by Katie Reus
Ellis hung up. Then he took the battery out but kept walking.
As he moved across the parking lot to a vehicle his sister had dropped off for him, he slid into the front seat and called Lizzy on another burner, while watching the SUV. Even though they had a solid plan in place, it still felt wrong leaving her. Like he was abandoning her.
She picked up immediately. “I made the call,” he said to her.
“Carlito knows what to do. He has a lot of questions—like a whole lot, and now I owe him some favors—but he knows what to do.”
From his position, Ellis had a clear view of the SUV. He’d parked it next to a dumpster and there wasn’t anyone else on the other side. “Good. How are we doing on that other thing?”
“I can’t find any accounts that Bird has opened up. No safety deposit boxes, nothing. Which really makes sense. He’s got a piece of property up in North Carolina that’s buried pretty deep in various company names, but it’s his. It’s like fifty acres though, and nothing is built on it so…if he hid it there, I don’t know how we’d find it. It’d be like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.” She sounded as frustrated as he felt.
He glanced at the time. Duarte should be there by now. What was going on? He looked around the parking lot, but there was very little movement. And no sirens in the background. “I’m wondering if he’s got it at the office. It’d make sense because no way would Vitaly try to sneak into a DEA office to retrieve it. It’d be suicidal.”
“Yeah, I thought that too.”
Ellis glanced at the clock. Too much time had passed. He didn’t like this at all. “Carlito still isn’t here. I’m gonna grab her.”
“Just give him another minute. You know what Miami traffic is like.”
Screw that. He’d started to get out of the car when a pickup truck parked behind the SUV. Ice flooded his veins as a man he recognized got out of it and strode toward the back of the SUV doors.
“Shit.” Ellis yanked open his door.
“What is it?”
“One of her stepfather’s men is there. He’s getting her out of the back.”
Lizzy let out a curse. “Vitaly might have someone monitoring 911 calls.”
He’d thought of that, but Duarte should have been there. That should have been a nonissue. Heart in his throat, Ellis pulled out a weapon and shut the car door behind him.
Chapter 20
Arianna tensed as the back door handle jiggled. This was it. She just hoped this detective was as trustworthy as Ellis seemed to think. No, he would be. She trusted in Ellis and wasn’t going to let old fears crowd into her head and take over. At that moment she also had to ignore the ache in her chest at the realization that she had no idea when she would see him again—if ever.
Suddenly the door swung open, the early Sunday morning sunlight nearly blinding her. She winced, then gasped in surprise when she realized it was Otto, one of her stepfather’s men. In his late forties, he had a salt and pepper mustache and was in good shape. Like her stepfather, he’d been born in the US, but he didn’t have any accent.
He seemed relieved to see her as he reached for her. “Come on.”
Stunned, she held out her tied hands when he reached for them. “What are you doing here? How did you find me? That man said he was calling the police!”
Otto reached into his back pocket and pulled out a knife. She almost winced away but suppressed the action as he cut her wrist bindings free.
“Come on.” He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as he helped her out of the back of the SUV.
Oh God, what should she do? That detective should have been here by now. She could hear a police siren faintly in the background and shuffled her feet, glancing around the nearly empty Starbucks parking lot. “Where are the police? Should we wait for them?” She fought the swell of rising panic as they neared his vehicle. She couldn’t leave with him.
“Arianna,” he snapped out. “We need to go. Vitaly does not want you involved with the police. Trust me when I say this, you don’t want to be on the news. Let’s go!”
She wanted to argue with him but couldn’t see a good way to do it. And when a woman with a toddler in the back seat pulled into the parking lot next to them, she shut her mouth. She had no idea if Otto would hurt random bystanders if she fought him. She didn’t want to think so but she wasn’t going to take the risk. The man worked for Vitaly which meant he had to be at least somewhat ruthless.
As she went with him to the nearby truck, she saw Ellis stalking their way. It was clear Otto didn’t see him across the parking lot that connected to a grocery store chain. She shook her head at Ellis to warn him off and got into the passenger seat, completely ignoring him. She couldn’t risk him getting into something with Otto and blowing his cover—or that woman and her child getting hurt. No way. She just couldn’t do it, even if it meant facing her stepfather.
As Otto slid into the front seat beside her, he reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m glad you’re okay.” He sounded like he actually meant it, which made her want to relax just a little. He was one of her stepfather’s few employees that she actually liked. He was always nice to her—he often said she reminded him of his daughter. And she didn’t think he was lying, considering his daughter worked across the country and was also an elementary school teacher.
“I don’t understand why we aren’t waiting for the police.” She had to play this up for all she was worth, had to be confused and scared. The scared part wasn’t hard either.
Sighing, he pulled out of his parking spot after glancing in the rearview mirror. “Vitaly has been worried sick over you. He’s had us all over Miami trying to find a lead on who could have taken you.”
She held back a snort at the lie. She wondered if Vitaly had even told Otto about the call from Ellis, about the missing money. She had no idea if Otto was high enough up the food chain to be privy to that sort of thing. He hadn’t been on Ellis’s board of information so maybe he wasn’t. She hoped not.
