“Coffee, Red?” Mikey asks as he looks up at me from the laptop screen.
“Yes, please, I would love one,” I say as I rub my eyes. We have been staring at these damn screens for a solid two hours. As I suspected, whoever tampered with the security feed has wiped some of the other cameras too. Specifically, the camera in the alleyway, where Conor met his mystery lady, has ten minutes missing so there is no evidence of her. And when we checked the camera for the main entrance, the footage of her talking to one of the bouncers from earlier had been wiped too, making it much harder to track her.
Sure enough, when Mikey checked the VIP area, there was no footage to be found of the woman claiming to be me approaching the guy with the green hair either, and a full ten minutes had been wiped. It doesn’t mean that we can’t find and track these people, it just makes it a hell of a lot harder.
But what is worrying me most is that I am systematically working my way through every security camera along this street and every single one has been hacked, and each of them has had a crucial portion of time wiped so that I have been unable to get eyes on the van that Liam was taken in. Which not only means that we are dealing with someone who really knows their shit, but it could take me days to find him, and we don’t have that long.
“I’ll be back in five then,” Mikey says as he stands up and I smile at him because I can’t let him see how worried I am.
I’m still bent over the screen when I hear someone walking into the room a moment later. “That was quick,” I say without looking up.
“He didn’t know anything useful,” Conor replies and I look up to see him and Shane walking toward me.
“Really? Nothing at all?” I frown.
“No. You come up with anything yet?” Shane asks as he perches on the desk beside me.
I shake my head. “Nothing except that we are dealing with someone who knows their stuff.”
I briefly explain the problems I’ve been encountering and watch as the worry and concern settle over Shane and Conor’s faces.
“You can find him, though, Jessie?” Conor asks when I’m done.
“Yes. Of course I will.” I glance at the computer screen. Liam has now been gone for almost three hours and who the hell knows what they are doing to him. “But I had hoped I’d have something by now. At the very least, I would have wanted to identify the van that they took him in.”
Conor sits on the sofa with his head in his hands while Shane nods solemnly. “What can we do to help?”
“Nothing right now,” I admit. “All of these screens have something going on. I’ve got alerts set up for different traffic cameras. I have two programs trying to tracing the IP address of whoever hacked the security footage, but none of those things are quick fixes.”
Shane nods. “Maybe we need to find these college kids and this mystery woman who claimed she had Conor’s baby?” he says.
“Conor’s baby?” I stare at him open-mouthed.
“It wasn’t. We’ll explain later,” Shane says with a sigh just as Mikey walks back into the office with a tray and a coffee for each of us.
“I heard you two coming back up,” he says to Shane and Conor as he sets the tray down and hands each of us a drink. “You get anything from the kid with green hair?”
“No,” Shane shakes his head. “Seems like he was just some random that they chose to deliver a message.”
I lean back in my chair and blow on my hot coffee. “Not entirely random, though?” I arch an eyebrow at them as Mikey sits next to Conor.
“What do you mean?” Shane frowns.
“He had a green Mohican, right?”
“Yeah,” Mikey replies.
“How many guys do you see walking around your club, or even New York, with a hairstyle like that?”
“Not many,” Mikey agrees.
“Are you suggesting we’re not capable of getting information from people, Jessie?” Shane scowls at me.
“No,” I shake my head. “Not at all. I’m sure he had none to offer and really was just a messenger. But why choose a guy with a green Mohican? Why not pick someone who looks… well, average? Someone who doesn’t stand out in a crowd?”
“You think they wanted us to be able to find him easily once we realized what had happened?” Shane asks.
“Yes. Exactly that.” I nod as I take a sip of my coffee. “So, that your efforts are wasted interrogating some kid who genuinely has no clue what has gone on instead of focusing on the people who do.”
“Fuck!” Conor says as he runs a hand over his face.
“So, who did have a clue what was going on?” Shane asks.
“No idea.” I glance over at Conor and Mikey. “All three of you were distracted by young, attractive women, right?”
“Not me, Red,” Mikey winks, unable to resist using humor to mask his emotions now that he is able to function again. “Mine was a guy with green hair.”
Conor nudges him in the ribs and rolls his eyes. “Yeah. So?”
“But the guy with Mohican was approached by a young woman too. One he described as hot, right? That’s no coincidence either, is it? I suppose those women could have been in on it, or could have been selected at random and paid off? I mean, there is no shortage of hot young women at your club, is there?”
“That’s not really much help, sweetheart.” Shane arches an eyebrow at me.
“It is though. Because it’s a pattern, isn’t it? Patterns are important because they are formulaic. The devil is in the detail, Shane Ryan. Has no-one ever told you that?”
