Chapter Nineteen
“THIS IS GETTING out of hand, we need to make a move. Now. Stop him before he does anything worse,” Sam says, voice flat with that cold certainty that makes people listen.
We’re crowded into Stefan’s office–me, Sam, Josh, Stefan–elbows and maps and too much coffee.
It’s been hours since Surry’s panic attack.
She’s asleep in her room; the girls and Richie are taking shifts watching over her so she won’t wake alone.
I told myself that was enough. That I could sit here and plan and then go to her and be the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes.
But the idea of her curled up and fragile while we chase ghosts makes my teeth ache.
“Surry can’t keep dealing with this,” I say. The words taste like iron. “She’s going to break if we keep dragging her through it. My job is to protect her — not just her body. Her mind too. We remove her from this. Full stop.”
Stefan nods; Sam and I lock eyes. They offer no pushback, we’re all in agreement. I feel the small, ugly thing at the edge of my chest–the thought that maybe I should have done more earlier. That if I’d been faster, smarter, this wouldn’t be happening. I shove it down and look for action.
“Let’s see if we can pinpoint a location if I give him a call,” I say.
I want to bait him, make him slip. Josh smirks because he knows me the way brothers know each other, the part of me that rants, becomes the part that moves.
“Get Corver on the phone so he can tap in and hopefully find this bastard.” Stefan snaps at one of his men, who opens a secure video line, and we get three for the price of one.
Corver, Gunnar, and Arnie are on the screen looking at us, and we fill them in on what we want to do.
“What if it makes him angrier?” Sam asks. He’s thinking of Bridget, of collateral. “He might do something worse.”
“If we call, he has less leverage,” I say.
“He won’t act until he thinks he can take Surry.
He won’t get her.” I pace. I can feel hands on me, the steadying presence of people who know how to take a man apart and put him back together.
I see Josh’s hands holding my shoulder, and I look from him to the screen.
Gunnar gives me a shallow nod, encouraging me as well.
I pick up the phone. Corver’s fingers dance across a laptop screen–he’s already pushing at Gavin’s comms, trying to get a bead on the man. Five minutes and the line is live.
The receptionist answers exactly like I hate: polite, but a tremor under the surface.
“Hello, you have reached Callie at Kelly Enterprises. How can I direct your call?”
“Send me to your boss, and I won’t take no for an answer,” I say.
“Oh, okay sir, let me see if he is in,” she says, and then the world’s ugliest hold music pulses through the speaker. I can feel all of them leaning in.
“God, even his hold music is fucking ugly,” I mutter. A few of them chuckle; Stefan rolls his eyes. Corver clears his throat and says he’s got a line into Gavin’s work phone; he’s working on the cell. “Do not hang up until I say,” he cautions. I nod.
I don’t want to let the receptionist go, anyways. Her voice is frayed.
“Hello, sir, may I ask who is calling?” she asks when she comes back on.
“No, but trust he will want to talk to me, are you safe?” I can’t help myself. I throw the offer out because I don’t trust the cheap warmth behind corporate voices.
“I’m–I’m sorry sir? I don’t understand your question. Safe from what?” Her voice trembles harder.
“Take this number down. If you need help, call me. Any hour. I or one of my associates will come for you. Do you understand? Take the number down. Now.”
“Sure…okay.” I hear a pen scratch, and I hope it’s not just a habit. I’m not letting anyone be a cog in his machine.
“Now, I am ready to be transferred when you are.”
“Okay, I will transfer you now, sir, one moment.”
The hold music begins and then suddenly stops. For a beat, I taste the room’s stale air.
He grunts, then a voice I despise comes through.
“This is Gavin.”
The conversation unfolds like a choreographed dance where I already know all the steps.
His voice—that particular blend of honey and gravel—slides through the phone and settles in my ear like an infection.
Each word lands with the precision of a boxer's jab: calculated, measured, designed to wound without leaving visible marks.
My knuckles whiten around the receiver as heat crawls up my neck, my jaw clenching so hard I can hear my molars grinding.
The familiar rage builds not in waves but in concentric circles, expanding outward from my chest until my fingertips tingle with it.
I did my part and kept him on long enough to serve its purpose, both for getting a location and to ignite the war drums in my soul.
“Got the location on his work phone,” Corver says without ceremony. “It’s a landline. I need more digging to find his cell. Also–weird–trackers are pinging on all your phones. All of yours are safe. Surry’s phone shows a Seattle ping.”
