Jimmy could have stood on principle. He could have stood on all he had done in the past for the Drakos organization. But he didn’t fight it. Because Alex had given him too many second chances before. He dropped the ball, and had been dropping many balls lately. But none that involved Kari Drakos. He didn’t beg for another chance. He didn’t stand on his past successes. He took the honorable route and left.
Kari looked at Alex. “What do we do now?” she asked him.
“Nothing. I had another team investigating it on a separate track. They were thorough. They turned up the same intel Jimmy did. So did Reno’s guys.”
“Then why did you fire Jimmy if he came to the right conclusion?”
“Because what if more was going on? He didn’t look into any of the shit I mentioned. What if that woman and that shooter were connected? What if it was some kind of dress rehearsal for something larger, just to find out what kind of security I had on you? He didn’t check into any of that. The conclusion wasn’t what mattered as much as covering all bases did. That’s why I fired him! He cut corners, and you were involved. I can’t take that risk with my family.”
Kari understood what he meant. What if it was Jordan and Jimmy had dropped the ball? She wrapped her arms around Alex’s neck. “That’s why I love you, Alex,” she said. “You don’t play when it comes to our family. Thank you for that.”
Alex touched her arm, but thanking him seemed wholly unnecessary. He just hoped all of the intel was correct, and it was what it appeared to be: a jealous husband going after his wife’s lover. It used to be crazy to him when he’d read about men insane over some woman. But now that he was in love, and now that he had that kind of wonderful woman himself, he knew how they felt. He knew he’d do anything, and he meant anything, to keep Kari in his arms too.
“Why don’t you get some sleep,” he said to her. “I’m going to call London.”
Kari looked at him. “You should be there right now, shouldn’t you?”
Alex nodded and exhaled. He wasn’t going to lie. “Yes. But it’ll wait until tomorrow.”
“But even after you go back to London,” Kari said, “you’ll still be back home for Jordan’s surprise party on his birthday Thursday night, right? Today is Monday. You have to be back by Thursday, Alex.”
Alex nodded. “I know. I’ll be back,” he said.
“Promise?” Kari asked. Alex wasn’t great about making it home when he said he’d be home. But he had to be in place for Jordan’s sixteenth birthday. He had to! Turning sixteen was a milestone they could not get back.
“I promise,” Alex said, although he knew it wasn’t going to be as easy as his word.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Every team of investigators, including Reno’s teams, all reported that the incident in the New York restaurant appeared completely random to them as well, which meant Alex’s revised plan of departure was still on. He and Kari were at the airfield early that next morning.
But even as he was escorting Kari across the tarmac and onto the corporate jet for her fly back to Florida, he couldn’t shake that uneasy feeling. As if something still wasn’t right. As if everybody was telling him that the waters were calm, when he kept feeling as if a man-eating shark was just beneath the surface.
And when Rocco, his bodyguard, came running toward the steps just as Alex was escorting Kari up those steps, Alex’s sense of foreboding was heightened.
“What is it?” Kari asked when Alex stopped walking up the steps when he saw Rocco approaching.
When Alex didn’t answer her, she looked where he was looking. And he was looking at Rocco running toward the plane.
“I just got a call from Florida, sir,” Rocco said as soon as he got to the bottom of the steps.
“What about?” Alex asked.
“Oz is missing, sir.”
Alex and Kari were both shocked. “Missing?” Alex asked as he began walking down the steps. Kari quickly followed him. “What do you mean missing?” Alex snatched the phone from Rocco’s hand. “Who’s this?”
“It’s Conners, sir.” Jeb Conners was one of the security chiefs for The Drakos hotel and casino enterprise.
“What’s this about my brother?” Alex asked.
“He’s gone missing, sir. No check in this morning. No answer to any of our calls. The GPS on his Porsche somehow disabled. He’s missing, sir.”
“And my son?” Alex asked.
Kari looked at him.
“He’s missing, too, sir,” Conners said.
