“I’m organizing a jet to bring you here. Nothing, and I mean nothing is going to stop us from getting her back. I don’t care how much it costs. I have money, I have lots of it, and we will get her back.”
Then we call her sisters and tell them the news. Sophie, who works in the Middle East, tells us that she knows people and by people she means men who are off-the-grid. They go in and rescue people from situations that seem unsolvable. Sophie is ano-nonsense woman. Tomas organizes a first-class ticket for her to come here so we can all be together.
Hours later, Enrique runs into the office. He’s panting. “We have a location. We got a hit on the van from a partial plate; it was seen at a private airport. We found the flight logs. They are headed to Morocco—Casablanca, to be specific.”
Fuck, she’s in Africa.
How the hell are we going to find her there?
28
ZOE
It wasn’t a long flight to wherever we were going. Nikolai and Dmitri sat drinking vodka and playing cards, and all I could do was stare at them and plot their demise. Gracie eventually woke up. She was a little disorientated for a while, but after a quick nip of scotch, she was back to normal. I told her she needed to be strong, that I needed her to be strong. That we would get out of this situation, but she had to trust me, she had to trust that the boys would find us.
“You really think Mateo and Tomas will save us?” Gracie asks quietly.
“Yes, I do. Enrique will help them.” I try to be positive.
“I hate them.” Gracie’s eyes zero in on Nikolai and Dmitri laughing.
“Me too, but trust me, Gracie, if I ever get a chance, I will fucking kill them both.”
She smiles at me. “Me too.”
Nikolai grins, which sends shivers over my body.Be strong, Zoe, I chant over and over in my head.
“Get ready, ladies, we will be arriving shortly.”
The hot air hits our faces as we are escorted off the plane, Dmitri in front and Nikolai behind us, caging us in. There are men on the tarmac dressed all in black with machine guns. A large black van awaits us, its doors open.
“Get in.” Dmitri pushes us into the dark van. The slamming of the doors echoes through the empty van.
“Where do you think we are?” Gracie asks.
“I don’t know. We were on the plane for maybe a couple of hours—Greece, maybe? It’s pretty hot.” I feel so disorientated. We could be on the moon for all I knew.
“My head still hurts, which makes it hard to think. But where would they take us? Where would they feel safe from the police? Because they must know the boys will try to find them,” Grace states.
We’re both silent as we try to work out this puzzle.
“Somewhere they can pay their way through. Because how else are they able to kidnap two girls and have no one care?”
“Africa!” I scream.
Yes, they would totally take us there. It’s like the wild west. They could make us disappear so easily; corruption is rife, and the land is vast.
“Shit, we are fucked.” Gracie lets her head fall back against the van’s wall.
“Yes, it’s going to make things harder, but we are two intelligent women.”
“How the hell are we going to take on an army of Russian mafia plus who the hell knows who else is out there?”
She’s right, but I don’t care. We can’t give up.
“We need to make a pact. If either one of us can escape, we need to go, no matter what, okay? We need to get help.”
“What? No! We need to stay together,” Gracie says, shocked.