Page 52 of Forbidden Boss

“I’m sure you’re right,” Yuri answers calmly. “They’re going anyway. Sometimes the stupid thing pays.”

I stare out the window at the tunnel lights flicking by. I count them, because if I don’t concentrate on something, I’ll rip the door off. I force the voice in my head to shut up. It says I should’ve answered her first text in one minute, not ten. It says I should’ve held the board meeting at the office instead of at the Chairman’s restaurant. It says every choice was the wrong one.

“Call his wife,” I say. “Even if she doesn’t know anything, she could be leverage.”

“Daniella left him in the spring,” Yuri reminds me. “You knew that. She nearly took everything. At least, it looked like she did, but she probably didn’t know about his little side business. Anyway, she got the place in Maine and has been there ever since.”

“What about his friends?” I ask. “His neighbors? There has to be someone we can get to.”

“We’re his friends,” he answers darkly. “Wewerehis friends,” he quickly amends.

I can’t concentrate on the thousand ways Marcus has betrayed us. The only thing that matters now is getting Mari back. Every other feeling is going to have to wait until I know she’s safe.

“We’ll find him,” Yuri says, stating it as fact. “He can’t vanish with her in broad daylight without leaving a trace. He took the staff bay to the service tunnel. I’m tracing the tunnel cameras now.”

“Who signed that tunnel access order?” I ask.

“You did,” he says without looking up. “Last winter, for the plaza renovation.”

That one’s on me, I know. But as I think back to it, I realize Marcus was the one pushing for it. I only signed off to get him off my back. There were more important things to focus on at the time.

Still, I can’t help wondering how I missed this. Were the signs there the whole time? Have I been blindly trusting him out of some misplaced loyalty while he’s been secretly planning to fuck me over?

I’m going to kill him when I find him. If he’s touched one hair on Mari’s head, I’m going to make it very slow and very painful.

Yuri’s phone pings. He pulls up a new clip.

“Service tunnel Camera Three,” he says. The screen shows the black SUV from the first bay sliding into the tunnel, then stopping at a gate to wait. A second SUV appears thirty seconds later and falls in behind. The timestamp matches up. The plate on the first SUV is a company pool plate. The second has no plate. Then both disappear under the camera’s frame. I lean forward and stab the intercom.

“Cut right. Take the back ramp to 43rd,” I tell the driver. “We’ll sweep the service alleys on foot. Put us by the receiving docks.”

“I’ve got three more teams rolling,” Yuri says. “One to the boutique that manages the trust, one to the Newark yard, one to the Delancey club. If Marcus thinks he can trade her, it’ll be to buy time from the people taking our money.”

“He won’t trade her,” I say. It comes out too sharp. I make myself steady it. “He’ll hide her. He’ll try to leverage her to get distance from me. He wants a corridor to leave the city.”

The SUV brakes hard at the curb. We get out. The alley behind the building is narrow, walled by loading docks and dumpsters. A delivery guy smokes by a steel door and decides to finish his cigarette somewhere else when he sees us. I stop him.

“You see a black SUV leave in the last twenty minutes?” I ask.

He takes another long drag of his cigarette. “I don’t know.” He shrugs.

I take a fifty from my wallet and hold it, not offering, just showing. “Try again.”

His eyes flick to the bill and then to my face. “Two,” he says. “One with two men in caps. One with a woman in the back, I think. I didn’t see her face. The glass was dark.”

“When?”

He checks his phone. “Fifteen, twenty minutes ago?”

“Which direction were they headed in?”

He points south. “Up the ramp and then left.”

I nod and slip him another fifty for his trouble. Yuri and I head back to the car, and I tell the driver to head south.

23

MARI