Chapter 26
SEBASTIAN
The police and ambulance are already outside Val’s house when I get there.
I park crooked at the curb and get out without killing the engine.
One of my men pulls in behind me, but I don’t wait.
I’m already moving up the driveway, eyes locked on the open ambulance doors and the woman sitting on the back bumper with a blanket around her shoulders.
Gia.
Her hair is falling out of its knot. One side of her face is swollen and there’s dried blood crusted at the corner of her mouth. A paramedic crouches in front of her with a penlight, trying to check her pupils, but she keeps looking toward the house like she expects Val to walk out of it.
She sees me, and her face crumples. That tells me enough before she says a word.
“Where is she?” I ask.
The paramedic turns his head sharply. “Sir, you need to give us some room.”
Gia grabs my sleeve before I can answer him. Her hand is shaking badly.
“I don’t know.” Her voice cracks on the last word. “I don’t know where she is.”
I crouch in front of her, ignoring the paramedic’s annoyed look. “Tell me what happened.”
“She called me.” Gia swallows hard, presses the blanket tighter around herself. “She said she was at her house. She was upset and didn’t want to be alone, so I came over. She checked the camera before she opened the door. I know she did because I told her to.”
“Gia,” the paramedic says, “you should sit back.”
“I’m sitting.” She barely looks at him. Her eyes stay on me. “I started yelling at her the second she opened the door. I didn’t even get through the sentence. I saw someone move behind me, and then I woke up on the porch with Mr. Keller standing over me.”
A uniformed officer steps closer, notebook in hand.
“Mr. Keller lives across the street. He found her around six-thirty when he came outside for the morning paper. Called 9-1-1.”
Some old man with a newspaper subscription is the only reason Gia isn’t still lying on that porch. I look past the officer at Val’s front door. It stands open now, but I can see the scene clearly in my head. Gia on the porch. Val inside. Adrian waiting in the blind spot.
I don’t let myself think about how she got out of my house.
Not yet.
“Did you see him?” I ask Gia.
Her eyes fill with tears again, which seems to piss her off more than anything. “No. I’m sorry. I tried to remember, but I didn’t see his face. It happened too fast.”
“It was Adrian.”
She nods once, too quickly, and winces from the movement. “It had to be.”
My phone is already in my hand when I stand. Nico picks up before the first ring finishes.
“Did you find her?” he asks.
“No. Get to Val’s house now.”
“What happened?”
“Gia was attacked. Val is gone.”
There’s a sharp sound on the other end, like he knocked something over getting up. “I’m coming.”
He hangs up first. I turn toward my man at the curb.
“Pull the doorbell footage. Front, side, street if she has it stored. I want it on my phone in two minutes.”
“Yes, sir.” A police officer steps in front of me before I can move toward the house.
“This is an active scene,” he says. “We can’t have you contaminating evidence.”
I look down at him.
“Call your boss and tell him Sebastian DeLuca is asking questions. He’ll tell you exactly what I can and can’t do.”
His jaw tightens. “We’ll need a statement.”
“You’ll get one from her when I bring her home.”
I walk around him before he decides whether to be stupid about it.
Inside, Val’s house looks normal. A lamp glows in the living room. Her purse sits on the kitchen island. Her phone is on the floor near the entry, screen cracked. I pick it up with my handkerchief because the officer wasn’t completely wrong about evidence, even if he is currently useless to me.
One of my men comes through the door behind me. “Footage is uploading now.”
“Send it to Matteo too.”
“Already did.”
Good. At least one person is thinking.
I step back onto the porch as Nico’s SUV comes in too fast and stops half on the curb. He’s out before the car settles, eyes sweeping from the police cruiser to the ambulance to Gia.
He goes to Gia first.
“Nico,” she says, and the shift in her voice makes me notice something I don’t have time to think about.
He crouches in front of her, taking her hand carefully. “You okay?”
“I will be.”
He lets out one hard breath. “That’s good.”
“I lost her,” she whispers.
“No,” he says immediately. “You didn’t. This wasn’t your fault.”
Her face crumples again. He touches her cheek with two fingers, careful of the bruise, then stands and turns to me.
All the softness drains out of him. “Tell me.”
“Adrian took her.”
“Where?”
“I’m working on that.”
“That’s not a good enough answer.”
“I couldn’t agree more. But you know nothing is going to stop me from finding her.”
For once, he doesn’t try to argue.
My phone buzzes with the first footage file. I open it, and Nico steps close enough to watch over my shoulder. The doorbell camera shows Gia approaching the porch, half-dressed and annoyed, exactly the way she looks now. The door opens. Val appears inside.
Then motion comes from the left, just outside the main angle. Gia goes down. Val lunges forward. A hand catches her arm. The camera catches Adrian’s profile for less than a second as he drags her out under the porch light. Enough to identify him.
Nico makes a wrecked sound. I close the video before he has to watch Adrian haul her away.
He grabs my wrist. “Show me the rest.”
“No.”
“Sebastian.”
“No.” I meet his eyes. “You don’t need that in your head.”
He looks ready to hit me, and for a moment, I almost let him. Then Gia makes a pained noise from the ambulance, and his attention snaps back to her.
“She needs you here,” I say.
His eyes cut back to mine. “Don’t do that. You’re not going to talk me out of looking for my sister.”
“She has a concussion at minimum. She’s scared, and she shouldn’t be alone.”
“My sister is missing.”
“I know.”
“Then don’t ask me to sit here.”
“I’m not asking because I think you want to. I’m asking because Val would never forgive either of us if Gia was left alone after this.”
That gets him.
He looks toward Gia. The paramedic is trying again to talk her into going to the hospital, and she’s shaking her head like stubbornness is a medical treatment.
Nico curses under his breath. “I hate when you’re right.”
“Take care of her,” I tell him. “That’s your only job right now. I’ll bring Val back. You have my word.”
He nods and walks toward Gia just as my phone buzzes again. Matteo’s name fills the screen.
“Tell me you have something,” I say.
“I have the sedan,” he says. “Traffic camera picked it up four blocks from Val’s house at 12:48, heading east. Plates changed again, but it’s the same car. Sending the route now.”
A map loads on my phone seconds later. The sedan cuts through side streets, avoids main intersections, then disappears near a stretch of older properties tucked into the hills. I zoom in.
“What’s there?” I ask.
“Old estates. Some occupied, most empty. Look at the one I marked.”
The pin sits over an abandoned mansion off a private road. The property is half hidden by trees, purchased three years ago through a holding company I recognize from one of Adrian’s files. I know it before Matteo says another word.
“That’s where he took her,” I say.
I’m already moving toward my car, phone pressed to my ear.
“I’m ten minutes out,” he says. “Want me to come to the house?”
“Meet me at the estate. Bring two men, quiet ones. No convoy.”
“Nico?”
“He’s staying with Gia.”
Matteo pauses, and I know he understands exactly how ugly that conversation was. “Good.”
“Do we have house plans?”
“County records are old. I’m pulling what I can.”
“Send them.”
“Already doing it.”
I get into the car and slam the door harder than necessary.
Outside, the street looks obscenely normal. Neighbors stand on their lawns pretending not to watch. Somewhere down the block, a dog barks without stopping.
I don’t look back.
The map sits open on the dash, the abandoned estate marked in red. I pull away from the curb and press my foot down.
Adrian has made his last mistake.