Chapter Six
Grayson
“First things first,” Jake began, looking at me through his glasses. “Carrie’s trust fund has been moved, just as a precaution. That money is most likely the motivator, but there’s no way in hell I’m letting whoever has her get to it.”
I nodded, leaning back in my seat, all business now. “Where is it?”
He pulled out his phone, typing something, and then a second later, my phone dinged. My eyes landed on it, noting it was in front of Hayes. Without a word, my right hand slid it over to me, keeping his eyes on Jake. I grabbed it and opened the message, detailing her new account information.
“I left just under a thousand in here for her, just in case,” Jake noted when I looked back up, leaving the rest of the words hanging in the air. Just in case she manages to escape.
I nodded and moved on. “Did you get the surveillance footage I sent you?”
“Pulling it up now,” Jake replied, tapping some keys on his laptop. A second later, the projector screen came alive, and the five of us were looking at the inside of the General Store in Astoria. We watched in silence as Carrie entered the store, looking at her phone. She was texting me at the time, and when she looked up, she pocketed her device, greeting Jimmy, the owner. They had small talk for a few moments before she made her way through the produce section, down the center aisle, towards the office supplies. While she was looking, a man entered the store wearing dark clothing.
“Larks has a partner, I see,” Ash said darkly.
“We knew she wouldn’t have been able to do this on her own,” Hayes noted.
My eyes remained on the screen as Jimmy greeted the man with a smile before going back into the office for a moment. The man looked around the front of the store, clearly searching for Carrie. He went down the first aisle, then the next, then the next, and when he got to the center aisle, he blocked Carrie’s path. My hand curled into a fist on the table, my jaw tightening.
Dominic turned his chair slightly, his eyes on me. “Gray,” he called softly.
My eyes sliced to him as I gave him a single nod. I was good. Truly, I was. Whatever the hell happened in my office wouldn’t be happening again. Carrie was what mattered, not my shit.
When I looked back to the screens, I saw Carrie moving past the man, heading down the aisle. She was nearly to the front when he grabbed her from behind. He yanked her back against his body, stifling her scream of terror, the packets of paper falling from her arms onto the floor. I leaned forward as the man whispered something in her ear, causing her to flinch before he shoved her forward into the shelving, knocking canned goods to the ground.
Everyone was tense, the air thick with anger as we watched.
Carrie reared her head back into his jaw, and he released her. She ran to the front, crying out for help as Jimmy emerged from the office. There was a pop that rang through the air, and my eyes darted to the man standing at the mouth of the aisle, his gun pointed at Jimmy. Carrie was on the ground now, trying to crawl to the old man. Jimmy’s wife came out next, and the man shot her too. She went down, and then his focus was back on Carrie.
My gut tightened, knowing what I was about to watch.
He pulled her back into the aisle by her foot as she pulled out her phone, scrambling to call someone.
You.
She was trying to call you, Grayson.
A sound came from my throat as he stepped on her wrist, snatching the phone from her. A low, muttered curse came from Jake when he kicked her in the face. I couldn’t say anything; I was too busy trying to keep my anger in check. Hayes sat forward suddenly, pointing at the screen. “Pause,” he ordered Jake.
The video paused, and we all stared, our eyes on the image of the man’s face.
“He looks awfully similar to Robert Hale, does he not?” Dominic asked the room, reading my mind.
I fell back in my chair, the air escaping my lungs as I stared at the man who took Carrie.
“Once I get past the FBI firewalls, I’ll run facial recognition,” Jake promised.
“He’s too old to be Carrie’s father-in-law,” Ash noted, looking at me.
“The Hale children are dead,” Dominic reminded us.
“On paper,” Hayes added, folding his arms over his chest, looking at the table, brows furrowed now.
“Zoom in for me, Jake,” I commanded. I stared at the man, noting how similar yet different he looked to Robert Hale. He was heavier, a small gut protruding from his unzipped coat, his face rounded. This wasn’t Robert Hale; it wasn’t possible. Carrie saw his body chopped into bits. This wasn’t Robert’s father either.
