Her gaze roamed the very expensive yacht. She thought it might have three levels. “So they killed your family.” It was a shot in the dark but seemed to fit.
He snorted. “Killed would have been merciful. After they tortured my mother for a while, making my sisters watch, they then turned to my sisters. Innocent little girls who knew nothing of evil.”
“Neither did the children you killed.”
“Yes, I know. I regret they had to die, but it’s the way it had to happen.”
In his twisted mind, she was sure that’s what he believed.
“They finally shot my sisters,” he said, “then took my mother and did unspeakable things to her, trying to get her to tell them where my father was and who else was spying for the US. But she didn’t know. She truly didn’t know. If she had known, she would have broken long before then. But do you know why she didn’t know?”
“Why, Nicolai?”
“Because my traitorous father didn’t tell her he was leaving—and taking his mistress with him. Nope, he kept that all to himself. In the end, after my mother screamed and begged for mercy, for her children’s lives, they made her sit on the sofa next to her dead children and shot her. At that point, I’m sure she was grateful it was finally over. And then they burned the house down.”
Ava swallowed hard and shuddered.
He must have felt the ripple run through her. “It doesn’t sound so fun, does it?”
“No, not at all,” she said, her voice soft. “What a horrible thing for them to do. I’m so sorry.” And she was. But her compassion wouldn’t reach him at this point. He was too lost in his darkness. And she wouldn’t deny she was terrified.
He stared at her, his brow wrinkling at her words. Then he shook his head. “I was hiding in a small area in our den that my sisters and I called the box. We used it when we played hide-and-seek. I was in there when they burst into the house, so I saw it all and could do nothing.”
“How old were you?”
“Ten. By the time they left, I vowed to get justice for my family. When I went to live with my aunt, over the years she uncovered all the information that would lead me here. As I grew, I trained. And every year, I would visit my mother’s and sisters’ graves, and every year, I renewed my promise. To make them all suffer as much as I possibly could.”
“Starting with your father and his wife.”
“Yes.” His hand spasmed on her arm as he stopped in front of a door. The door she assumed led to that horrible room. “When I was old enough, my aunt gave me the papers and pictures she’d found in a box my father had left behind. She instructed me to find out as much as possible about the photo of the five men while she worked on tracking down my father. It took years to figure everything out. Years and years and years. Fortunately, my aunt knew many high-ranking people in the KGB and through much effort—and a lot of money—eventually found everything she needed to know about the man who’d helped other high-ranking officials—and their families—defect.”
“You were the only family left behind, weren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“So, you decided to kill the other families because . . .”
“They needed to know what it felt like to lose their whole family because of one person’s decision. Because of their actions, my family died. Because of my actions, their families died.”
“An eye for an eye, huh?”
He shrugged. “My aunt said they had to pay, and I promised to make it happen.” He nodded to the room. “I added that after I learned about you. Your father was extremely clever in hiding his family. At first, I was going to just take my pleasure in torturing and killing him, but this has worked out so much better. Now he gets to watch me do to you what they did to my mother. He gets to watch you die knowing that it’s all because of him.”
Ava clasped her fingers together and brought her hands up, knuckles first, to slam them into his throat. He stumbled backward and hit the rail, gasping, coughing, kicking, as he tried to catch his breath.
She ran.
The chopper blades cut through the air, sweeping yet another part of the lake. They’d chosen to do an open-door helicopter search. It wasn’t the usual way to do things, but it wasn’t completely unheard of either, as it allowed him to see more of the ground below.
“What are we looking for, Cade?” Travis asked.
His voice came through the headphones and Caden shook his head. “I’m not entirely sure. I’m hoping I’ll know it when I see it.”
When they’d arrived at the property, Caden had noticed the absence of the speedboat and called the authorities asking if they’d impounded it. They had not. At that point, he called in a chopper while they searched the area—and found a sedan. “She was here,” he told the others. “The boat’s missing. I’m willing to take the chance that Nicolai put her in it and headed to whatever location he has set up.”
It seemed to take forever, but the chopper had finally arrived just as the crime scene unit pulled up. He and Travis had climbed into the helicopter while Gavin and Asher would keep them updated on the ground activity.
Caden checked his harness again, then leaned out the door as the pilot banked and made another run, following a grid pattern. The sun sank lower and Caden’s heart thudded a painful rhythm of desperation. “Where are you?” he whispered. “She has to be on the lake somewhere,” he said in a normal volume. “Look for the boat.”
“There are several islands out here,” Travis said. “Let’s check those. You don’t need a boat if you have land access to an island. The fact that he left his car tells me he can’t get to wherever he is with it.”
“Good point.”
Caden pulled up the map of the lake and noted four different decent-sized islands. He entered the coordinates of the first one into the GPS and the pilot headed for it.
The water police were standing by, ready to move in when directed, as were other agents.
Nothing caught his attention on a quick tour around the island, and they moved on to the next one.
Caden’s phone rang. Asher. “Yeah?”
“I’m here with the crime scene unit and the cops. We found evidence Ava was in the car.”
“What evidence?” He and the others hadn’t touched it after a brief glance inside, not wanting to disturb any evidence that might have been left behind.
“Strands of dark hair in the back seat and a couple of zip ties. Obviously, we can’t be one hundred percent sure that the hair belongs to Ava, but you know it does.”
Yes, he knew it did. But where had he taken her?
“What’s that?” He pointed.
“Looks like a yacht of some kind,” Travis said. “Rich people can rent out their own island and go off-grid for a few days. You know, put their cell phone on airplane mode and only use the internet while they’re actually on the yacht.”
Caden scoffed. “There’s no speedboat there. That’s what we’re looking for.” He showed Travis the picture of the boat that had been tied to the dock.
They circled the island twice. “No speedboat and nowhere to hide one,” Travis said. “There’s not even a dock.”