“Seattle?” Sam blinks; the word lands in the room like a thrown brick.
I run out of the room. My feet carry me to Surry’s room, my heart a fist. The door is cracked, the light a sliver.
I push it open, and the small world I’ve been holding–the covers, the scent of her–is gone.
The bed is empty, sheets bunched over nothing.
Her phone is gone. Her side of everything has been stripped.
“ALISHA!” I roar. The name echoes off crown molding, and within breaths, Alisha barrels in, breath ragged.
“What is it–” she starts, but then she sees the bed and the words leaves her throat sounding dry and cracked. “Where is she?”
“Who is supposed to be watching her?” Names spill out, panicked — Richie, Hazel, Juniper. They come running, faces ashen. Selene lurches in, limping, the sight of her sister’s empty bed collapsing something inside her.
“Who was with her?” I bark. No one answers quickly enough. Hazel’s voice breaks; she was in Selene’s room. Time slipped. It’s always time, slipping. Selene starts crying, and the house tilts. I don’t have patience for anyone’s grief right now. Surry is gone.
My knees hit the floor before I fall to the side, like I can feel every second.
The room spins. I clamp my hands on my knees.
Something sharp and animal snaps in me. The part that wants to tear out throats.
Josh punches me in the chest. Hard. I didn’t see the fist coming; it lands, and the pain is an anchor.
“Get your fucking head on straight, man,” he says. “She took a small boat. Black clothes, sunglasses, hood. She wasn’t taken in a truck. She went willingly. I don’t know how we missed it. Gavin called, Corver checked the call logs. He must have threatened her, or Bridget. We need a plan.”
A small boat. She chose it. A hundred versions of why tumble through my skull, and I’m dizzy with them: guilt, relief, fury, helplessness. If she went, why didn’t she tell me? Why did she think she had to go alone?
I look at Stefan. “Do you have gear here? If not, I’ll hit Ballard and grab mine.”
Stefan gives that slow, dry grin. “Ah, me son. I’ve all that an’ more, I do.” He taps the table with a ring, and the men who move under his orders already shift into lines I recognize.
We march back into the office, and Corver is already back in his world, eyes blue with code.
“I’m in a backup office,” he says, but he’s doing work right now.
“Arnie’s gone to Tacoma. Gunnar’s going to help me move closer when I find the Warehouse I am sure he will end up in if the intel on Natasha is good. I’m pulling every feed.”
“Good,” I say. “We will pack up here and head that direction. Let us know the location to meet you in Seattle.” Corver nods, and the rest of us move out to collect what we will need.
Before I exit, I place my open hand on Sam's chest, feeling his heartbeat hammer against my palm.
His jaw tightens, a muscle twitching beneath the three-day stubble that darkens his face.
"We get her back," I say, my voice barely above a whisper but hard as tempered steel.
My eyes meet his—two mirrors reflecting the same desperate fury, the same raw fear.
“I can’t lose her again, Brenden. I won’t.
It was bad enough the first time.” His gaze holds mine for a breath, and I give him a single, sharp nod.
I understand. I turn away, boots scuffing against concrete as I fall in step with the rest of the men, their weapons gleaming dully under the fluorescent lights.
We move fast because there’s only one direction that matters: forward.
Bags are thrown together. Stefan’s boats are loaded with the kind of kit that smells like rubber and oil and certainty.
We don black and pack light. The chatter is clipped, everyone running on coffee and adrenaline.
There’s no room to be sentimental in the hull of speed boats hurtling east; that will come later, if we live.
On the way to Seattle, the world goes by in strips of bright sun, which is unusual for Washington this time of year, and industrial coastlines.
Corver calls from the backup office; he’s already scraping the grid and turning over cameras.
Gunnar texts an ETA. Arnie is standing by in Tacoma; we’ll bring him in if we need the muscle.
Right now, he serves us better by being attached to his screens.
We get to the safe house Corver keeps, a nondescript block building with one of those garage doors you’d ignore if you saw it every day.
It smells like electronics and takeout. Corver and Gunnar arrive within the hour, faces set and ready.
We are not far from the coast, near a section of warehouses, praying to whatever god might listen that these will be the right ones.
They dump laptops, lay maps, and immediately start overlaying feeds.