28. Ryder

28

Elene woke almost five hours later.

By then, she was secured to a chair in a safe house, and Ron Hill had confirmed she was the right woman. He'd also tried to spit on her, but Ana had dragged him out of the room. Asshole. Now he was watching on a monitor in the next room with Khatia, ready to assist in any way possible. And he would assist. His freedom depended on it. Khatia had promised to turn him loose if Blackwood recovered Luna's money, on the condition that he never again returned to the US. He'd actually complained about that. Apparently, Georgia wasn't as much fun as he thought it would be.

Ryder leaned against the wall, arms folded, watching as Elene blinked slowly and looked around, confused. The first thing she saw was Ana, sitting backwards on a dining chair—or arse about face, as Emmy would say—her arms resting on the back.

"Where…where am I?"

"That's not important." Ana spoke in English for Ryder's benefit. He was the only person on the team who didn't speak any Georgian, although Ana admitted hers was rusty. And Ron had only learned a few phrases. "What's important is why you're here."

The colour drained out of Elene's face, and she jerked at the handcuffs. Then realised her ankles were taped to the legs of the chair and gasped.

"W-w-why am I here?" She noticed Ryder standing in the corner, and her eyes took a moment to focus. "I don't…I don't understand. They took you too?"

Ana was sitting too close for comfort, invading her personal space. "It's simple. You stole our client's money, and we want it back."

Her gaze met Ryder's. "You're the police?"

Ana answered for him. "Ara, saq'varelo. We don't play by any rules."

"Well, you've made a mistake. I don't know what you're talking about."

Without looking behind her, Ana beckoned toward the doorway. A moment later, Ron Hill walked in, and if Elene had been pale before, now she turned absolutely ashen.

"Where's the money, Irina?"

"I… My name isn't Irina."

"So you lied about that too?"

Ana leaned forward an inch. "Next, you're going to tell us that Irina is your twin sister, and you're an innocent party in all this."

Hope flashed in Elene's eyes, but Ana quickly dashed it when she held up a phone.

"This is a burner. No contacts other than Tripp, no photos, no call history. If you had a twin sister, there would be some trace of her."

Silence.

"If you think you're getting out of here scot-free, you're wrong."

As designated good cop, Ryder stepped forward. "We don't want to detain you for longer than necessary, but our client needs the money back." On cue, Khatia removed Hill from the room, and Ryder moved to Ana's shoulder. "You didn't honestly expect to get away with taking ten million dollars?"

"I don't have any more comments."

Ana shrugged. "Fair enough. We have your fingerprints now, so we'll start there. Nobody goes from zero to grand larceny in the space of a month. Do you have a record?"

Elene tried to hide the flinch, but she didn't do a great job of it.

"I'll take that as a ‘yes.' Which means we'll have your identity by morning, and then we'll start pulling your life apart. Do you have loved ones? I'm sure they'll be disappointed in you."

"No!"

"You're not in a position to be making demands."

She turned pleading eyes on Ryder. "This woman is crazy. Why are you letting her do this?"

"She's the boss. All you have to do is return the money, and then we can get on with our lives."

"You lied to me."

"And you lied to Ron, so I guess we'll call it even."

"He lied too! He said he was six feet tall and weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. There's no way he's forty years old either. I should have known you were too good to be true when you looked like your picture."

"Ditto. And there's a difference between adding a couple of inches to your height and stealing somebody's life savings."

"That wasn't his life savings. He said he earned millions every year from property rentals."

This was news, or was Elene lying? Ryder heard a grunt through his earpiece, and then Hill choked out, "Okay, okay, I told her that."

"He lied about the property rentals. He also left out the part where he stole the money from someone else before you stole it from him."

Another jolt of shock. "It wasn't his money?"

"No."

Elene opened her mouth, thought the better of trying to justify her actions, and closed it again. Ana gave her leg a sharp kick.

"Give the money back, and we'll release you."

"I can't."

"Did you know the human body can survive for three minutes without air, three days without water, and three weeks without food? Which one do you want to test first?"

Ah, fuck. That didn't sound good.

"I-I-I don't have the money anymore."

What? This wasn't over?

"You stole ten million bucks, and you didn't keep it?"

"I never took it for myself."

"Fine. Tell us who has it, and you can bunk with Ron while we pick them up."

"No."

"No?"

Ana was on her in the blink of an eye, one hand holding Elene's nose and the other keeping her mouth shut as she calmly began counting. Elene struggled, but Ana had both the strength and the technique to win the battle.

Ryder was on Emmy's team. He'd seen some real dark, fucked-up stuff over the past couple of years, but the complete lack of emotion on Ana's face as she pushed Elene toward the brink of death unnerved him. Enough that he almost stepped in, but he couldn't undermine Lilith. Not if he expected to walk out of there unscathed. How many times had she done this before?

It took Elene twenty seconds to realise that by fighting, she was wasting oxygen, and she stilled. Smart woman. Not smart enough to avoid this predicament in the first place, but perhaps clever enough to figure a way out.

"Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine, sixty."

Ana released her hold, and Elene sucked in a lungful of air, her shoulders heaving.

"I'll ask the question again. Who has the money?"

