Behind him, two more guys. Six total. This was never a fight I was winning.
Veins in his neck stand thick, nostrils flared, as he’s pointing his pistol at me and smiling like the devil’s ugliest nephew.
“Look at that,” he says. “Andretti’s got some fight in him after all.”
I keep my eyes on his. “You always travel with this many people, or am I special?”
His eye twitches. “You’re very special.”
He’s furious. I can see it in the glassy brightness of his eyes, the way his hand keeps flexing at his side.
“Funny thing,” he says. “This wasn’t even hard.”
I frown. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Nikolai grins. “Finding you.”
“Congratulations,” I snort. “You found a fucking parking garage.”
His smile stretches wider. Meaner. “All we had to do was follow her.”
The garage tilts under my feet.
“What?”
“Your girl,” he says. “She ran straight to you.”
The fluorescent hum overhead is the loudest thing in the garage.
“You’re full of shit,” I snarl.
Nikolai steps closer until we’re almost nose to nose.
“Found her little secret phone,” he says. “Cute hiding spot, by the way. Real creative.”
My gut bottoms out.
He keeps going, voice soft and vicious. “Didn’t get much off it. She was smart enough to clean up after herself. But I got enough to know she was hiding something. So I watched.”
Every word lands like a hammer.
“No,” I say.
“Oh, yes.” He tilts his head. “We watched her leave. Followed her right here. Saw exactly who she was meeting.”
My blood goes cold. Every molecule of air in this garage turns to ice, because the math is simple and the answer is catastrophic.
They tailed her. To this hotel. They watched her walk in, and then they watched her walk out.
And they let her go.
“She’s already on her way home,” Nikolai says, reading my face. A smile. Slow, satisfied, rotten. “Daddy’s waiting.”
Cold rips through me.
She doesn’t know.
She’s walking straight back there blind.
