Yeah, way too many. I shrugged innocently, finally elbowing past him when a firefighter came over. I could see the fires were out; I didn’t need a report. As I rushed past my guard, he reassured me that Tati had stayed in her room the entire time, just like he’d ordered her to.
Once again, that uneasy feeling crept in. That wasn’t exactly like the Tati I had grown to know over the past weeks. Do what she was told when bombs were detonating all around her, and the place was crawling with emergency workers outside?
He informed me he hadn’t let the police inside, but that they were going to be difficult to get rid of without doing somekind of sweep to make sure everything was safe. Since I wasn’t supposed to be the kind of person who was used to being targeted by bombs, it seemed like the easiest thing to do would be to let them. They’d find nothing that could incriminate Dima or me in their quick search.
But first I had to get my arms around Tati, who was probably scared out of her wits.
If she were in her room, which she wasn’t. The broken window kept me from looking in any other room and had me bellowing for a guard. The uneasy feeling made perfect sense now.
“A distraction to grab her,” I said, remaining calm in spite of the need to start tearing apart the city to find her. “Someone ratted us out.”
My fear and fury kept me from thinking about anything except destroying whoever had her, but my guard hurried past me toward the broken window, shaking his head. The look on his face when he turned back made my stomach sink like a stone.
“It’s broken from the inside,” he said, leaving it at that.
That could only mean one thing. My brain knew it, but my heart said fuck no. “Cameras,” I said, heading to the office so I could clearly see exactly what had happened. I swore aloud when I saw that the safe was open and Tati’s phone was gone.
Still, that could mean anything. She could have been under duress. But who knew the code besides me? It hit me harder than the last time someone got me in the face with brass knuckles. She was so damn clever, wasn’t she? Hanging out in the office. And I’d been careless. Complacent. Trusting her when we were on completely opposite sides.
Dima was also too complacent in the camera coverage around a house he only used on occasional weekends, and there was no evidence that she had climbed out of the bedroom window of her own accord.
What there was evidence of, after a bit of searching forward from the time of the attack, was Tati hauling ass down the street, away from the house. The guards were too busy putting out fires to notice one woman taking off when the neighbors were already gathering and causing more distractions. I watched with clenched fists until Tati disappeared out of camera range.
She was gone.
Find her. Save her.My instincts went into overdrive, my blood boiling. Not with anger at her escape, but with the need to protect her, even if it was from herself.
But what if she didn’t need saving? No one was chasing her in that security footage. What if this was all meticulously planned out and she was biding her time for the perfect moment? What if she were exactly where she wanted to be, possibly celebrating a victory over me and my family?
Shaking my head, I crashed out of the house, past the milling police and the lingering neighbors. “Deal with them,” I told my guard. “And stay alert. I may need backup.”
I ran to my car that I’d been forced to park halfway down the street due to the blockade of fire engines and cop cars, heading to a place that wasn’t swarming with distractions so I could find Tati.
She wasn’t working against me, not my Tati. Because if she was, that would destroy me. Whatever made her leave didn’t matter. I’d deal with it when I found out. When I found her. She was mine, and I was getting her back.
Chapter 37 - Tatiana
My heart was pounding, I was running on pure adrenaline, without a clue which way to go. Once I was off the small waterfront street, I turned in the more populated direction, just running like my life depended on it. Maybe it did. Or maybe this was the biggest mistake of my life.
I had to cling to the hope that I was saving my father. If he even needed saving. He could be in charge of this whole operation for all I knew. That was the main problem. I didn’t know what was true. But Papa told me I could trust Riku, and Riku told me to run, so that’s what I was doing, along with ignoring the terrible feeling in my gut.
It must have been more than a mile of flat-out running, something that should have been impossible if it weren’t for my harried state, but a car finally swerved up beside me, and the back door flew open.
Jumping in, I put my head between my knees to try to catch my breath while the car took off. After a moment, I sensed a presence next to me in the backseat, and I straightened up. I recognized the man himself, calmly assessing me, his hands resting in his lap.
Riku should have been handsome. Slicked back black hair, smooth olive skin with a trace of a beard, piercing brown eyes. But there was something mean about the set of his jaw, and there was no warmth in his eyes when he nodded a greeting to me, still waiting for me to stop heaving for breath.
I suppose that someone who didn’t know Papa might think he looked mean if he was under stress, and this was a stressful situation, no doubt about that. Kon could look downright terrifying under the right circumstances. All thehorrible things Kon told me about Riku came rushing back, but I tried not to think about them. Or think about Kon. I had to concentrate on seeing my father soon, alive and well. Perhaps he was a traitor, but I’d deal with his explanations for that when the time came.
I smiled tentatively, and a corner of Riku’s mouth lifted in return. “Mr. Yoshida,” I said, still finding it difficult to draw breath despite recovering for several minutes as we drove.
“Miss Kanatova,” he replied. At least we were being polite.
A thousand questions jockeyed to get out of my mouth, but his slightly cold, assessing stare didn’t invite conversation. At least not from me. I waited, trying not to flinch and look away, and when he blinked first and turned to face his driver, I didn’t feel like I’d won anything.
The man was a killer.
But so was Kon.