“My brother is a thug. He’s good with a gun and having his men do his dirty work. Nikolai wouldn’t know how to hack anything,” Hazel said.
Maybe that should have made me feel better, but it didn’t.
“Shit. I need to call Skylar and warn her not to come home right now.” I didn’t want to give Nikolai another hostage. He hadn’t mentioned her, which meant she mustn’t have been home.
I used voice dialing and waited for Skylar to answer. It went straight to voicemail. “Listen, don’t come home right now. Something is going down at the house, and I need you to go to my office. There’s a sofa. Crash there for the night.”
I ended the call. My eyes narrowed as I focused on the road. I should have called Skylar earlier while I was in Chicago. If she was already home from work and I had given Nikolai a third hostage, I would never forgive myself.
We hurried up the mountain pass and down the gravel road for my house, closing in, drawing nearer. I cut the engine and shut the truck off a few yards away. I didn’t want to alert Nikolai that we had arrived. We needed the upper hand.
With quiet precision, we snuck out of the truck, closed the doors, careful not to alert anyone inside of our arrival. I stalked past Nikolai’s vehicle, the driver was slumped forward, dead.
Had Declan taken him out or Nikolai? I’d find out later, right now I needed to get to our gear and rescue Izzie and Ariella.
Quietly I pulled the door handle to Declan’s vehicle and slid the equipment from the backseat and the floor, providing our team with guns and gear for the mission.
We needed to assume Nikolai was armed and prepared for our arrival. There was no chance that we were entering through the front door.
I took in my surroundings, listening for any signs of distress or other armed men who may have been watching. The river trickled to my east, but that was the only sound that reached my ears. With careful precision, we strode forward in silence, approaching the house.
Aiden followed behind me with Lincoln in the rear. I wasn’t crazy about Hazel coming with us, but if we didn’t use her as bait, there was a higher chance that Nikolai would shoot my baby girl or Ariella. He wouldn’t shoot Hazel; at least I was mostly confident he wouldn’t hurt her.
There were no guarantees. He had sold her off to be married.
I held my breath on our approach, hugging the window as I listened for sounds inside and any indication of their whereabouts.
Aiden tapped me on the back, and I glanced over my shoulder. He pointed at the ground, the broken cell phone on the slushy packed snow that had begun to melt.
Declan’s phone had been abandoned. The screen smashed. I tilted my head up to glance at the roof. Had he climbed atop and dropped his phone?
With a goofy grin, he waved down at us.
Bastard.
He was in position with his sniper rifle. While I appreciated that he made sure no other assholes were hidden in the forest and he had the upper hand, I also needed to get inside the house. Laying up on the roof wasn’t going to help me rescue Izzie and Ariella.
We needed to find a way inside the house and not through the front door.