“We’ve been listening to police scanners and when we heard a call about a kidnapped woman, I figured I would check it out since I was so close. I can’t believe it’s you.” He shook his head, pure relief in his voice. So okay, maybe they really had been listening to the scanner. Which was bizarre.
“Why were you listening to a police scanner?” she asked, because she figured that was a very normal thing to ask. She knew that people actually could listen to police calls in some areas and that there were apps for that very thing. Freaking apps. But she also knew that a lot of police departments had taken steps to block people from listening in.
“Ask Vitaly when you see him.”
“I’m not going to Orlando. I want to talk to the police and I want to go home.” She resisted the urge to turn around, to see if Ellis had followed them.
“Your father’s here.”
She almost said stepfather but reined in the correction. “What do you mean?”
“I mean he’s here in Miami.”
She knew he had a home here, one he rarely used. It was in a gated neighborhood and luxurious. Nowhere near like his estate in Orlando, which was on two acres in the city, something nearly unheard of. “I just don’t understand—”
“Look, I don’t have any answers for you. I just know that he’s been turning over every rock trying to find you. Do I need to call a doctor to meet us there?” he asked carefully. “Are you…injured?”
She blinked until she realized what he meant, then shook her head and looked away. It was clear she wasn’t going to get any answers from Otto so she sat back against the leather seat and kept her mouth shut. Right about now she figured that staying silent was the best thing.
“Whoever did this to you is going to pay,” Otto said, maybe mistaking her silence for sadness.
She simply shrugged and kept staring out the window. Yep, she was keeping her mouth shut. Better to say nothing than slip up and say something that could get her or Ellis killed.
Barely half an hour later Ar
ianna walked on numb legs to Vitaly’s office, Otto escorting her. She received a few sideways glances from random men who clearly worked for Vitaly, but she ignored them. Her wrists were bruised and scabbing in places, which should help sell her story more.
Ellis hated that she’d scuffed up her wrists but she’d convinced him it would look a lot more realistic to the police this way. Maybe if she’d been a different person, if she had different experiences, she wouldn’t have felt the need to prove what she’d been through, but she did. And Vitaly was observant enough that he would notice the bruising.
Otto opened the door and quietly ushered her in before ducking back out.
Her stepfather was on his cell phone and nodded once at her as he quickly ended his call. There was no relief in his eyes to see her—which was very telling. If she’d held out any sort of hope that he cared at all about her, it died a sad death right then.
As he set his phone down, he hurried around his desk and came to her, gently taking her by the shoulders in his weird version of a hug. “Otto texted me. He said…you don’t need to see a doctor?”
She shook her head and tears sprang to her eyes. She didn’t bother brushing them away. They were real, though not for the reason he likely assumed. Her life had crumbled around her and now she had no idea what she was walking into with him. Had no idea if she was going to survive this or not. And that was terrifying.
“I don’t understand anything that’s happened,” she cried out. “A man kidnapped me and made me go to Grand Cayman. There was a bank account in my name and I had to close it down. It had millions of dollars in it and now he’s got it. He called me all sorts of horrible names and he hates you. He hates you so much.” She machine-gunned the words out as she started crying even harder, all the while wondering if Vitaly knew she was lying and was going to kill her right where she sat. But no, he wouldn’t want blood in his office, she thought, then bit back another sob at the insanity of all of this.
“Sit, sit.” He led her to a nearby chair. “I’m sorry about what you’ve gone through. Can you tell me about the man?” His tone was quiet, but his blue eyes were ice cold.
Ellis had blue eyes but they were nothing like the man in front of her, the man who didn’t care if she lived or died. She swiped at her cheeks. “Why aren’t we calling the police?”
He sniffed dismissively. “Of all people you know how useless they are. I don’t want them involved in our business.”
“But—”
“Enough. I’m not going to discuss it.” His gaze drifted down to her wrists and he frowned, lifting one of them up to inspect. “He will pay for what he did.” It seemed as if he was saying it more to himself than to her.
Which he was, because he didn’t care what happened to her. Vitaly was doing this for himself, because no one crossed him. That was something she saw crystal-clear right now. He would have to make an example of the man who’d taken her—and she would never let him find out it was Ellis Bishop. “I don’t understand how there was a bank account in my name with so much money. It’s all so bizarre.”
“Don’t worry about that now. First tell me about the man who took you.” He cleared his throat as someone knocked on the door, then told them to go away. As he looked back at her, he said, “How many people were involved with your kidnapping?”
“Only one, really. Well, one that I had to deal with, anyway. I think he worked with others though, because when we went to the bank, he told me someone was inside watching me. But I don’t know what they looked like or if they even existed. He could have been lying. We flew down to Grand Cayman and back with the same pilot and he didn’t seem to care that the man was holding a gun on me.” She and Ellis had gone over the details multiple times and they were embedded into her brain.
It still felt bizarre to be lying even though she knew her life depended on it. Shuddering, she wrapped her arms around herself, hoping she was convincing. She was certainly scared and she didn’t have to fake that. Her heart was a wild, out of control mess and she was just glad there was no way Vitaly could hear it.
