Page 162 of Emerald Malice

Mila and I have been sitting on the patio for so long that my legs are going numb. She doesn’t wander and neither does Remi—both of them stay touching me at all times. Even when Misha meanders down to the pool, Remi sits glued to my side, sensing that my need is greater at the moment.

The tech room is close enough that we can hear Shura shouting through the walls. “Why the fuck haven’t you found her yet?! Tracking her cell phone shouldn’t take this damn long!”

It’s been hours of this—quiet stretches of nothing, then Shura losing his shit, then Andrey kicking him out again.

Someone steps onto the patio. Mila and I look up hopefully, praying it’s Andrey with news. But it’s just Leonty, looking somber and on edge as he walks around to us.

“Have you two eaten anything?”

Mila shakes her head for the both of us. “Not hungry. How’s it going in there?”

“Shura’s got the tech team shitting themselves. Andrey forbade him from coming back in there.” Leonty sighs. “I think Shura knows he’s not helping. He went quiet and stormed off.”

Mila’s hand tightens around mine. “He’s just scared. Men like him aren’t used to being scared.”

Patting Remi’s head, I slowly push myself off the patio swing. My legs complain with pins and needles, but I ignore the feeling and stretch.

I limp around slowly until the feeling comes back. I oughta move or run or, better yet, sleep, but I’m terrified I’ll miss something if I go. So I pace the same four feet back and forth and back and forth.

Remi follows behind me, and even Misha is on the same page. He’s on his tenth or hundredth or thousandth circle around the pool.

“They have to find something soon, right?” I ask no one in particular.

Leonty sits down next to Mila and wraps an arm around her. “If anyone can get Katya back, it’s Andrey.”

Misha climbs up onto the porch and strokes Remi’s head absentmindedly. I touch his shoulder, if only because it’s so much easier to put on a brave face when you’re trying to be strong for someone else.

“I’m sure we’ll hear someth?—”

Before I can finish my sentence, a commotion explodes inside the house.

Without hesitating, I sprint into the manor and push my way into the tech room. Andrey is standing with his back to me, leaning over one of his men as they both peer at a large screen.

I can make neither heads nor tails of what they’re looking at. Complex computer code ripples across the monitor, a string of numbers that makes absolutely no sense until?—

Coordinates, I realize. It’s a set of coordinates.

Andrey looks at me with a grim steel in his eyes. Then his gaze flits over my shoulder. “Leonty, go get Shura. We know where she is.”

I slip further into the room and squeeze Andrey’s hand. “Is it really her?"”

“I think so. Her phone was dumped several miles from her apartment, but we managed to hack into surveillance footage and security systems in the area. They’ve got her in an abandoned flop house on the outskirts of the city.”

He presses a button on the keyboard and the numbers disappear, affording me a grainy view of a depressing building losing a long war with weeds, graffiti, and despair.

“She’s in there?”

“She’s being guarded. We haven’t determined how many yet.”

“Is Nikolai behind this?” I ask.

“It can’t be anyone else.”

“I don’t understand, though,” I protest. “What would Nikolai stand to gain from kidnapping Katya? How does he even know about Katya when he barely knows about me?”

Andrey’s eyes are troubled when he forces them to mine. “He must know more than we think he does.”

That sends a tremor of fear shooting through me. But before I can process it, Shura’s storming into the room. “Where is she?”

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