21. Garrett
GARRETT
P aige disappears down the hall, the elevator’s ding signaling her departure, and I push up from where I’ve been lounging on the couch. My foot catches on one of the blankets from her setup the other night, making me grin at the memory. Every time one of us has made a move to clean it up, we end up tangled back on the floor.
I sigh, knowing that now would be the perfect time to tidy up the mess with no distractions. Just as I gather a couple of the throw pillows, my phone buzzes on the coffee table and I drop everything.
It won’t be the end of the world if the makeshift nest isn’t cleaned up right now.
Of the few names I was expecting to see on my phone screen, I stop short when I see that same number from the past few months that has been calling.
Maybe it’s the fact that I’m procrastinating or that I don’t know what to do in my own home without Paige here, but I decide to answer this time.
“Hello?” I say, leaving the living room to grab a drink from the kitchen.
“Is this Garrett Walker?” a familiar voice questions and I frown, pulling the phone away to double-check that this is truly a number I don’t know.
“It is,” I clip.
“Finally.” The voice sighs in relief. “Garrett, it’s Hank.”
My spine goes ramrod straight and my mouth goes dry.
“What’s going on? This isn’t the number I have saved for you.” I try to hold back the bite in my tone, but he hasn’t had a reason to call me in years.
“I’ve been trying to reach you for months. I had to get a new number during a case last year.”
“You could have left a voicemail and I would have called you back immediately,” I snap. His silence is telling of his lack of forethought and I shake my head. “What happened, Hank?”
He normally only calls to update me on appeals my parents try to submit pleading their cases for an early release. Or the one time that my dad got in a fight and was hospitalized. I might not have any love left for them, nor have I seen or spoken to them since I was a kid, but there’s always been a lingering curiosity for how they’re doing.
“Your mom got her sentence reduced. She was released on parole,” he tells me and all I can do is stare blankly across my kitchen as he continues on. “There was new evidence brought forward claiming it was all your father’s operation and that the child endangerment was out of her control.”
“That’s bullshit,” I grind out between clenched teeth. I was only in third grade when the police busted into the house one day and broke up my parents’ extensive drug ring. There’s not much I remember from my time with them. Years of therapy and being around the Mikelsons helped, but that day is seared into my brain.
My mom fully believed that just because she locked me in the closet when they had buyers over, that I would never hear or see anything. And while she’s not wrong, I never saw mich, she also wasn’t right because I understood enough to know that it was her in charge.
“I know it’s bullshit. But that’s not the real problem,” Hank tells me.
“Then what is?” I pinch the brim of my nose. My gaze lands on the time on the oven and my brows scrunch together. Paige said she’d be back in five minutes and is now going on thirty.
“No one’s seen her since her release.”
My stomach drops. “You think she’s gone underground?”
Between the news and Paige’s absence, I’m immediately heading down the hall toward the elevator and smash the button impatiently.
“No one knows where she is. Your father isn’t saying anything against her, even though she completely threw him under the bus and all her old contacts claim to have not heard from her.” Hank sighs. “Just…be on the lookout. I saw the news about your success, so it wouldn’t be surprising if she did too and tried to weasel her way back into your life. If she does?—”
“I’ll be on the phone with the police to bring her back.”
We finish up saying goodbye and I save his new number in my phone as the elevator brings me down to the office.
Eerie silence greets me as I reach our floor. My nerves are shot thanks to the news, but I focus on finding Paige and dragging her back upstairs.
My pace falters when I come across a chair from one of the editor’s desks knocked over. Deciding to fix it on my way out, I continue down the hallway toward our offices.
I call out for her, ready to make a joke about her being a workaholic, except the sight of Paige’s office nearly brings me to my knees.
Police and detectives rush about, taking pictures and seeming to mark everything they pass. It all looks the same to me from where I stand in my doorway watching.
Her office was completely trashed, the contents of her desk strewn everywhere and the phone ripped from the cord.
But it was her sweater in the middle of the floor that told me all I needed to know. I didn’t need to be a detective to know what happened.
Someone took her.
“Sir, you’re not allowed in here,” one of the officers says, pulling me from my spiral. I look over my shoulder to find two intimidatingly giant men staring down at the man in uniform like they might squash him. A man that I can only assume is Emmett Dalton spots me and raises a single brow.
I push off the doorframe, crossing down the hall and step up behind the officer.
“They’re with me,” I say, motioning to let them in. “They’re a part of my security team.” It wasn’t exactly a lie. It just wasn’t official yet either.