Kari saw the look of terror on Alex’s face. “Alex, what is it?”
“Put every man and woman on the search,” Alex said.
“I have, sir.”
“We’re on our way,” Alex said, and tossed the phone back to Rocco.
“What is it, Alex?” Kari asked again as Alex hurried her back up the steps and onto the plane. “Is Jordan okay? Is Oz okay?”
“We don’t know,” Alex said and Kari, stunned, stopped all movement.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The ride to Florida was as intense as any Kari could recall experiencing. Alex was on the phone constantly, to all of his people on the ground and those searching by helicopter, too. And although there appeared to be a flurry of activity, there was no word of finding either Oz or Jordan at all.
But instead of Kari sitting under Alex shaking with fear, she sprang into action too. She was calling each and every friend Jordan had, to see if they’d heard anything at all from him, or saw him, or had spent even a moment with him during those crucial hours.
But she was turning up blanks too.
She hung up from the last friend and looked at Alex. He was seated across from her, at a conference table on their plane, and had just ended a call himself.
“Anything?” Kari asked him.
He shook his head. “Nothing,” he said.
“Have we even established that they were together?” Kari asked.
“All we know is that they left the airfield together after dropping you off,” Alex said. “Then they were spotted at some bar Oz frequents in Pensacola.”
Kari couldn’t believe it. “He took Jordan to a bar?” she asked.
Alex exhaled. “Unfortunately, yes. They stayed several hours at that bar, dancing and partying with some woman Oz picked up. And then the three of them left.”
“And it’s all on video?” Kari asked.
“Nothing’s on video. This is some deep in the woods hideaway shithole that the elites like to fraternize because of the lack of eyeballs in the sky. The bar doesn’t have a single camera inside or outside. We only know the little we know because some of the staff at the casino had been to the place with Oz before.”
“But how do we know he was actually there if there are no cameras?”
“The bartender told our guys what he remembered of last night. He knows Oz by name. But that’s all we got. Nobody’s seen any of them since they left that bar.”
“What about the girl Oz picked up?” Kari asked. “Does the bartender know her? Does anybody know her?”
“No,” said Alex. “Nobody had ever seen her before.”
“Could they describe her?”
“Small, white, redheaded. That’s it. She caught a ride to the bar, apparently, but we haven’t been able to trace who she rode with. And she had no ID whatsoever. None.”
Kari was unable to hide her anger and fear for her son and just plain disgust. She leaned her head back. “I can’t believe Oz would be reckless enough to take Jordan to a bar in some woods somewhere!”
“He thinks he’s invincible,” Alex said of his brother. “He’s always thought that way. That’s why I used to have to beat his ass all the time. He thinks he can protect Jordan from anything, and you and me too while he’s at it. Damn fool!”
“I can’t believe Jordan would be reckless enough to go with Oz to some bar,” Kari said. “It’s not just Oz. Jordan should have known better.”
“He’s infatuated with his uncle,” Alex said.
“He’d walk on water, if he could, for Oz.”
Alex’s cell phone rang again. He quickly snatched it up. “This is Drakos.”
When he listened for a while and then looked at Kari with a sudden look of hopefulness, Kari sat upright too. “What is it?” she asked.
“The copter found them,” Alex said to his wife.
“They’re okay?” Kari asked anxiously.
He nodded. “They’re okay,” he said to her.
“Keep it lowkey,” he said into the phone. “I don’t want any tips to the authorities or anybody else. We’re only a few minutes outside of Apple Valley and we’ll come straight there.”
Then Alex ended the call. And Kari hurried into his arms.
But when they got on scene, and saw the condition of Oz’s Porsche, neither one of them were celebrating. Because even though Oz and Jordan were fine, with Oz having a small cut on his forehead and Jordan completely unscathed, the woman who had been with them, Patricia, was dead. Apparently the only one not wearing a seatbelt, she had been thrown from the vehicle at some point, and hit her head on a rock. At least that was the preliminary assessment by Alex’s people.
