Chapter 38 Knight
KNIGHT
The early-evening breeze whips through the open window of my truck as I sail down the highway, grateful that tonight’s call wasn’t anything too excessive.
I love my job just as much as any of the guys on my team, but there’s nothing I hate more than leaving for work while Harper is home.
But that’s life, I guess. It comes with the territory, and she understands that just as much as I do with her job.
Only difference is, now that she’s in charge, she can kiss her peaceful night shifts goodbye.
Not that they were really offering her much peace anymore.
It stopped raining a little over an hour ago, but the downpour has left the roads soaked, and under the soft moonlight, there’s something so damn peaceful about it. It’s got to be my favorite thing about a storm—the aftermath.
An incoming call sounds through my truck’s Bluetooth system, and as I find Harper’s name across my screen, a smile kicks up the corner of my mouth. “Hey, doll,” I say, putting my window up so I don’t have to strain to hear her over the breeze whipping in. “I’m on my way home, I should be—”
“They’re gone,” she howls, the terror in her tone not something I’ve ever heard from her before. “They’re gone. Someone’s taken them.”
“What? Doll. What the fuck are you talking about?”
“The girls,” she cries, her words almost impossible to decipher over the sound of her heaving sobs. “One second they were playing in the guest room, and the next . . . they’re gone, Knight. I . . . I don’t know what happened. I can’t find them. We’ve looked everywhere.”
“Fuck,” I mutter, stepping on the gas and flying down the highway, trying to figure out what the fuck is going on. “How long have they been missing?”
“I . . . I don’t know. A few minutes at most.”
“Have you checked the yard? Done a perimeter sweep?” I ask. “Kids like to play hide-and-seek. Are you sure they’re not just hiding somewhere?”
“We have checked everywhere, Knight. There’s no sign of them. It’s as though they just vanished out of thin air.”
“Fuck. FUCK!”
I drag my hand down my face as my stomach ties into knots, and as I push my truck to its limits, I grab my phone, immediately bringing up my home security app. There aren’t any notifications, only alarms from where Hunter, Izzy, and Harper have gone running in and out over the past few minutes.
I double-check the back door camera, but again, I get nothing that tells me what the fuck happened to the twins.
“You said they were in the guest room?” I clarify, bringing up the cameras from the side of the property, but the guest room window is in a blind spot.
It won’t give me much, but if someone has taken them, I might just see something that could give me even the slightest clue where to start looking.
“It’s okay, doll,” I murmur as I try to concentrate on the road while also scanning through the footage over the past few minutes. “We’re going to find them.”
“What if they get hurt because of me?” she cries. “I gave Jonah my word that I could do this. I told him they’d be safe with me.”
“We’re going to get them back,” I tell her, just as a shadow cuts across the front lawn.
My brows furrow, watching even closer, but the angles aren’t right, and it’s almost as though whoever is there knows exactly where my cameras are.
I can’t see what I need to see, and as frustration burns through me, I see the slightest flash of pink dart across my screen, and I screech to a halt in the middle of the highway, needing to back up the footage and really concentrate on what I’m seeing.
“I’ve got something on the security feed,” I tell Harper as I back up the footage and hit play in slow motion, feeling sick to my fucking stomach that I am stopped on the side of the road when Harper needs me more now than ever, but I have to do this.
I have to figure out what the fuck happened to those little girls. I need to know they’re safe.
Watching the footage through again, I come to the portion of pink flashing across the screen and hit pause, seeing one of the twins attempting to dash across the front lawn, and as I push forward to the next frame, I see the very edge of Mae’s face as she reaches out and grips the little girl’s arm, yanking her right back out of the shot.
“Fuck,” I grunt, throwing my phone down on the passenger seat, my chest heaving with a raging fury. “It was your mom.”
“What?” Harper says, disbelief thick in her tone. “It couldn’t be. She’s in the hospital. She hasn’t been discharged. I—”
“It was your fucking mother, doll. I got her on camera. She took the girls from the bedroom window. She lured them out and took off.”
