53. Chapter Fifty-Three | Theo
Chapter fifty-three
*Liam Callahan added Theo Smith-Harrington to the group chat: The Brigade*
Liam
Sophia is on a plane already, will be in Forrest Falls within two hours.
Walker
Who is Sophia?
Ryan
Liam’s tech guy that’s really a girl.
Finn
Can she start looking into stuff en route or something? I don’t want to wait two hours! Where the fuck is our sister?! What can I do?
Jack
Liam, is there anyone else we can pull in to help with this?
Liam
I have an entire network of people working on this right now, Jack. My plane will land in forty-six minutes or less. I already have the best people available in the world working on locating her. We will find her.
Ryan
I’m waiting at the airstrip for you and we’ll get to Savannah’s house as soon as possible.
Finn
What are we telling her girls?
Jack
Nothing. I’m at Dad’s right now, and the girls are all playing together, none the wiser. The plan is to keep them that way until it is absolutely necessary.
Vivian
Sav didn’t willingly leave like that. She wouldn’t do that. She wouldn’t just leave her girls. She wouldn’t just leave us.
Jack
We know, sweetheart. We are going to find her.
“Why is this group chat called The Brigade?” I ask Walker as I pace the length of Savannah’s kitchen.
He hums and the corner of his mouth tips up. “You know how they call their sibling group The Cavalry, right?” I nod. “Well, a Cavalry is typically part of a larger military group, like a division or a brigade. So that group chat, until today, was The Cavalry plus me.”
“And now I’m part of The Brigade?”
“Yeah, man. You’re a part of it. And Savannah will love seeing your name in there. It’s an unwritten rule but Jack or Liam are the ones who kind of take the lead on that stuff, so the fact that they added you, it’s a good thing.”
I pull my reading glasses off and rub my hand down my face as a frustrated sigh escapes me. “I can’t wait to be happy about that.”
“What do you mean?”
“I cannot be happy about any-fucking-thing until I know Savannah is okay, Walker. What the hell happened? And if it’s not Shane, which obviously we all know it’s not possible for him to be simultaneously involved and also in critical condition, then where the fuck is she?”
Sheriff Eddie explained that when Shane was found on the floor in his office, the cleaning crew initially thought he had suffered a heart attack, but the tests at the hospital showed a much more nefarious reason for his collapse: someone poisoned him.
His blood and urine tests came back positive for tetrahydrozoline, an ingredient in the over-the-counter eyedrops Visine.
Shane is currently unconscious, ventilated, and in critical condition in the ICU, so whoever poisoned him must have used a shit ton of Visine.
The timing of Shane’s apparent poisoning and collapse along with Savannah’s disappearance has all of us on high fucking alert.
I spoke to Pippa and she’s taking Gigi to Nashville for a shopping day with our mother, and hopefully by the time they return later this evening, all of this will be resolved. If not, my sister will keep Gigi overnight and we will go from there.
How does someone disappear in this day and age, especially when they had a tracking device, technically multiple devices, on their body?
“Do you think she’s still wearing the necklace?” Walker asks, as though reading my thoughts.
“I hope so. I’m sorry we kept it from you, just…” I shake my head, not wanting to admit to covertly tracking my girlfriend to a federal agent.
“I get it. I’m not worried about technicalities right now, and as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know anything about any of that. I’m only concerned with finding my sister-in-law and bringing her home to her family, and you.”
I clench my jaw to try and hold back the stinging in my eyes. I’m not a crier, but the thought of her not coming home? I can’t stomach that possibility. It’s not a possibility. She has to come home.
“I can only do so much if I don’t have all of the information, Liam,” Sophia snaps at him as her fingers fly across her keyboard. We’ve congregated at Ryan’s and his kitchen has become the headquarters for everything related to trying to find Savannah.
We know that Savannah was likely taken from her home sometime between 9:10 p.m. and 9:35 p.m. as her security cameras on her property, along with those at both next-door neighbors, were offline for those twenty-five minutes.
Sophia already explained that whoever is behind this likely used a jammer of some sorts to knock out any surveillance, which is also why Savannah’s necklace is still offline.
It also explains why the safety measures Liam added to her security system if anyone accessed it isn’t helpful right now.
Instead of accessing her system, which would have launched the malware designed to feed information back to Liam’s servers, the person or people that took Savannah knocked out all electronics within a certain distance from wherever the jammer was located.
The capability and knowledge to do that large of a jamming signal only reaffirms that we are not dealing with amateur hackers.
