Chapter 41
GRIFFIN
My bike’s not fast enough. A chopper would be faster, but arranging it, getting it here on time…
I ramp up my speed. I’m pushing it. The speedometer says I’m well over one hundred. I angle impatiently around cars on the freeway.
In my ears, there’s the tinny sound of a phone ringing, then Sasha’s voicemail message again. “The caller you are trying to reach—”
“Fuck!” I shout into my Bluetooth. I tap the button on my helmet to disconnect the call.
My phone rings a split second later.
“Slow the fuck down,” Ford yells when I pick up. He’s in a rental car somewhere behind me.
Ford doesn’t yell.
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“My wife is in fucking danger!” I shout.
“And you’re no use to her dead.” Ford matches my volume.
He’s scared. I’ve never heard him scared before. That’s because I’m acting like a fucking maniac. Right after I saw that text from Sasha, I knew she was in danger. I knew, somehow, that what happened to Lionel was connected to Creelman, to Macklin.
To my girl.
“We’re close, Griff.” His voice is still hard and loud, but I can hear him forcing calm into it. “We’ll be there in under an hour.”
Ford’s right. I need to slow down. As if to prove it, a pair of red taillights appears in front of me, coming at me way too fast. I squeal around the back of the bus, nearly fishtailing.
Adrenaline rockets through me at the near miss.
“Fuck me.” I slow down. Just a little.
“I never should have let you drive,” Ford says.
This isn’t like me. Ford knows it, and I know it. I never let feelings control me. But the gloves came off when Sasha came into my life.
“Did you get through to Cass?” I ask once my heart rate steadies a little.
“Yeah. No sign of Sasha at your place. Lights off.”
“Chester’s?” Cass said that was where Sasha said she was going tonight before her place.
A pause.
“Ford, fucking talk to me.” I feel the bike picking up speed again, and I let it come back down, breathing as calmly as I can.
“Not sure if she made it over there.”
“Well, fucking find out!”
“Take a fucking breath, Griffin. I’ve got a text into her. I’ll call when we hang up.” His voice is calm again. I veer into the fast lane to pass a semi-trailer, but I do it at a reasonable speed. Sort of.
I can tell he’s debating whether to tell me something.
“I’m okay, Ford,” I say. I’m not really, but I’m not going to kill myself on this highway. Not before I get to her.
“I heard back from Yang. He says security footage shows an unmarked van parking in the garage under the office. Guys went up dressed like pest control.”
If I could spare the loss of vision, I’d pinch the bridge of my nose. “We have the tightest security in Manhattan, and yet the front desk downstairs lets up guys in fucking bug spray suits?”
“Security’s not much use when the intruders have a top clearance badge.”
Whoever took Lionel took his access cards, too.
I grimace. “Makes sense how they got it to go up so fast.”
In the five hours since we left the city, McCrae it’s gone.
Someone—soldiers in Creelman’s organization, we’re pretty sure—got into what looks like every corner of the office with blowtorches disguised as insecticide canisters.
They used Lionel’s security badges to breeze past security.
Everything’s encrypted at McCrae, no paperwork left unscanned or unshredded, but whoever did this didn’t want to take any chances.
It was sheer luck that Ford was out of there before they came in. We were already en route to Quince Valley when it happened, because of that text Sasha sent. And much worse, because she hasn’t responded since.
I still don’t know where she is, and that fact makes me feel like someone’s scraped out my insides with a rusty spoon.
There are only two reasons Sam Macklin would have tracked his sister down: either he and Creelman’s people need her for leverage or something worse, or he knows what’s going down and he’s genuinely concerned for her well-being.
I can only pray, knowing he cared for her once, that it’s the second. But with her missing, I’m too much of a pragmatist to think it’s anything but the first.