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Me:Okay. I’ll text him later today, once I get some work done and figure some things out.
It might not have been the ideal solution. In a better world, I wouldn’t have to crowdfund my justice. But I had to live and operate in this one. Besides, there had to be more people out there like the ones in my support group. People who would give a damn about a stolen child who still needed to be found.
I made myself a sandwich and took it with me over to my desk. With all the drama today, I would have to cram a lot of work into a few hours. But once that was done, I had a new project to give me some hope.
Mommy’s not giving up, baby. This thing with Alan and the cops is just a setback. I’ll find you. I promise.
***
It was so much easier to work now that I had a glimmer of hope and an idea of what to do. I wished I hadn’t wasted so much time relying on the system to do its job. But when all of this had happened, I’d still had faith in the police, the legal system, in the possibility of getting justice and getting my baby back alive if I just played by the rules like a good civilian.
Now, almost a year later I wondered how I could have been so naive.
But regrets would only drag me down. I had a plan now, and as soon as I was done with four hours of accounting and another two hours cleaning the laundry room, I could set it in motion.
After talking to George, I started setting up my fundraising site. Writing down the whole history again hurt. How Michelle had been kidnapped. How the search had gone. How the police were giving up. How I couldn’t afford to. All I wanted was enough money to cover a private investigator and any associated fees. I just wanted my baby back. I knew doing this was risky, George had warned me that sometimes appeals like this dragged all the crazies out of the woodwork, but after eleven months with no leads I was prepared to filter out the crackpots if it would help me find my daughter.
I checked everything twice, hit submit, and got myself a mug of chamomile tea while I waited for the page to go live. Finally, after a few long minutes, I was satisfied that everything was posted properly, and all my information was correct. Sighing with relief, I closed my laptop and finished my tea. Now all I had to do was promote the page on social media and pray that it attracted the attention of enough sympathetic people willing to donate.
I was so worn out that just going from my couch to my bed seemed to drain the last of my energy. I didn’t bother to change, just kicked off my shoes and crawled under the covers. I didn’t care that it was still early, the breakup with Alan and the effort of mentally having to go through all the pain of losing Michelle, setting up that page had taken what resources I had left.
As I drifted off, I found myself once again thinking about Dimitri and our one amazing night together. I wondered where he was and what he was doing. If he was with anyone…and if he ever thought of me.
I knew so precious little about my daughter’s father. He had engineered our encounter that way, we were ships passing in the night, no phone numbers exchanged. I had never done anything like that before or since, and though I didn’t regret it, I did regret that he had no way of knowing he was a dad.
And I still couldn’t help but wonder if he would help me if he was around and knew that our little girl had been stolen.
Chapter 4
Gregor
Isweated my way through Vasily’s debriefing while, across town in my apartment, a tiny nameless girl slept in my bed with my cat curled up next to her. I hated leaving her alone, but in the circumstances, I had no choice. Thankfully, as my line of work entails some personal danger, I have security cameras all around my home, so I could check in on her regularly and make sure she was safe. Hopefully, she’d still be sleeping by the time I returned. She had demolished her early breakfast, accepted one of my t-shirts, and said not one word. But the way she’d eaten, the way she’d slept, and the exhausted, solemn calmness with which she went along with me told me she’d been through something terrible.
I had no idea what to tell Vasily about her. I was outraged that I had ended up in a situation that, if I had followed orders blindly, would have led to my killing a kid for him. The girl being there had to be some mistake. But somehow, despite that, despite my professionalism and what he expected of me, I said absolutely nothing about her.
He would find out eventually, more likely than not. But at least I had bought some time to come up with a truly innovative excuse. Maybe if I was lucky, he wouldn’t even find out until the girl had been relocated somewhere safe.
Vasily went over the photos I had taken before torching the place—four targets, four bodies. Then he looked up at me, his bushy white eyebrows rising toward his hairline. “Any complications?”
“None. Besides the weather, anyway.” I pulled at a loose thread on my sweater, the focus of the movement hopefully hiding any signs I was lying.
“Good.” He checked something on his laptop while I glanced around, trying to figure out what to do with all my nervous energy. I hated lying to my pakhan, but until I knew the girl’s story, I wanted to keep her safe from everyone—and that included my boss.
“I found some pretty strange things in that house,” I started, wondering if I could get some of the mystery solved.
“Put it out of your mind.” He didn’t even look up from his work. “There is no time to concern ourselves with things like that. They crossed me, they are dead for it now. I’ll have a new assignment for you soon. We have some more housecleaning to do. Some of our people have forgotten where their loyalties should lie. We must make enough examples that the rest are reminded.”
“I understand.” I didn’t. There was something odd in how quickly he had brushed my questions aside. How vehement he was about getting this done. Like the presence of the child, it didn’t fit.
“Good. Consider yourself on call for the next week.” He opened his desk and pulled out a thick packet of twenties, then another. He eyed me, then sniffed once and added a third. “Make it two.”
“I’ll keep my phone on me,” I promised, taking the cash and tucking it away. But my confusion still gnawed at me as he dismissed me, and I walked away.
Vasily and I had always had a good working relationship. He wasn’t always transparent about why he wanted me to go after this target or another, but if I had specific questions, he would generally answer them. Not this time. And the discrepancy set off little alarm bells in my head.
Leaving my meeting I quickly checked my phone, the little girl was sleeping so that was good. I got burgers on my way home, not wanting to waste time cooking when I had some independent investigating to do. I had stolen every laptop and external hard drive in the Ivanov house and planned to go through them all tonight. Learn who my targets had been, what they were really into, and how the little fairy princess snoozing in my apartment fit into all of it.
When I opened my door, it was quiet aside from my cat trotting up to me meowing at the top of his lungs. “Let me guess, there is perhaps a few centimeters of the bottom of your food bowl showing.”
