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20
EMMY
“Where’s Alex?”
Ana groaned into the phone.“How should I know?Probably asleep, same as the rest of us at whatever time this is.”
“A quarter to six, and his phone’s going to voicemail.”
“The battery probably quit.”
For crying out loud.Hadn’t he heard of a charger?
“Get your arse over here.Ottie Marquette has turned into a headache, more of a migraine, actually, and we need to get to the hospital.I’ll wake Hallie for a briefing.”
But fifteen minutes later, after a hasty shower and a double espresso from the machine in my room, I was as worried about Alex as I was about Ottie.
“His room hasn’t been slept in,” I told Ana.“I checked.”
“You’re sure?He didn’t just make the bed himself?”
Alex was a neat freak.Mrs.Fairfax, the housekeeper at the estate I owned with my husband, said that whenever he stayed at Riverley, he left his room tidier than it had been when he arrived.So it was a fair comment.But no, he hadn’t simply made the bed this morning.
“Maybe he went for an early run,” Hallie suggested.
“His bag isn’t there.”
I’d watched Alex dump his duffel into the back of Darya’s compact after dinner last night.Bradley had handed him his room key, but he hadn’t used it, and now I was getting worried.Because our new case had a Russian connection, and Darya was not only Russian but also deadly.
I gave Ana and Hallie a quick rundown of my discussion with James.
“So now Alex is missing, Ottie’s in the hospital, and we’ve got a first-class Russian assassin tangled up in the middle of it all.”
“Dasha wouldn’t hurt Alex.”Ana was adamant.“You don’t know her the way I do.Alex—Alexei—was perhaps the first man in her entire life who showed her any sort of kindness.She used to fall asleep at night wrapped up in his fucking coat.In those days, it reached her knees.”
“Then where is he?She was meant to bring him back to the hotel, and as far as he knows, we’re leaving for the airport soon.”
“Maybe he stayed at her place?”
“Firstly, Alex doesn’t do hook-ups, and secondly, he’d have sent a message if he’d changed his plans.Where does Darya even live?Do you have a phone number for her?”
Ana shook her head.“Only an email address.She was cagey, but I know the hell she’s been through.I didn’t want to push her.”
“You want me to try and find the address?”Hallie asked.
Hallie was young and not particularly experienced, but she was also smart and resourceful as well as gutsy, which was why we’d hired her to work for Blackwood in the first place.
“Go for it.”
She slipped out the door, and I cursed under my breath.Ottie Marquette was lying unguarded, and now we were wasting time.How did other people manage to take vacations?All I wanted was a couple of days of R & R, and shit justhappened.This was my second attempt at a minibreak in as many months, and the second time I’d found myself doing anything but relaxing.
While Hallie did her stuff, I got ready for, well, anything.I had zero desire to go up against Nine again, but I would if I had to.Alex was more than a trainer; he’d been a friend for nearly two decades.
“Should we wake Bradley?”Ana asked.
“Let him get his beauty sleep.”
Ten minutes later, Hallie came back.