That only left Brandon, the dead brother.
“I want everything you can find on Brandon Hale’s fatal car crash,” I told everyone in the room, leaning forward once more.
“You think it’s him?” Jake asked from the front of the room, his brows raised slightly.
“I know its him,” I returned.
“So Monica Larks and Brandon Hale are the targets,” Hayes declared.
I looked at him, nodding once.
“What about the moving company in Jersey?” Ash asked, meeting everyone’s eyes. “That could be his.”
“It would make sense,” Dominic agreed with a nod.
“The building belongs to a Harry Brown,” Jake told us, pulling up the title for us to see.
“Harry Brown. H and B. B and Ha. Brandon Hale,” Dominic put together. He shook his head. “This man isn’t the brightest.”
“Of course, he isn’t,” Hayes cut in. “He’s going after a woman, not only under Red Snake’s protection, but also the protection of Carrie’s old connections in St. Louis.”
“Are we bringing Oasis in on this?” Ash asked.
I shook my head, sharing a look with Hayes. “We’re keeping them out of it.”
The boys nodded, not asking questions before moving back to Brandon Hale. “How does a man like Brandon Hale fake his death?” Jake asked, looking at Ash.
A shadow fell over the ex-Navy Seal’s face then, his past haunting him—more so than mine. “He’d have to have very powerful friends.”
Robert.
My gut was telling me Robert had something to do with Brandon’s “death.” Clearing my throat, I cut in. “Something is telling me Robert was behind this.” All eyes landed on me. “We need to get in contact with the Hales. Soon.”
Dominic was heading to St. Louis to have a conversation with Carrie’s old in-laws when she was kidnapped. Everything had been derailed. My eyes met Dominic’s. “When we’re done with Gelling, I need you to head back to St. Louis.”
He nodded once.
I shifted the conversation then. “Ash, what’s your plan?”
When Ash was in the Navy, he was in charge of mission coordination, much like he was with Red Snake. He also had dozens of kills under his belt, most of them powerful threats to the American government. He, along with his team, broke into countless secured locations seamlessly. He was clean and swift. That was why he was the best man for figuring out how Red Snake was going to break into a prison to talk to Bradley Gelling.
Ash rose from his seat and turned to grab something. A second later, he was rolling out the building layouts for the prison, the blueprints. At the sight, Jake muttered something under his breath before coming to the table. “Please don’t tell me we have to go through the sewers again,” he groaned, rubbing a hand through his long ginger hair.
My eyes snapped up to him. “You can sit this one out, Jake,” I offered, knowing he didn’t like small spaces.
He shook his head once. “I’m not sitting anything out until we have Carrie back,” he said firmly.
“Good,” Ash said. “And no, we don’t have to through the sewers, but I might have to place a few bombs.”
Dominic looked to the ceiling. “Fucking hell. This is like Kansas City all over again.”
“Relax,” Ash assured him.
Before I could say anything, Hayes beat me to the punch. “Ash, you blew up a fucking parking garage.”
Ash, being Ash, wasn’t phased in the slightest. “What’s your point?”
“It was a fucking building, that’s the point,” Jake deadpanned.
“Was anyone hurt?” Ash asked. “No, and the job got done and we got paid. Moving back to the prison, this should be a simple in and out.” He pointed to the main entrance. “Dominic will enter here and check in at security while the four of us enter through here.” He dragged his finger across the thick paper, pointing at a smaller entrance in the far corner of the west building.
“Why that entry point?” I asked, standing so I could get a better look, Hayes and Dominic following suit.
Ash looked to Jake, letting him take over for a moment as he answered, “There’s only one security camera in that section, and it has a blind spot. We’ll have a ten-second window to get the door open and get inside.”
“From there,” Ash said, pointing down the long hall, “we’ll head down this hall, make a right, and then it’s a straight shot to where Dominic will be.” His finger landed on a small room in the west end of the structure.”
“Good. We can get this done without going through the whole fucking campus,” Hayes said, nodding.
