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“You won’t believe it. He’s engaged.”
“What?”
9
KIRILL
Every morning, I woke the same way. Startling awake in the spare room bed—the same one Molly had last slept in—and sitting up with force. In my nightmares, I heard her calling out my name. I endlessly searched for her through dark hallways, hearing her voice but never finding her. The dream always ended the same. I fell from a broken, hidden staircase and hurtled through the darkness, knowing that Molly wasn’t calling for my help but saying goodbye.
Like clockwork, I reached for my phone and checked my emails. I wasn’t spending a fortune on private investigators to let them sleep late.
It had been two months.
Something should have shown up by now. In two months, Molly hadn’t used her bank account or shown up anywhere that would ping her name in any system. Where the fuck was she? There had to be something.
When the search for her alias turned cold, I’d turned my attention to the known people in her life who mattered to her. Now Henry was dead, there were only three. Her mother, Mara, and her co-workers from The Blue Rabbit. I put my money on Federica.
The woman was full of secrets; her private life was evidence of that, and I was sure she hid Molly’s secrets too. The question was how and when to push her to reveal them. I was sure my smart Molly wouldn’t directly put her friend in danger, so torturing an exact location from Federica was improbable. Still, it was a thread that needed to be tugged and the only avenue we had left.
I stilled as I checked an email from a new surveillance team, one highly recommended to me, and my heart tensed in my hollow chest.
I scanned the email twice. Despite the highly illegal and difficult nature of tapping a line belonging to a rival syndicate, my guy had got a tracing program into The Blue Rabbit phone system. I’d already looked at and discarded Theo and Federica’s cell phones, as well as Grateful Dawn’s. Molly knew better than to call on those.
I called the young hacker immediately as I jumped out of bed. The room was losing its Molly smell, despite my best efforts to stop Olga from laundering the sheets or dirty clothes she’d left behind.
“Tell me,” I demanded as soon as the call connected. I strode to the kitchen and set up my coffee as I waited with anticipation.
“Okay, give me a minute. I went to sleep an hour ago,” the kid, Rowan, muttered.
“Not my problem,” I snapped and waited impatiently.
A yawn came over the line before he started. “Okay, the club line gets a lot of calls, so many that I was starting to think it was a bust until I studied the staff rota more closely.”
“And?”
“And there are certain great tip days and certain terrible ones. Sunday night is dead, and the staff doesn’t make half as much as they do the other nights. Guess who’s worked the Sunday night shift for nearly two months?”
“Federica.” I didn’t need him to confirm it. This was it. I was getting close enough to taste it.
“Right, so now we’ve got a time period to look at, which helps. I haven’t had eyes in the system long enough to find a pattern, so we can’t rule out any calls on that basis. Basically, we have proof that she’s in contact with Federica Bucur, probably as recently as last night.”
“Which means it’s time to talk to the woman herself,” I said, anticipation firing in my veins.
“I thought you’d say that, so I took the liberty of preparing a little extra leverage for that conversation,” Rowan said.
“I already know about her family.”
“But did you know about her dead fiancé?”
“No, I didn’t. Good work.”
“You know my fee doesn’t include a tip, right?”
“This leads me to Mallory, and you can name your price,” I told him and hung up, opening my laptop with my free hand to look at Federica’s information.
I was close. I could taste it. I would get my hands on Mallory again soon, and nothing would stop me. The wreckage I’d left the rest of my life in—from deals needing my attention, the problems with the broken engagement, and the drama with Nikolai and Viktor—had all fallen by the wayside in my need to find Molly. My rage at her running was tempered by the knowledge that I certainly hadn’t helped the situation. I’d punish her, but I’d also punish myself, as was only fair.
Soon, Princess. I’m coming to collect you soon, and we’ll never be apart again.
