Claim Me(Capture Me: Book 3)(4)
“How much are you putting behind the trade?” I ask.
“Seven million,” Winters replies. “It’s going to get ugly.”
“All right,” I say. “Go for it.”
Seven million is a sizable sum, but if the tech stock is about to drop as much as Winters thinks, it could easily be another triple or more.
We go over a few more upcoming trades, and then Winters walks me out to the reception area, where Rosa is reading a magazine.
“Ready to go?” I ask, and she nods.
Getting up, she places the magazine back on the coffee table and beams at me and Winters. “Definitely ready.”
“Thanks again,” I say, turning to shake Winters’s hand, but he’s not looking at me.
He’s staring at Rosa, his green gaze oddly intent.
“Winters?” I prod, amused.
He tears his eyes away from her. “Oh, yes. It was a pleasure,” he mutters, shaking my hand, and before I can say another word, he strides back into his office and shuts the door behind him.
* * *
As I promised Rosa, after the meeting I take her shopping on the Magnificent Mile—also known as Michigan Avenue. As she tries on a bunch of dresses at a department store, I take a seat next to the fitting room and check my email again. This time, there’s a short message from Diego:
Located the stolen pick-up truck at a gas station near Granada. No other cars reported stolen for now. Blockades up at all the major roads as per your instructions.
I put the phone away, frustrated anger churning in my gut. They still haven’t found Yulia, and by now, she could be in another country. She has undoubtedly made contact with her agency, and depending on how resourceful they are, it’s entirely possible that they’ve smuggled her out.
For all I know, she’s already on a plane, flying to her lover.
“How do you like this?” Rosa asks, and I turn to see that she’s come out of the fitting room in a short, form-fitting yellow dress.
“It’s nice,” I say on autopilot. “You should get it.” Objectively, I can see that the dark-haired girl looks good in that dress, but all I can think about right now is the fact that Yulia may be on her way to Misha… to the man she truly loves.
“All right.” Rosa gives me a huge smile. “I will.”
She hurries back into the fitting room, and I pull out my phone to fire off an email to the hackers looking into UUR.
Even if Yulia managed to get away, she won’t stay free for long.
No matter what it takes, I’ll find her, and she’ll never escape again.
6
Yulia
“Sorry about that,” Contreras says, pulling the lid off my crate. “I didn’t expect you to be this tall. I’m glad you were able to fit in there.”
I groan as he pulls me out, my muscles cramping from being stuck in the tiny crate for the last hour. My knees feel like two giant bruises, and my spine is throbbing from being squashed against the side of the crate. I am, however, alive and across the Venezuelan border—which means it was all worth it.
“It’s okay,” I say, rotating my head in a semi-circle. My neck is painfully stiff, but it’s nothing a good massage won’t cure. “It fooled the police and border patrol. They didn’t even try looking into the crate.”
Contreras nods. “That’s why I brought it. It looks too small to fit a person, but when one is determined…” He shrugs.
“Yeah.” I rotate my head again and stretch, trying to get my muscles working. “So what’s the plan now?”
“Now we get you to the plane. Obenko has already arranged everything. By tomorrow, you should be in Kiev, safe and sound.”
* * *
Our drive to the small airstrip takes less than an hour, and then we’re pulling up in front of an ancient-looking jet.
“Here we are,” Contreras says. “Your people will take it from here.”
“Thank you,” I say, and he nods as I open the door.
“Good luck,” he says in his Spanish-accented Russian, and I smile at him before jumping out of the van and hurrying to the plane.
As I walk up the ladder, a middle-aged man steps out, blocking the entrance. “Code?” he says, his hand resting on a gun at his side.
Eyeing the weapon warily, I tell him my identification number. Technically, eliminating me would accomplish the same thing as getting me away from Esguerra: I wouldn’t be able to spill any more UUR secrets. In fact, it would be an even neater solution…
Before my mind can travel too far down that path, the man lowers his hand and steps aside, letting me enter the plane.
“Welcome, Yulia Borisovna,” he says, using my real patronymic. “We’re glad you made it.”
