Page 175 of Dark Endures

“Thank you.”

“What would you like me to do now?” Colton waits by the door.

Find Mindy. “Just hang out until something comes up.”

Colton walks over to the bar.

Sasha Kamenev steps into my office, and the room gets silent. “My father was unable to attend. He’s working some angles looking for Mindy. What information do you have? All I got was that she was kidnapped.”

I don’t even want to know who told you that. “So far, we have three leads, a drug dealer named Crawley, the person who killed Adonis, and the Linckesters.”

“Crawley didn’t do it.” Sasha steps into the room.

“How do you know that? I took one of his dealers.” It would be easy to see how the dealer would transfer Levi’s debt onto me.

“Because Crawley is dead. I killed him when you were looking for that kid.”

And that is why you never underestimate a Kamenev, even the young ones. “That leaves us with two.”

Sasha shakes his head. “The Linckesters don’t work that way. They don’t take hostages. She would be dead in your bed or killed in front of you. They don’t play trifling games with hostages. Plus, isn’t Mindy related to them? There’s nothing more important to them than family.”

That leaves one. “We have no leads on Adonis other than Plant. And I can’t see Plant killing his cousin.”

“What did you say?” Sasha’s eyes narrow.

“Plant and Adonis are related. The two of them have been working together to traffic women and children. That’s what we’re thinking happened to Marlie. Plant abducted her like he did the other women and then sold her to traffickers.” The idea of Mindy being in the hands of human traffickers makes my blood boil, but now isn’t the time to let anger rule. “Do we have confirmation that Adonis was murdered?”

“Sure, looks like it to me.” Enzo pulls up the video. “A stolen car plowed right into him. Unless they were completely blind, they had plenty of time to stop.”

“That was a hit.” Sasha turns away.

“The sedan didn’t follow her to the park.” Everett pulls up an image of Mindy striding in.

“That leaves us with zero leads.” Nothing. We have several of the greatest strategists in the world standing right here, and we’ve got nothing.

“You have leads! You’re just looking at this from the wrong perspective” Fea steps away from Daria. “You think this is about you.”

“Mindy said it was. She told me they wanted my money.”

“What if they were confused? Mindy’s been afraid of something for months now. That’s why you hired her. What if the something finally caught up to her? Look at how she’s walking into the park. She’s stressed about something. Why was she there in the first place?” Fea points to Mindy’s image.

“To meet with her brother, Waylon. But we checked him out. He’s clean.”

“Maybe not so clean. Mindy gave him a second check last month. She wiped out her entire savings.” Enzo puts Mindy’s bank account history on the screen.

There they are, two checks of increasing amounts. “Where’s the brother?”

“On it.” Enzo’s fingers start flying.

“Everett, can you find out when the brother arrived at the park?” Maybe they followed him in.

“Looking for him now.”

Sasha steps over to Everett. There’s way too much interest in his eyes, but I can’t think about Kamenev trying to turn my computer genius into an asset now.

Later, I’ll worry about that. Why didn’t I address this sooner? As a friend, ask her why she was afraid. I could have prevented this.

“Found him. Waylon entered through an entrance on the other side.” Everett pulls it up on the main screen. “And there’s our black sedan with blocked plates.”

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