He stares at me as though I’m talking Spanish. “That particular pattern might be important and it might not, but identifying things like that helps me process. You have your methods of information gathering and I have mine,” I shrug.
“I feel kind of helpless sitting here doing nothing and just watching you work though,” Shane says and Conor and Mikey nod their agreement.
“You are helping,” I say as I go back to my screen and continue my search. “Mikey, can you go through the footage in the club and track the two drunk college girls? Take screenshots of people they have more than a minute of conversation with, and then we can look into each of them.”
“Okay. But that could take ages, Red.”
“I understand that. But how else are we going to find out who these people were working for?”
He nods and sits at the laptop.
“And what about us?” Conor asks.
“Help Mikey if you can, but I need those other laptops to keep doing their thing, so you’ll have to look over his shoulder or find another one.”
“There’s one in the club downstairs,” Conor says before walking out of the office.
“And me?” Shane asks.
“Keep talking. Tell me everything the guy with the green hair said.”
Shane relays the information they got from the guy downstairs while I continue my painstaking search of all the traffic cameras in the New York district, starting with the ones closest to us and working outwards. I try to hide my frustration as each one has been tampered with in the same way. I have no idea how long this will go on for because the person tampering with them is constantly two steps ahead of me, and they are incredibly thorough. I will catch up with them eventually, but it could take vital time that we don’t have. So, until my software tracks their IP address, I am screwed.
“Anything?” Conor asks when he comes back into the room fifteen minutes later, as I sit frowning at the computer screen.
“Not yet,” I shake my head. Nothing from their conversation with the Mohican guy has given me anything else to work with, so I go on with my search while the brothers check the CCTV from the club.
Another hour has passed and we are still no closer to finding Liam. The tension in the room is ratcheting up with each passing minute as the boys’ frustration grows that they are unable to do something more to find their brother. My methods are definitely not what they are used to, but right now we have little else to go on.
“Any luck?” I pop my head over the computer and ask Mikey.
“No,” he says with a sigh. “Nobody except Liam and one of the bouncers spoke to them for more than a few seconds.”
“They could have been approached before they even got to the club?” Conor suggests.
“Yeah, or they were in on it from the outset,” Mikey adds.
I nod absent-mindedly. “Or they were spoken to in a place where there are no cameras?”
“The ladies’ room?” Shane frowns.
“Maybe.” I shrug.
“Mikey, concentrate on the cameras outside the ladies’ room. Look for the college girls and a hot redhead,” Shane barks.
“On it,” Mikey grins, no doubt believing that we are finally getting somewhere, although I’m not so sure. I can’t shake the feeling that the young women were pawns, just like the Mohican guy, and are more dead end leads to keep us from following the right ones.
“Are we sure it was the Russians who took him?” Shane frowns as he rubs a hand over his jaw and looks at Conor. “Perhaps you and I should go and shake up a few of our associates and see what they know?”
“It had to be the Russians,” Conor frowns at him. “No-one else would pull shit like this. No-one else has anything to gain from taking Liam.”
“But why Liam? What do they have to gain from taking him?” Shane frowns.
I sit back in my chair. It is the most obvious question with the most obvious answer. The one we should have asked from the outset. Because I just realized exactly where they have taken him.
“Me,” I say, and the three of them turn to stare at me. “Alexei wants me.”
“Yeah,” Conor frowns.
“So, that’s the point of it all. Throw us into a tailspin, chasing leads that go nowhere until we finally realize that it is me he wants.”
“But we already knew that, Angel,” Conor says.
“We did. But we kind of forgot that in our search for Liam,” I say as I bring up the traffic camera I am looking for. I do a quick calculation in my head to account for driving time and search a fifteen minute window either side. Thankfully, at 2:30am there is little traffic, and sure enough the black van appears on the screen in front of me.
“So, where the hell have they taken him?”
“To the house in Connecticut,” I say as I nod toward the screen. “He wanted us to find him. He knew we would come for him, and that is the surest way to get me back.”
Shane leans down and wraps his arm around me, pressing a kiss on the top of my head. “Good girl,” he says softly before he stands upright again.
“Mikey, grab every fucking explosive device you can get your hands on. Conor, get the guns. The big ones.” Shane barks his orders.
“Jessie. Go get dressed, sweetheart. Because we are about to go and bury Alexei Ivanov and his Bratva army.”
I nod and stand up from my chair, grateful that he didn’t try to make me sit this out, because there is not a chance in hell I would have.
“Meet in the basement in twenty,” Shane shouts to his brothers’ retreating backs as they march out of the room.
