Chapter Thirty
Orion
I t had been a week since we finally caught Miles, and a week of losing my mind every second Emmy wasn’t in my sight.
Even though the threat against her was dead, the unfamiliar feeling of fear still lingered under my skin, burning itself into invisible scars against my heart. I could honestly say I’d never experienced a feeling like when I received an alert on my phone and saw a video of Emmy speeding out of my garage at one in the morning.
“Get me access to the security footage, now,” I demand, a vein throbbing in my temple. “Find out which way he went, then hack into the street cameras to follow him.”
Doug doesn’t bother responding, instead, he opens his laptop immediately and goes to work. I am on the warpath and anyone who opens their incompetent, useless mouth to say anything other than “we’ve got him” will bear the brunt of my rage.
“How the fuck did you let him get away? There’s three of you and one of him!”
Cole, Hague, and Romain divert their gaze with sullen expressions.
My head spins to Atlas. “Remind me to deal with them once we find Miles. Or Liam. Or whatever his fucking stupid name is.”
My girl is in our bed without me, riddled with anxiety and fear, terrified her fucker of an ex-boyfriend is going to turn up in the middle of the night to hurt her and I can’t seem to get my hands on the bastard.
“Orion.”
I glare at Doug. “What?”
“You need to see this.”
I eat up the space between us in two pissed-off strides. Doug spins his laptop to face me, and it’s open on the FBI’s database, HAK, with a photo of Liam Thorn positioned in the center. My jaw ticks. “I asked for his location, Doug, not his damn photo.”
“The facial recognition program is running in the background, but this popped up and you need to see it.” Doug clicks off the photo before scrolling down the screen to a report from nine years ago. “Read it.”
I scan my eyes over the report, ignoring the details I already know until I reach the end which specifies why the report was filed.
Lead suspect in the homicide of Andrew and Josie Fields.
That twisted, sick fucking bastard.
I grit my teeth, and my upper lip curls into a sneer. Anger coils in my stomach, and horror skates through me at the thought of Emmy finding out.
“Atlas,” I say icily, my eyes glued to the damn screen. When Atlas joins my side, my phone pings a familiar chime.
What the fuck is it now?
While Atlas reviews the report, I unlock my phone and see the security alert from my Canon CR-X500. My hands curl around the edges of my phone, dread suffocating me from the inside out as I click on the footage.
The video plays, and Emmy rushes out into the garage, her face worryingly pale and her legs trembling while she runs and climbs into one of my cars. She fiddles with her phone for a moment before igniting the engine and suddenly soaring out of the parking space like she’s fucking Caden Knox herself.
My mind conjures all kinds of horrible scenarios while I curse myself for leaving her alone. For failing her. My heart rages in my chest, a snarling beast furious at the sight of her running through the garage so distressed and scared.
I click off the app quicker than my fingers can keep up with and bring up the Find My Friends app to track her location. Please tell me you took your phone, Emmy.
A brief flood of relief rushes through me when I see her picture gliding through the streets of Manhattan. I’m already storming to my car when Doug shouts across the street, “Found him!”
“Atlas, get in,” I snap, swinging open my car door. “Doug, send the location to Hague.” I glare at the idiots who let Miles escape from their grasp. “Think you can handle driving, or are you gonna fuck that up too?”
“We’re right behind you,” Cole assures, sprinting to his Mercedes CLA with Hague and Romain hot on his tail.
Atlas barely closes the passenger door when I rag the car out of park and speed down Mercer Street. The seatbelt signal dings like a high-pitched scream over and over, but I’m too fucking riled up to give a damn.
I throw my phone at Atlas. “Where’s she headed?”
“East Harlem.”
“Fuck,” I hiss, my blood pressure reaching a record high. “That’s a twenty-minute drive.”
Anger and worry coalesce into a block in my stomach, and my heart rate ticks up. A muscle pulses dangerously in my temple, and I floor the gas. My grip strangles the steering wheel as I imagine all the things Miles could be doing to Emmy right now.
Something is wrong.
I feel it deep in my bones as I race down the back streets of New York. Emmy wouldn’t just take off like that, not without a call or text.
Something must have happened since I left. Something which terrified her so much she couldn’t even call me or Atlas.
My knuckles turn white around the steering wheel, and my entire body flushes hot, then cold. The invisible noose around my neck tightens and a tiny bead of sweat trickles down the back of my neck.
“Take a left here.”
Dread and horror coil at the base of my spine as I turn onto a narrow lane, an abandoned infrastructure greeting us at the end of the road like an invitation to a haunted house on Halloween.
A new bout of fear hits me like a freight train, blindsiding me. Images of an injured Emmy, or worse, slam into my mind as I pull the car into park. My blood runs cold, a glacier warping its way under my skin and encasing itself around my tightening heart, strangling me in its wrath from the inside out.
If anything has happened to her…
Arianna and Clover sat on either side of her on the sofa. The three of them had been watching some chick flick for the last hour with Chinese takeout.
I was supposed to be working, but every time I shifted my gaze from Emmy to look at my computer, a tightness fabricated in my chest.
My protective instincts had kicked up a few gears since last week, and I had no shame in admitting that. Emmy, on the other hand, was slowly growing irritated by my need to watch her like a hawk.
She was handling it better than I was and even had plans to return to work next week, despite how many times I argued against the idea. So, we came to a compromise; Emmy was returning to work, and I was going to “stop sulking like a damn child.”
Though I had organized an extensive background check on Sasha Bishop, just to be on the safe side. Her father may have been one of my long-standing clients, but no precaution was too far when it came to Emmy’s safety.
Turned out, the girl was as blindsided as the rest of us. A small part of me had wondered whether she had a hand to play in Miles getting to Emmy that night, but after analyzing every text and call she’d received or sent since Miles’ release from jail and reviewing the footage of them meeting for the first time in the foyer of the White I’d bet my last dollar that whatever she was about to say was not the best idea.
“Why don’t you both come with me to Monaco in September? The Grand Prix isn’t as exciting when you’ve already been ten dozen times and it’s the same fight between the same two drivers.” Aaron and Caden . “We could sunbathe on my father’s yacht and hit the casino.” Her face then suddenly lit up with excitement. “And I can introduce Clover to Caden Knox.”
Fuck. My. Life. Sideways.