Chapter 42 Ransom
RANSOM
Sparks fly from the grinder I’m using, and I cut along the edge of the car door, bobbing my head to the beat of the music playing in the garage.
It feels good to be back to work. Although Ethan went out of his way to fuck over our business, he hasn’t ruined it completely. There are still some people out there willing to work with us, so we can rebuild from what we lost.
I’m in the zone, enjoying the feel of the tools in my hand as I work on the car.
In a lull between songs, I hear a shout from upstairs. I frown, silencing the music, on instant alert.
When nothing else follows, I drop my tools and head up to the second floor. Malice is already at the top of the stairs, and I shoot him a look as I fall into step beside him.
“Did you hear that?” I ask.
He nods, and we push our way into Vic’s room to see him typing frantically on his keyboard.
“What the fuck is going on?” Malice demands, folding his arms.
“I don’t know.” Vic’s voice is tight, and he doesn’t look away from the screen, fingers flying over the keyboard.
“Um, we’re gonna need more than that.” I step closer to his bank of computers, trying to prompt him to explain something. “Why were you shouting?”
“I was on the phone with Willow,” he bites out. “And then the line suddenly went dead.”
My stomach drops. “What the fuck?”
“It’s possible her battery died. Or it’s possible she dropped her phone and broke it or something,” Vic continues. “But I swear I heard the sounds of a scuffle before the call ended.”
“Shit,” I mutter under my breath.
Vic glances at me, and I can see the same deep worry in his eyes.
“Where was she when the call dropped?” Malice’s voice is tense.
“Dammit,” Vic curses. “I’m not sure. She said she was going to Nordstrom, but there are at least three in this area. I’m scanning each one.”
Malice and I can’t do much other than stand like sentinels and watch as Vic combs through footage near each shop that Willow could have gone to.
It’s frustrating as hell, but we have no way of knowing which she would have picked.
One is closer to her campus, one is closer to her apartment, and one is a bit farther out, but closer to where her grandmother lives.
Vic moves as fast as he can, but he has to be precise if he’s going to make sure not to miss anything. It’s agonizing, watching him scrub through footage and seeing nothing helpful.
All I can think about is when Ilya took Willow. We didn’t get there in time, and if it hadn’t been for that fire that killed Ilya, he could have tortured and murdered Willow then.
And we couldn’t have done anything to stop him.
We can’t let it get that far this time. We have to fucking get to her before anyone else can hurt her, but to do that, we have to fucking find her first.
My heart is in my throat, and Malice looks just as agitated beside me, his arms crossed over his chest as his fingers clench and unclench.
Every second Vic spends going through footage feels like an eternity, and the knot in my gut gets bigger and bigger as he crosses off the store near her grandmother’s place and then the one near her campus.
“I thought she would have gone there,” Vic mutters, jabbing at keys angrily. “She was leaving school when she called.”
“Maybe she wanted to shop closer to home,” I suggest, knowing good and well that if we don’t find her at that one, we’ll have nothing to go on.
I can’t even stomach that thought.
Vic brings up the footage from the one closer to her apartment, and for a few agonizing minutes, we see nothing. Then he inhales sharply and points at the screen.
“There. That’s her.”
And there’s no doubt about it. It’s Willow, getting out of her car in the parking lot of the plaza, her phone pressed to her ear. That does something to ease the feeling of dread crawling up my spine, but it’s not enough.
Vic zooms in on that footage, following Willow as she crosses the street, her phone held up to her ear. She ducks into an alley at one point, looking like she’s taking a shortcut to the store.
“Fuck,” Vic hisses.
He types some more and then pulls up a camera from the alley. The footage here is dark and grainy, but we can make out the shape of a tall person in a mask grabbing Willow and dragging her away to a car.
“Someone’s got her,” Mal growls. “Someone fucking took her. Where the fuck did they go?”
“Give me a second.” Vic’s fingers fly over the keyboard as he gets to work using security and traffic camera footage to track the car and figure out where the hell Willow’s abductor took her.
Malice and I lean in close, offering a second and third set of eyes, watching for the car they shoved her in as the seconds tick down. Every second we spend looking is one less second we’ll have to go and save her, and I fucking hate it.
“Who the hell took her?”
Pure fury laces Mal’s voice, and I know how he feels.
With Ilya, we at least knew what he wanted. He was after us, and he planned on using Willow to get what he wanted. But with this shit, we’re in the dark. We thought she would be safe after Ilya went down, or we never would’ve let her out of our fucking sight.
Malice grips the back of Victor’s chair, squeezing so tight that the leather on the back starts to creak in protest. His jaw is clenched and his eyes are hard as he stares at the screen.
“We never should have let her leave here,” he mutters. “We should have kept her living with us. Kept watching her closely. Kept eyes on her at all times.”
He sounds like he’s on the verge of losing his shit entirely, and I know he and Vic are thinking the same thing I am.
We can’t fucking lose her.