Kane's Ransom: A BWWM Mafia Romance Novel (10 page)

Chapter eleven

An hour and a half later, they were in the city itself, surrounded by skyscrapers that towered up, so high that Alicia felt dizzy when she tried to tilt her head back and look up at their tops.

"We should go check out your brother's apartment," Killian said. "Do you know where he lives? Can you get us there?"

He waited for a beat as Alicia dragged her gaze away from the window and her thoughts back to the present. He really was putting her through the ringer, Killian couldn't help thinking to himself with a pang of guilt. She was a nice girl, a young woman. She shouldn't have to be dealing with the stress of all of this at once.

He also felt a little guilty for taking her hand earlier, as she'd recounted some of her past to him. Sure, he meant it as a comforting gesture, nothing more - certainly nothing sleazy or implying anything between them. But still, he wondered if she might be reading his signals the wrong way.

That thought was made more difficult by the fact that he wasn't quite sure what signals he actually wanted to send.

At least this most recent question seemed to help wake Alicia out of her funk. She paused for a moment, looking around at the buildings and streets.

"Yes, I remember how to get there," she replied. "It's actually not that far away." She smiled humorlessly. "Always made me feel a little strange, how close all the million dollar skyscrapers and apartments stood to the ghetto, where people didn't have anything more than a couple of nickels to rub together."

Killian considered this, but decided not to comment. Instead, he simply followed her instructions as she guided him, turning off of the highway and down several side streets.

"Is this car going to be a problem?" he suddenly asked, only now considering the downside to bringing a Maserati worth six figures into a very lower-class neighborhood.

Alicia considered the question, and then shook her head. "Actually, you kind of lucked out," she remarked with another little smile. "If this was a nice Toyota or something, it would be jacked by the second we turn our backs on it. But a car this nice, well, it screams out that there's someone really powerful who owns it. No one's going to touch it, since they'll all be afraid of what they'll bring down on their own heads."

"Too nice to get stolen," Killian echoed, and the thought made him smile a little.

They were definitely reaching the less affluent part of town. The skyscrapers of gleaming steel and glass around them had been replaced by smaller, dingier buildings of wood and brick, and although the streets were lined with storefronts, most of them looked either out of business or locked down, with bars across the windows and fitfully flickering neon signs. There wasn't much life on the street, and most of the pedestrians kept their heads down and shuffled further onto the sidewalk as the car passed. No one wanted to attract the wrong kind of attention around here.

Alicia didn't remember the area quite as well as she assumed, so they had to cruise up and down some side streets a couple of times before she finally pointed up at one of the buildings. "Here it is," she declared.

Killian pulled the car over to the side of the street, edging it carefully into an open spot. Stepping out of the car, he did his best to give the impression of someone hard and tough, just in case any unseen eyes were watching him, before circling around the vehicle to help Alicia out of the car by lending her his hand.

After climbing out of the low-slung car, Alicia led Killian up the steps to the nearest building, fumbling in her purse. "I brought along the key that he gave me," she explained, digging through odds and ends inside the bag. "I never thought I'd need to use it for, well..."

For a moment, she seemed about to come apart, and Killian patted her gently on the back. She seemed to gather some strength from the gesture of comfort, and dug out the key. It slid into the front door of the building with no problem.

Marcus's apartment ended up being on the third floor, up two flights of an old wooden staircase that felt a bit rickety and groaned with each step. The corridors on each floor were narrow and dimly lit, and Killian didn't even want to imagine when the carpet underfoot had last been cleaned. They headed down the third floor, Alicia in the lead.

She stopped at a door partway down. "Here it is," she said, although she didn't reach out with the key to open up the door right away. Instead, she just looked at the dark door with a rather tarnished brass number on it for a minute, lost in memory, before giving herself a little shake and unlocking Marcus's apartment.

Killian didn't know how messy Alicia's brother might usually be, but the apartment didn't look in good condition. Nothing was totally overturned, but he saw cups knocked down on the floor, papers scattered around, a lampshade sitting askew on an end table. He glanced over at Alicia, wanting to see her reaction.

She looked around, her mouth open, and then looked back at him. "He's not usually messy," she said, sounding confused. "I mean, he's not the neatest person in the world, but he never left cups lying around like this!"

Squatting down, Killian picked up the cup, noting that there was a little bit of some dingy liquid still sloshing around inside. Any spill on the floor had already dried, but he did feel some dried substance in the carpet when he rubbed his fingers next to where the cup had lain. He rose up, slowly walking around the apartment.

"Look for anything that's out of place," he instructed Alicia.

"Out of place? Like what?"

He shrugged. "Anything that's in the wrong spot, or something that doesn't belong. Something new, in amid old things. Something that your brother wouldn't normally have lying around, out in the open. Anything like that."

