’t know about his little side business. Anyway, she got the place in Maine and has been there ever since.”
“What about his friends?” I ask. “His neighbors? There has to be someone we can get to.”
“We’re his friends,” he answers darkly. “We were his friends,” he quickly amends.
I can’t concentrate on the thousand ways Marcus has betrayed us. The only thing that matters now is getting Mari back. Every other feeling is going to have to wait until I know she’s safe.
“We’ll find him,” Yuri says, stating it as fact. “He can’t vanish with her in broad daylight without leaving a trace. He took the staff bay to the service tunnel. I’m tracing the tunnel cameras now.”
“Who signed that tunnel access order?” I ask.
“You did,” he says without looking up. “Last winter, for the plaza renovation.”
That one’s on me, I know. But as I think back to it, I realize Marcus was the one pushing for it. I only signed off to get him off my back. There were more important things to focus on at the time.
Still, I can’t help wondering how I missed this. Were the signs there the whole time? Have I been blindly trusting him out of some misplaced loyalty while he’s been secretly planning to fuck me over?
I’m going to kill him when I find him. If he’s touched one hair on Mari’s head, I’m going to make it very slow and very painful.
Yuri’s phone pings. He pulls up a new clip.
“Service tunnel Camera Three,” he says. The screen shows the black SUV from the first bay sliding into the tunnel, then stopping at a gate to wait.
A second SUV appears thirty seconds later and falls in behind.
The timestamp matches up. The plate on the first SUV is a company pool plate.
The second has no plate. Then both disappear under the camera’s frame. I lean forward and stab the intercom.
“Cut right. Take the back ramp to 43rd,” I tell the driver. “We’ll sweep the service alleys on foot. Put us by the receiving docks.”
“I’ve got three more teams rolling,” Yuri says. “One to the boutique that manages the trust, one to the Newark yard, one to the Delancey club. If Marcus thinks he can trade her, it’ll be to buy time from the people taking our money.”
“He won’t trade her,” I say. It comes out too sharp. I make myself steady it. “He’ll hide her. He’ll try to leverage her to get distance from me. He wants a corridor to leave the city.”
The SUV brakes hard at the curb. We get out. The alley behind the building is narrow, walled by loading docks and dumpsters. A delivery guy smokes by a steel door and decides to finish his cigarette somewhere else when he sees us. I stop him.
“You see a black SUV leave in the last twenty minutes?” I ask.
He takes another long drag of his cigarette. “I don’t know.” He shrugs.
I take a fifty from my wallet and hold it, not offering, just showing. “Try again.”
His eyes flick to the bill and then to my face. “Two,” he says. “One with two men in caps. One with a woman in the back, I think. I didn’t see her face. The glass was dark.”
“When?”
He checks his phone. “Fifteen, twenty minutes ago?”
“Which direction were they headed in?”
He points south. “Up the ramp and then left.”
I nod and slip him another fifty for his trouble. Yuri and I head back to the car, and I tell the driver to head south.