“Where’s Banks?” I asked.
“She and Kai are with Alex, talking to the cops,” Rika said. “She’s safe. They’re waiting for us.”
“Do you have a plan?” I snatched up the bag, digging out the cell phone, already finding Rika, Will, and everyone else already programmed in.
“No, that’s your domain,” she answered.
My domain. So since we played our little mind games, she thought I was that good?
Not when I was aching, hungry, and distracted, though.
Jesus. Winter. If he hurt her…
I scrolled through, trying to call her just in case.
“Damon,” Rika spoke up as I let the line ring. “Gabriel will give me Michael, because of his respect for Evans Crist and a sign of good faith, but Alex is disposable to him. She saw the information we were looking for. He’ll find her and kill her.”
I knew that. I knew what our problems were, Rika.
But she kept talking. “And he knows that even if we give him the evidence we have about my father’s accident, we were smart enough to make copies. He’ll want assurance we won’t use it. He’s going to keep Winter.”
“The hell he is.”
No one answered, so I hung up and led the way to the elevators. Adrenaline was taking over, and I barely felt my stitches at all right now.
“He’s going to ship her off somewhere you can’t find her and do who-knows-what with her.”
“Fucking hell, Rika!” I growled over my shoulder.
What the hell? Was she trying to give me a heart attack? Winter was with my father right now. Every second was a risk.
We rushed into the elevator and Will pressed the floor for the parking garage.
Rika stayed silent for a moment. When she spoke again, her voice was calm and soft. “Absorb it,” she said. “Process it. And then get your head straight again. When you do, tell us what the hell we’re doing.”
She was right. I needed to calm down. I couldn’t fucking think with my mind racing and spinning like a tornado.
My father would have Michael and Winter at his house. He wasn’t trying to hide them from us. He wanted to bring us to the table.
But Rika was right. In the digital age, there were no guarantees. He knew we had the evidence backed up.
He couldn’t get his hands on Alex tonight, and he couldn’t hurt Michael.
Winter was his assurance.
Think.
Negotiation was useless. I would never let him keep Winter.
We needed to get on the property, undetected, and he wasn’t going to be dumb enough to fall for Banks as a diversion again.
Fuck, fuck, fuck…
My mind started wandering from one scenario to the next, and finally, I had it.
“David and Lev,” I said. “They’re still working for Banks, right?”
My father’s old employees who left on bad terms, hated my father, but knew the lay of the land and everyone who worked for Gabriel. They worked for my sister now, who also stole my father’s cook, Marina.