30. Valentina
VALENTINA
“This is insane!” I pace back and forth along the hallway between the kitchen and the lounge. “You told me we were safe here, you told me nothing could happen while we stayed here!”
“You’re right,” Bradley replies tightly. “I’m sorry, Valentina.”
“No, I’m sorry.” Frank steps forward, his face grim. “This is all my fault. I’m the one who let him leave and I didn’t check in with George immediately to make sure he was down there. This is my fault.”
I want to yell. I want to scream and lash out and make Frank feel even an ounce of the tight, twisted pain that’s radiating through my chest at Diego’s absence, but I don’t. Deep down, I know it isn’t fair.
“No,” I say with a deep, pained sigh. “This… this isn’t your fault. It isn’t either of your faults. It’s mine.”
“How do you figure that?” Ruslan asks as he walks through from the lounge with his phone in his hand.
“Diego told me he had somewhere he needed to be and he looked… tense. But I brushed him off because I was so excited to have remembered something that I thought he could wait. But he’s been waiting ever since he met me.
His entire life has been put on hold and threatened all because of me, and not once have I stopped to ask him what he wanted or what he needed.
That’s on me.” Both my hands rest on my hips, and my head falls as a sting of helpless tears creeps up. “This whole thing is on me.”
“Don’t do that,” Bradley says gently. “Don’t put this weight on yourself. There’ll be plenty of time for that after we find him. Right now, we need to track down where he went.”
“Raven’s on it with Cassian,” Ruslan replies. “His phone is off so we can’t track it, but she was able to get his message logs. He was messaging that Mindy person.”
“Mindy?” My head snaps up. “Saying what?”
Ruslan moves next to me and shows me his phone where a duplication of Diego’s messages flash on screen.
“Little alarming that you can even do this,” I murmur. “Holy shit, though.”
“Seems Mindy was spiraling and Diego was trying to calm her. She stopped messaging after this threat, though, and this is around the time he was last seen here. These messages pinged off different cell towers throughout the city, so he was on the move while texting her.”
It looks like he was trying to goad her into a reply but didn’t get one. “So he went to Mindy’s place?”
“It’s as good a place to start as any,” Bradley agrees. “Retracing his steps will give us an idea of where he could have gone next while Raven keeps digging.”
“What’s his relationship to Mindy, anyway?” Ruslan asks as we all rush down to the cars in the elevator.
“I don’t know how much I should say,” I admit. “It’s his life.”
“And it could save it,” Bradley points out. “So tell us everything you know.”
“Alright. One thing I can say for sure is that she’s a manipulative cunt. She tried to kill herself in his kitchen all because she wanted money from him. She’s a drug addict and she blames him for that.”
“Why?” Ruslan asks.
I hold off on the rest until we’re in the car with Frank weaving us through the city toward Mindy’s apartment.
“She blames him because the first time she got high, it was with him. Although from my understanding, it wasn’t because of him.
His… brother died. That’s how he got into drugs.
He was high as a kite one night and she tried it for herself and got hooked.
She’s blamed him ever since. I think… I think he blames himself too. ”
“Did he stick the needle in her arm?” Ruslan asks, running his fingers up and down his seatbelt to make a soft noise.
“No.”
“Then it’s not his fault.”
“I know. But I think he feels it is because he created the situation that got her hooked.”
“How?” Bradley’s frown deepens. “He didn’t kill his brother. He was a man in pain and in need of help that he was finding in a needle. Any decent friend would have gotten him help, not joined him.”
I stare at Bradley and nod slowly. “That’s…
not a perspective I think he has considered.
” And it might be exactly what he needs to hear.
“Well, he nearly overdosed five years ago and got clean. Spent these past five years turning his life around and doing everything he can to help her get clean, but she refuses. So he tried to distance himself.”
“And she turned into a suicide-baiting cunt who realized he’s soft enough and feeling guilty enough that he’ll give her what she wants,” Ruslan murmurs. “What a piece of work.”
“She also…” I smile sadly. “She found us at the motel. Diego was desperate for money so he ended up selling drugs for an old friend to help us. She followed him back to the motel and was going to scream to alert you to our being there. Although looking back now, that would have been a good outcome, wouldn’t it? ”
“This her only place?” Bradley flashes his phone at me, displaying her address on the screen.
“That I know of. She called in that bounty, too, probably for the money.” I grit my teeth. “He’ll stop at nothing to help her.”
Unfortunately, when we get to Mindy’s place, there’s no answer. Bradley knocks loudly and continuously on the door while Ruslan heads around the back, but there’s no answer there, either. Bradley’s halfway through kicking the door down so we can look inside when Raven calls.
“He called someone.” Her voice drifts from Ruslan’s speaker. “One call to someone called Tech? Then we got another ping on his phone near an address I’ve sent to Frank.”
