Page 68 of Savage Little Secret

Dmitri

My eyes burn as I pace in front of the oversized map taped to my living room wall. Red pins stab all over Vegas. Highways, back roads, dead ends, everywhere Cara could’ve been taken.

At this point, I’m doing a detective’s job with a killer’s patience.

Not only do I have a huge aerial view map of the city and the old highway where the car was found, but I have red pins dotting the important places and areas of interest. This way, I can get a better idea of how far away she was when she was driven off the road and kidnapped.

I need all the details that I can get because nothing is happening. Nothing is being found. So, I can barely do anything but stare at a map and drink myself to sleep because I can’t relax enough to doze off naturally.

“She was more than an hour outside of the city when she wrecked,” I tell Andrei as he leans against the back of the couch with a piece of pizza in his hand. “I’m pretty sure they followed her from the city, but they drove off with her in the opposite direction.”

“They could’ve pulled a U-turn and headed back to the city,” Andrei points out before eating half of the slice in one bite.

“But why not do it right there? There’s barely any traffic on that highway,” I reply as I gesture to the areas on either side of the hallway. “There’s nothing out here. They could’ve driven across the lane.”

Andrei shrugs as he chews.

I drag my fingers through my hair as a yawn breaks from me. It doesn’t matter how many times I yawn or how much my eyes ache, I still can’t go to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time.

“I think we should take another trip down the highway,” I tell him, hearing him quietly sigh through his nose. “Maybe there’s a back road heading off the highway or a small town that we missed.”

“It would’ve shown on the map,” Andrei points out.

“Maps don’t show everything, not service roads, ranch turnoffs, dirt tracks,” I reply. “We have to do something, Andrei!”

He dusts the pizza crumbs off his hands before walking up to me and placing a hand on my shoulder. “Dmitri, you need to get some sleep. I say this with love, you look like shit.”

I glare at him, frustration crackling within me. I don’t need his concern. I need his help. “We’re getting nowhere. She’s running out of time!”

Andrei lets his hand drop from my shoulder, his body tensing. “They’re not going to kill her if they want to make a trade. She’s okay right now!”

A cold laugh bursts from me. “You think her captors wouldn’t hurt her? She could be bleeding. Starving. Terrified.”

Andrei frowns, and I know he doesn’t say anything because he knows that I could be right. We’ve come across some cruel bastards in our day, and we’d be naïve to decide that she’s being held captive by some good Samaritans.

I part my lips to rant some more, but my phone buzzes on the couch cushion. I rush past Andrei, nearly knocking him aside. Before I can even grab the phone, I see the “No Caller ID” on the screen.

“It’s him,” I tell Andrei as I pick up the phone and answer, putting it on speaker. Andrei’s already recording the audio from his phone.

A few seconds of silence whispers through the speaker before there’s a slight crackle and a breath. “I figured you would be up late, Dmitri. Trouble sleeping?”

I glare at my phone, wishing that I could see the face of this coward. “Enough! You need to release Cara to me. Now.”

A light chuckle echoes through the speaker. “Well, you need to do something for us first. That’s how a trade works.”

“I’ve been waiting for days for you to name your terms!” I snap at him.

“I’m a firm believer that you need to work hard for what you want,” he replies, voice tinged with amusement. “So, listen to my words carefully. Don’t want you to miss them.”

I glance over at Andrei, who holds his phone up with a nod. We’ll have every word recorded to look back on. “Go ahead.”

“In order for us to release Cara to you alive, you need to trade the one you’ve aligned yourself with, someone who is bad for business. Forty-eight hours,” he tells me. “We’ll text the address.”

My face screws up in confusion. “What? The one I aligned with?”

“Start thinking, Dmitri. The clock is ticking.”

The call goes dead a second later. “That son of a bitch! What does he mean?”