“Alright. So what’s our next steps?” Carlos looked at me like I had all the answers. Like maybe I was sitting on information and not sharing with him. He was right, of course, but I sure as shit wasn’t admitting that.
I gave a shrug. “They can’t stay hidden for long. Ares has weapons to sell, and the type of people he sells to don’t take kindly to being blown off. Our best bet is to follow the money. Who is he selling to next?”
Carlos gave a nod, staring off into the distance. “I’ll make some calls. A while back, I heard whispers of a turf war brewing between the Bratva and Odessa. One of them will be buying from Ares, for sure.”
I arched a brow. “You have contacts in the Bratva and Odessa?” And high enough in the hierarchy to know who they were buying weapons from too.
Carlos just offered me a toothy grin, showing off his gold-capped incisor. “I got contacts everywhere , amigo. Why do you think Dan set up her panic button with me and not one of you Guild pricks?”
Dan. He called her Dan . So fucking familiar with my Danny . I would kill him slowly, I decided.
“Probably because she knows that no one in the Guild can be trusted completely,” I muttered aloud, not really caring that Carlos heard me. It was the truth, after all. Even I would put the Guild above everything else… and had in the past. It was why Layla was dead now.
Carlos just smirked at my comment, though. Because I was agreeing that Danny trusted him more than anyone else in her life. And that made me hate him even more.
“Just call me if you get a lead,” I told him with a hard glare. I’d ditched my fake glasses and my fake personality along with them. The version of me that Carlos got was a whole shit load different from the one I’d presented to Danny.
He gave me a mocking salute with tattooed fingers. “Yes, sir. Tell Jude I say hello.”
I scowled at him, not understanding that comment, but didn’t stick around to ask questions. Carlos was still standing there in the parking lot as I sped off in my rented Mercedes, heading back to my hotel.
My phone rang again, and I hit answer on the steering wheel.
“This better be more useful information,” I snapped at the Guild tech bunny on the other end. I’d assigned him the job as an “official” contract, so he had no idea that I was the client. He didn’t even know who he was reporting to, only that I was a superior.
“I think so,” he replied. “I found some heavily altered legal documents from about nine years ago. I’ve only just started unscrambling them, but it points toward Ares buying property in Italy.”
Good. That wasn’t far away. “Italy is not specific enough, William. Get me coordinates.”
“I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Do better than that, William.” I ended the call and tightened my grip on the steering wheel. If his info was accurate, then I was a huge step closer to getting Danny back. My lips curved up in a smile, and I nearly didn’t recognize myself in the mirror when I got out of the car at my hotel.
I made it all of two steps inside the foyer when I understood Carlos’s parting comment.
“Judith,” I said, narrowing my eyes at Danny’s best friend. “What are you doing in Brussels?”
She scowled back at me, leaning heavily on her cane as she stood up from where she’d been waiting. “I came to ask why the fuck you haven’t answered my calls, Leon. And to help find my friend.”
I briefly considered shooting her just to stop the annoyance. But we were in the very public foyer of a five-star hotel, and the cleanup cost alone would make it less than worth it. So I sighed and continued toward the elevators, knowing full well that she would follow.
“Are you going to answer me?” she demanded, stepping into the elevator right before the doors closed.
I gave her a cool glance. “Out here, where anyone can overhear confidential information? No, Judith, I’m not.”
Her lips parted in shock, and her cheeks pinked with embarrassment, but she shut the fuck up, so that was something.
“I understand you’ve been relegated to the library for a long time, Judith,” I commented with a slight edge of scolding, “but you know better than that. Honestly, meeting you now, I have no clue how you were ever on track to finish top of your training class.”
Her cheeks darkened, as did her glare, but her lips pursed tight, and I smirked slightly. How the fuck Danny had the patience for all these friends , I had no idea. We would have to change that when I had her back.
There was nothing quite as potent as the loss of a loved one to help foster a new, less healthy relationship.
27
A fter my bath, Kai left me locked in his room. I didn’t have much to complain about, though, considering it was a goddamn palace compared to the cell they’d been keeping me in.
I took my sweet time snooping through every drawer, his whole wardrobe, and even under the bed. To my disappointment, I found nothing fun at all. Not even a box of condoms. Kai was turning out to be more unexciting than I’d first assessed him to be.
Looking out the window was a bust, too. There was a metal roller blind down from the outside, totally blocking out the view… whatever it was. Did he do that because he knew I’d be in his room? Or was it a standard safety feature when the crew was out of town? So to speak.
Eventually I grew bored and turned on the huge flat screen TV mounted on the wall facing the bed. It wasn’t connected to any local stations, so I got no clues to our location, but it did have some streaming apps. Small win. I searched out the teen vampire drama I’d been watching the last time I’d watched TV and flicked through to the episode I’d been up to.
The heroine of the show had a love triangle situation going with two sexy brothers, and I had my money on the bad boy to win her heart in the end. Then again, love triangles always seemed to result in the boring, good guy as the hero. Snore.
Somewhere around the fourth episode I watched back-to-back, I fell asleep. In my defense, Kai’s bed was like a goddamn cloud. It was so comfy. Nothing at all like Jae’s hard mattress I’d woken in earlier.
When I woke a couple of hours later, though, the room was pitch black—the TV off—and I wasn’t alone. The mattress was weighted down beside me, and body warmth radiated beneath the light blanket.
I kept my breathing steady as I opened my eyes, peering through the darkness to confirm it was Kai and not some other creep. Although, if it were Sam, I hardly thought he’d be sleeping peacefully beside me, and as for Jae… well… who fucking knew what he’d been doing while I was in that drugged sleep earlier.
Experimenting, I shifted my position and watched to see if Kai would wake. When he didn’t move at all, I slipped out from under the blankets and stood. Still no reaction. Wow… was he for real? How fucking easy would it be to kill him right now?
Hmm. No, Ares hadn’t survived this long by being a moron. Suspicion rippled through me. This fucker was faking to see what I would do.
Well, so be it. Danielle the bank teller would see this as her opportunity to escape. Danny the mercenary saw a perfect opportunity to case out the house a little better. Gather intel to form a better escape plan for when I did get a real opening.