43. Noooooooo
noooooooo
. . .
Davian
A soft whizzing sounded before another set of explosions filled the sky, making me and Vince both hug the wall.
“Are we under attack?” I asked in disbelief.
This day couldn’t get any stranger.
Vince shifted along the wall, creeping closer to the balcony doors. “No, it looks like… It looks like someone’s setting off fireworks?”
“At this hour?” It was still daylight.
He shrugged and eased back from the door. “It’s summer. Might be some kids messing around.”
I had my head of security on speakerphone by the time the next round of explosions went off. “What’s happening out there?”
“Fireworks on the west side,” Dante answered grimly. “Twenty feet from the property.”
“Who?”
“No sign of the culprits, but my team is on it. The explosives were set off at long range. Remote detonator.”
I frowned at the folded note on my dresser. The timing didn’t sit well. Sadie was hiding somewhere in the compound, and now there were fireworks. “Has Enzo made any progress on that footage?”
“He’s scrubbing it now.”
“Send him to my office. I want to see it.” I hung up and headed for the door, calling over my shoulder to Vince. “Come with me. We need to find Sadie.”
He snorted. “You’re acting like professionals are after her. It’s just some kids looking for trouble.”
“Things have changed,” I said, but there wasn’t time to get into it now. “Long story short, Zain Ali is Fessy’s brother. He was the one at Sadie’s apartment last night.”
Vince’s jaw dropped before he snapped it shut.
“Shit,” he muttered, voicing my thoughts as he jogged after me. “Well, that’s a curveball.”
“A big one. He’s planning something, and we need to get ahead of it.”
He grunted. “I’ll see if Malcolm’s put that team together.”
When we reached my office, I was surprised to find my father still there. I’d half expected him to be petty enough to leave after I told him not to.
“Davian.” Seb turned from the window, and I shoved back a wave of annoyance at his smirk. “Now that you’ve calmed down, I’ll set up a dinner with Gio and Dani?—”
“Not now.” I moved to stand behind Enzo taking a seat at my computer. He pulled up a screen with four different camera angles and swapped through the feeds. “Any luck?”
He straightened his black-rimmed glasses and tapped a few keys. “I found her exit point.”
“Exit point?” There it was again—the pesky snapping in my chest. “She made it out?”
His fingers froze on the keyboard, and he glanced up at me. “Not too long ago, and Dante’s patching the hole in security now. It won’t happen again.”
I rested both palms on the desk and leaned forward. “Show me.”
He hit play while Seb joined us on Enzo’s other side, and the top two cameras showed different angles of Sadie climbing down the same escape blanket-rope she’d used yesterday.
We watched in tense silence as she dropped to the ground on her ass, though Vince may have stifled a laugh behind me.
Sadie scurried across the yard like a squirrel, with that dead plant of hers in tow. She stayed out in the open—not even bothering to hug the walls or try to stay hidden. Not that it mattered, since my security had somehow missed all this.
The more footage Enzo played, the less I believed what I was seeing. Sadie’s sneaking skills were… questionable, at best. Her hand-eye coordination was even worse. When she found Bear napping by the pool, she ran straight into a patio chair and tripped over it. Soil from her plant went flying, but she straightened the chair before taking off with Bear in a half canter, half limp.
I shouldn’t have found it so damn endearing.
She headed to the eastern perimeter, where a guy I’d never seen before was waiting with a ladder propped against the wall. I leaned in, unable to stop myself from sizing him up. If possible, this guy was even larger than Vince. “Who the hell is he?”
And just how long had Sadie been planning this?
“I think he’s from the shelter.” Enzo zoomed in on the feed as the guy beckoned Sadie up to him. “Dante is pulling up files on all the volunteers.”
One of her friends, then. I told myself not to care. That it was stupid to want to kill someone just because they were helping Sadie get away from me.
But there was something about watching the girl I’d begun to think of as mine canter-slash-limp toward another man that made me see red.
I watched the feed like a hawk—just as Sadie chucked her dead plant at the stone wall. Vince couldn’t stifle a snort this time when it fell to the grass, and neither could my father.
“ That’s the woman who caught your eye?” he asked me dryly. “I thought I raised you better than this.”
The urge to grab a pen returned with a vengeance. “You should take a walk, Pop.”
He grumbled a few choice words but didn’t budge.
After some bumbling, Sadie made it over the wall, with her friend lugging Bear after her. Enzo switched to a camera angle on the other side of the wall, and Seb grunted in disgust. “What is that godawful eyesore?”
