“He’s in the white van. If you want him to stay alive, you’ll get in quietly with him.”
They definitely know the right buttons to push. I’m not about to fight if Zane is right there and needs me.
The van door opens, and I see two guys in it but not Zane. I try to stop moving, but it’s too late. Something hard cracks down on the back of my head and everything goes black.
Nikolai
* * *
I’m crawling the glass ceiling of my Tesla because there’s goddamn construction or something on the blocks around Chelle’s office, and I can’t get through to pick her up.
I don’t like it. There’s an itchy feeling crawling up the back of my neck, especially because Zane hasn’t answered his phone all day, and Dima couldn’t track it—like he turned it off, or it’s dead.
I put an actual tracker that can’t be turned off in Chelle’s phone last night after she went to bed, so at least I have that. Zane’s safety is unfortunately as important to me as Chelle’s because I don’t want her to be damaged over something that happens to him.
I text Chelle to tell her to wait inside the building until I can get there, but she doesn’t text back.
I try calling, but she doesn’t answer.
That prickly feeling in full force, I pull up the tracking software. It looks like she’s standing in front of her building.
Dammit.
I try calling again. When she still doesn’t answer, I lose my shit. I swerve to drive with two wheels up on the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to scatter for their lives.
Cars honk. People scream. I don’t give a fuck.
I skid around the corner, finally making it to the street Chelle’s building is on. I scan the sidewalk in front as I cut up onto the curb.
She’s not fucking there.
She’s not here, and my tracker says she is.
Blyad’!
I throw the car in park and leap out, racing to the sidewalk, dialing Chelle again as I follow the tracker to the corner.
I hear the phone ring faintly beneath my feet.
I swallow the bile in my throat as I slowly look down to see the faint glow of her phone beneath the bars of the storm drain.
Goddamnit. Chyort voz’mi!
I jog back to the Tesla to the serenade of a dozen car horns and get in. I’ve never been particularly violent, but in this moment, I turn deadly. I will fucking kill every last one of those zhopas who touched Chelle.
She belongs to me and no one fucking touches what’s mine.
I call Dima first, even though he’s not here.
“They fucking took her!” I bellow.
“Blyad’. What happened?” His voice is low and urgent to match mine.
“Her phone is in the storm drain in front of her office. There was a jam-up on her street, and I couldn’t get through. They probably caused the delay on purpose to stake her out.”
“Fuck. Okay, I’m hacking the phone records to get both Chelle’s and Zane’s last calls and texts. It will just be a minute. While I do that, I’m going to connect in Ravil,” he says smoothly, which is probably good thinking, but I hate our pakhan witnessing my total combustion. “Hang on one second.”
A moment later he comes back. “I have Ravil and Maxim on the line too.”
“Where are you, Nikolai?” Ravil asks.
“Driving to Zane’s dorm. I’ve already been there today, as well as to Chelle’s to check on the new locks and make sure the place wasn’t being watched, but I didn’t find anything.”
“I’ll send some guys to stay at Chelle’s,” Ravil says. “Text me the address.”
“I have their last texts,” Dima interrupts. “Chelle’s was to you at 5:34 p.m. Zane’s was to Chelle at 7:42 p.m. last night. He sent no other texts or calls before his phone went dark at 9:03 p.m. Do you want me to try to retrieve the contents of Zane’s texts?”
Fuck. I doubt they have anything useful, but I mutter, “Da,” anyway.
“Stand by.”
“Let’s talk this through,” Maxim says. “If Zane owes this drug dealer money, he’s going to use Chelle for leverage, no?”
I want to scream, no shit, but I manage to say, “Yes,” through gritted teeth.
“He won’t keep Zane once he has her. If he even has him now.”
“Probably true,” I grunt.
“Zane won’t run if they have his sister, right?”
“No. He’s a coward, but he wouldn’t do that to her.”
“This is good,” Dima says. “Zane’s phone stores everything in the cloud. I’m going to activate a new phone with his data, and it will be like having a duplicate. We can see everything—everywhere he’s been, who he’s talked to, all of it.”
I let out the breath I’d been holding. Thank fuck for Dima and his super powers.
“Last text was from Chelle. She said… mm.”
“She said what?” I shout at my dashboard as I double park in front of Zane’s dorm. This is no fucking time to hold back shit from me.