Guarding Autumn (Crimson Point Security #3)

Chapter Eighteen

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Autumn’s hands flew up to cover her mouth as she watched Gavin and Tristan run back toward the stairs leading to the lobby. She was shaking, sick to her stomach. Her baby was out there somewhere lost in the midst of that violent mob, the twins were about to wade straight into harm’s way to find her, and she had just dropped a bomb on Gavin.

She swallowed hard, fighting back tears. What the hell was she supposed to do? She couldn’t just sit here doing nothing while Carly was out there.

Gavin had given her the option to remove Carly from this situation last night. Not only had she made the wrong call there, she’d selfishly focused on herself and her own needs instead of her daughter’s safety.

Gavin’s reaction to her confession just now was everything she’d feared. The look on his face, the betrayal... It was another knife in her guts.

She stood unmoving outside the ballroom while dozens of people swept past her, the security team herding everyone through the double doors. She couldn’t go in there. Couldn’t stand the thought of being locked down inside it when Carly was still outside.

She wanted to throttle Jonas for losing her, and those security guards for manhandling her and preventing her from getting her daughter instead of helping her. But mostly she was furious with herself and sick with guilt.

Carly was her responsibility. She should be out there looking for her.

“Autumn.”

She whirled around, blinked the scalding tears back and found Decker striding toward her. She rushed straight for him, grabbed him tight.

He caught her in surprise, took her by the shoulders to look down at her with a frown. “What’s wrong?”

“Carly’s missing.” Her voice wobbled. “The twins just went out there to try and find her.” While she was trapped in here being useless.

His gaze moved past her toward the stairs. “How long ago?”

“You j-just missed them.” No way was she telling him about the rest of it. He’d find out soon enough.

He steered her toward the ballroom. “Go inside, they’re going to shut the doors anytime now. Cassie,” he said to someone off to the side, and for the first time she noticed the tall, woman with silver eyes and short, black hair standing nearby.

“Autumn, right?” Cassie gave her a friendly smile. “Come with me.” She put a hand on Autumn’s back and urged her through the ballroom doors.

Autumn opened her mouth to protest, but when she glanced back, Decker was already running in the direction the twins had gone. Her shoulders slumped. Now three quarters of the Abrams family was in mortal danger in their mission to rescue Carly, and this whole disaster was her fault.

“Come on,” Cassie urged, pushing harder between Autumn’s shoulder blades. “You can’t stay out in the hall, and they’re not going to let you out of the building now.”

“I can’t just sit here while—”

“They’ll find her. And in the meantime, we can help find her from here.”

Autumn looked at her sharply. “How?”

“By identifying her on video so we can direct them where to go.” She had her phone out, hit a button and put it to her ear. “Hi. We’ve got a new situation. I’ve got Autumn with me, her daughter is lost in the crowd outside. The Abrams boys need virtual backup finding her. Can you help?” She paused a moment. Nodded. “Great. One sec.” She lowered the phone so Autumn could see the screen, turned it sideways.

A woman’s face appeared. She looked a little bit older than Autumn. Brunette. Hazel eyes. “Autumn, this is Ivy, our secret IT weapon,” Cassie said.

Ivy. The woman Teagan idolized.

Ivy nodded, her expression calm and all business. “Hi, Autumn. What’s your daughter’s name?”

The woman’s I-got-this demeanor took Autumn’s anxiety down several notches from DEFCON one to a one-point-five. “Carly. I called 911 to report she was missing but the phone got knocked out of my hand, and I couldn’t retrieve it. It’s crazy out there and I have no idea where she is...” She clamped her lips together, drew in a shaky breath as new tears flooded her eyes. This was something out of her darkest nightmare.

“I can imagine. But we’re going to find her.” Ivy was so calm, no hint of judgement. “Can you give me a description of her?”

She nodded, hurriedly wiped her face. Get your shit together. “She’s twelve. Long, light red hair. About five-three.” She was going to be so tall. Thanks to Gavin.

“What was she wearing?”