While I waited for the police to get here, I felt…useless. Calling Emmett was a long shot and I wasn’t even sure if they could do anything. One of his passing comments when we were on the phone bounced around my head while I stood staring at the mess.
“Security protection and recovery” is what he had described some of the company’s services as. This might not have been what he meant, but I needed to do something that wasn’t just standing around.
The cop rolls his eyes. “This is a crime scene. I can’t just let people in because you called them.”
The man beside Emmett leans down, saying something that’s too low for me to hear. The officer pales, scrambling to step aside and let them through.
I nod back down the hall and they follow, pausing only to look around Paige’s office.
“You should have called us first,” the other man grumbles while passing me to plop himself on my couch. He pulls his laptop from a bag I hadn’t noticed earlier and makes himself comfortable.
“Normal people like to follow the law, Park.” Emmett turns to me, offering me a tattooed hand. “Nice to officially meet you. Circumstances are less than ideal though.”
The other man huffs out a laugh while I quickly shake Emmett’s hand.
“Thanks for coming, I’m not exactly sure what you can do but…” I shrug, glancing at his partner, who has his nose buried in his laptop.
“That’s Parker. Horrible social skills but the absolute best person at tracking.”
I swallow thickly and nod just as one of the head detectives steps into the office.
“We got the security footage,” he starts, but Parker cuts him off.
“Have it pulled up here.”
The detective sputters out his protests, but Emmett and I both ignore him and frame either side of Parker.
Bile rises in my throat as we watch a hooded figure enter Paige’s office and pull a gun out. Paige slowly rounds the desk and then everything happens quickly. They scramble. She throws anything her hands land on to distract him and tries to dodge him. My breath catches as she makes it to her door, almost escaping, but the man is hot on her heels, grabbing the hood of her sweater and yanking back. She reacts quickly, unzipping it and dropping so it slides off, and he stumbles.
The camera follows them down the hall, switching angles to where he catches her once more by the editors’ desks. Paige grapples for a chair and just as she lifts it to throw, the man bashes her head with the butt of his gun, and she crumples to the floor.
The detective talks with Emmett, but I tune them out and close my eyes. The image of Paige collapsing plays on repeat in my mind as I try to calm my breathing.
The sound of my phone vibrating on my desk pulls me from my thoughts and I stiffly cross to grab it.
“Emmett,” I call out at the sight of a text message with an image attached from an unknown number.
My blood boils at the picture of Paige tied to a chair, her tank top askew and dirty while her head hangs limply to the side. Red stains the side of her lip and my chest tightens.
Unknown: $1,000,000 and you can have her back. Come alone.
Emmett takes my phone just as another message with an address comes in and he reads it off to Parker.
“Mr. Walker, I hate to be the one who brings this up, but we need to look at this situation from every angle,” the detective says, running a hand through his greasy hair as he takes a cautious step away from Parker. “Is there a possibility that Ms. Adams is working with someone? This could be a setup for her to get money from?—”
“No,” I cut him off, my nails biting into the palm of my hand.
“We need to prepare?—”
“Got it,” Parker says, uncaring that the detective was talking. “It’s an abandoned warehouse on the bay.” He shares a knowing look with Emmett as he slams his laptop shut. “I have everything we should need in the truck.”
Emmett nods, turning to me while the detective sputters out his protest.
“There are protocols in place! You can’t just?—”
Parker stands, towering over the detective and scowling down at him.
“We both know that we can. Call your boss if you have a problem with it.” He grabs his bag, raising a single brow toward Emmett. “I’ll be in the truck.”
He leaves without another word and Emmett turns to fill me in.
“We can get her, unless you want to pay the ransom.”
“Only as a last resort.” I motion to the door. “Let’s go.”
He smirks but shakes his head. “I don’t think so. You’ll only get in the way.”
“I’m not stupid enough to think I can go in. I know nothing about situations like this,” I explain, snatching my phone from his hand and holding his passive stare. “But I can wait in the goddamn truck and be there when you get Paige out.”
Something akin to admiration flashes in his eyes, but he only nods.
The detective sputters out his protests, but I breeze past him and follow Emmett. He pauses in my doorway, glancing sidelong at the detective with traces of a smirk on his lips.
“I’ll make sure to personally call Chief Rogers to make sure that you guys can do your paperwork correctly.”
If I wasn’t so consumed with thoughts of getting Paige back, I might have laughed at seeing the horrible cop getting put in his place.
There are swarms of reporters outside, everyone shouting and demanding more information about what’s happening, but we leave the police to hold them back. Parker pulls up in front of the building, and I don’t spare a single glance back as we take off.