When they first arrived, Jordan and Oz both sat side by side on a big boulder themselves, both looking glum because of Patricia’s fate more so than their own, while Alex’s men attempted to sanitize the area. But Jordan ran to his mother as soon as she arrived, and fell into her arms. And he was in tears.
Alex looked at Oz as Oz looked at Jordan. Oz seemed thrown by Jordan’s emotional outburst, as if he couldn’t imagine why Jordan would be so unhinged. He didn’t seem to understand that Jordan loved his uncle, but he needed his mother. And he needed his mother, Alex thought angrily, because he was a fucking kid! Who would bring a kid, and the kid of a billionaire no less, to a hideaway so remote it looked like a jungle out there? Alex was so angry at his brother he could hardly look at him. He could have beat Oz’s ass right then and there.
But then Jordan broke from Kari and ran to Alex, falling against him hard and wrapping his arms around Alex’s waist. Alex was taken aback when Jordan ran to him and held onto him that tightly, and he wrapped his arms around Jordan, too, and pulled the young man into an even tighter embrace. Kari was in tears as Alex held onto their son.
Alex ran his hands through Jordan’s curly hair, and then lifted his chin so that his face was looking up. When he saw the pain and fear in Jordan’s sweet eyes, he exhaled. “Are you okay, son?” he asked him.
Jordan nodded his head. “Yes, sir.”
“A little shook up?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You’re safe now, alright?”
“Yes, sir,” Jordan said, and laid his head against Alex’s broad chest again.
But Alex also knew he had work to do. A woman was dead, and Oz was responsible. If he didn’t handle the situation, and handle it swiftly, Oz could go down hard. His ass undoubtedly deserved it, and what he had to do went against everything he believed in, but Alex knew he had to do it. He couldn’t allow his kid brother to go down.
He looked at Kari. Kari understood. She moved over and pulled Jordan from his father’s clutches, and held onto him herself.
Alex walked out of earshot of his family and the security detail on site, who had been waiting for his orders, followed him.
“Move the body,” Alex said to his men.
“And the Porsche?” asked one of his men.
“Melt that motherfucker,” said Alex. “I don’t want a scrap of it left. I’ll have Odysseus file a stolen vehicle report right away, and that’ll take care of that. I also don’t want a scrap of evidence that any accident occurred on these back roads. Not a scintilla. I want this entire area pristine.”
“Yes, sir.”
Further over, Kari, still hugging her shaken son, watched Alex as he opened his suit coat, placed his hands on his hips, and barked out orders she knew he hated giving. But she knew Alex. He’d do anything in this world for his brother, despite their tumultuous relationship. He was going to cover it all up for his brother’s sake, even though a woman was dead.
And that, to Kari, was the heartbreaking shame of it. A woman died behind Oz’s foolishness. A woman died! Kari couldn’t look at Oz either.
And when Alex made his way back to Kari and Jordan, both mother and son moved to either side of Alex and placed an arm around him. Alex placed both hands on the small of their backs and escorted them, under heavy security, away from the scene. Oz walked slowly behind them.
A woman was dead. His heart was heavy too. But despite Oz’s recklessness, Jordan, and Oz, too, were okay. That was the good news. Because he knew it could have been a very different story.
He moved Kari and Jordan closer against him, as they walked.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
But as soon as they walked into the penthouse, and Kari walked Jordan to his bedroom, Alex couldn’t hold back his anger another second. He took his fist and knocked his brother over the kitchen table so violently that the table fell over too. And then he ran around the table, grabbed Oz by the collar, and began punching him repeatedly. The more he thought about the condition of that car, and Jordan in that car, and an innocent woman dead, he punched him harder and harder. Oz tried to defend himself, he was a mighty foe when anybody attempted to do him harm, but even he knew he was no match for Alex.
