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“And what about us?” Conor asks.
“Help Mikey if you can, but I need those other laptops to keep doing their thing, so you’ll have to look over his shoulder or find another one.”
“There’s one in the club downstairs,” Conor says before walking out of the office.
“And me?” Shane asks.
“Keep talking. Tell me everything the guy with the green hair said.”
Shane relays the information they got from the guy downstairs while I continue my painstaking search of all the traffic cameras in the New York district, starting with the ones closest to us and working outwards. I try to hide my frustration as each one has been tampered with in the same way. I have no idea how long this will go on for because the person tampering with them is constantly two steps ahead of me, and they are incredibly thorough. I will catch up with them eventually, but it could take vital time that we don’t have. So, until my software tracks their IP address, I am screwed.
“Anything?” Conor asks when he comes back into the room fifteen minutes later, as I sit frowning at the computer screen.
“Not yet,” I shake my head. Nothing from their conversation with the Mohawk guy has given me anything else to work with, so I go on with my search while the brothers check the CCTV from the club.
Another hour has passed and we are still no closer to finding Liam. The tension in the room is ratcheting up with each passing minute as the boys’ frustration grows that they are unable to do something more to find their brother. My methods are definitely not what they are used to, but right now we have little else to go on.
“Any luck?” I pop my head over the computer and ask Mikey.
“No,” he says with a sigh. “Nobody except Liam and one of the bouncers spoke to them for more than a few seconds.”
“They could have been approached before they even got to the club?” Conor suggests.
“Yeah, or they were in on it from the outset,” Mikey adds.
I nod absent-mindedly. “Or they were spoken to in a place where there are no cameras?”
“The ladies' room?” Shane frowns.
“Maybe.” I shrug.
“Mikey, concentrate on the cameras outside the ladies' room. Look for the college girls and a hot redhead,” Shane barks.
“On it,” Mikey grins, no doubt believing that we are finally getting somewhere, although I’m not so sure. I can’t shake the feeling that the young women were pawns, just like the green-haired guy, and are more dead end leads to keep us from following the right ones.
“Are we sure it was the Russians who took him?” Shane frowns as he rubs a hand over his jaw and looks at Conor. “Perhaps you and I should go and shake up a few of our associates and see what they know?”
“It had to be the Russians,” Conor frowns at him. “No one else would pull shit like this. No one else has anything to gain from taking Liam.”
“But why Liam? What do they have to gain from taking him?” Shane frowns.
I sit back in my chair. It is the most obvious question with the most obvious answer. The one we should have asked from the outset. Because I just realized exactly where they have taken him.
“Me,” I say, and the three of them turn to stare at me. “Alexei wants me.”
“Yeah,” Conor frowns.
“So, that’s the point of it all. Throw us into a tailspin, chasing leads that go nowhere until we finally realize that it is me he wants.”
“But we already knew that, Angel,” Conor says.
“We did. But we kind of forgot that in our search for Liam,” I say as I bring up the traffic camera I am looking for. I do a quick calculation in my head to account for driving time and search a fifteen minute window either side. Thankfully, at 2:30am there is little traffic, and sure enough the black van appears on the screen in front of me.
“So, where the hell have they taken him?”
“To the house in Connecticut,” I say as I nod toward the screen. “He wanted us to find him. He knew we would come for him, and that is the surest way to get me back.”
Shane leans down and wraps his arm around me, pressing a kiss on the top of my head. “Good girl,” he says softly before he stands upright again.
