Roman barged into Sergei’s office, drawing both Kir and Sergei’s attention at once. Roman motioned for Kir to mute Knox’s voice coming through the speaker phone then answered with all the certainty in him. “I will find you, and when I do, hell will rain down on you and your men. Or you can simply give me my bride now and save all of your lives.”
The man sighed. A long suffering one that said he was weary of the whole ordeal altogether. “Let’s not beat our chests. It’s an unnecessary action considering we both want something and are in a position to make a simple exchange.”
“And what is it you want?”
Sergei stood slowly and rounded his desk.
Kir typed something on his keyboard, then reclined against his seat back and crossed his arms in front of him, watching Roman.
“You want your fiancée. I want her computer and for you and your family to stay out of my affairs. Completely.”
“And her family?”
“If you can keep them in line and out of my business, then I’ll give them to you as well. Though, if I hear one word about either of them talking, they won’t live long enough to speak again.”
The scheme Bonnie had overheard her brother and father talking about the day they’d been taken—clearly, he’d decided to strong-arm someone who not only didn’t like being backed into a corner, but had the means to cut the head off a threatening snake. “They will not talk. If they do, you are welcome to them.”
The man grunted. “Yes, I can see where you’d be less inclined to offer them your protection. Idiots.” He paused a moment and movement sounded in the background. “There is a warehouse on Jourdan Road. The street address is 6202, but there is a gate at the far end. It will be left open tonight. Be there promptly at midnight with the computer in your possession and we will make our exchange.”
“We will be there.”
“By we I assume Mr. Petrovyh and Mr. Vasilek will be accompanying you.”
“Of course. This is my pakhan’s city. Why would he not be present?” It was a subtle dig—a reminder of who was on home court and who was not.
“Hmm.” Another sigh and what sounded like plastic castors on concrete. “That’s a brave risk, the three of you attending together. Though, not surprising. As you will, Mr. Kozlov. We’ll see you tonight. Midnight.”
With that, the call went silent.
As soon as Roman lowered the phone from his ear, Sergei engaged. “What do they want?”
“Bonnie’s computer. He gave an address on Jourdan Road for midnight tonight and offered Bonnie and her family in exchange for the device.”
“Anything else?”
Roman shook his head. “Only that we agreed to take no further action against him and that we keep her brother and father quiet.” He looked to Kir. “He did not give a name.”
Kir straightened from his semi-reclined pose and typed a few words on his computer. “We don’t need it.” He turned the computer around for Roman and Sergei to get a better look. “Knox and I pieced it together just before you walked in the door. Erick Rossi. On paper he shows as Chief Financial Officer for a pharmaceutical supply company out of Florida, but his real connection is to a major drug player in Southern California.”
“He’s a middleman?” Roman asked.
“So, it seems,” Kir said, “but not a very smart one. The supply company is a front for their connection with a pharmaceutical manufacturer in Florida. The manufacturer fell on hard times—too much competition. They opted to enter the black market for street sales rather than going out of business. But they had no clue how to market their product.”
“But Rossi did,” Roman said.
Kir nodded. “And then some. Rossi is their connection to the dark web. In exchange for his know-how and keeping the manufacturer tied in, Rossi gets a cut, the vast majority of which should be going to his boss in California.”
He tapped a few keystrokes and the database layout on the screen shifted to two side-by-side versions. He pointed to the one on the left. “This is the older of the two databases. It shows deposits going to an offshore account. The other shows each deposit changed to one that eventually ends up back in Bolivia in the bank account of his boss where it should have been all along.”
“And Kevin found this data somehow?” Sergei asked.
“No.” The pieces fell together for Roman as he spoke. “Bonnie said he’s been hired many times for hacking jobs. He was probably hired to change the data for Rossi. Better for a foolish outsider to do it than for one of his own men to do it. That way Rossi covers his tracks and frames a sloppy hacker instead.”
Kir nodded. “Cassie tells me that Bonnie specifically mentioned her brother and father arguing the day they disappeared. That the disagreement was about money. It may be Kevin decided to use the information he’d found and saved to blackmail Rossi.”
“A rash move at best,” Sergei said. He motioned to the laptop with his chin. “Who is Rossi’s boss?”
A wry grin from his brother was the last thing Roman had expected, but from the look on his face, Kir couldn’t wait to drop his latest bit of information. “A woman by the name of Gretta Sosa.”
Sergei smiled. A wicked one that said he wasn’t just pleased, but had the perfect plan to stack the dominos in their favor. “Well, then. We have data, a name and fifteen hours to work with. I suggest we make full use of it.”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Jourdan Road ran the eastern length of New Orleans’s Inner Harbor Navigation Canal—a waterway that conveniently connected Lake Pontchartrain to the Mississippi River. While Roman hadn’t exactly been a stranger to the terrain in his time since moving to New Orleans, by the time the sun set he’d personally combed every warehouse entrance and exit along the aged brown road and had mapped every possible means to navigate to their target destination—including the dock options off the canal and the overgrown entrances from neighboring buildings.
An old, water stained concrete wall ran along one side of the road—either to keep flood waters at bay for the neighborhoods farther east of the canal, or to muffle the railroad noise for the residents beyond. Feed chutes ran every half mile or so from the many grain silos on one side of the road to the warehouses backed up to the canal and thick metal electric poles stood in neat rows like industrial sentries.
But his main focus had been the pale gray building that stretched as long as a football field and boasted enough docking bays along the front to handle a swarm of semis at once. Once upon a time, the building had been part of the agricultural industry, but now served as storage and a staging area for all manner of shipments.