Page 110 of Fierce Pursuit

“Anything like that at all?” Mikhail asked.

“No,” I answered automatically, and then I remembered what I had found seconds before I caught a bullet.

In all of the chaos, I had forgotten.

“One bill had a series of numbers printed on it. I didn’t have time to figure out what they were, but that had to be what he was looking for.”

“Numbers? Like a bank account?” Gregor asked.

“It was sixteen digits, so too long to be a phone number, but maybe coordinates?” I said, sitting back as Mikhail finished the last stitch and tied off the thread with a sharp tug that stung.

He gathered the towels he had used to soak up my blood, piling them at one end of the table. It looked like he had treated a small army instead of only a single man.

“You should rest,” Mikhail said.

“I will rest when Marina is safe, not before.”

Mikhail nodded as if he understood.

He didn’t understand. How could he? No one could understand what it was like to fail their woman so completely. I needed to make this right.

“Drink this,” Mikhail said, handing me a large bottle of water. I ignored it.

“I have the hotel manager scouring the security feeds to figure out where she went,” Damien said, coming into the room and sitting down at the conference table, leaning back in his chair and propping his feet up on the table. “Security is already clearing the floors, and they’re positive she’s no longer here, but not sure how she left yet.”

“Find her,” I demanded, getting to my feet.

Mikhail grabbed my good shoulder and pulled me back down in the chair, pressing the bottle of water into my hand.

“Drink, or I will drown you with it.”

Asshole, I thought as I opened the bottle and drank the cold water down in a single pull.

“The numbers,” Gregor said, pulling my attention back to him. “You said eight digits? You think they are coordinates? For what?”

“A hit maybe?” I said, shrugging and ignoring the pain and limited movement in my right shoulder. ”There wasn’t enough money to pay a pro, but maybe if it was a deposit and the rest of the payment was to be delivered upon completion?”

“Do you remember the numbers?”

I rattled off the digits and Mikhail grabbed his phone and started typing while I reached into the first aid kit and finished wrapping my shoulder. If I was going to get her back, it would be easier if I could keep the rest of my blood inside my body.

“Was there anything else in the bag that may have explained the digits?” Gregor took a seat at the head of the table.

“Nothing that I saw,” I said. “But I had just found the numbers when those dead men walking broke into my room.”

“Fuck.” Mikhail stood, knocking his chair to the floor.

“What?”

“The coordinates. They’re for the compound in Virginia. The girls, the kids, they are all?—”

Damien and Gregor stood staring at Mikhail for a moment.

The room was completely silent for a single heartbeat, the implication clear.

Solovyov had put out a hit on Gregor himself, or worse, a member of his family.

This wasn’t a cunning move from a ruthless boss.

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