“I’m not sure. She was still in her pajamas when I left her, but she usually wears her pink unicorn hoodie.”

“Okay, all great information.” Ivy’s gaze was on something else off screen, her arms moving slightly as though she was typing. “I’m bringing up various security camera feeds outside the conference center. Where was she last seen?”

Autumn had no idea how she had access to all that remotely. “Right outside our hotel.” She gave the name and address, plus the cross streets.

“Excellent.” She focused back on Autumn. “Are you up to this? The scenes outside are going to be stressful.”

“Yes,” she answered without hesitation. The security guards were shutting the doors to the ballroom. She pushed down a bubble of panic at being physically barred from getting to Carly, focusing on the task at hand. “I’ll do whatever you need me to.”

“I’m going to start with the feed right out front of the conference center to start. I’ll sweep over the area slowly. It’s chaotic out there, but Carly’s hair color is a definite bonus to help us spot her.”

Autumn nodded, hope swelling deep in her chest. “I’m ready.” Hurry, hurry.

Ivy did something on her end, and Cassie’s phone switched to the video feed out front. The situation hadn’t calmed at all since Gavin had brought her inside. She watched the crowd intently, scanning from left to right and back to front, looking for any sign of Carly’s red-gold hair.

Ivy changed cameras several times, giving them different angles. “There’s Decker,” Autumn said, pointing off to the side of the shot where he was hopping over a security barrier. Moments later he was swallowed by the shifting crowd. She didn’t see any sign of the twins.

“One more time,” Ivy said, and began all over again.

Autumn’s eyes stayed glued to the screen, fighting against the fear and despair that threatened to drown her. “I don’t see her.” Several red-gold heads, but none of them Carly. Would she have her hood up?

“All right, I’ll start moving north up the street. We’ll work our way toward your hotel, circle it, and then come back south. And we’ll keep looking until we find her.”

Ivy’s confidence calmed Autumn a little more. “Okay.”

She sat in the chair Cassie indicated and took over holding the phone, angling it so they could both see along with Ivy. With the three of them monitoring the video feeds, plus the twins and Decker on the ground outside, Carly had six pairs of eyes looking for her.

It would be enough, she told herself.

It had to be enough.

****

The level of chaos in the street was something Gavin had only witnessed in places like Kabul or Aleppo, and both those cities had been under siege at the time. It was surreal that this was happening in Portland.

Holding up his ID, he shouted at the security agents outside the conference center to let him through. They stepped aside, and he turned sharp left, racing for the thinnest part of the crowd on the far side with Tris right behind him.

The riot police were still being pushed back from their original position. A group of violent protesters had breached the line in one spot and were currently stuck in the midst of the crowd, swirling between the reforming cops and the more peaceful protesters trapped against the outer security perimeter. Trying to find Carly in this mess was a logistical and personal nightmare.

He was still reeling from Autumn’s announcement, couldn’t afford to get caught up in his head and lose focus out here, but it was damned near impossible to stop thinking about it. Carly could be anywhere between here and their hotel, which was still burning. There were tens of thousands of people in the streets, the peaceful and violent all mixed up together in a roiling, confusing mass, with pockets of violence and destruction happening all over the city center.

“Abrams, what the hell’s going on?” Ryder’s stern voice said in Gavin’s earpiece.

He didn’t reply because there was nothing he could say that would justify what he was doing. Nothing except that he was on a mission to rescue his daughter, and as he’d just found out five minutes ago and was still struggling to comprehend it, he wasn’t ready to announce it to anyone else.

Moving at a dead sprint, he waved an arm in warning and shouted at the people ahead of him at the first concrete barrier to get out of his way. They backed up slightly, creating a small gap, and stood wide-eyed as he vaulted the barrier and plunged past them into the crowd.

It was like hitting a brick wall. He slammed into several people at the same time, gritted his teeth as he found his footing and kept pushing forward. Even here on the perimeter of the crowd it was tight. He was going to have to fight his way through the shifting mass with every step, and he had no idea where he was going, other than toward the burning hotel.

