Page 80 of Marrying the Pakhan

I will get her back.

39

VIKTOR

The car ahead of us takes the turn onto the service road too fast, tires screaming, and I match the speed without hesitation, my own vehicle fishtailing slightly before the road straightens out again.

“They’re heading toward the industrial district,” Sergei says from the passenger seat, eyes fixed on the taillights ahead. “Nothing out there but warehouses and the old airfield.”

“The airfield.” The word lands heavy in my chest, immediate understanding following right behind it. “They’re taking her out of the country.”

I press the accelerator harder, closing the distance, and the car ahead swerves violently, someone in the back seat firing blind through the rear window. The shot goes wide, cracking against the road beside us, and I don’t slow down, not now, not with Ginger somewhere in that vehicle.

We lose them at a fork in the road, two paths splitting toward different sections of the industrial sprawl, and I make the only choice available, following the fresher tire marks still visible in the road dust.

It’s the wrong choice. Or it would be, if we hadn’t found the other car first.

A second vehicle sits abandoned near the fork, engine still ticking as it cools, driver’s door hanging open. One man remains beside it, clearly left behind in the chaos of splitting up, patting down his jacket for something that isn’t there anymore.

I’m out of the car before it’s fully stopped.

He goes for a weapon and doesn’t reach it in time. I have him against the hood of his own abandoned car within seconds, forearm braced hard across his throat, close enough to feel him shaking.

“Where?” I say, voice low, controlled in a way that costs me everything I have to maintain right now. “Where are they taking her?”

“I don’t know anything.”

I press harder, and he makes a choked sound, eyes going wide with genuine fear rather than practiced defiance.

“You have exactly one chance to be useful to me instead of disposable,” I tell him. “Where?”

“The hangar.” The words come out fast, desperate, self-preservation winning over loyalty the way it usually does when a man realizes exactly how alone he actually is. “Private airfield, north end, hangar three. There’s a plane waiting. They’re supposed to have her in the air within the hour.”

“Whose plane?”

“I don’t know, I swear, I just drive, I don’t know who arranged it.”

I believe him, mostly because men this frightened rarely have the composure left to lie effectively. I release him into Sergei’s custody, already moving back toward the car, adrenaline burning through every ounce of exhaustion I should be feeling after tonight.

“Hangar three,” I tell my other man, already turning the car back toward the main road. “North airfield. We have less than an hour.”

The drive there stretches into the longest twenty minutes of my life, every red light an obstacle I run through without slowing, every mile marker a fresh wave of fear that we’re going to be too late, that Ginger’s going to be somewhere over an ocean before I ever get close enough to stop it.

I keep running the math in my head, distance against minutes, refusing to let myself land on the version where the numbers don’t work out in our favor. Every siren I hear in the distance makes my chest seize, wondering if it’s already too late, if somewhere above the city a plane’s already climbing with my daughter locked inside it.

My phone rings halfway there. Dimitri.

“House is secure,” he says, breathless, clearly running toward his own car as he talks. “Harper’s safe, in the safe room. I’ve got two men on her personally. I’m coming to you now, where are you.”

“North airfield, hangar three. They’re trying to fly her out.”

“I’m fifteen minutes behind you. Don’t go in alone if you can possibly help it.”

“I’m not waiting fifteen minutes, Dimitri.”

“I know. Just try to still be alive when I get there.”

He hangs up, and I drive faster.