We’re hoping Savannah is still wearing her necklace and that it will eventually come back online, but so long as she’s with whoever has the signal jammer and it remains in place, the tracker in her necklace is a moot point.
We have a dedicated laptop monitoring and recording the signal, or lack of signal, so if her tracker comes back online for any length of time, we will know it’s precise location.
But so far, the necklace remains offline, and we have no idea where Savannah is—or who took her.
“Soph, I didn’t even think about what happened with her car when you were here to sweep her house. I’m sorry, I thought I was giving you all the necessary information, the oversight is my bad. I’m really fucking sorry.”
“Listen, beating yourself up isn’t going to help me or your sister right now, alright?
But between the malware on her home security system, and the malware used to knock out the security cameras at the local businesses, I might be able to find a breadcrumb to hunt down and unravel who the hell is behind this coding.
” Sophia barely looks up from her computer as her hands continue flying across her keyboard, only pausing to take a drink from one of the three beverages she has sitting next to her on the counter.
When she arrived at Ryan’s house, I’m not sure what I was expecting when Liam mentioned her hacking skillset, but the five-foot-three spitfire with dark brown hair piled up in a messy bun and vibrant turquoise eyes was not what I pictured.
“Whoever is involved with this has a very sophisticated code, and if I wasn’t so fucking pissed at them for messing with a woman, I could admire their skillset.
But no, I need to identify them so I can destroy them.
” Sophia may only be talking to herself, but she almost scares me a little, so I don’t question her.
I’m just glad she’s on our team and helping us try to find my girl.
“Did Jack say if the girls are worried at all?” I ask Walker who just got off the phone with him.
“No, they’re keeping them as distracted as possible.
But I don’t think we will be able to go much longer than dinner time without telling them something.
” Walker sets his cell phone on the island.
“Local law enforcement can’t do much until she’s been missing for twenty-four hours, so we will file the report if she’s still missing at 9 p.m., but hopefully that won’t be necessary. ”
“I know you guys don’t know me, but I promise you, I am really fucking good at what I do, and if there is a breadcrumb to find, I will find it, and blow up their entire fucking world,” Sophia says to the room.
It’s not that much comfort to me, Walker, and Savannah’s brothers that are here, but I appreciate her efforts.
I step outside and get some fresh air. It’s midafternoon and Savannah has been wherever she is and whoever she is with for approximately seventeen hours.
Is she hurt? Oh fuck, if someone is hurting her, I will kill them with my own hands.
I try to sit down but my legs bounce too much, so I jump back up and keep pacing along Ryan’s deck.
A few minutes later—or who knows how long it actually was—Ryan comes out.
“I just got off the phone with our Chief of Staff.” Ryan is the Chief Financial Officer at the hospital in Forrest Falls and has been keeping tabs on Shane’s condition.
We discovered that for some reason, Shane had listed Ryan as an emergency contact at some point in a clinic, so when the hospital was unable to reach Savannah, they searched his medical records and Ryan’s name being listed allows us to have access to his medical information.
“Shane is conscious but still requiring the ventilation assistance. They’re going to try and wean him off of that in the next hour or two, depending on how he handles it.
The doctor said that Shane waking up on his own is a good sign that he is responding to the treatment, and likely the activated charcoal to counterbalance the tetrahydrozoline poisoning.
” Ryan runs a hand down his face. “What the hell is going on?”
“I don’t know, man. But I know the timing of his poisoning and Savannah’s disappearance is not coincidental,” I tell him as we both stare out to the open fields behind his house. “I don’t believe in coincidences.”
“Me either. We are going to find her and get her back, man. We have to.” Ryan may be trying to convince both of us right now, but I’m not giving up hope.
Liam sticks his head out the back door and yells for us to come inside.
The door barely slams behind us before Sophia starts rattling off information.
“I found my fucking crumb and I’m going to get this asshole.
I have a theory that this feels like a hacker I’ve run into before, and if it is, he can’t outrun me. ”
“What does that mean?” I ask the bouncing ball of energy as her fingers fly across her keyboard.
“It means that if I can identify the hacker, I’ll hack the asshole myself and find out his level of involvement and if necessary, who he’s working with.
Someone start a clock. I bet I have him crying and squealing like a pig within forty-five minutes.
” She looks up and pierces us with a glare. “Seriously, start a fucking clock.”
“Yes, ma’am.” I open the stopwatch on my phone, not that I care how long it takes as long as it’s as fast as possible and helps us get my girl back.
We’re coming, Kitten. Hang on, and if necessary, use those damn claws.