CHAPTER TWENTY
LIAM
“Fucking Christ!” I spit.
The black vans hightail it out of here, weaving between one another to create a mess of confusion. A ploy to get us to follow the wrong vehicle. It’s already questionable which is theirs, although I swear, I haven’t lost track of the one that holds my whole goddamn world.
This is where emotion can derail the wisest tactics because, right now, all I want is to chase after my girls and kill every motherfucker in my way.
Outnumbered doesn’t faze us, but hurtling into a mass of assassins who know our position won’t end well. Especially since it’s clear they’ve got one hell of a scheme. We need them to think they’ve gotten away.
Wells is fighting the same instinct, even knowing we can track them. It’s written all over his face. Watching them wheel away from us feels like failing.
But every last one of those fuckers will pay with their lives today.
Between Rex, Dante, Wells, and myself, we’ve got about a dozen dead Skulls’ bodies scattered in the alleyway behind the shops. Dante hustles toward their SUV with Keith slung over his shoulder. Rex meets him there, moving Arnold to the trunk. Looks like he’s dead too.
Fucking hell.
Wells alerts me that he’s getting the Rolls-Royce and pulling up Ivy’s tracker. That’s why she jumped in there. She knew being with Celeste meant they couldn’t disappear. Fucking crazy, but this would be a much different scenario had she not.
Sprinting back to Rena, I find she’s got all the girls’ purses strapped onto her and her gun drawn, pointed fiercely at the personal shopper.
Upon seeing me, Rena explains in an eerily serene tone, “She’s involved. She did this.”
That doesn’t surprise me. They had to have someone on the inside. Rena, dirty and scraggly, staring this woman down with cold, murderous eyes over the barrel of a pistol, is a bit shocking though. I fucking love this girl.
“They have my mother,” the lady squeaks, voice quavering. “They sent pictures of her tied up.”
Not willing to squander another second with this shit, I take the gun from Rena, scoop her into my arms, and instruct the shopgirl to walk to the cars ahead of me. Rex and Dante can interrogate her.
“Nicely done, sweet girl,” I commend Rena as we dash for the car. “You did so good.”
“Are Celeste and Ivy …” Her sobs clip off the rest of the question.
“We’ll get them,” I assure her, my gut lurching up into my throat. “Rex and Dante are going to take you to Axel at our house.”
“No. You need them to help. I—”
“That’s how we’re doing it, Rena.” No idea what the hell she was about to suggest, but there’s no time to argue. I won’t have her caught up in this madness.
Rex takes her from my arms and buckles her into the back seat while Dante deals with the personal shopper, and I jump in with Wells. He’s on a burner with Gage.
“Headed west,” Gage reports as Wells peels out. “We’re loaded up. Call you back when they stop moving.”
Wells slams the phone down repeatedly, snarling, “Jesus! Fuck!” as Ivy’s tracking dot taunts us on the screen.
“Route 90,” I supply, remembering the Lulu Truck Stop was the location of the drop for the transport team we tortured. The Skulls do a lot of work out of Houston, but based on some of the information I’ve gathered, it seems they’ve got a pit stop along the way. “I think they’ll head toward Morgan City.”
“Looks like it,” he grants, careening down the back roads that lead to the highway, surpassing 150 on the speedometer. “Call it in to Vargas.”
Terrance Vargas is one of our contacts for the FBI. We still monitor a number of cases for both the CIA and FBI and assist with securing inside tips—that’s aside from the agency and bureau guys we own through KORT. But Vargas is the one we rely on most. We’ve worked with him since we were first erased. It’s been over a year since we’ve spoken. We haven’t had to call something in since we retrieved Ivy from the schoolyard in Ohio.
I punch his number into the burner phone, and he answers on the second ring.
“Yeah?”
“We’ve got a bombed building and a dozen down at the Ellington Shops in Magnolia Heights.”
This isn’t an incident we can call York, our cleaner contact, about. He doesn’t handle blown-up buildings or manipulate news coverage. There’s got to be a major story that accompanies something on this level.
“Fuck,” Vargas hisses. “Cause? Any civilian casualties?”
We chose that designer because the plaza is secluded and closed on Mondays. Not worrying about thoroughly vetting people from surrounding businesses was a perk. Looks like we weren’t the only ones considering the seclusion a bonus. It would have been far harder to pull this off with people everywhere. An oversight on our part. How many fucking oversights have I had with Celeste?
I’m so fucking sorry, baby.
“Attacked. No civilians,” I answer, clutching the dashboard as Wells flies airborne over a bump. “The Skulls. I’m not just calling for cleanup. They took our girls.” Bile burns my throat as I speak the nightmare out loud.
“Shit.” The pecking of his fingers romping on a keyboard marries with the horns blaring around us because Wells is driving like a bat out of hell. Vargas is probably attempting to get some traffic or satellite images of what’s unfolding. “What do you need?” he asks.
It’s the one thing all of us understand. The guy is no saint himself—none of our contacts are. But no matter how many unspeakable things we’ve done, we all respect the code of family. Nothing else matters if they’re involved.
I rattle off my requests, anxious to be done here. “Traffic diverted, no interference, and you’ll need to spin it. Massive cleanup. There will be no one left.”
“Location?”
“Not yet,” I growl, hating that the details are all dangling precariously. “Somewhere off 90, we’re guessing, near Morgan City.”
“Fine. Call five minutes prior to launch. I’ll put out an APB in the opposite direction for all cars. I can buy you about an hour.”
“Good enough,” I say, ending the call and directing my attention to the unhinged Chief behind the wheel. “We’re not reporting out to KORT.” It’s not a question. I’m unwilling to involve anyone other than us, the men who will stop at nothing to get our girls back.
“No,” he agrees without hesitation. “They’ll want to weigh in, call the shots, and this is our fucking fight.”
I blow out a semi-relieved breath, always happy Wells, ruthless and calculated, is on my side.
“Won’t matter if no one’s left breathing anyway,” I grit out through my clenched jaw, ready to massacre the whole damn world for targeting Ace.
A wicked grin tips his lips, like he’s envisioning the same slaughter. “My thoughts exactly.”
For all our confidence that we’ll get to them, I can’t help but swallow a gulp of trepidation for what our girls could be enduring even though I know I shouldn’t go there. It will only serve to muddy my vision of executing the rescue.
My eyes close as I try to center myself. Ivy is a force. Smart. Well trained. And Celeste is shrewd and cunning. She killed a guy with a fucking hairdryer, for Christ’s sake. They’ve got this.
But what if they don’t? I can’t lose either of them.
“Fuck!” I smash my fist into the ceiling.
I just found you, Ace. I’m coming, baby girl.