“Thanks, Raven,” Ruslan says. “Anything else?”
“Nah, still dark.”
“We’ll keep looking.” Ruslan hangs up and glances up at the night sky as a few droplets of rain drop down from above. “Who is this Tech guy?”
“A friend. A dealer. Diego sold drugs for him,” I reply. “Do you think he and Mindy went there?”
“Well, he’s not here,” Bradley says while fixing the door. “So Tech is where we’ll go next. Don’t worry.” He grimaces then and nudges my elbow with his. “Which I know is terrible for me to say. But we’ll find him. I promise.”
That promise sours when we make it to Tech’s apartment and the stink of blood drifts through the half-open door. Bradley and Ruslan immediately pull guns from their hips and make me stay back with a glance, then Bradley pushes the door open slowly and eases his way inside.
They both move like cats approaching prey, slow steps and even slower movements. Underneath the coppery scent of blood lies the stink of cigarette smoke, stale booze, and rotten food. It’s enough to turn my stomach, and I cover my mouth while following them deeper into the single-story apartment.
Blood. It’s on the walls and across the couch, sprayed across the floor and then surrounding the dead body of Tech face up on the floor. His mouth hangs open and his eyes gaze, unseeing, up at the stained ceiling.
No one speaks, not until Ruslan and Bradley have checked the two adjacent rooms and the kitchen.
“Empty.” Ruslan sighs deeply. “Is this Tech?”
I stand over his body, staring down into glazed, dry eyes. Did he see Diego? Did he see who did this and what happened to Diego after? Or was he already like this when Diego was here?
“Val?” Bradley’s voice softens, and suddenly, he’s next to me, taking up a surprisingly small amount of space given his bulk. “Is this Tech?”
I nod wordlessly, frozen.
What if Diego’s in the same way?
Dead somewhere in an alley or worse?
What if this is the last time I’ll ever have contact with Diego or someone from his life?
“This could mean nothing,” Ruslan says quietly. “The cell tower ping wasn’t here exactly, so we don’t even know that Diego came here.”
“Yes, we do,” I croak. “You’re trying to make me feel better and I get it.
I do. But Diego… Mindy is gone. Tech is dead.
I don’t know anyone else from his life except the people from the bar, but what use is it now?
” Tears flood my eyes as I lift my gaze, but I refuse to let them fall.
“He’s dead, isn’t he? I didn’t give him the time he needed from me, and now he’s dead! ”
“Val!” Bradley suddenly sweeps me into an all-consuming, tight embrace and he holds me so close that I’m frozen in shock by the heat radiating from him. More than that, it’s familiar enough to shock my grief out of its spiral and the tears remain unshed.
“Hello?” Ruslan answers his phone a moment later, then Raven’s tones fill the air.
“We got a hit on the bounty on Diego’s head.”
I immediately draw away from Bradley. “A sighting?”
“No,” comes Cassian’s calm voice. “A payment. They handed him over and got paid a little under an hour ago. It’s only just been put through the site.”
“An hour ago,” I repeat, hastily wiping my cheeks as tears fall when I blink. “So… so he might still be alive?!”
“It’s possible,” Cassian says.
“The hunter,” Bradley cuts in. “Do we know him?”
“Yes,” Raven replies. “And we know where he is.”
The twenty minutes it takes to drive through the city to the bar where the bounty hunter who claimed the money on Diego went is the longest twenty minutes of my life. My heart beats slowly but powerfully, as if it’s trying to chip away at my ribcage and free me from the agony growing in my gut.
Diego was taken.
God knows what’s happening to him.
This is all my fault.
I should have stopped and listened to him.
I should have taken him with me.
I should have done more.
My leg doesn’t stop bouncing for the entire ride and as soon as Frank pulls up outside the bar, I’m out of the car like a whirlwind to the echo of both Ruslan and Bradley calling my name.
I saw what the bounty hunter looked like when Raven gave Ruslan all the information and I hold that face in my head as I storm through the doors and blow off the bouncer at the door.
A sea of people greets me, heaving back and forth with chants as a birthday is celebrated in one corner and a group of men cheers for a spot in another. All of it fades into the background when I spot him.
That bastard bounty hunter.
He sits at the bar nursing a glass of something expensive, judging by the bottle sitting next to his hand on the bar, an expense likely paid by handing Diego over to whoever the fuck has been chasing us all over the city.
“Hey!” I bark loudly, and several people glance my way.
The bounty hunter doesn’t even look up.
I charge toward him like a bull, shoving people out of the way while someone behind me yells my name. I barely hear it, focused only on the bastard who finally looks up when I kick a stool out of my way.
Our eyes meet, and then I punch him so hard in the face that he flies off his own stool with a stunned cry and crashes to the ground.
“Where the fuck did you take him?!”