"You can't have it."

"Then next time, we'll try seventy seconds."

Ryder crouched beside Elene. "Nobody wants to hurt you, but at the same time, we can't go back to our client empty-handed."

"And I can't tell you where the money is."

"Can't, or won't?"

"Both," she whispered, and then she focused on him with intense blue eyes. "Please, I beg you, if you ever felt anything for me at all, just kill me quickly."

Fuck.

"Why would you die for this? It's only money."

"Why would you kill for this?"

A good question. Truthfully, they'd never planned to kill her, only scare the shit out of her. Either she was calling their bluff, or she was more scared of whoever had the money than she was of Ana.

"If you tell us who has the money, we can protect you from them."

"I don't need to be protected from anyone but you."

"You understand that we can't let you walk away with stolen cash."

"I understand that."

"So the money's useless to you anyway."

"I already told you, I don't have it."

Khatia muttered in his ear. "This makes no sense."

Right.

Elene would rather die than reveal the whereabouts of the money, but she claimed she wasn't scared of whoever had possession of it. Where was Hallie when Ryder needed her? She'd tell him to think outside the box, that if the obvious options were incorrect, to dig for the obscure.

And then he realised.

He realised that Elene herself had given him the answer.

Why would she die for the money?

Why would he kill for it?

Why was he here in Georgia at all? For love. He was here because he loved Luna, and he wanted her to be happy.

Who did Elene love?

What if between the many lies, she'd told fragments of the truth?

A sister.

A sick nephew.

"You gave the money to your sister, didn't you? To take care of your nephew?"

When Elene was stripped of her mask and still woozy from the drugs, her face really was quite expressive. She gasped, and before she slammed the shutters down, he saw the truth in her eyes.

"Nice," Ana muttered.

"There is universal healthcare in Georgia," Khatia said from the doorway. "You don't need ten million dollars to care for a sick child."

"He has a rare illness," Elene whispered, so quietly that Ryder had to lean in close to hear the words. "There's no treatment available here."

"Where is the treatment available?" Ryder asked, already ninety percent sure he knew the answer.

"In the United States."

God bless for-profit healthcare.

Over the next half hour, the story came tumbling out. Once Elene—she claimed that was her real name—realised they'd find the details anyway, she spilled her guts. Her nephew had a rare genetic condition, one of only three hundred children in the world to suffer from it, and if he didn't get treated fast, he'd carry on deteriorating until he was fully paralysed. Without medical intervention, his life expectancy was less than ten years. Bio-D Pharmaceuticals had developed an experimental gene therapy that could potentially stop the disease in its tracks, but the stay in the hospital would be lengthy, and for an overseas citizen, there were no subsidies available. If Misho wanted to be a part of the trial, he'd have to pay his way.

Mariam, Elene's sister, didn't even know the money was stolen. She thought Elene had sweet-talked a wealthy benefactor into donating it.

And the kicker? Elene had hoped to use Tripp's connections to get a visa so she could be close to her sister, but thanks to a couple of minor blips as a teenager, she had a criminal record, so she couldn't go through the usual channels. She hadn't wanted to bleed him dry; she'd wanted to marry him.

Sheesh.

Ryder had to speak with Luna. Yes, he'd wanted to get her money back, but if they simply took it from Mariam's account, a young boy would die. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. Ryder wasn't sure he could live with that, and he was certain Luna couldn't either.

What a damn mess.

Khatia was supervising Hill as he made coffee, and Ana was awkwardly comforting Elene as she sobbed on the couch. There was no doubt in Ryder's mind that if Ana's daughter had been in the same position as Misho, she'd have done the same as Elene, or possibly robbed Fort Knox because that was also within her capabilities.

"I need to make a call," he told her, and stepped outside.

The phone rang once. Twice.

"Ryder?"

What the fuck? "Who is this?"

"Romeo Serafini."

Why the hell was he answering Luna's phone? If this was some power play, a demonstration that he could get close to Luna while Ryder was out of town, then Ryder wasn't biting.

"Put Luna on."

"Wish I could. We don't know where she is."

"What do you mean, you don't know where she is?"

"I mean, we can't find her. I was just about to call you."

Ryder heard voices in the background, but none of them were Luna's. His chest began to tighten.

"Either she's in her hotel suite, or she went somewhere with Randall."

"She didn't leave with Randall, and I'm in her hotel suite. She's not here."

"You've spoken with Randall?"

"No, but I have a man stationed by the elevators, and he said they didn't come past."

"It wouldn't be the first time one of your men missed something. I'll call Randall."

Randall was in the office. He hadn't heard from Luna since the day before, when he'd driven her back to her apartment to pick up a toy Rocky had left behind. Nobody else at Blackwood knew where she was either, but she couldn't have left the hotel, right? She'd promised she wouldn't, and Ryder trusted her to keep her word. But if Rocky had been desperate to shit, he could have seen her stepping outside without wanting to bother anyone. He called Romeo again.

"Randall doesn't have her. Where's the dog?"

"We don't know that either."

For fuck's sake. "Then she probably took him outside to do his business."

"I have people searching the grounds, and Derek is checking the cameras."

"She can't just disappear."

"You say that, and yet…she has."