43 #2
Matty looked away. When he came back to me, he looked exhausted more than angry.
“Yeah,” he said after a long second. “I can see it from your side.” He scrubbed both hands over his face.
“I would’ve hated you for being the one to bring him down.
And I did hate you for leaving.” His voice cracked.
“My baby sister was pregnant and alone. My best friend was gone. My mom was dying. I had no one to lean on, man.”
That hit exactly where it should have. I had spent years carrying what leaving cost me. Standing there, I finally had to look straight at what it had cost him.
“And I think...” Matty breathed out roughly. “I think deep down I always suspected Jade was yours. I saw the way you looked at Lila. The way she looked at you. The way you always found each other in a room.” He shook his head. “I didn’t want to see it. But I knew.”
My throat burned. There was too much to say and none of it belonged in this moment.
Matty seemed to realize the same thing. He cursed and looked toward the hall. “Fuck. We don’t have time for this. We still have to find Lila.”
That dragged the whole room back to what mattered. I looked toward the bedrooms. “Did she take Jade’s phone with her?”
Evan answered immediately. “Yeah. I think so. It wasn’t in Jade’s room.”
Relief punched through me hard and fast. “I got a tracker on my daughter’s phone.”
Matty stared at me. “You what?”
I already had my phone out, thumbs moving before he finished asking. “I’m not leaving my kid’s safety up to chance.”
He gave one disbelieving snort. “Both Lila and Jade are going to hate that.”
“Fine.” I kept my eyes on the screen while the app loaded.
His mouth twitched despite everything. “But thank God for your alpha male overprotectiveness.”
The three of us crowded around my phone, shoulders nearly touching as the map came up. The location appeared, and whatever relief I’d felt disappeared just as fast.
“That doesn’t make any fuckin’ sense.”
Evan leaned closer. “What?”
I turned the screen so they could see it. “It’s still on the property.”
My eyes went straight to Richard. “Don’t move,” I said, pointing the phone at him. “You stay right the fuck here. You try to leave before I get back, I’ll make what happens next the worst mistake of your life.”
Richard went pale. Matty stepped between him and the door without hesitation. “He’s not going anywhere.”
I was already turning toward the hall. “Let’s go.”
We ran.
Whatever dignity or old resentment might have mattered an hour ago disappeared as we tore down the stairs and across the parking lot after the signal.
The app pulled us toward the shrubs at the edge of the property.
Matty dropped to his knees and shoved both hands into the landscaping until he came up with Jade’s phone.
“Son of a bitch!”
I kicked the nearest tire hard enough to send pain up my leg. “Damn it!”
The screen in Matty’s hand might as well have been dead. Whoever had lured Lila out had thought far enough ahead to make her ditch the easiest way we had to follow.
I turned to Evan. “Did she say where she was going? In the note?”
“No,” Matty said, still crouched beside the shrubs. “Just that she had to go.”
“Did she take her own phone?” I asked.
Evan shook his head. “No. Just her car, apparently, if she tossed Jade’s phone out here.”
I stared across the dark lot toward the road beyond it. Lila could already be anywhere. I’d put a tracker on Jade because the thought of losing my daughter terrified me, and somehow I had never thought to do the same with Lila’s car.
Then Evan gasped.
I spun toward him. “What?”
“She took her car but not her phone.” Excitement had cut through his fear. “You two don’t know her like I do. She was constantly losing her keys at work, so she got one of those little tracker tag things for them.”
Matty blinked. “And?”
Evan looked at both of us like our combined stupidity offended him. “And we can track her keys from her phone, you giant menaces. Whoever has her probably has no idea there’s a tracker on them, and Lila’s smart enough to keep them tucked somewhere if she can.”
I caught Evan’s face in both hands and kissed his forehead. “You are a genius.”
“I know,” he said breathlessly. “Get off me.”
We ran back upstairs.
Lila’s phone was on the bed. Evan grabbed it before either Matty or I could touch it. “I know her passcode,” he said, already unlocking the screen. “We’ve used each other’s phones at work before when things got insane.” He opened the tracker app and muttered, “Come on, Lila. Please.”
The map loaded, and this time the signal was moving somewhere across town.
Cold replaced the rage in me. A location meant we could reach her. It also meant she had gone exactly where whoever threatened Jade ordered her to go.
I was calling Priest before the address finished resolving. I gave him the location and told him I wanted men staged a block out and quiet until we knew what we were walking into. Castor was next. If this required precision, I wanted the best we had close.
Then I looked at Richard.
He had gone gray, the truth seeming to age him by years in less than an hour. I felt nothing for it.
“You better go get my daughter,” I told him. “You bring her back safe and sound so she’s here when I bring her mother back.”
His mouth opened. I stepped toward him, and whatever he saw stopped the words.
“If she is not returned safe and sound, I don’t care whose father and grandfather you are.” My voice stayed low. “I am done protecting you.”
Matty shifted toward me.
I stopped him with a look. “Nah, man. You’re a cop.
” I tipped my head toward Richard. “You go with him. Bring my daughter home.” Holding Matty’s gaze hurt more after everything we had just said, but that was exactly why I made sure he heard me.
“I’ll bring your sister home. This is not gonna go clean.
You risk your whole career if you come with me. ”
The war in his face lasted only a few seconds. Then he nodded.
Richard rose slowly.
I pointed at him once more. “Safe and sound, old man. She better be there.”
Then I left.
The tracker location burned in my head as I reached the bike. Lila had walked into whatever waited there because she believed Jade’s life depended on it. She had gone alone because somebody understood exactly which threat would make her stop thinking about herself.
I swung onto the bike and started it. This time, I knew where my woman was. I only had to get there before whoever had her decided she was no longer useful.