Total pages in book: 77
Estimated words: 75748 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75748 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
It was well over an hour since I’d gotten to the apartment and found the blood. There was potentially another hour she could have been missing before I even got back there, judging by the melted candles.
“Here, watch this,” Zeno said, pointing to the very edge of the grainy footage he found. “That’s baseball cap guy,” he said, catching just the corner of a man as he glanced out of the door beside the convenience store.
He disappeared for a second.
And when he came out again, he had his arm around a woman. Around Blair.
She was leaning against his chest.
The sight made my heart lurch.
Until I realized her feet and legs weren’t moving. She wasn’t leaning into him. She was being carried by him.
No.
Not just him.
As Blair became fully visible, another arm was clearly wrapped around her.
Not a man this time.
A tall, thin woman.
“No fucking way,” Leo said as Zeno paused the screen.
“Who is it?” Gav asked, trying to shoulder in.
“Motherfucker,” I snarled, turning away from the computer to pace a few steps.
Ronny?
It was fucking Ronny?
I’d been accepting the possibility that she knew about the idea. But not that she would be capable of violence, of kidnapping.
“They drugged her,” Gav observed.
“And she’s bleeding,” Zeno added.
I wasn’t aware a growl had escaped me until I felt Leo’s hand on my shoulder again.
“We’re ready to go. Just tell us where.”
Where?
I didn’t know where.
Ronny’s place?
I didn’t think she could bring Blair there without being seen or heard. But if Tom was home…
Well, let’s just say that with the rage bubbling up inside me, I was ready to do some of the wicked shit that Brio did with my own two hands.
“Zen,” Leo called. “You stay here. Watch the dog. Try to dig up places they might take Blair.”
Thank God for Leo.
Not a single thought seemed to be forming enough for me right then.
“Let’s go.”
Leo took the lead with me following and Gav and Cesare behind me.
It wasn’t a long drive back toward Ronny’s apartment building. But I grew tenser with each passing second.
By the time we climbed out of Leo’s car, I was practically vibrating with rage.
Cesare moved ahead of us, making short work of the lock, then moving aside to let me charge in first.
I expected to find Tom sitting there in his beat-up old recliner with the mismatched dish towels on the arms because Ronny always claimed his arms were filthy and messed up the chair’s fabric.
But the living room was empty.
The TV (that I’d never seen black in my life) was off.
Since the last time I’d visited, the place had become emptier. Pictures were no longer on the walls. Shelves were cleared off.
Ronny was planning on leaving.
Soon.
She’d gotten too impatient and had decided to cut to the chase and just force Blair to give her what she wanted.
There was one problem, though.
Blair didn’t have the files anymore.
Or the laptop.
She had nothing to leverage for her freedom.
Panic welled up as I rushed through the familiar apartment, seeing it with different eyes.
“Zen, you gotta get me something,” I heard Leo say through the walls. “He can’t lose her.”
I moved into Ronny and Tom’s room, yanking open drawers, upturning them on the bed, then digging through the contents.
But it was all just… junk. Lotion, clothes, random pictures.
I tore through the closet next, whipping everything out, then making sure there were no hiding spots in the wall or floors.
There was nothing—nothing—that indicated they were criminals at all. Let alone masterminds.
“Where is Danny living? Here?”
“Not technically, no. He had to go to an approved location for parole. But he does crash at his parents’ place when he wasn’t expecting a drop-in from his parole officer.”
I whipped past Matt’s room, which was still perfectly preserved from the last time he’d been living there. Old movie and music posters from Matt’s early adulthood still hung. But there was a bottle of a recently released cologne on the dresser.
While Matt’s room was cluttered and disorganized, Danny’s room was a complete and utter disaster.
When I pushed the door, it met with resistance and sent a pile behind the door toppling.
“Christ,” Gav grumbled from behind my shoulder. “Shocked Ronny let him keep it like this.”
Unless, of course, the mess was a distraction, making you think there was no way anyone would keep important documents or information in such a disaster area.
So I moved inside, systematically going through the drawers, closet, under the bed, then even using my toe to dig through the piles of crap on the floor.
There was a sheet of balled-up paper listing all the things Danny wanted to buy with the money from selling me and my family out to our enemies.
The fucking idiot wanted a Ferrari and a yacht.
A fucking yacht.
By the time we’d dug through every inch of the apartment, another hour had ticked by.
An hour where fuck-knew what was happening to Blair.