Chapter 21 – Grey
GREY
I drained the last of the coffee in the paper cup and tossed it to the floor to join the others discarded there, tapping through different security feeds to find the one I wanted.
There was exactly one gas station near the area of the Docks.
The road leading up from the lake forked in two directions.
One leading toward Thorn Valley and one leading through Edgewood and further south, to Lennox.
The gas station squatted in between the prongs of that fork.
Anyone traveling by car had to take one of those roads to leave the area.
And since Corvus sent Drake after AJ, it was safe to assume he took her that night. Which was why she never came back. Not because she didn’t want anything to do with us anymore. Not because what Corvus said had hurt her so deeply it was enough to keep her from us all.
Because he took her.
The image of her, tied to a wooden chair in what looked like a fucking dungeon on Corvus’ phone was seared into my retinas and would probably live there for as long as it took to get her back. Maybe longer. Maybe forever.
I’d hoped his phone would be able to give me something my brother couldn’t anymore, but I’d already tried to work with the calls and phone numbers Drake used to call Corvus as a means of tracking him, but like I already figured, it was a complete waste of time.
He’d covered his tracks too well, but I had one ace in the hole.
Well, Diesel’s Ace, actually. Someone in the bureau owed him a favor.
He’d been saving that favor for years. Today, I asked him to use it, and he agreed.
There was no telling if the agent would do it, or if it would help, but it was worth trying. The last cell tower Drake’s burner phone pinged off of to make a call would narrow down the area. And if it didn’t, then I was fucking praying something in this footage would.
I lifted my gaze to Becca lying in her hospital bed, a machine assisting her to breathe with a tube jammed down her throat.
Or if you’d just do me a solid and wake up…
If she did, there might be something she could tell us. All I needed was a single thread to follow. To unravel it all. And I could find her. I could make this right before we lost anyone else.
I wouldn’t lose anyone else.
I grimaced as a sharp pain stabbed into my chest and I hunched over the laptop propped on my lap, swallowing past the burn in my throat.
Everything hurt. My head throbbed in time with my pulse, each labored beating a hammer against my skull, but I wouldn’t give in to the need to rest.
I’d rest when I was dead.
Or when he was.
My hand vibrated over the mousepad as I toggled over to another folder the owner of the gas station sent over at my ‘request,’ and I clenched my fist to stop it.
I wanted to be out there . Tearing down every building in search of her. Like Corvus would be. But I was better at this. This was where my talents were best put to use. Sitting here in this fucking chair, on this fucking laptop, batting my head against a proverbial wall.
“Just give me something ,” I growled at the screen, resisting the urge to throw the damned thing across the room.
A soft double rap at the door preceded my uncle’s entry into the room. He took one look at me and all the paper cups littering the floor around me and set his jaw. “Nephew,” he said, stepping in quietly, shutting the door behind him.
I nodded before going back to the video files filling my screen with small dark checkered images. I clicked on the first one, playing it with fast forward enabled to get through them quicker.
It would help if I knew what the bastard was driving.
Damien St. Vincent lifted the clipboard from the end of Becca’s bed, flipping a page.
“No change,” I said, saving him the trouble.
“But everything’s stable,” he argued. “She should’ve woken up by now.”
He shoved the clipboard back into the slip and put his palm to his mouth, inhaling deeply.
He was right. She should’ve, and it wasn’t a good sign that she hadn’t. The longer she stayed in this coma, the less likely she was to wake up at all. But I wasn’t about to tell him that. We’d suffered enough loss this week.
“How are you holding up?” my uncle asked, and I tensed, the knee-jerk reaction to tear a strip off him and shove him out the door making my eye twitch.
Or maybe that was just the abundance of terrible hospital coffee in my veins.
“How the fuck do you think?”
“It seems my brother wasn’t entirely honest about the situation here. He said it was handled.”
I laughed darkly. “Diesel doesn’t ask for help.”
I didn’t need to tell him that. He knew it just as well or better than I did.
Diesel handled his own shit. There were three chapters of this gang.
His, Uncle Damien’s and Uncle Ransom’s, and they all operated fully independent of one another.
None of them had ever asked him for aid, and he wasn’t going to be the first to break that unspoken rule of doing business.
“No. He doesn’t. But I wish he would’ve.”
He paused, moving to perch on the edge of Becca’s bed in front of me. His ringed fingers clasped in front of him but that was as far as I would look. I couldn’t meet his stare. Not right now. I needed to fucking focus.
I clicked to the next video.
“This business with the Kings. Be honest with me. Are they a threat?”
“You need to talk to Dies.”
“I’m talking to you.”
I clenched my teeth. “We don’t know,” I answered honestly, doing what my father wouldn’t if only to keep anyone else from a senseless death.
My gut twisted. “We have reason to believe they may come after us.”
“How undermanned are you right now?”
“More than we should be.”
He pushed up from his knees and stood. “That’s settled then. You did the right thing, son. This conversation will stay between us. You have my word.”
I tapped the spacebar, pausing a video just as a dark colored jeep came driving up to the fork in the road. I squinted, zooming into the still frame to see a shock of blond hair catching the moonlight. I checked the timestamp. It fit.
But the footage was grainy as fuck.
Whatever ancient system this gas station was using needed upgrading fifteen goddamned years ago.
Damien asked something, but I was beyond hearing him, clicking through the footage frame by frame as the topless jeep took the turn, not toward Thorn Valley, but toward Edgewood and Lennox.
It’s him .
Holy fucking shit, it was him.
The frozen frame of his face in side profile was unmistakable. But then where was AJ?
I played the footage back a second time. A third.
On the fourth, as the Jeep bumped over a pothole in the road, I caught a glimpse of exposed skin.
I took a screengrab and moved it over to the software I’d purchased last year for cleaning up footage this shitty. I zoomed. Enhanced. Waited for the pixilation to even out.
And there she was.
Slumped over in his lap, her hair fanned over most of her face. That and the dark dress she wore concealed her almost entirely from the view of the camera.
“AJ…” I breathed, my heart pounding as my mind raced to work through what I could do with this.
This was the thread.
Now all I needed was to follow it and unravel everything. If this footage existed, there would be more. I just needed to follow the road. Every business nowadays had video surveillance for liability purposes. I just needed to go bang on every door from this point south. Follow his path south.
It would take time I didn’t have, but it was something. Finally fucking something .
“Grey,” Damien pressed, and I knew it wasn’t the first time he’d tried to get my attention. “What did you find?”
I turned the screen to face him. “It’s her.”
His brows drew down as he analyzed the image. “Do you have a frame with the plate number?”
I’d already taken a screenshot of it. I brought it up and showed him. Damien nodded and pulled out his cell phone, typing something. “I’ll see if my contacts can find the owner.”
“It won’t be the guy,” I said. “He’s too smart for that.”
“Even the smartest of them make mistakes, son. That guy there,” he pointed to the still-open image of Drake in the driver’s seat. “He saw an opportunity, and he acted. I doubt there was a lot of time for being choosy about transportation.”
I nodded, still thinking it would be a dead end but grateful to my uncle nonetheless.
An alarm blared into the hospital room, jarring us into motion. My uncle and I shared a look, both of us twisting toward the door, where loud, thudding footfalls echoed in the hall.
I drew my gun.
My uncle followed my lead.
A voice on the sound system called for security to room 308.
The door smashed open and Rook’s pale face stuck into the room, breathing hard, his eyes wide black discs. “He’s out of surgery.”