“You’re doing good. Now let’s start at the beginning.”
So she did, weaving a tale about how a man had taken her from her house even though it had really been from her AA meeting. From there she told her stepfather how this stranger had roughed her up and then made her get on a private plane at gunpoint, how he’d said all sorts of vile things about Vitaly and what a bad man he was.
“He said,” her voice cracked as she neared the end of her tale, “that you wouldn’t pay a ransom for me, that you were worthless. I thought he was going to kill me!” she sobbed out.
Vitaly pulled her into an awkward hug, patting her back a couple times. “He lied to you. I was negotiating with him, trying to figure out who he was. A few of my associates have recently had their adult children kidnapped. Just like you.”
She blinked in surprise at this bold lie, though she wasn’t sure why she should be surprised. It was clear he was a master liar and manipulator. Heck, maybe it was the truth, but she doubted it. He was simply trying to explain away why he’d tossed her aside like garbage. “Really?”
“Yes. It’s why I wanted to handle this myself without any law enforcement. They just muck things up, as you know. Now, do you know why he let you go?” He watched her carefully.
She shook her head and wiped away the lingering wetness on her cheeks. Vitaly, the jackass, hadn’t even offered her a tissue or anything but she kept that thought to herself. “No. But he did say that just because you were a monster didn’t mean he was. I thought he was lying though, when he said he was going to call the police to find me. I thought he was just taking me somewhere to kill me.”
Vitaly’s gaze went distant for a long moment as he stepped back, mulling over her words. “I want you to describe this man to me.” Her stepfather leaned against his desk, crossing his arms over his massive chest.
“He wore a mask and baggy clothes most of the time, but he had a beard and I’m pretty sure he’s white. Because he didn’t wear gloves the whole time.” Arianna kept her description vague enough so that it would line up with any potential security videos her stepfather might find.
He nodded once, his expression thoughtful. “In the picture he sent of you, your clothing was ripped.”
She cleared her throat and looked down, clasping her fingers together. He wasn’t asking a question directly, but she knew what he wanted to know. “He didn’t rape me, if that’s what you want to know. He ripped my dress and I thought…he would.” She cleared her throat, looking away as if she couldn’t bear to say it. “He grabbed my… But then he stopped and told me that he wasn’t a monster like you.” She looked up at him. “Who is this man, and what does he want with you? He hated you. I might not know much, but I feel like this is personal.”
He flicked his wrist once in a dismissive gesture. “I have a lot of enemies, which is natural as I am successful. I will find out who this is and take care of him the way I took care of that stupid boy in college.” His icy eyes flared with anger for a moment before his neutral mask slid seamlessly back into place. But she’d seen that anger, seen the violence lurking.
And she couldn’t pretend not to know what he meant.
When she didn’t respond he lifted an eyebrow. “Is there something you want to ask me?” It almost sounded like a challenge.
She swallowed hard. “Yes and no. I don’t think I want the answer.”
Sighing, he pushed up off the desk and went over to his minibar, pouring himself a vodka on ice. “Your mother told me that she alluded to you what I had done.”
Arianna shoved out a breath. She’d always wondered if her mother had told him. When her mom had been on her deathbed she’d told Arianna that her stepfather had taken care of Charlie. And Arianna had been able to figure out easily what her mama had meant. Vitaly had either killed Charlie or had someone do it for him. The carjacking had been in a quiet part of town that saw little violence, the car had been f
ound abandoned not far from the area, and Charlie hadn’t been robbed of his wallet or expensive watch. “Did you do it yourself?” she whispered.
He looked over from the bar, a flicker of surprise probably that she had asked at all. He shook his head and took a drink. “You have had a rough couple of days. I think you need to rest. I’m going to get some pictures together and see if any of them look familiar. I know you said he wore a mask, but maybe something will look familiar to you. The pictures might trigger something.”
Though she wanted to leave his estate, she knew that would arouse suspicion so she simply nodded and stood. “I’m pretty hungry too. And I want to call my sponsor.”
He nodded. “Yes, yes, head to the kitchen. Mario is working today. I brought him with me from Orlando. He will fix you anything you want. You can call your sponsor later. Do not tell her what happened. And no police.”
“I understand.” More than he realized.
As she reached the door, she paused as he spoke. “Arianna, I think it goes without saying that you will never discuss with anyone else what your mother told you.”
“I haven’t said anything to anyone ever. Why would I tell anyone now? I’m not sorry he’s dead.” That was the truth too. When he’d died so violently, she’d been relieved for it. Even through the dark haze of all her drinking, she’d been so glad that the monster had been gone from her life. Her glee had actually scared her, made her question what type of person she was. But she’d been spared living through a trial and all the public speculation about whether she’d “wanted it” or not. Ugh.
Another flicker of surprise, but then he nodded and dismissed her. As if she was some random employee and not his stepdaughter who’d just supposedly been through a frightening ordeal.
As she stepped out into the hall, she realized that she had absolutely no guilt about helping Ellis. Vitaly deserved to go to jail and Ellis deserved his life back. Ellis was an honorable, wonderful man who shouldn’t have to pay for someone else’s crimes.