7
Lucas
By Saturday morning, I’m convinced that Yulia must be back in Ukraine. Diego and Eduardo were able to track her as far as Venezuela, but her trail seems to have gone cold there.
“I think she left the country,” Diego says when I call him for an update. “A private plane registered to a shell corporation filed a flight plan to Mexico, but there’s no record of it landing anywhere in that country. It must’ve been her people, and if that’s the case, she’s gone.”
“That’s not a fact. Keep looking,” I say, even though I know he’s most likely right.
Yulia got away, and if I’m to have any hope of recapturing her, I’ll have to widen the net and call on some of our international contacts.
I consider bringing Esguerra up to speed on the whole situation, but decide to postpone it until Sunday. Today is his wife’s twentieth birthday, and I know he’s not in the mood to be bothered. All my boss cares about is giving Nora everything she wants—including a trip to a popular nightclub in downtown Chicago.
“You do realize guarding that place will be a nightmare, right?” I tell him when he brings up the outing at lunchtime. “It’s too many people. And on a Saturday night—”
“Yes, I know,” Esguerra says. “But this is what Nora requested, so let’s figure out a way to make it happen.”
We spend the next two hours going through the club schematics and deciding where to station all the guards. It’s unlikely that any of Esguerra’s enemies will catch wind of this, since it’s such a spur-of-the-moment event, but we still decide to position snipers in the buildings nearby and have the other guards within a one-block radius of the club. My role will be to stay in the car and keep an eye on the club’s entrance, in case there’s any threat coming from that direction. We also work out a plan for securing the restaurant where Esguerra and his wife will have dinner before going to the club.
“Oh, I almost forgot,” Esguerra says as we’re wrapping up. “Nora wants Rosa to join us at the club. Can you have one of the guards drive her there?”
“Yes, I think so,” I say after a moment of consideration. “Thomas can bring the girl to the club before taking his position at the end of the block.”
“That would work.” Esguerra rises to his feet. “I’ll see you tonight.”
He leaves the room, and I go outside to assign the guards their tasks.
* * *
Esguerra’s dinner outing passes without an incident, and afterwards, I drive him and Nora to the club. Rosa is already waiting there, dressed in the yellow dress she bought on our shopping trip. The moment Nora steps out of the car, Rosa runs up to her, and I hear the two young women chattering excitedly as they head into the club. Esguerra follows them, looking mildly amused, and I stay in the car, settling in for what promises to be a long, boring night.
After about an hour, I eat a sandwich I packed earlier and check my email. To my relief, there’s an update from our hackers.
Finally broke through the Ukrainian government’s firewalls and deciphered some files, the email reads. UUR is an acronym for Ukrainskoye Upravleniye Razvedki, which roughly translates to “Ukrainian Intelligence Bureau.” It’s an off-the-books spy group that was established in response to their main security agency’s corruption and close ties to Russia. We’re now working on decoding a message that may point to two UUR field operatives and a location in Kiev.
Smiling grimly, I write a reply and put away the phone. It’s only a matter of time before we take down Yulia’s organization. And once we do, she’ll have nowhere to run, no one to help her.
No lover she could return to.
My teeth clench as violent jealousy spears through me. Yulia could be with him already, with this Misha of hers. He could be holding her at this very moment.
He could even be fucking her.
The thought fills me with blazing fury. If I had the man in front of me right now, I’d kill him with my bare hands and make Yulia watch. It would be her punishment for this latest betrayal.
A buzzing vibration from my phone cuts into my vengeful thoughts. Grabbing it, I read Esguerra’s text, and my blood turns to ice.
Nora and Rosa attacked, the message says. Rosa taken. I’m going after her. Alert the others.
8
Yulia
The familiar smell of car exhaust and lilacs fills my nostrils as the car weaves through the busy Kiev streets. The man Obenko sent to pick me up at the airport is someone I’ve never seen before, and he doesn’t talk much, leaving me free to take in the sights of the city where I lived and trained for five years.