Chapter 25
Dmitri
My eyes burn as I pace in front of the oversized map taped to my living room wall. Red pins stab all over Vegas. Highways, back roads, dead ends, everywhere Cara could’ve been taken.
At this point, I’m doing a detective’s job with a killer’s patience.
Not only do I have a huge aerial view map of the city and the old highway where the car was found, but I have red pins dotting the important places and areas of interest. This way, I can get a better idea of how far away she was when she was driven off the road and kidnapped.
I need all the details that I can get because nothing is happening. Nothing is being found. So, I can barely do anything but stare at a map and drink myself to sleep because I can’t relax enough to doze off naturally.
“She was more than an hour outside of the city when she wrecked,” I tell Andrei as he leans against the back of the couch with a piece of pizza in his hand. “I’m pretty sure they followed her from the city, but they drove off with her in the opposite direction.”
“They could’ve pulled a U-turn and headed back to the city,” Andrei points out before eating half of the slice in one bite.
“But why not do it right there? There’s barely any traffic on that highway,” I reply as I gesture to the areas on either side of the hallway. “There’s nothing out here. They could’ve driven across the lane.”
Andrei shrugs as he chews.
I drag my fingers through my hair as a yawn breaks from me. It doesn’t matter how many times I yawn or how much my eyes ache, I still can’t go to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time.
“I think we should take another trip down the highway,” I tell him, hearing him quietly sigh through his nose. “Maybe there’s a back road heading off the highway or a small town that we missed.”
“It would’ve shown on the map,” Andrei points out.
“Maps don’t show everything, not service roads, ranch turnoffs, dirt tracks,” I reply. “We have to do something, Andrei!”
He dusts the pizza crumbs off his hands before walking up to me and placing a hand on my shoulder. “Dmitri, you need to get some sleep. I say this with love, you look like shit.”
I glare at him, frustration crackling within me. I don’t need his concern. I need his help. “We’re getting nowhere. She’s running out of time!”
Andrei lets his hand drop from my shoulder, his body tensing. “They’re not going to kill her if they want to make a trade. She’s okay right now!”
A cold laugh bursts from me. “You think her captors wouldn’t hurt her? She could be bleeding. Starving. Terrified.”
Andrei frowns, and I know he doesn’t say anything because he knows that I could be right. We’ve come across some cruel bastards in our day, and we’d be na?ve to decide that she’s being held captive by some good Samaritans.
I part my lips to rant some more, but my phone buzzes on the couch cushion. I rush past Andrei, nearly knocking him aside. Before I can even grab the phone, I see the “No Caller ID” on the screen.
“It’s him,” I tell Andrei as I pick up the phone and answer, putting it on speaker. Andrei’s already recording the audio from his phone.
A few seconds of silence whispers through the speaker before there’s a slight crackle and a breath. “I figured you would be up late, Dmitri. Trouble sleeping?”
I glare at my phone, wishing that I could see the face of this coward. “Enough! You need to release Cara to me. Now.”
A light chuckle echoes through the speaker. “Well, you need to do something for us first. That’s how a trade works.”
“I’ve been waiting for days for you to name your terms!” I snap at him.
“I’m a firm believer that you need to work hard for what you want,” he replies, voice tinged with amusement. “So, listen to my words carefully. Don’t want you to miss them.”
I glance over at Andrei, who holds his phone up with a nod. We’ll have every word recorded to look back on. “Go ahead.”
“In order for us to release Cara to you alive, you need to trade the one you’ve aligned yourself with, someone who is bad for business. Forty-eight hours,” he tells me. “We’ll text the address.”
My face screws up in confusion. “What? The one I aligned with?”
“Start thinking, Dmitri. The clock is ticking.”
The call goes dead a second later. “That son of a bitch! What does he mean?”
Andrei ends the recording on his phone and shakes his head. “I don’t know. An ally or an associate? It must be someone close to you.”
I rack my brain for any clues, but I’m so damn exhausted that barely any names come to mind. “I don’t understand. Who is bad for business?”
“He could’ve used better wording,” Andrei mutters as he tucks his phone into the back pocket of his black jeans. “Maybe someone you’re willing to protect that you’re in business with…”
My eyes dart around as I think to myself before landing on Andrei. A thought pops into my head, and I don’t like it in the slightest. “Anyone you pissed off lately, Andrei? Sleep with some powerful guy’s girl?”
His eyes widen. “What the hell are you talking about?”
