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“Take it out,” I told the nearest man with a gun.
In one shot, the small machine came plummeting to the earth, landing with an anticlimactic thump. White dust rose in every direction as it scattered the crushed shells of the courtyard. All of my armed guys aimed their guns at it, but it only lay there in a broken heap of plastic and wires. We waited a minute, but nothing happened. I approached it warily, turning to shrug at the guards.
“It’s just a delivery drone,” I said.
That might have been fine, except I would never have allowed anything to come in this way, even if I had ordered something recently. Everything we got on the island was left at a drop point in the closest town, fifteen miles away. Someone would retrieve it and drive it in, going through the same security checkpoints as anyone who made it this far.
I leaned over the shattered drone and kicked it. Still, nothing happened, but when it rolled onto its side, I saw the small package attached to it. Barely larger than a deck of cards and wrapped in plain brown paper with no markings that I could see.
“Let me grab it,” one of my guys said, but I waved him back.
They went above and beyond for me, and I was almost sure this wasn’t anything to panic over, but I wasn’t completely sure. I tugged it from its cable and turned it over in my hands. It weighed next to nothing, but there was writing on the other side. One word.
Watch.
Okay, not too cryptic. I gave it a tentative shake, and when we still weren’t blown to smithereens, I tore the paper off and opened the box. Inside was a rectangular silver USB stick wrapped in bubble wrap. No other note, nothing.
“I guess we watch it,” I said, heading back inside.
In my office, I flipped off the cap, still half expecting an explosion of some kind. It seemed to really just be a plain old USB stick.
“Hang on,” Andre said, muscling past the others before I could put it in one of the slots on my computer. “There might be a virus on it. Let me just…” He sat in my chair, clicking on things in rapid succession, then leaned under the desk and pulled out a few cords. “Now it’s not connected to anything. It might wreck this machine, but it won’t be able to travel to the network.”
“Good job,” I said, impressed. He’d been out of sight since Evelina continued to hold a grudge against him for his part in her abduction, but he was one of my best.
I plugged it in, waiting to see what was on there. My stomach twisted into a knot when I saw a lone video file pop up on the screen. I reached for my phone as my hand hovered over the mouse, tapping the first number in my contacts before I played the video.
Kristina answered right away, letting me breathe again. “Hey, I’m just about to go into an audition—”
“Sorry, sweetie,” I interrupted, clicking on the video file now that I knew my daughter wasn’t going to be on it. What loaded up on the screen sickened me almost as much as what my imagination had conjured. “It was just a mistake, but I’d love to talk to you later.”
I ended the call, not taking my eyes off the horrific video unfolding before me, surprised I could make my voice sound so normal and pleasant.
“Jesus,” I muttered. Movement in the doorway made me drag my eyes from the scene to see Evelina standing in the doorway. My heart lurched. I couldn’t let her see this. “Get back upstairs,” I shouted, too angrily. I could tell she knew something was wrong immediately and approached the desk. “Go now, Evelina.”
Her eyes were locked with mine, full of fear as she seemed to read what I was thinking. But she couldn’t know, and I couldn’t let her. As she picked up her pace and hurried around my desk, I fumbled for the mouse to shut the video down. I was too slow, and she put her hand over mine to stop me, leaning over my shoulder to peer at the screen.
“No,” she whimpered, her voice cracking. “No, please, no.”
Her brother Leo was her other half, maybe the only person she completely trusted in the world. Nearly inseparable, he was always within shouting distance when they were apart. One time she was at our house having a sleepover with Kristina. She had woken up in the middle of the night, hysterically demanding to be taken home. At the same time, Leo was being rushed to the hospital with appendicitis. Somehow she knew.
My daughter may have been her best friend, but her twin was on another level entirely.
And now she had to watch him being ruthlessly beaten on the video. He was bound to a chair in an empty room. His face was already battered and bruised, with blood streaming from his nose and over his split lips. One eye was completely swollen shut. Despite his state, he was still awake as a man whose back was turned to the camera continued to pummel him with his fists. Again and again, each meaty whack made Evelina draw in a sharp sob. The unidentified assailant only stopped throwing punches when Leo slumped forward in the chair he was shackled to, entirely still.
Evelina cried out and leaned closer as if she couldn’t believe what she saw. Tears streamed down her pale face, and I realized she had my hand in a death grip. She held her breath as she stared unblinking at her brother. It had been a long time since I prayed, but I silently offered up a plea that she wouldn’t have to suffer such heartache. Leo’s chest finally rose a half second before the video ended, and everyone in the room breathed a sigh of relief. Evelina let go of my hand and sank to the floor, staring up at me with hollow eyes.
“I’ll get him back,” I said, kneeling beside her. “I promise I’ll get him back safe and sound.”
I would have promised her anything if only I could erase the hopeless look on her face.
Chapter 17 - Evelina
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be real. Seeing Leo being savagely beaten—my fault, all my fault—broke something inside me. Not my big, burly genius of a brother who was always quick with a joke and quicker with his fists, who could cleanly shoot a cap off a bottle at a hundred paces. Who always stuck by me, no matter what nonsense I wanted to get up to. The only thing he wouldn’t do was let me put myself in danger.
It was like I could feel every punch as it landed. It should have been me. It was all my fault.
The next thing I knew, I was on the floor, with Mikhail kneeling beside me, saying something I couldn’t register at first. My brain felt like it was full of swarming bees, the horror of what I saw drowning everything else out. I felt his hand on my back, and finally, his firm voice broke through.
