“Why?” Jake asked the two men.
Drake shrugged. “I could have any number of enemies, but Joshua, not really. This had to have begun some time ago, so it isn’t any of Nikita Bogomolov’s crew. Sasha, Nikita’s son, is included in our association, although loosely at this point. He still has to prove himself in order to come fully into the circle. So, for us to have a common enemy, that would narrow it down significantly.”
“Is it possible Joshua was just a convenient entry to follow into the States?” Fyodor asked.
“Anything is possible,” Drake conceded.
Mitya shook his head. “It feels too personal. Joshua? Any ideas? Who do you have for an enemy?”
“As far as I know, no one,” Joshua said. “But I do originally come from Louisiana and the lair that Drake runs. I can’t imagine that anyone there considers me an enemy, since I left when I was a toddler, but I suppose it could happen that someone harbors resentment.”
Mitya shook his head. “This originates in Borneo.” He said it with absolute conviction because he believed it. “Something happened there.”
Joshua raked both hands through his hair. His gaze shifted to Drake. Mitya fought to keep his features an expressionless mask. There was something that neither man wanted to say or admit. He waited to see if Joshua was really with them or if they were all being played. His gaze shifted to Sevastyan. His cousin had caught that look as well, and he was waiting. Mitya had the feeling Sevastyan could turn violent in a heartbeat—and would.
“The only thing I can think of, I’m not very proud of,” Joshua said. “No matter how I explain it, I’m not going to come out looking good on any level.”
“It isn’t necessary to explain anything,” Drake said.
“I disagree,” Joshua said. “If everyone is in danger here, and it’s because of something I did, they need to know about it.”
Drake shrugged. “It’s up to you, Joshua.”
Joshua reached for his coffee cup and turned it around idly as he searched for the right place to start. “We had come to know most of those who made it a practice to kidnap tourists or members of very wealthy families. We knew which ones would give back the victims the moment the ransom was paid, and which ones wouldn’t. For most it was simply a business, like any other. We negotiated, paid the ransoms and retrieved the victims. A straight business transaction. If it was a group who preferred killing the victim, we raided and took them back.”
Mitya knew Drake still ran a crew in Borneo for that purpose, and another in South America. Just because he wasn’t there didn’t mean the practice of kidnapping had ended.
“There was a rumor that five strangers had entered the rain forest. They hit a village and took two young girls. They set fires in the village, an unusual thing when they were going to ask for money to get the girls back. I tracked them, but I was a couple of days behind. As I followed them, I began to have suspicions that they were leopard.”
He took a sip of coffee and when he looked around the table, there was rage in his eyes. “What they did to those girls were some of the worst things I’ve ever seen. I’m not going into details, but by the time I found them, the girls were in a catatonic state. I lost it. I’m not going to lie. I completely and utterly lost it. Those five leopards are dead, burned and buried so deep no one will find their ashes. I took the girls back to their village, but honestly, I wonder if both might have been better off buried with those men.”
There was silence. Mitya frowned, going over Joshua’s short rendition of the encounter, trying to find something that didn’t add up. “Only those in that village knew you went after the girls, is that correct?”
Drake shook his head. “There were men in my organization who knew I sent him. The villagers certainly knew. As for those leopards’ families, we didn’t know where they came from. We had no idea. Questions weren’t asked. They were killed.”
Mitya was watching Joshua when Drake was explaining. Those blue eyes held so much rage that Dymka reacted. Those leopards hadn’t just been killed. There was more to it than that. Five men to his one. Joshua was no pushover. He appeared cool and easygoing. He had a killer inside of him that struck when called on. Mitya hoped the others realized that.
Jake drummed his fingers on the table. “That doesn’t give us a lot to go on. Drake, can you make inquiries as to what happened to those girls? What happened to the families of those girls? Where is everyone now?”
“This is fuckin’ thin,” Mitya said. “You have no idea where those five men came from, whether they were related, or anything about them.”