Ash’s lips thinned. “Don’t get too excited.”
“Why?” I pressed, stroking my bearded jaw.
“We’re going to have to go in dark.”
“Wonderful,” Hayes muttered, sighing.
My eyes snapped to Jake, jaw tight. “They got a scramble?”
He nodded once. “I could hack into it, stop the frequency, but that would draw attention to us, and—”
“—we need to be quiet,” I finished for him.
We continued going over more details, and once we were done, the boys left to get ready, leaving Hayes and me in the meeting room alone.
I braced my hands on the table and bent my head as I took a deep breath, closing my eyes.
“I’m sorry.”
My head lifted, and I found Hayes with his forearms on the back of his chair, his green eyes on me, pain swirling inside them.
“Don’t apologize for my fucking shit, Mitchell,” I muttered, looking down at the table. “There was nothing you could’ve done.”
“I shouldn’t have left you alone,” he countered, his voice sincere.
I huffed a small laugh of disbelief. “Hayes, I just went into my office—”
“That’s not the fucking point,” he all but clipped back at me. His shoulders were tight. He was on edge. “You asked me to not let you go there, and you did.”
Fuck, he was blaming himself.
“Hayes—”
The door flew open, and our heads snapped to find Dominic, the office phone to his ear.
“What is it?” I asked, rising to my full height.
“Humbly got a hit on a stolen van in Astoria.”
I stiffened, a cold chill shooting down my spine as Dominic held the office phone out to me. “Please tell me you’re running that fucking plate, Humbly,” I said once the phone was against my ear. I moved then, Dominic and Hayes right behind me as I headed straight for Jake’s cave.
“Of course, I have,” Humbly shot back.
I found Jake behind his desk, sliding one of his many laptops into his backpack. He jerked his chin. “We got something?”
“Sheriff Humbly got a hit on a stolen van from Astoria,” Dominic explained as I put the phone on speaker and rounded Jake’s desk.
“Jake, run it,” I ordered to my tech genius before ordering Humbly to repeat the plate number. Jake put in the number, and a second later, a picture of a black van came onto the screen as I ground my teeth, my jaw popping.
“We believe the man who kidnapped Carrie also stole the van,” Humbly explained on the phone as Jake muttered something under his breath and turned to his second screen, his fingers flying over the keyboard. I watched as he input the address registered to the van and pulled up an image of the house—which was down the street from Blue Beauty, Carrie’s house.
“What are you looking for, Jake?” I asked, leaning over him, my eyes on the screen as Ash walked in, joining the rest of the team.
“There’s a traffic camera at the end of Carrie’s street,” he told me, tugging at my memory.
Fuck, there was.
A flicker of hope sparked inside my chest, threatening to grow quickly. Despite how good it felt, I needed to snuff it out. Relying on hope alone was a fool’s errand.
“What’s your guy pulling up?” Humbly asked over the phone.
“Traffic cameras,” Hayes and I answered at the same time, his eyes flicking down to the phone on Jake’s desk.
“You—Grayson, your guy hacked into my fucking traffic cameras?” the sheriff clipped.
“Of course I did,” Jake answered for me as he pulled up a video. My eyes dropped to the time stamp.
Forty-eight hours ago.
“Grayson, I swear to God, if you don’t get your man—”
My head snapped over to find the phone in Hayes’ hand, the call ended. “I can see why you wanted to kill him,” he noted, annoyance lacing his voice.
Ash and Dominic chuckled as I looked back to the video, my eyes on the black van sitting on the side of one of the houses. At the top of the screen, you could see my woman’s pretty blue house on top of the hill, where, at the time, I had my cock buried inside her.
Pulling myself away from those thoughts, knowing they would only piss me off now, I returned my attention to the van. Jake sped up the video, the sun moving across the sky, and just when the sun was about to set, Monica Lark appeared.
My upper lip curled, and the next words out of my mouth were filled with nothing but malice.
“I’m putting a bullet in her fucking head.”