The man sits forward again, swiping my phone screen to light it up so he can take another look at the photo. “You have him?”
“I have eyes on him. Waiting to see if he’d lead us to someone more important.”
“Who stopped my team from travelling down south?”
Again, I have to focus to snag the answer from my memory. “Stefan held and released them.”
“I don’t care that he released them. I care that they’re trying to do their business while three quarters of my team is working against me.”
The hurt is more obvious this time. I didn’t think it was possible for this man—a man who thought nothing of abandoning his dying wife to a sub-standard palliative care ward—to exhibit feelings aside from greed.
“We were being cautious.”
“You want to be cautious? Next time, try bringing on board the only other man at our rank who also has a daughter and knows how this loss must feel.”
Amala is twenty years older than Sophia, closer to my age than hers, but I finally get his point. We might not see eye to eye but we’re the two men with the most in common. If the situations were reversed, I would take it personally, as well.
“That’s fair,” I concede.
“Did you know my stepdaughter was kidnapped? She was older, sixteen, but I still remember what it felt like to have information flying in from every quarter and have no idea who to trust.”
“Amala was kidnapped?”
“No, my stepdaughter, Eloise.” A strange expression crosses his face, there and gone before I can categorise it. “Didn’t Teodor mention it?”
Teodor? Why would he know about it? I open my mouth to ask, then decide I don’t need to know. Stefan was going to check out that connection, anyway. If there’s anything usable there, he’ll tell me.
Instead, I shake my head. “Can you tell me about the gang connection?”
He checks the photograph again. “Where is this?” he asks, neatly sidestepping. “I don’t recognise the neighbourhood. Is it a safehouse?”
“It’s the bedsit of one of his employees.”
At that, Andrej presses his lips together. “An employee, huh?” He raises his eyebrows at me.
“You have something you want to say?”
He raises his hands. “No need to get testy with me. Pavle’s putting pressure on everyone to make new alliances. I understand.” Then his lips twist. “Just didn’t think dating the chief suspect in your daughter’s kidnap was the best use of your time.”
And how the fuck does he know this?
“One of your men flagged a few things to me,” he says without me having to ask. “I’d tell you who but right now you’re withholding so much that I’m not in the mood for sharing.”
Another traitor in my midst. My complacency takes another blow.
“Don’t worry,” Andrej says, reading my expressions as easily as bold ad copy. “I’m on your side, remember? Part of your wider team and all that blah blah blah.” He pauses for a moment, then adds in a far more serious tone, “I wouldn’t dick around with something like this.”
“She’s not involved.”
“Then she should be. What’s the point of hooking up with someone who has inside intel and then not exploiting the hell out of it? If you want to scare Sergio into revealing his contacts, parade her around town. Let everyone who’s even remotely connected to our world see you backing her. Then you can sit back and see who comes out to play.”
“That would expose her.”
“So?” Andrej waves his hand around at the walls. “Isn’t all this to keep out folks who might hold a grudge. If you think it’s good enough to keep you safe, why wouldn’t that work for her?”
It would. Except Sophia was a graphic lesson in how safety is sometimes an illusion. “I won’t risk her life when sitting back and waiting gives us the same—”
This time the hand flaps dangerously near my face. “Don’t give me that load of bollocks. You don’t find out how many teeth the bear has until you poke him.”