“Gav, slow down,” Tris yelled behind him, his voice nearly swallowed by the collective noise engulfing them from every direction.

He couldn’t slow down. Didn’t so much as spare his twin a backward glance as he kept plowing onward while scanning the area for anyone that remotely resembled Carly. She was so little, could so easily be crushed or trampled out here.

“Hey!” someone shouted in objection when he shoved them aside, and threw an elbow.

It slammed into Gavin’s shoulder, glanced off his jaw, hard enough to snap his head back. He grunted and stumbled sideways onto one knee, knocking over two people in the process.

“Fuck you, asshole,” another guy yelled at him, grabbing him by the front of his shirt while Gavin was busy deflecting a boot coming at his head.

He braced for the punch, his hand balled into a fist to return the favor. Before the blow landed, the hand gripping his shirt was ripped away, and the man was thrown backward.

A strong hand locked around the shoulder strap of Gavin’s vest and yanked him upright. He glanced up to find Decker holding him, his face a hard mask. “You good?”

“Yeah,” Gavin said, looking around. “Where’s—”

“Right behind me.”

Gavin glanced past him and saw Tristan battling his way to them. But there was no time to stop and regroup. “Let’s go.”

“We’ll never find her in this together. We need to split up and fan out, cover more area,” Tris said, breathing hard as his head swiveled around.

He was right. But that also meant they would all be that much more vulnerable wading through this shit show alone. “Okay. We split up and go as far as their hotel. We’ll RV there if we haven’t found her before then,” Gavin said.

“Yeah, copy,” Decker muttered, his tone and expression making it clear that while he didn’t like it, he agreed it was the best chance of finding Carly.

“I’ll take the east side of the street,” Gavin said. It was the riskiest location, involving him fighting his way through the angry mob clear across the street to get there. But Carly was his responsibility.

He went in that direction, leaving his brothers to go in theirs.

“Gavin, you copy?”

He was surprised to hear Ivy’s voice in his earpiece. She wasn’t part of their team this weekend, although maybe Walker had brought her on unofficially. “Yeah, go.”

“The crowd’s thinning to your two o’clock, eighty meters or so.”

Might as well be a mile away in this mess, but he was grateful for the help. Ivy must have eyes on the security feeds in the area. “Roger.”

“I’ve got Autumn and Cassie helping me search for Carly on the video feeds, but I’ll direct you as you go.”

He was glad Autumn was involved in the rescue effort. Now that the initial shock of her news had worn off, he was operating on pure instinct. He couldn’t imagine how hard it was for her to be locked inside when Carly was out here alone, somewhere between here and the burning hotel.

He tried to imagine how a twelve-year-old would react to the situation, what Carly might do. Had she tried to look for Autumn, been swept up in the crowd and carried forward into the street with the momentum? Or had she managed to hang back close to the hotel somehow to wait for her?

Either way she had to be fucking terrified right now, and Autumn was distraught. And as someone who had just found out he was a parent—Jesus, he was a father—he was experiencing a whole new level of fear.

He had to find Carly and keep her safe, no matter what.

The battle to reach the far side of the crowd was exhausting. He was only ten meters or so from the edge of the street when the crowd suddenly surged to the left, knocking dozens of people off their feet and taking him with them.

A body under him cushioned his fall. The woman’s scream nearly pierced his eardrum.

Cursing under his breath, he scrambled to his feet and threw out a forearm to protect them both, blocking an elbow strike from the person flailing next to him. Someone else bounced off his back as he turned and aimed for the spot Ivy had indicated.

Something heavy glanced off his right upper arm and clipped the edge of his lower lip. He tasted blood. A second later, another projectile grazed his eyebrow as it flew past his face, slicing it open.

He wiped the blood out of his eye, didn’t stop. Wouldn’t stop until he found Carly and got her to safety.

She was his. As incredible as it seemed, Carly was his daughter.

I’m coming, squirt. I’m coming.

He would save her or die trying.