Stolen from the Hitman: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance by Alexis Abbott, Alex Abbott Page B

and my eyes widen.
    “A party,” I mutter out loud, my brow furrowing. The email I read doesn’t sit well with me in the least. So the girls did indeed go out for a night on the town last night. Ordinarily, that would simply mean that they might be sleeping off a hangover this morning, and that they’d stumble into the gym later on, but as I straighten up and look around the apartment once more, the events piece together.
    The girls get to the apartment, they set their things down, start to unpack, and then this email comes in around the time they’d be getting settled. A couple of young foreigners might be easily enticed by the idea of a party with some Parisians...but who’s this inviting her? What kind of man digs up a young woman’s email address from a roster like that?
    Then again, I think to myself, what kind of man breaks into his students’ apartment on a hunch? But my motives have some purpose behind them. She doesn’t seem to know the sender of the email well, though.
    I start to run a hand through my hair, thinking twice about my actions. Perhaps I truly am overreacting. It’s perfectly natural and fairly frequent for young people, particularly these college types, to flirt and hook up with one another right off the plane, as it were. Liv probably met this man and decided to really start enjoying herself for her first night in Paris. Can I really blame her for that?
    Of course not, but some things simply don’t fit here. Suppose Liv really is waking up beside her new French lover in his cramped apartment — why is her roommate not around either? They must have been watching each other, so why would they have not helped each other home? And the email I see before me suggests that Will was the one making the advances when they met, and he was apologizing. He stepped over the boundaries and Olivia seemed to have rejected his advances. So unless something changed at the bar, what are the odds that she’d have gone home with him after turning down his kiss?
    But all I have to go by is this email address and the name of the bar, I realize as I curse under my breath. There’s nothing definitive here. But the evidence is deeply concerning: however I rationalize it, two young American girls went to a party their first night in Paris and did not come back home. I think back to my past, to everything I saw back in Russia. Even what I saw when I headed west. I grimace. Even in the best cases, that doesn’t look good.
    Then my heart sinks. I feel a burning drive to dig deeper into this matter, but as I glance back at the little email address on Liv’s computer, I realize that I don’t have the expertise to follow the rabbit hole further. On my own, the trail stops here, my lack of technical know-how finally catching up to me.
    Anger swells within me. Two young women go missing, and what can I do? Sit in their apartment and strut around furiously while the trail gets colder because I don’t know how to maneuver the backdoors of internet and computer systems. I’ve never taken kindly to my rustic background holding me back, an icy chain digging into my flesh no matter how hard I fight against it.
    Perhaps that’s overly dramatic; in truth, I really don’t want to reach out to the one man who I know could open those encrypted doors for me.
    I pull out my phone as I walk back into the living room, grimacing at the screen as I flick through my contacts to the name I have on my mind. A few times, I think again, putting the phone away and going back to the laptop myself, trying to trace it through a few simple searches and going through the university’s database. Nothing.
    A low groan escapes me, and I want to punch a wall as I draw the phone out yet again, staring at the contact on the screen before taking a deep breath.
    One push of a button later, I put the phone to my ear and listen to it ring.

9
    Liv
    W e cling together in the darkness, barely daring to breathe. I can feel Maggie’s fingernails digging