“I’ll send you the rest of the information via email.” Without another word, he ends the call. I breathe heavily in the cold silence of the armory. Every moment Victoria is in Shehu’s hands is another minute she’s in danger.
I don’t care who I have to threaten, torture, maim, or kill.
I’m going to find her.
My phone dings with an email from Timofei containing two addresses. “Two possible places Brahim could be,” I read aloud. One is the residence of Jeffrey Rogers, the CPS agent Brahim killed and impersonated.
The other is, according to some old records that one of the men found at City Hall, Brahim’s old childhood home. The email adds that his mother appears to have a long rap sheet of prostitution related offenses.
That’s exactly the place the vigilante would work. He’s looked down on everyone around me and everyone involved in this business, and what better place to cleanse the world of sins if not the very house where he first witnessed his mother let strange men use her body for sins of their own?
It all makes sense. So neat, so poetic, so blindingly obvious. How could I have missed it?
“He’s there,” I say out loud, shaking my head and clenching my fists. “I know he is.”
I can’t be positive. At least, not one hundred percent. But we don’t have time to wait. I send Timofei a text.
Get all our men. Every single person you can. We’re going to that location and we’re taking Victoria back.
“We’re going to save her,” I say out loud to the empty room.
I hope to God I’m right.
28
Victoria
I press my forehead against the cold wooden floor, blinking sleep away. I don’t know whether it’s day or night, but everything feels sluggish. In this awful neighborhood, the only sounds from outside that I recognize are crickets. No passing cars, no shouting pedestrians, nothing.
I want to sleep again, to pretend everything—this awful house, Rogers, all of it—doesn’t exist. But I can’t force myself to do it.
I push up from the ground. The room that Rogers put me in doesn’t have a bed. My body groans in protest.
I tried to fight him off when he shoved me in here. When I thought he wasn’t looking, I made a break for it. But he was too big, too strong. He grabbed me around the waist, slapped me hard across the mouth, and threw me to the cold floor. I can still taste the blood.
I wanted to save myself. I wanted to overpower him and break free from this hellhole, but he’s made it clear that I can’t.
He wants me to think I’m alone. To break me. But I refuse to give him that satisfaction.
Even though things are looking bleaker by the second. Mentally, I know that my odds of making it out of here aren’t good. I just have to remind myself that I’m doing this for the right reasons.
For Nikolai.
For Matvei.
They need each other more than either one realizes. They’re each the only family that the other has left. I can’t let Rogers kill either one.
The mental image of Nikolas standing at Matvei’s casket flashes through my mind and I put my head to my knees, sobbing. He doesn’t deserve this. If Rogers succeeds in killing us both, he’s going to take Nikolas and disappear. He’ll bring Nikolas up to be just as insane as he is. The thought reduces me to even more tears.
When the chains on the door start to jangle, I wipe my eyes and push myself up from the floor, bones and joints popping and cracking. I straighten up and stare directly ahead of me, watching the door as Rogers slowly eases it open.
He carries a plate of food in his hand. Nothing fancy. A Styrofoam cup of water. A place of bread and some weird meat that looks like it came from a can. No utensils. Just a paper plate and napkins.
“Here,” he says, handing me the tray. He drags in a stool and takes a seat. Tentatively, I cross my legs on the floor and grab for the bread, taking a small bite. It has no taste, but right now, my stomach is roaring for something. I can’t be picky. If I don’t eat this, nothing else will come. I’ll have no strength and no hope at that point.
“Thank you for this,” I say, looking up at him. I make a show of eating a piece of meat with the bread, then drinking