The fight was so violent and loud that Kari left Jordan’s side and ran into the kitchen to make sure they didn’t kill each other. But when she saw it was essentially a one-way fight, and saw Alex putting a hurting on his brother, she didn’t intervene. Because her anger was as potent against Oz as Alex’s anger was. He had no right taking her son to some bar in the woods. He was completely out of line!
Then Alex grabbed Oz up altogether, and threw him down into a chair. “A woman is dead because of your stupid ass!” Alex was yelling. “And my son could have been killed too! Don’t you realize what you’ve done? Don’t you realize the destruction you’ve caused?”
“I know what I’ve done,” Oz said as he ran both hands through his long hair. “Of course I realize what I’ve done. But it was an accident, Alexio!”
“Driving drunk is no fucking accident. And you know it!” Alex shouted.
“But I wasn’t drunk!” yelled Oz.
“That’s a gotdamn lie! Your ass reek of alcohol right this very moment!”
“But I wasn’t drunk!” Oz said again. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. I had two beers that entire time. Two beers! Then the next thing I know I’m driving and suddenly I’m feeling woozy. And before I can pull over to find out what’s wrong with me, I’m out. Then the next thing I know I’m waking up, it’s a new day, and your men are pulling me and J from the wreckage. But I wasn’t drunk!”
“You certainly wasn’t drunk when you decided to take our son to a gotdamn bar!” Kari said. “You certainly wasn’t drunk then! We can’t blame that shit on alcohol!”
Oz ran both hands over his face. He didn’t understand what was happening to him any more than Alex and Kari did. But he knew one thing to be true: he was not drunk!
But trying to convince them was not going to happen.
“Hit the shower,” Alex ordered his brother. “One of my contacts at the police station is going to file a stolen vehicle report that you supposedly called in, and date it for last night.”
“Thanks,” said Oz.
“Don’t leave this penthouse until we can find out who that woman was and if her death will become more of a problem for us than it already is,” Alex said, not interested in any thank you from Oz. And then he added: “And stay away from Jordan!”
Oz felt as if his heart was being ripped out. He loved Jordan as if he was his own son. He’d never do anything to intentionally harm him. But he also understood how Alex and Kari felt. He understood their disgust with him. Because they were right: he was wrong to take J to some bar. He was dead wrong.
He got up, and did as his big brother had ordered.
Kari got up, got the coffee pot, and poured Alex another cup of coffee. But as she was about to walk away from him, he pulled her down onto his lap. She sat the pot on the table. “How’s my girl doing?” he asked her.
“Not so great. It’s been a quite a couple of days.”
Alex nodded. “Yes, it has.”
“Think there’s a connection?”
“Between what?” Alex asked her.
“Between what happened at that restaurant in New York and this incident with Oz?”
Alex frowned. “I don’t see how it would be,” he said. “But I’m ruling nothing out. I’ll need more intel before I can make any conclusion.”
Kari looked at him. His big, blue eyes were so tired! “You need to be on a plane for London,” she said to him. “You know that.”
“Correction,” said Alex with a smile that didn’t reach those eyes. “I don’t need to be on a plane for London. I need to be in London this very moment.”
“You spoke with your people over there?”
“Oh, yes. They’ve been calling me all day. Negotiations, it seems, have stalled once again. The Brits are threatening to walk once again. I need to be there.”
Kari looked at him. “Then why aren’t you, Alex? You can’t do anything around here until we get, as you said, more intel. I get what that merger could mean to our bottom line, especially after the losses we took. Why haven’t you left already?”
“Too many loose ends,” Alex said quickly. “I need to make sure my men did what I ordered them to do. I need that confirmation from my cleanup crew. I also need to find out why Oz reeked of alcohol when he declares he only had two beers.”
“You believe him?”
Alex exhaled again. “The evidence isn’t in his favor, that’s for damn sure. But Odysseus has never been much of a liar.”
Alex Drakos: Branding Her Again Page 8