Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 114793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 114793 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 574(@200wpm)___ 459(@250wpm)___ 383(@300wpm)
There was another pause, followed by the creak of a chair and a quiet sigh on the other end of the line.
“You know,” Grandpa mused, “I just had a woman named Sayla and her boyfriend’s kids go through something like this. It's the same shit, just with different names. I'm tired of it, son. Tired of the kidnappings, the gunmen, the secret files, and the endless string of people who believed the only way to settle a problem is to make someone disappear.
“Agreed.” Wyatt stood beside me with his arms folded tight. “We’re all sick of it.”
“I just want one normal family fight,” Grandpa muttered. "Maybe some yelling in the driveway, a thrown lawn chair, the usual kind of chaos—but not tactical extractions and police reports."
I couldn’t help the half-laugh that escaped. He wasn't joking either, my family was capable of calling that a normal family night. “You’re preaching to the choir.”
“Well,” he sighed again, “Gabby’s Sasha’s cousin, that makes her mine by extension. So yeah, I’ll make some calls. I know someone who used to work with Maddox. I don’t know if he’s still in the inner circle, but I’ll see what I can shake loose.”
“Thanks, Gramps. I really appreciate it.” My shoulders tightened with a mix of gratitude and urgency that hadn’t left me since she'd vanished.
“Don’t thank me yet,” he warned. “If Maddox has her, this isn’t going to end with a polite negotiation. He’s not the kind of man who hands anything back.”
I glanced from the map to the faces around me. “We’re gonna make him.”
Matty’s voice broke through the low buzz of conversation from the kitchen. “Got something,” he called out.
I crossed the living room in three strides, leaving Dad to talk to Grandpa, with Jesse and Elijah trailing behind me. Matty didn’t look up from his laptop—his focus was locked in like a sniper’s, fingers tapping fast as he scrolled through an email.
“The guy from the electronics shop finally got back to me. He's just sent through a full inventory list of what Gabby bought.”
He turned the screen so I could see. The receipt had the timestamp we expected, just after she arrived in Orlando. There were micro-cams, audio recorders, a burner phone… and then something that made the knot in my chest tighten.
“Tracker.” Matty tapped the line. “The model’s unfamiliar, so it might be one of the newer private-use types.”
“Can you trace it?” I asked, stepping in closer.
“Not directly,” Matty hedged. “That model doesn’t ping to any open GPS databases I have access to. I asked the guy if he had any internal tools or access codes. He said no, but he’d reach out to the manufacturer and call me back.”
“Could be encrypted,” Remy added from the corner, his voice calm but edged with focus. “Some of those trackers are subscription-based. The data is routed through cloud services, which require credentials to access. Unless Gabby linked it to something we can hack into, we’ll have to wait.”
That was the issue—the waiting was killing me. I hated the word now.
Remy’s fingers flew across his keyboard, windows, and tabs blinking across his screen like a Vegas light show. “I ran those faces Matty pulled from the hotel footage. I've got three hits, but something’s off.”
“What do you mean?” Marcus asked, crossing his arms behind me.
Remy leaned back slightly, tapping his temple. “On paper, everything about them checks out—almost too perfectly. Their background checks, licenses, and work histories are all spotless as if someone has gone through every line, combed it clean, and pressed it flat until it looked just right. I’ve seen that kind of manufactured perfection before.”
He met my eyes.
“They’re hired security. Disposable. Probably don’t even know who they’re working for. Basically, they’re the kind of guys you hire when you want plausible deniability.”
“So, we’ve got ghosts in shiny clothes,” Jesse huffed, dragging a hand through his hair. “Fucking awesome.”
I turned away, pacing a slow circle as the walls started to feel like they were closing in. We were close. So damn close. But everything was moving at half speed—like we were fighting a fire underwater and losing seconds we couldn’t afford.
I dragged my hand through my hair roughly and finally stopped pacing. “We need more. We’re sitting here spinning plates while she’s out there—God knows where.”
Elijah stepped forward and put a hand on my shoulder. “Webb.”
I shook my head, jaw clenched.
“Webb,” he tried again. “If you go too hard, too fast, you’re gonna miss something. You know that. Hell, man, you taught us that.”
Jesse nodded, arms crossed. “This sucks, we all know it. But if you let the emotion cloud the objective, you’ll start chasing ghosts. You can’t afford that.”
Marcus didn’t say anything—he just gave me a look. The kind that said you know they’re right, even if it hurts like hell to admit it.