I recognized what Sadie referred to as the Dog-Mobile immediately, and my fingers flexed against the desk. “It’s a van from the dog shelter.”
But instead of getting into the van, Sadie went over to Bear and wrestled something from his mouth. She tossed whatever it was back over the wall—before everyone piled into the van.
They zoomed across the property, where Sadie’s elderly friend, Gladys, darted out of the trees and hopped into the Dog-Mobile. I watched in disbelief as they sped off without anyone from my team chasing them.
They’d even made it look easy.
“They’re heading back toward the city.” Enzo swapped to another feed that showed the back of the van.
I straightened up and checked my watch. “No one saw this happening in real time? The ladder? The van? Nothing?”
Enzo wouldn’t meet my eyes. “We don’t actively monitor the perimeter walls, so it was only caught on camera. By the time the motion detector alerted us to the activity, the team was on the west side, dealing with those fireworks.”
“Great.” We’d gotten outplayed by Sadie and her friends—who, I assumed, all lacked any experience with rescue operations. If this weren’t proving Vince’s assumptions about Sadie wrong, I would be more embarrassed for my security team.
Shaking his head, my father pulled out a pack of cigarettes. “This is a ridiculous waste of time. I’m stepping out for a smoke.”
I waved him off. I had more important things to deal with now.
“Dante is working to track the van down,” Enzo said as Seb slipped out the door. “Unless you want to see the footage again, I can go help him.”
“Go,” I ordered. “And send someone to find what Sadie threw over that wall. Thanks, Enzo.”
While he rushed off, I turned to Vince. “Send Malcolm and Shane after that van. Now.”
Instead of pulling out his phone, Vince scratched the back of his neck, hesitating. “Or… maybe it’s best to just let the girl go if she doesn’t want to be here.”
I stared at him. Was he making a joke? “Why wouldn’t she want to be here? The last time I saw Sadie, she was happy.”
I liked to think I’d had something to do with that, too.
He cleared his throat and looked out the window. “Well, women are fickle. She must’ve changed her mind.”
… Changed her mind?
Vince sounded nothing like himself. I studied him closely—the stubborn tilt to his jaw, his crossed arms, and how he didn’t seem the least bit worried Sadie was out there with Zain searching for her—until it hit me.
My father wasn’t the last one Sadie had spoken to before leaving.
Vince was.
And now he wouldn’t even look at me.
It’d been a long time since I felt dread like this.
“What did you do?” I murmured.
“Huh?” He coughed into his fist, glancing at me in alarm. “I didn’t do shit?—”
“Tell me exactly what you said to her, Vince.” I took measured steps closer to him, but my last shred of patience was dangerously close to snapping. “You know I’m not engaged. You know I’ve never been involved with Daniella. Tell me you told Sadie that.”
His jaw clenched. “The only thing I know is you don’t need some helpless, na?ve baker at your side.”
“You mean the girl who lifted a gun off you?” His hypocrisy made me scoff, and I pointed at the window. “And who just escaped from under your nose a second goddamn time? Don’t tell me what I need when you’re the one who needs to stop underestimating her.”
Vince’s face twisted into a scowl. “Can’t you see Seb and I are trying to protect you? Look around you. You’ve known this girl for a day, and she’s already made you soft.”
Seb and I .
Another piece of the puzzle clicked into place, and I shook my head. I couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to. “My pop knew about Sadie before he came over. Tell me you’re not the one who let that slip.”
I wanted to be wrong, but the guilt was written all over Vince’s face—especially when he refused to look me in the eye.
“ Seriously? You fucking snitched on me?”
“It was supposed to be harmless,” he muttered. “I thought he’d just tell you to cut her loose.”
“While Zain is searching for her?” Vince was the closest thing I had to a brother, but my fingers itched to choke him. “I shot the man’s family. What do you think he’ll do to Sadie if he gets his hands on her?”
His lips thinned. “I didn’t know he was involved then.”
My laugh lacked any humor, and I pulled out my phone before scrolling to the latest addition to my contacts. “Get out of my sight.”
“We’re just worried about you,” he said. When I turned away, he grabbed my arm. “Hey. I’ll make this right, okay? I’ll help you find her?—”
“You’ve helped enough,” I said coldly, shrugging him off and striding away. If I stayed, I’d take a swing at him, and my priority was to get Sadie back before anything worse happened. I’d deal with him later. “I’m not kidding, Vince. If I see you again before I get her back, you better pray my gun jams.”