I step closer to him, making him hold out his arm to try to get me to stop. “You’ve got some targets on your back. You’ve fucked with the wrong people before, and it’s cost you.”
Andrei’s face hardens. “Look, nothing I’ve done is serious enough to warrant your girlfriend getting kidnapped!”
“You’re one of the few friends that I have left! Who the hell else is he talking about?” I question him.
“Fuck if I know!” Andrei bites back. “But it’s not me! There’s someone else that you’ve worked with that has pissed them off to the point of kidnapping Cara!”
I search his face for any signs of deception, but I don’t see any. I just see my angry, confused, frustrated friend staring back at me because I just threw an accusation at him.
A heavy sigh breaks from me as I move to sit on the couch, slumping back into the cushions but not feeling an ounce of comfort. “Fuck, I’m sorry. You’re right.”
Andrei comes over and sits down next to me, a slow exhale leaving him. “It’s fine. You’re just worried and tired and pissed off. I get it.”
I rest my hand over my aching eyes, my body feeling so damn heavy. The stress of all of this is killing me, but I can’t stop. I need to figure out who the captor was talking about.
“I only have forty-eight hours to figure out who they’re talking about,” I murmur. “And I don’t even know where to start.”
“Make a list of everyone you’ve struck up a deal with or collaborated with in the last year,” Andrei replies. “They must be one of the names.”
I lower my hand from my face, my eyes meeting his. “Even if I figure out who it is, I’ll have to find them and capture them because they’re not going to be willing to be handed over to some stranger.”
Andrei frowns. “We’re going to figure this out, Dmitri.”
With every single day that passes, my hope dwindles a little more. It takes a beating every single day that I don’t get a single step closer to finding Cara and bringing her back home. Now, I only have two days to figure out this trade, or I lose her.
For good.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to save her in time,” I tell him in a quiet, defeated voice. “She could be already dead for all I know. They could still be using her to make me do what they want.”
“I believe that she’s still alive,” Andrei replies. “It’s too risky for them to not keep her alive for a trade. The moment that you see she’s dead, they should know that you’ll kill them all.”
My eyes darken. “Even if she is alive, I’m going to kill them all.”
“Then, hold on to that,” Andrei tells me. “Whatever it takes to motivate you to keep going.”
My eyes drop as misery spreads throughout my chest. “You know what’s keeping me going the most?”
“What?”
“We left off with her thinking that I never wanted to see her again,” I murmur, regret souring my stomach. “I thought I was keeping her safe by pushing her away from me. I kissed her that morning and then told her to get out and that I never wanted to see her again.”
Andrei’s face softens. “I’m sure she knows you did that to protect her.”
I shake my head. “You should’ve seen her face. She looked devastated. She wrote me a note telling me that she loved me. And I just…let her go.”
“You didn’t know that any of this was going to happen. No one did,” Andrei reminds me.
I still blame myself, but I give him a grateful look regardless because he’s a good friend. He stands by my side no matter what craziness I get into. I’m sure that I haven’t been easy to deal with lately.
“I want to make things right,” I tell him. “That’s the biggest thing motivating me.”
Andrei nods. “You will. You’ll get to be with her again.”
I tilt my head back to peer up at the ceiling, feeling the tiniest flicker of hope deep in my chest. “I want everything with her. A life. A family.”
“Might as well get a pet while you’re at it,” Andrei lightly teases me.
I chuckle at that. “Maybe we’ll get a cat. Whatever makes her happy.”
“Kids, though? Really?” Andrei asks me.
I nod as my throat threatens to grow tight. “Yeah, I’d like some with her.”
“Bratva kids or Irish kids?” Andrei replies as he lifts an eyebrow at me, amusement sparking in his bright eyes.
I roll my eyes at him but feel a small shred of hope. “The thing that I want to say to her the most is that I love her too. She needs to know that.”
“She knows. You’ll be able to tell her everything when you find her,” Andrei assures me. “Just think. In the next forty-eight hours, you’ll have her back in your arms.”
My pulse races at the thought. I’ve been waiting too long for this to happen, but I have to fulfill my end of the trade first.
“I’m going to brew a pot of coffee. If you want to leave and get some sleep, you can, but I need to get to work on that list,” I tell him as I rise to my feet, feeling a new surge of energy.
Andrei flashes me a pointed look and hauls himself up. At first, I think that he’s about to insist that I take a nap at least, but he nudges me to the side instead. “I’ll fix the coffee. You grab your laptop. Let’s get that list done.”
I open my laptop.
We have forty-eight hours to figure this out, or I lose her forever.