Love Thy Enemy (Red Stone Security #13)(52)
Viktor growled low in his throat, his hand clenching around his phone. He was going to kill the man. Slowly.
“You have twenty minutes to be at that address. Go in through the parking garage. Bring your brother. Or the bitch dies.”
The screen went black before he could respond.
“It’s a trap,” Abram said, moving into the living room with Lyosha.
Viktor nodded once, agreeing. It had to be a trap. Abram and Lyosha had clearly heard everything and Lyosha was still working away on a tablet.
“I got a location on where he called you from,” he said. “The phone is a burner but it pinged from a property Shane Hollis owns—for now. It’s being foreclosed on. It’s different than the address he gave you. On the other side of downtown. It’d take him more than twenty minutes to get there.”
He had no time to make a decision. “Can you find out what kind of security the place has? The one he called from?” He was already moving toward the front door. They needed to have left ten minutes ago.
“I can try, but it’ll take more than twenty minutes to disable it, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
That was exactly what he was thinking. Hollis, or whoever was under that mask, wanted him to go to a specific address when he wasn’t even there. It had to be a trap. “What about the place he wants us to go to?”
He, Abram and Lyosha spilled out into the hallway, talking as they ran to the elevators. His body was moving on autopilot, his only goal to get to his car and find Dominique.
“It’s…also being foreclosed on. Owned by Hollis too. This f*cker is losing everything his family built,” Lyosha muttered.
Viktor’s gut told him to go to the place the phone pinged from. As the elevator dinged at the bottom floor, the doors whooshing open, he looked at his brother, who’d been quiet. “If it was Lucy, what would you do?”
“Go with my instinct—which says the place he wants us to meet him is a f*cking trap. Probably rigged with explosives or someone waiting to take us out. I think your girl is at the place his phone pinged from.”
“Me too.” He pulled out his phone again as they hurried into the parking garage of the condo complex Kir had thought was his hideout. He needed to get into that building undetected in twenty minutes and there was only one man he could think of who could make it happen.
It was time to collect his favor from Harrison Caldwell.
Chapter 18
Weapon in hand, Viktor stood outside the stairwell door to one of the top floors of the Hollis-owned building. Lyosha and Abram were silently waiting on the stairs as he confirmed one last time with Harrison that they were good to go.
“We’ve completely taken over the security feeds. The top eight floors aren’t being monitored but there’s no way to know if he saw you infiltrating from the parking garage. From this point forward if he does have security capability, he’ll only see what we show him.” Harrison’s voice was clipped over the phone line.
Viktor nodded at Abram and Lyosha and they moved silently up the stairs. Instead of using the elevators they’d chosen the stairs so they wouldn’t be seen. The building hadn’t been finished—Hollis had run out of money—so there was no security in the stairwells either. Not that it would have stopped Viktor from coming here.
Nothing could do that. “Thank you.”
“I’ve called in a favor to the PD. They’re going to move on the other building as if there’s a bomb threat.”
Which there very well could be. Viktor had no idea what Hollis had in store for him and Abram at the meeting place he’d insisted on. “Wait until I’ve got Dominique safe.” Because if the cops moved in and Dominique was in there instead, or if Hollis got wind of the police involvement, he could kill her.
Harrison snorted. “Contact me in fifteen minutes or I’m sending the cops in.”
Viktor didn’t bother responding, just ended the call and checked to make sure his phone was on silent. This was it. He, Lyosha and Abram were sweeping every floor, starting with the empty four on top.
Heart pounding, he eased open the door and peered into a hallway. Sunlight streamed in through the open doorways. A couple soda cans sat in a cluster near the closest entry—with no door. The floors weren’t done; the steel and concrete frame was visible down the majority of the hallway. Insulation was also visible through the nearest open doorway, as if the construction crew had started installing it, then stopped mid-job.
He took a step into the hallway but froze at the slight echo of his footstep. Inwardly wincing, he slipped his shoes off and tucked them out of sight in the nearest room. Weapon up, he moved silently room to room, sweeping each one with a glance. There was no furniture, nothing to hide anyone.
When he heard a muffled sound three doors down from the opposite stairwell, he froze, listening. He heard it again.
It was too much to expect that it was Dominique, but the hope burst inside him, a burning wish to find her alive, unharmed.
He glanced once over his shoulder before continuing his path. His heart was an erratic tattoo against his chest as he moved like a predator hunting prey. If Hollis was in there, the man was dead. Viktor wouldn’t allow him to surrender.
At the next doorway he heard the scraping, shuffling again. Moving in low, he swept the room with his weapon, immediately dropping it when he saw Dominique restrained to a chair, a gag in her mouth. Alone.