I shut off the water and dry my hands. “I’m at the estate and Amara is not here.”
“Phone?” Maverick asks.
“Also not here.”
“Tracker?” Baron asks.
“Off. Either it’s dead or gone.”
“Security cameras?” Baron asks.
“Checked them. Electra came over, they sat on the couch for a while, went to sleep, then they both left around 2 A.M.”
“So maybe they went to Electra’s house?” Mav asks.
But I shake my head, making my way into my office. “Not likely. The footage I have of Electra banging on the front door shows her face bruised and messy. Someone beat her up pretty bad. I’ve been connecting dots, and I think I figured out what’s been going on with Electra’s shady boyfriend.”
“He’s a piece of shit from Brooklyn that can smell sex?” Maverick asks.
I wish it were that fucking simple. But that’s not it. If I hadn’t been so distracted, I would have put it together sooner. Electra’s boy drama wasn’t just a coincidence. It was by design.
It was a fucking trap.
And we all fell for it.
As usual, Baron speaks what’s in my mind. “This has Tristan written all over it.”
“Bingo.”
“Shit.” Mav curses under his breath in Russian. “So now what?”
“I need you guys on backup. We need to find Tristan. I’d put my money on it that he has the girls.”
“You got it,” Baron says, and I hang up.
Then I look around the room for clues.
Anything at all that would tell me where they could be. But other than a couple of half-finished mugs of cold tea and a pile of bloodand snot-stained tissues, I don’t see anything. Amara’s purse is gone, which tells me she left on purpose. The car is also gone, which tells me she drove somewhere with Electra.
But where?
I punch in the code for my other estate and march straight into the master bedroom, flipping all the lights on.
“What the—” Jenica bolts upright and rips off her satin sleep mask. Then she rolls her eyes in annoyance. “You really don’t care about my sleep schedule, do you?”
“Get up. I need your help.”
“Again? Let me guess, Igor was a hot mess and you shot him before he cracked.” She pulls her mask back over her eyes and lays back down. “Not my circus, not my monkeys.”
I walk over to the bed and rip the mask off.
“Hey!”
“I got what I needed before I shot him. But Amara is gone.”
“What does that have to do with Igor?”
“It means that Tristan is onto us, and while I was interrogating the guy you suggested, he was in the process of kidnapping Amara and my child!” I snap.
