Total pages in book: 71
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66833 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 334(@200wpm)___ 267(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Chekhov grimaces. “All of it. The dress shop, which you already know about, is the one and only recording of her. Neither of the traffic cams at the cross streets caught her after she exited the shop. Nor did any security cameras from the nearby businesses—though, with this being an old historic area, there were quite a few shops that didn’t have any cameras whatsoever, including several of the ones immediately surrounding the dress shop.”
Fuck. Unless my wife has suddenly developed the skills of a professional spy, there’s only one explanation for her too-thorough disappearance: her brothers have already gotten involved, specifically Konstantin with his hackers. Though I don’t know why they’d bother erasing the footage from after the dress shop and not from before. Why not erase all of it instead of letting us track her for several blocks? Then again, maybe we got to that footage before they did. Either way, it’s obvious what happened.
Alina saw an opportunity to run, took it, and immediately contacted her brothers—who acted swiftly to cover her digital trail, allowing her to escape unobserved to their designated rendezvous point.
I take another deep breath and try to think through the haze of fury in my brain. It’s been a little over five hours since she climbed out of that window. That means she might still be somewhere in Geneva, waiting to be picked up by her brothers or whoever they’re sending. I doubt the Molotovs just happened to have a trustworthy-enough crew stationed nearby, so they’re probably coming from Moscow, same as my people. How much time does that give me to retrieve Alina before we have to fight a full-out battle? A few hours? More? Less?
Less, I decide. Much less. If the Molotovs tracked my plane and figured out its destination prior to us landing—which is more than likely given Konstantin’s hackers’ capabilities—they were already on the way here when we arrived. So I have a couple of hours at best. After that, things are going to get bloody.
“Make sure our people are stationed at every airport, public or private, within driving distance,” I tell Chekhov as his phone vibrates in his hand. “If we don’t find her before her brothers arrive, we’ll follow them to her.”
“Already on it,” he says absentmindedly, looking at the screen. Suddenly, his posture changes, and his head snaps up to meet my gaze. “Our hackers located the flight plan for the Molotov jet. It’s scheduled to land in four and a half hours at the same airport we used. Both Konstantin and Valery are on board.”
I stare at him, taken aback. “They filed a flight plan?”
That’s not like the Molotovs at all. Normally, they’re very good at concealing their movements—and they’d definitely want to do that this time to avoid leading me to my runaway bride. Unless… they’re sending a separate team to pick her up while we’re distracted by Konstantin and Valery.
Chekhov is clearly thinking along the same lines. “It’s most likely a decoy.”
“I’m almost certain it is,” Ruslan says, looking up from his laptop. Unlike me, who has been pacing around my newly purchased penthouse for the past hour, he’s lounging on the couch, unfazed by the events. And why not? It’s not his fucking wife who’s pregnant, sick, and on the run.
I’m about to snap at him when my phone pings with an incoming email. I glance at the screen, and my pulse jolts.
It’s a reply to the message I sent to the Molotovs the other day, notifying them of Alina’s diagnosis.
Konstantin and I are coming to see her. Don’t stand in our way.
-VM
I frown and show it to Ruslan and Chekhov.
Ruslan’s frown matches mine. “Why would they warn you that they’re coming? We’re supposed to have figured that out on our own thanks to their supposed slip-up, right? Otherwise, it’s a shitty decoy.”
“They’re making it sound like they don’t know Alina ran away,” Chekhov says, scanning the message again. “How stupid do they think we are?”
I take my phone back and read over the message. It could be interpreted that way—or it could be that they’re warning me to stand aside and let them retrieve Alina without a fight. Either way, the message is out of character for Valery.
“Something’s not adding up,” Ruslan says, voicing my thoughts. “They have to know that we know that they’re in touch with Alina. Could the message have been sent prior to her escape? Maybe there was a delay in the email reaching us for some reason?”
That’s a possibility, though an unlikely one. But it’s a better theory than anything else I can think of. Either way… “Tell the guards to be prepared for anything,” I tell Chekhov. “And continue keeping an eye on all the other airports, along with train and bus stations. Also, set up checkpoints on all the roads leading out of Geneva. Call in every favor we’ve got.”