Chapter 26
TWENTY-SIX
VORTEX
Connie’s scream on the other end of the line stops my heart cold. The line goes dead soon after.
“Vortex?” Havoc says. “Why did you stop? We have to keep moving.”
“We fought the last time I talked to her,” I say, my emotions somehow distant. “What if she’s not okay?”
We’d been dealing with an unruly guest, one who was rich enough that he had to be handled delicately.
“Well, standing there isn’t going to fix it,” Havoc hisses. “Whatever.” He keeps running down the hall toward the parking garage. We’re on the third floor, though, and I have no clue which parking floor they’d all been on.
I pick up the pace. Once we’re in the garage, Havoc looks at the door to the stairwell. “Caleb parks on the first floor, right?”
“Yeah,” I say, grabbing the door to the stairwell instead of heading for the elevators. “Let’s go.”
Our steps echo loudly as we descend the stairs, and the sound is weirdly unnerving. All the while, my thoughts run in a loop. Is Connie okay? Is Seven? What will I do if something’s happened to either one of them?
I burst into the garage at the first floor, already taking off at a solid run as I head for Caleb’s personal parking space. A man I recognize as Caleb’s driver is standing over a fallen figure on the ground, and my heart races even faster as I get a good look at her.
“Connie!” My relief at seeing her fades quickly, though, as I realize no one else is here. “Where are they?” I demand.
The guy startles upright. “Shit. Vortex. I don’t know. I was on a call with my wife, and then I heard a scream. Some guy knocked this girl to the ground, and Mr. Spade and… uh, his boyfriend got into a van?—”
Havoc grabs the driver. “And you fucking let them?”
The driver lets out a startled sound and raises his arms to defend his face. “I’m sorry!”
I let Havoc deal with him, focusing instead on Connie as she groans. “Connie. Are you okay? What happened?” I help her sit up.
“Sebby?” she mumbles. “Sebby, they took your boyfriend.”
“Is your head okay?” I ask, ignoring the other — major — problem for the moment. “Shit. I need to call an ambulance for you.”
There’s no one I can call to find Seven or Caleb, though. That’s all on me and Havoc.
Even though Connie tries to tell me she’s fine, I can feel a lump on her head. There’s blood, too, and even though I know head wounds bleed profusely, I’m not taking any risks. I dial 911, quickly walking the dispatcher through the situation.
For all that my instincts are screaming at me to go after Seven, I’m not going to lose Connie, too. No matter how stubborn she is, I’m not going to let her skip seeing a doctor.
I wrap my arms around her and squeeze tightly. “Fuck, Connie. Don’t scare me like that again.”
“I wasn’t trying to,” Connie mumbles, but she hugs me back. “I kept thinking about the fight. About how I didn’t want to die without talking to you again, or…” She trails off, so bbing.
I relax the grip I have on her, but I don’t let go of her. “You’re not going to die. Everything is going to be okay.”
Except Seven isn’t okay. Seven is gone, and the fact that Caleb is with him doesn’t help.
“I know,” she sniffles. “You’re the one acting dumb.”
I huff out a laugh. “The ambulance will be here soon, okay?” I glance at the driver, realizing I have no idea what he and Havoc have been saying. “We need to find him.”
Havoc curses. “A fucking catering van. Not that it matters. We’ve got the tracker.” He pulls his phone out and taps over to the app.
“Bet you’re glad we did that now,” I mutter.
Havoc glares at me. “It’s still fucking creepy and invasive. I don’t see Caleb with one.”
“Yeah, well, people don’t have a hard-on for kidnapping him,” I snap. “Just be glad we have it. Where are they?”
“They’re heading out of the city, I think,” Havoc says.
“Let’s go,” I say, fighting back my guilt. “Connie, we have to go.” I glance at Caleb’s driver. “Stay with her until the ambulance arrives.”
The driver nods. “Of course, Vortex.”
“Sebby!” Connie says as I turn to jog toward my car.
I stop and face her. “I’ll be at the hospital as soon as I can,” I promise. My heart aches at the idea of leaving her here, but she’s as safe as she can possibly be.
Seven isn’t.
She’s my only family, though, and what happens if something happens to her on the way to the hospital? I hesitate, not sure I can actually leave her behind.
“Get him back,” she tells me.
I nod, my throat tight. “Thank you,” I tell her. I can only hope she understands how grateful I am to her for that blessing.
I get in the car, reaching over to the glove compartment to pull out a container of wet wipes so I can scrub the blood from my hands. When I’m not going to get more blood — my sister’s blood — everywhere, I start the car and ease out of the parking spot .
Havoc gets into the passenger seat, phone still out. “They’re still heading out of the city. I’d say they’re aiming for the interstate.”
“Fuck!” I snarl. “What if they’re going to drive him all the way to New Bristol?” Fear grips me, refusing to let me go. I can’t lose Seven any more than I can lose Connie.
“Then we road trip all the way to fucking New Bristol to get him back,” Havoc snaps back. “Fucking hell.”
Havoc gives me directions as best he can, but it’s not like we know where we’re fucking going.
“Still on the interstate,” Havoc says as I pull onto it.
The sun is shining directly at me, and I grab my sunglasses from the car console. “This isn’t in the direction of New Bristol,” I say quietly.
“It isn’t,” Havoc agrees. “Maybe that’s a good sign.”
“Not if they’re heading deeper into the desert,” I say. “I have no idea how to track someone out there, least of all chasing after another car I know next to nothing about.”