“No, she . . . she wouldn’t do that,” Harper says, her tone breaking a million times over. “I know she’s a terrible person, but not even she’s this stupid. She would never involve the girls in this bullshit. Jonah will never speak to her again.”
“Well, she did.”
“FUCK!”
“I’m going to be there in ten minutes, doll. I need you to hold on. I need you to calm down. Do you understand me? We’re going to go and get these girls, but we’re doing it the right way with my team at our back.”
“It’s one thing for them to come after me, but the girls? They’re innocent.”
“I know,” I say. “Now, tell me you understand. Tell me you won’t do anything stupid.”
“Knight, I . . .” Harper sighs, her voice shaking. “I can’t take a back seat on this. They’re my nieces, and I gave my word that they’d be safe with me. I can’t just . . . I can’t just sit back and do nothing. Every second they could be harmed. I . . . I—”
“I don’t expect you to take a back seat, doll. I know the likelihood of that happening. I just need you to wait for me,” I tell her, unease beginning to burn through my veins, fearing that she’s going to take off, her emotions ruling her. “Now, let me talk to Hunter.”
I hear Harper’s shaky breathing as she hands her phone to Hunter, and not a moment later, his voice comes through my Bluetooth.
“Boss,” he says, fucking distraught. “I don’t know what happened.
They were right here. We could hear them laughing in the guest room, and then they just . . . They fucking vanished.”
“I don’t have time to deal with your guilt, Hunter. You can grovel later; right now, I need your head in the fucking game. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Perimeter search. What did it bring up?”
“Not much. Guest bedroom window was left ajar as though someone had tried to close it too quickly,” he tells me. “No tracks to follow in this weather.”
“Okay. I’ll be there in six minutes. Be ready to go,” I tell him. “The code to my safe is three, nine, two, zero. There are four guns, and another in my bedside drawer. Grab all the ammo and the bulletproof vest for Harper. But keep an eye on her. I can’t have her doing something stupid.”
“Got it,” he says. “I . . . wait. Harper. DON’T! HARPER! FUCK!”
There’s a scuffle, sounding as though he’s racing through my home when he roars in frustration. “FUCK! She took off with Izzy.”
“DAMN IT!”
I drag my hand down my face, slamming on the accelerator until my truck physically can’t be pushed any further, and I listen as Hunter races back through my house, the familiar beep of my safe being opened sounding through the phone.
“Be ready,” I warn him.
“She’s already gone, man. Don’t waste time coming here,” he says, both of us already knowing exactly where Harper is heading. “I’ll meet you there.”
Hunter ends the call, and before my Bluetooth even has a second to catch up, I’m already pressing call on Diesel’s number. “What’s wrong?” he asks, knowing I wouldn’t need to call so soon after just seeing him.
“Bring the whole fucking cavalry,” I tell him. “Double child abduction. Four-year-old twin girls. I want the whole fucking team on this.”
“The fuck?” he asks, but I already hear him moving, putting a game plan into action.
“Mae Slater, Harper’s mother. She kidnapped the twins from our home precisely six minutes ago,” I tell him, glancing at the time on my screen. “Harper’s already taken off after them with Izzy, and if my gut is right, Mae is leading her right into Elias’s waiting arms.”
“Fuck.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“We’ll be there,” he vows, ending the call just as swiftly as Hunter had.
My hand white-knuckles the steering wheel, and as I barrel through the streets, fury ripples through my chest, but not just because of the situation that my team is about to face, but because of Harper.
She promised me, as we stood out in the fucking road on this very highway after her release from jail, that she would never do anything reckless like that again. Never go barging headfirst into a deadly situation. Never be so fucking careless with her life that I risk losing her.
She fucking promised, and while I know these girls are her flesh and blood, what good is it going to be when she rushes in all hotheaded and gets herself killed because she didn’t have protection at her back, she didn’t have her fucking team, she didn’t have a single goddamn weapon to defend herself.
A pain twists deep in my gut.
This is different. She’s not going there and seeking trouble unexpectedly. No, she’s walking right into a fucking trap, and unlike last time, I can guarantee that Elias will be ready.