Alicia still looked unsure, but she started walking around the little apartment as well. Killian suspected that she'd be the one to find something, since she knew Marcus, and could point out what he would never leave lying around.

After a minute, sure enough, she let out a little exclamation. Killian crossed the little living room area into the bedroom, where she stood.

"These," Alicia exclaimed, pointing at a couple of cigarette butts lying on the ground. "These don't belong here."

Killian carefully squatted down and picked up one of the butts, turning it in his fingers. "Not his brand?" he asked Alicia, glancing up at her.

"Marcus doesn't smoke," she replied, shaking her head. "We both promised each other that we wouldn't get hooked on cigarettes. We saw how some of the kids were willing to do a lot of bad stuff to get their fix, and he made me promise never to touch a smoke. I made him agree to the same thing, for fairness."

The cigarette butt had gold foil wrapped around the filter at the end. Rolling it back and forth, Killian could make out a brand name, stamped and embossed into the foil. A quick search on his phone confirmed the brand - it was a high-end type of cigarette, a luxury brand - made in Italy.

That certainly pointed towards the Mob, like he'd suspected.

The two of them kept on investigating, after Killian carefully folded up a couple of the cigarette butts in a paper towel and tucked it into a pocket in case he needed to consult it later. After twenty minutes or so, however, they both had to admit that there weren't any other clues or items out of place to be found.

"This doesn't help us at all, does it?" Alicia groaned, stepping back into the living room area of the little apartment and flopping down on the couch. "What are we supposed to do from a couple of cigarette butts?"

"We still have some other options," Killian replied, although he could feel that same dejection biting at the back of his mind as well. "Do you have your phone on you?"

She looked a little confused, but dug into her purse again and pulled out her phone. "What about it?" she asked, flipping it open to reveal the home screen.

"Any missed calls?"

She looked at it again, and then shook her head. "Should there be one?"

"If you haven't gotten one yet, there should be another one coming," Killian replied. "The man who called to tell you that you'd need a hundred thousand dollars to bail out your brother - he didn't tell you any details, when you'd have to bring him the money, or how to let him know when you've got the funds. If he hasn't called already, he should be doing so very soon."

Alicia looked concerned when he started talking, but she was nodding by the time he finished. "And that could give us another clue?" she guessed.

"It might," he allowed. "But it will also let us know how much time we have. We're working under a deadline right now, but we don't know how many hours are left on that clock. Once the kidnapper calls, we'll have a better estimate."

He stepped over to stand in front of the couch, looking down at the young woman. She looked exhausted already, he had to admit, even though it was still just the middle of the morning.

"Perhaps it's time for us to head to our base of operations," he suggested, extending a hand down to help her up.

Alicia frowned as she reached up to take the offered hand. "Base of operations?" she repeated questioningly, frowning back up at Killian as he lifted her up to her feet.

"A hotel room," he replied, trying to not feel distracted by how light she felt, how easily he could handle her with his strength from training every morning. "We'll probably be here for a couple days, and it would be good to have someplace more spacious than the back seat of my car."

An instant after those words left his mouth, Killian froze, feeling blood rush to his cheeks. That sounded entirely scandalous and inappropriate! He hadn't meant to make his comment sound so, well, sexual!

But despite the blush that he could feel burning on his face, Alicia fortunately missed the double entendre - or perhaps decided to simply ignore it. "As long as you're paying for the hotel, I could probably use someplace to try and lay down, maybe recover a little," she admitted, reaching down and picking her purse up off of the couch. She looped it back over her arm, and then turned primly back to face Killian.

For a moment, he felt speechless, looking at this beautiful, nervous, but still proud young woman standing defiantly, despite all the adversity she'd faced in the last few days. It wasn't until Alicia blinked her dark eyes at him, frowning slightly when he kept on standing there motionless, that he snapped back to reality.

"Let's go," he said, perhaps a little more gruffly than he intended. He held out his hand, leading Alicia to the door.

"Do you know a place?" she asked, as they headed out of the shabby little apartment, locking the door behind them, and making their way back down the rickety stairs and out of the low-class apartment building.

Killian nodded. "There's a place I've stayed before. That's where we'll go."

They headed back out to the car.

Chapter twelve

Fifteen minutes later, Killian heard his copilot let out a little gasp as he turned off of the street and into the front entrance area to a downtown hotel.

"Wow," Alicia breathed out, presumably talking to herself, as the car came to a stop under the covered entrance. "This place looks amazing."

Killian didn't respond to the comment, but he smiled as a valet came dashing out to stand beside his door, ready to take the car and park it for him. He climbed out, mentioned to the young man that the luggage was in the trunk, and then discreetly passed him a folded bill as he handed off the driver's seat of his car.