Havoc curses. “If they go into the desert…” He looks into the backseat. “You got water in here?”
“No.” It’s my turn to curse. “We’re going to have to stop.” Before Havoc can argue, I say, “You know we don’t have a choice. We don’t know how long we’ll be out there or what we’ll find.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Havoc says. “You think I don’t know how the desert works? I lived in a fucking army base out there. We trained in this heat.” He taps on his phone again. “We can stop at the outlet mall two exits down. There’s a sporting goods store there, and a supermarket.”
I grunt. I don’t like this. We’re going to get farther and farther behind. “What if we can’t find him?” I find myself asking.
“We’re going to find him,” Havoc says immediately. “We’re going to save him. We did last time. We found him in that mall, and we didn’t even have a tracker on him then.”
I don’t remind him that we’d had people to question and an obvious trail — or that the tracker might not keep working once we reach the desert. He knows it as well as I do, and I’m showing enough vulnerability as it is.
“Yeah,” I say instead, and both of us fall silent until we get to the parking lot of the supermarket. “Let’s go.” I lead him in through the grocery section, heading straight for the cases of water. That’s the most pressing item.
“We need to buy shoes and hats,” Havoc says while I’m paying for the four giant cases of water and three boxes of protein bars. “Rope, too.”
“Shoes?” I ask. “We’ve got shoes. I’m not stopping for more crap.”
Havoc sneers at me. “You’re wearing a pair of loafers. My sneakers will probably melt two seconds out on the hot rock. We need real hiking boots.”
“We don’t have time for all this shit,” I tell him as we load the water into the car. “We’re not going to need rope.” I stop, then say, “I already have rope.”
Havoc holds up his phone, which shows the tracking app. “You think we can get here easily?” he asks, zooming out.
The little dot keeps moving, but it’s no longer on a road.
“This isn’t an address,” Havoc says. “It’s GPS coordinates. My cell signal is already close to zero and we’re at an outlet mall. We need to stop for gas, and then we have to hope your car can get us anywhere near this place, off road, and we have to hope we can find Seven and Caleb and then also find our way back to the car. You want to do that in your loafers and dress shirt?”
I growl at him, but I have to concede the point. “Fine.” I drive us to the sporting goods store, hurrying out of the car and slamming my door harder than necessary as frustration and fear well up in me.
What if we can’t find them?
“They’re not going to hurt him,” I say with more confidence than I feel as I grab a pair of hiking boots in my size. “They want him too badly.”
“They already hurt him,” Havoc answers roughly. He takes a pair, checks the sizes, then grabs three boxes. “They hurt him every single fucking day he was with them.”
I grimace. He’s not wrong. “What are you doing?” I demand. “Now isn’t the time to be shoe shopping.”
“I’m not going to try them on here,” Havoc says. “I’ll buy them all and test them in the car.” He turns toward the hiking section. “Go find sensible pants and shirts we can sweat through. I’ll grab some other supplies.”
He jogs off, leaving me to do his clothes shopping for him.
I look after him in disgust, but I don’t stall. I find shirts and pants in our sizes, going into the changing room and pulling on a better shirt and pants. I rip the tags off and grab my dress clothes, heading to the front to meet Havoc.
No one questions me about wearing the clothes out.
He has two backpacks with water flasks inside, along with sunscreen, sunglasses, binoculars, hats for both of us, a fucking compass, and paper maps.
“Are those going to help?” I ask dubiously.
“Better than relying on our phones.” Havoc and I pay for everything and rush back to the car. We toss everything inside haphazardly.
“Are they still moving?” I ask once we’re on the road again.
“Yeah, but they’re slowing down,” Havoc says. He takes his sneakers off and reaches for one of the pairs of hiking boots he bought. “You have a gun in here, right? And a knife?”
“Yeah,” I tell him. “A whole ‘murder kit,’ I think Caleb calls it.” I shake my head. “Caleb. I hope he hasn’t done anything stupid and gotten himself killed.”
They won’t kill Seven. I’m sure of that much. Too many millions have been flaunted in attempts to retrieve him. But Caleb? That, I don’t know.
Havoc is quiet while he awkwardly gets changed. He shimmies into his new clothes and starts slathering sunscreen on himself .
“Sorry about your sister. Glad she’s okay,” Havoc says quietly. “The bastards shouldn’t have involved her.”
I haven’t gotten any messages from Connie yet, so I have to assume that she’s at the hospital and being taken care of. “Yeah,” I say, my voice rough. “I don’t…” I nearly choke on my words, and my grip tightens on the steering wheel. “Why the hell did Seven go into the parking garage to begin with when he knew he was being watched? What was he thinking ?”
“He doesn’t think,” Havoc mutters darkly. “He got caught up in whatever the fuck was happening. Just like—” He makes a frustrated sound. “Fuck. This is because Caleb texted his location.”
I glance at him, then turn my attention back to the road. “He couldn’t have guessed Seven would be so…” I hesitate. I don’t want to say stupid , but I really do want to bend him over and give him a solid spanking when we get him back.
“Take this turn,” Havoc says suddenly. I look where he’s pointing, but I don’t see a road.
No road, but there’s a small break in the desert brush that could maybe resemble a path. Fuck. I do a sharp turn with my SUV, taking us off the paved highway.
Away from the safety of real infrastructure.
“You’re sure about this?” I ask Havoc.
“No. But it’s the only path on this side of the mountains,” Havoc answers. “My phone doesn’t have reception anymore, by the way.”
Of course it doesn’t.
Today keeps getting better and better.