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“It might be easier if we can charge her with something.”
“Throw the fucking book at her, I don’t care,” Derek said angrily.
“You might also consider bringing in Blackstone,” Jack said, speaking up for the first time.
“Viktor is already working on that,” Maia said.
His dinner forgotten, Derek strode to the bedroom and threw on some clothes. His spine was coiled with tension: fury and anxiety competing to dictate his actions. Justin Bishop had his woman. The sick bastard had Sophie and Derek had broken his promise to keep her safe. If anything happened to her…No. If Bishop harmed a single hair on her head, there was no place on earth he could hide. Derek would find him and kill him. Slowly.
* * *
“Layla confessed,”Maia told Derek. Viktor had Derek locked up in his office after he had arrived and ran into Layla Robinson and Christopher Blackstone. It had taken three Guardians to hold him back when all Derek wanted to do was slam Blackstone against the wall. He was hurling invectives at the older man and Layla as the Guardians hauled him away. Layla couldn’t look at him, but she was clearly frightened. Daddy’s little girl couldn’t easily get out of being an accomplice to the murder of an agent and the kidnapping of civilians.
“A man with Bishop’s build approached her at the terrace. He gave her some sob story that you had stolen Sophie from him.”
“That delusional little prick,” Derek snarled. The urge to smash something was overwhelming, but he had a sneaking suspicion Viktor liked his office the way it looked.
“He told her to keep her phone handy and he’d give her instructions on when to go to your condo. Have you gotten the camera feeds from your building?”
“Tim is processing the footage right now,” Derek said. “How about Blackstone?”
“He denied having sent those pictures,” Maia replied. “Viktor is still talking to him. But if he’s telling the truth, Bishop hacked into his phone. Oh, and a bartender was found bound, gagged and unconscious in one of the stockrooms. Guess we know how they got the drop on you. And though yet unconfirmed, it seemed Secret Service had detained a couple who claimed to be guests at the fundraiser last night but were not on the attendee roster. I’m pretty sure someone hacked into the fundraiser’s computer and switched the names.”
“Christ, who exactly are we up against?” Derek muttered. The last memory he had of the Robinson ball was throwing back the scotch he’d ordered after his confrontation with Layla.
“You can be sure he has Viktor’s attention,” Maia told him. And she did not need to say that Justin Bishop would probably rue the day that he got on Viktor’s radar. There was no one more ruthless than one Viktor Baran.
A rap on the door revealed Tim waiting with a laptop. Maia gave him a hand signal to come in.
“What you got?”
“Two men. One fitting Bishop’s description from the cafe. The other man is huge, around 6’5” and solidly built. I would put him at 275 pounds.”
“I talked to the guard on duty that night,” Derek said. “He said Justin waved my keycard at him and told him I had too much too drink. The guard thought nothing of it since both men were dressed in tuxes.”
“So Bishop buzzed Layla in,” Maia added.
“That fuck has been in my condo,” Derek said through grit teeth. “Touched my stuff.Shit.” He got angrier by the second. “Sophie’s things. I wouldn’t put it past him to…That fucker!”
“Derek!”
“What, Maia?” Derek snapped.
“You are not helping Sophie at all if you go off on blind rages.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” His voice broke, revealing his anguish. “Sophie is not you, Maia. She can’t defend herself against a sick bastard like Bishop. He’s already killed a woman in the worst perverted way. I can’t, I can’t…”
Derek broke off. He couldn’t say it. The images in his mind were too vivid. Bishop forcing himself on Sophie at the same time getting off on strangling her—cutting off much life-sustaining air. It was too much.
“Guys, something just came up,” Tim said. He was fiddling with his laptop and he finally set it on Viktor’s table and pulled up a screen to show them.
“This just came back.”
A collage of eight very brutish-looking men popped up on the screen.
“Who are they?”
“Ex-Mossad, ex-KGB, South African mercenaries, you name it,” Tim said. “They all came in on separate flights last Friday, all landed in Dulles. All arranged by Opperman. Some of these guys have worked for Damian Stoltz.”
