Chapter Twenty-Nine
Dominic Marino was their enemy, but as much as Callum did not want to admit it, he was also a resource. That didn’t negate Callum’s absolute disgust of the man.
Rocco and Roman had arrived thirty minutes before Callum and Gage planned to walk in. They couldn’t use comm pieces, and that was just as well. Callum didn’t need chatter in his head. He was working too hard to follow Vivian’s order.
They arrived at the swank hotel. The lobby was too trendy.
The decor matched the people who milled about.
Stationed somewhere in the lobby and bar were Delta team members.
Callum eyed a guy with dark hair and tattoos, haphazardly scrolling on his phone.
That guy looked like he could take everyone in the lobby out in a fistfight.
Callum checked his watch and caught sight of a blond surfer type assessing the lobby. He had his back to the wall, a suitcase by his side, and a deadly glare.
Across the lobby, Rocco waited by the entrance to the hotel bar, scrolling on a phone, eyes darting around the open space.
Where was Roman? There he was, kicked back on a sectional near the elevators.
“See anyone you know?” Callum asked Gage. “Think I’ve pinpointed a few.”
“Not Marino, and he’s all I care about.”
Callum made eye contact with the street fighter but went about his business with Gage to the rendezvous point. All of Titan had his back. He didn’t know who they were, might never see them again, but he sensed their unquestioning support. The feeling of camaraderie surged.
Damn, he’d been missing it.
He and Gage posted at the designated spot in the lobby. Callum checked the time again. Gage eyed his phone. They both received a message:
Marino arrived. Entering lobby.
Callum casually pivoted. His teammates covertly moved positions. All of them versus Dominic Marino, who wasn’t an idiot. Marino likely had his own people in the lobby scouting for them.
He spotted Marino approaching across the lobby. “There he is.”
“I see him,” Gage confirmed.
It had been many years since Callum had sat across from Marino on the Willoughbys’ deck. Marino had aged in the way wealthy people did: possibly a nip-tuck, a face full of filler, maybe even a hair implant. Expensive clothes, a smarmy smile. Callum expected nothing less.
Marino walked over and greeted them with his pearly white veneers. “Nice to see you again, Callum.”
He shook the man’s hand when he would rather have slugged him for all that he had put Grace through.
Gage’s greeting leaned friendlier. They would play good cop, bad cop, though Vivian had reminded Callum not to take it too far. He needed to employ a solid dose of diplomacy if this meeting was going to be worth their time.
Callum turned toward the bar where they could grab a table near their backup team and still have privacy.
“I reserved a conference room,” Marino offered. “I thought more privacy would be better.”
He and Gage shrugged in agreement. The move wasn’t entirely unexpected. Marino would have power players up his sleeve to assert dominance in a conversation he probably did not want to have.
They followed him toward the escalator that led to the second level. The conference room was nearby, and they settled around a large table.
What was Gage’s first impression of Marino? He’d been up to speed on the basics: who Marino was to Grace and in business, what the Bureau of Prisons had to say on his time in the system, and before that, what was in the prosecutor’s presentencing report.
In theory, Gage knew more about Marino than Callum. But Callum knew what mattered most: his obsession with Grace.
Callum cut to the chase. “Where’s Grace?”
He held up his hands. “If I knew, I would have told your colleagues and saved us this time.” Marino inclined his head toward Callum. “No one mentioned you would be here. I didn’t know you had retired from the Army.”
“I’ve been here since you pulled that stunt at the grocery store.”
His lips pulled down as if trying to hide a smile. “I’m not sure stunt is the right word.” He shrugged. “The interaction between a man and his wife is complicated—”
“You’re not married anymore.”
“What’s a little paperwork to complicate a lifelong commitment?” His sleazy smile exposed too many teeth. “Why act like that? I thought you wanted my help.”
“You’re so hung up on your ex,” Callum muttered.
Gage cleared his throat. Good cop. Bad cop. If they were going to meet their operating objectives, they would have to get under Marino’s skin.
“Hung up on her like you?” Marino volleyed.
That caught Callum off guard, but he kept a straight face. In no way would Marino learn anything about his relationship with Grace. “Which of your business partners took her?”
“If someone has her, they won’t hurt Grace.”
Callum wanted to throttle his face in. “Actually. We’re not so sure about that.”
“Why’s that?”
He pulled out his phone and pulled up aerial footage of their decimated safe house. “Do you know where I was this morning? I’ll give you a hint. It’s not there anymore.” He thumbed through the images of what remained. It wasn’t much. “Grace was about sixty seconds short of blowing up.”
Marino’s cocky demeanor shifted ever so slightly.
Callum noted it and pressed on. “So if you think one of your associates has simply taken her to ensure she doesn’t have a conversation with your friends, as you called them, I’d say someone has blown smoke up your ass.”
