23
“We ran his prints, Malik.” Hakeem took a deep breath. “He’s an American fugitive. Former cop. Allegedly behind a mass murder that went down in California last year.”
Standing behind his desk with a hand clasped over his downturned lips, Malik slammed his eyes closed.
“His name’s—”
“Lincoln Hill,” Malik finished, his eyes blinking open.
“You know him?”
Malik pressed his lips together tightly. “Killed the CEO and Chairman of Blackwater Cruises in cold blood, as well as their wealthiest shareholders which, in extension, got the cruise line shut down by the FBI. Billions lost.” That was just the cliff-notes version of the devastating blow Lincoln Hill had served to the largest trafficking operation in America. A ring with networks all over the world. It was a blow that had cost billions on all seven continents. The aftershocks of which were still shaking some world’s wealthiest elite to their core, but thankfully, hadn’t yet touched Malik. If he had anything to do with it, it never would.
“The FBI investigation is still ongoing,” Hakeem said. “Arrests still being made. A huge bust, Malik. Intricate. Complex. It’ll go on for a decade, at least. He’s still at the top of the most wanted list. One call to Homeland Security and—”
“Emma’s mother?”
Hakeem took a deep breath. “Lisa Hill. Missing for over five years after being abducted during a cruise to Mexico. Hill never stopped looking for her. Her original procurer worked out of Guatemala, but she returned to Shadow Rock when his police unit set up a sting to entrap her pimp. Things went south, and she died in his arms. Must’ve told him about Emma then. Guess that’s what made him snap.”
Malik bared his teeth, eyes bugging out as he stared off into space. “This is exactly why whores should never be allowed to see their children after they’re born. And people say the Russians are heartless.” He sniggered. “To allow that whore to meet and fall in love with her daughter—and on more than one occasion! How foolish could they be? Igniting a world of fury in her that she’d eventually pass on to her brute of a husband.”
“Lisa was higher in the ranks. Considered loyal. Trustworthy enough to see Emma on occasion.”
“And look how trustworthy she proved herself in the end.”
“One call to Homeland Security and he’s extradited come morning.”
“Have you found out where he’s taken Mia?”
“Not yet, but we will. Especially with the help of the American authorities who want his head.”
Malik thought it through. “No. If he knows his wife was in the trade, then he knows Emma was too, and that I acquired her on the black market. He’ll sing like a bird if we extradite him back to his miserable country. Too much potentially negative attention. My opponent is out for blood and if he gets even a whiff…”
Hakeem nodded his understanding.
Malik met his eyes, voice hardening. “I hired you to get sensitive matters resolved quietly. This is no exception.” Malik’s voice rose when Hakeem nodded again. “Why hasn’t anyone brought me his head? Why has another day gone by without my wife returned to me? Stop bloody nodding and do something about this.”
Hakeem jolted and then hurried away, moving toward the door.
“Kill him already. Preferably before he destroys everything I’ve worked for, not after!” Malik’s voice hit stratospheric levels, his face going beet red even as Hakeem raced to the door of the office and disappeared into the hallway.
Malik watching him go, teeth bared, chest heaving, and nails digging into the wood of his desk.
——
Later that evening, Malik had calmed. Not because he was any less impatient with the morons he employed, but because he’d just cleared the staircase to the top floor of his home. Because he was now looking upon the only door on the top floor. A smile graced his lips as he made his way toward it, fingering out a single gold key from his pocket while nodding the burly guard who manned the door away. The guard left without a word. Malik waited until he was gone to unlock the door and swing it open.
“My darling—” The sight that met Malik stole the rest of his sentence, his brown eyes bulging at the sight of Emma’s big green eyes flying toward the door in shock, and a gasp parting her lips. She wore a bright yellow dress with matching shoes and frilly white socks. But there was nothing frilly about the terror in her eyes.
When she suddenly snatched her hands out from underneath her pillow, Malik’s eyes flew to that pillow and then he was blazing across the room.
“No—wait!” Emma gasped when he flung the pillow to the floor, exposing the hunter green book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Emma’s head fell forward, making her blonde curls hang like a curtain around her face.
He snatched the book, and he held it up. “What on Earth is this?”
Emma shook her head, her voice as low as a baby bird’s, eyes still lowered. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know? Look at me, my darling.”
Emma slowly lifted her eyes to his, her tiny body shaking from head to toe, lips pressed together so tightly they nearly went white.
Malik shook the book. “Who gave this to you? Tell me. Tell me right… now…” His words petered away as his eyes shifted to something over her shoulder. In the next instant, the book fell from his hand and plopped back down onto the bed, forgotten.
He circled the bed and crossed the attic in three long strides, stopping at the tall dresser in the far corner of the room. Taking hold of the chest of drawers, he shifted it so that it slid away from the wall, and then he bent down, picking up a large brick that had been peeking out from behind the leg a moment earlier. He surveyed the wall behind the dresser, and the moment he caught sight of the concrete fragments on the floor, concrete that had been chipped away from the wall in an attempt to expose the laundry chute hidden behind it, his heated eyes flew back across the room to Emma. He stood and began toward her once more, his shadow looming over her as he came to a stop next to the bed with the brick held high in his hand, as if moments from bringing it down across her cheek.
“What the hell is going on here?” he breathed.
Emma’s mouth fell open, but she didn’t speak a word, her eyes expanding to twice their size, gleaming with hot tears.