In reply the lights dimmed again. A photo of a man filled the wall.
“This is Rudi Abramovich.” Callum pointed at the photo. “This man has Dimitri’s sister and we’re going to get her back.”
Dimitri felt his blood turn to ice. This is why he’d joined Benson Security after the fiasco in Scotland. He needed the team’s backing to find his sister. He’d done everything he could on his own, made it as far as he was able, now he needed help.
Dimitri had never felt hate until he’d come across Rudi Abramovich. He hadn’t realised the emotion burned like acid. He looked at the man who’d ruined his sister’s life. The crime boss could have stepped off the cover of GQ magazine. He was in his early forties and wore it well. His wavy brown hair was professionally styled. His grey suit and open-necked white shirt were tailored to fit his shoulders and make it clear he knew how to use gym equipment. His eyes were contact lens blue, his lips were full like a girl’s and his jaw was sharp like a cartoon character.
“Who knew evil came in such a pretty package?” Megan said.
Her approval of the guy?
?s rip-off, George Clooney get-up punched Dimitri in the gut. “There’s nothing attractive about him.”
Megan blinked before she softened. “Of course not. He’s evil. And has obviously had some plastic surgery. Nobody looks that good naturally.” She leaned across the table to pat his hand. “He’s evil and fake.”
Dimitri nodded. That was more like it. He lounged back into his chair, twirled a pencil and hoped he hid exactly how much the sight of Rudi affected him.
“As I was saying,” Callum gritted out, unhappy at the chitchat during his meeting. “This guy has Dimitri’s sister and our mission is to get her back.”
“Don’t you mean get her back if she’s still alive?” Rachel asked the question as though she was enquiring about the weather.
The pencil in Dimitri’s grasp snapped in two. So much for keeping his cool. The tension in the room ratcheted up. All eyes were on Dimitri as he carefully placed the two halves of the pencil on the table in front of him. Every muscle in his body felt tight as he fought to control his rage. Slowly, very slowly, he looked up at Rachel.
“What?” Rachel tossed her glossy auburn hair over her shoulder. “I’m not saying anything that everyone isn’t already thinking. Your sister has been missing for a year. We haven’t heard even a whisper about her whereabouts. She’s most likely dead. I know it. You know it. We all know it.”
“That’s enough,” Callum snapped.
Rachel opened her mouth but Callum’s palm slapped the table, so she huffed and closed her mouth.
Slowly, Callum turned to Dimitri. “Bring us up to speed. We’ve all come into this operation at different stages. Start at the beginning so we’re on the same page.”
As if by magic, the image on the wall changed and his sister appeared. Dimitri felt his chest clench as pain, sharp as a knife, speared through him. She had long black hair, a pretty smile and hazelnut eyes that were identical to his.
“My sister.” Dimitri worked to keep his voice devoid of emotion. He cleared his throat and sat up a little straighter. “Katrina Raast. Twenty-five.”
“She’s only two years older than I am,” Megan whispered.
Dimitri totally understood Megan’s shock. At twenty-five he’d been on his second tour of Afghanistan. He’d seen a lot of things that had changed him, hardened him. But Katrina had been sheltered. Her world consisted of college classes and fun with her friends. So yeah, she was young. Way too young to be out there on her own, dealing with an evil bastard like Abramovich.
“When she finished her Master’s degree at Brown, she decided to take some time out to travel before going back for her PhD. She’s smart.” He smiled, but the action hurt. “She got a job as an au pair in Germany for six months, to raise money for travel. In February last year her job wound up and she decided to backpack through Europe for the rest of the year.”
“Was she alone?” Megan asked.
Dimitri shook his head. “She’d made friends with two other au pairs who were placed by the same programme, both of them American.”
Two more images of young women flashed on the wall. Their smiles seemed to mock the people watching.
“Did they go missing too?” Megan said.
“No. They’d split up for a day in Greece. The other two wanted to visit museums, but Katrina wanted to visit the refugee camp.” He felt a tiny smile break through his pain. “She majored in development policy and international politics. She wanted to see the problems first hand. She wanted to change the world.”
The look in Megan’s eyes was the same as the one she’d had in Scotland the first time he’d told Benson Security about his sister. It was the look he’d seen before she held his hand and offered him comfort. A kindness that had almost broken him. Dimitri tore his eyes from her to look back at the image, which had changed to a candid shot of his sister posing in front of the Acropolis in Athens. Her arms were wide and she was grinning.
“She didn’t make it back to the hotel as they’d arranged.” Dimitri focused his comments on Callum. At least there was no emotion in his boss’s eyes to derail him. “The guide she’d hired to take her to the refugee camp disappeared off the face of the planet. When the agency she booked him through was questioned, they had no records of Katrina’s booking or the guide.”
“Abramovich’s organisation was using it to target tourists,” Callum said.
“That and several other tourist agencies on the same street. The police found discrepancies in all of them.”