His focus narrowed on the screen. “Subpar Photoshop skills? I expected more.”
Callum shrugged and scrolled through his saved photos until he found the one of a dead man lying next to his truck. “The way your associates are trying to keep Grace quiet doesn’t work for me.” His expression tightened. “And I suspect, it doesn’t work for you either.”
The tiniest flicker of doubt registered in Marino’s conceited gaze.
“Look, Mr. Marino,” Gage said, “I get you think you have everything under control. That you’re pissed that someone firebombed Alicia Jackson’s house to scare Grace, but you’re wrong. This has spiraled.”
Callum swiped his phone’s screen and showed the pictures of the shooter at the safe house and the SUV with its shot-up engine and unconscious thugs. “These two are still breathing.”
Gage hooked a thumb toward Callum. “You don’t like him. From what I hear, the feeling’s mutual. But if Grace is yours, you have lost control. In a sense, we’d like to give that back.”
Good cop. Bad cop. Callum repeated the mantra in his head and would rather cut off his arm than even suggest Marino could have Grace after they found her. But Gage was speaking Marino’s language and acting like she was a possession to find.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Sure you do,” Gage pressed. “We already know you and the Triad have a man on the inside—that’s obvious.
You know when things are happening. You know what the meetings are about.
You told Grace to keep her mouth shut. And we know it’s about the money laundering through her communication network.
We don’t care about that. We’re not the feds.
Check us for wires for all we care. We want to know where Grace is.
” Gage waited, then tacked on, “You knew she was alive the entire time, didn’t you? ”
Marino pursed his lips, waging an internal battle.
“You want to keep her that way?” Gage asked. “Tell us where we need to go; we’ll find your woman before the safe-house-exploding-faction finds her first.”
Marino lifted his hands as if he didn’t know, then dropped them to his lap. “I don’t know anything.”
The pressure building in Callum’s head might explode.
“You really think nothing will happen to her?” Callum asked, grinding his molars.
“Why would anyone I know hurt Grace? They wouldn’t dare.”
“They already did.”
The smug, conceited smirk fell. Callum wouldn’t call Marino’s expression worried—not by a long stretch—but there was something there. Not fear. If he had to guess, it was a lack of control. “Bullshit.”
“No, he’s telling you like it is.” Gage shrugged. “Tossed her right out a window and into the trunk of a car. Look, I don’t have a dog in this fight. No reason to lie. I get paid whether or not you give us anything. We just want to find her. Alive preferably.”
Someone knocked on the door, and a uniformed waiter rolled in a catering cart.
Marino swallowed hard as if surprised by the interruption, then in a less steady voice, “I’ll have to confirm that.” He cleared his throat. “I ordered coffee and pastries.” He gestured, distracted as he pulled out his phone.
Callum didn’t want any fucking coffee, but he took Gage’s lead and filled up a mug. Gage moved the platter of pastries onto the table. Was this some kind of power play? God, he hated games. He just wanted to get Grace back.
“Don’t waste your time,” Gage said to Marino around a mouthful of Danish. “I have a video that confirms it.”
He didn’t wait for Marino to ask and connected his phone to a Bluetooth flat screen. “Here we go.” Gage chomped on another Danish. “These little fuckers are delicious.”
A grainy CCTV video from the parking lot where she was taken was displayed on the screen. Callum hadn’t watched this yet. His gut twisted. The window went up. Grace fell out. The landing had been hard, yet she fought to get to her feet before two people put her in the trunk.
“Pretty crazy, huh?” Gage tossed another piece of Danish in his mouth. “If she’s yours, you should do something about it. Because that is fucked.”
Marino frowned. His smug conceit had disappeared. “I have nothing else to say to you.”
“Want the footage?” Gage offered as he slugged back coffee. “Man, this isn’t too bad for hotel crap, is it?” he asked Callum. “Mind if I take another one of these for the road?”
“Send me the video,” Marino demanded through clenched teeth.
Gage sent the link to the number Marino recited. As soon as it came through, the crypto king was on his feet and blasted out the door.
Callum wanted to tear the hotel down.
Gage hooted, and after they were out of the conference room, muttered, “That couldn’t have gone better.”
They walked across the lobby and departed the hotel, climbing into the waiting SUV.
“Hook, line, and sinker,” Gage said as Roman pulled away from the curb.
Rocco glanced over his shoulder at Callum. “You don’t think so?”
“We didn’t get names.”
“That was a long shot,” Rocco admitted. “The video link?”
“Like I said: hook, line, and sinker.”
A phone call rang through the SUV. Rocco answered it so that the speakers picked up.
“He clicked the link. We are live,” Dean announced. “Job well done.”
Marino had downloaded the video infected with a phishing virus. They had access to his keystrokes and communications. All they had to do was wait for him to make a call.