Chapter Fifty-eight — Theo
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
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THEO
Fear was a funny thing.
I thought I knew what it felt like. Different moments in my life. As a kid, when I almost drowned. That moment made me want to conquer my fear and was ultimately why I became a swimmer. A bad car accident in my teens. An injury in college. Fear of failure.
Now I knew I’d never felt fear a day in my life.
This was true fear. It tasted metallic and sharp. It made every breath last a hundred years and pass in a fucking second.
When Brooks shouted for us through the apartment, sounding like I’d never heard him before. Telling us that we needed to go because Trinity’d been taken. I didn’t know what to do. All my thoughts had been absent other than the paralyzing fear.
Logan drove, Aiden was in the passenger seat after picking us up while the car was still rolling. He had a laptop and was locked to the screen, doing everything he could to locate her or confirm where she was.
“Fuck,” he said.
“What?”
He turned the screen toward the back seat so we could see.
Footage of Trinity walking on the sidewalk.
A man followed her. She turned back like he spoke to her, and a couple seconds later she retreated.
And ran. She didn’t let him take her, but he did anyway.
He shoved a needle into her neck and she was limply dragged into an alley.
Seconds later, a van that hadn’t been visible sped out of there.
“Can you track the plate?” Brooks asked.
“On it, but I already know where they’re going.”
I would never understand how all the computer shit he did worked. All I could do was be grateful he did. If—when—we saved our Omega, it would be entirely due to him. And the DuPonts, whose helicopter we were racing toward.
Bastian calmly taped his hands in the seat beside me. He hadn’t said a word, and didn’t need to. Whoever was between us and Trinity would fall beneath his fists, and there wasn’t a question about it.
“It’s already at the fucking port,” Aiden growled. “It—”
He went silent. The kind of silence that preceded violence.
Then I saw why.
It was the same security camera he’d shown us the other day when Trinity had done her surveillance. This time she was running. Being chased.
Growls ripped out of everyone but Logan when she was tackled to the ground. But our Omega kept fighting. She tried so fucking hard.
I pinched the bridge of my nose between my fingers, trying to control my own anger and emotions. They taped her mouth shut.
What she must be feeling—
“Here,” Logan said.
The gates were already open. I didn’t know what the hell this place was, and I asked no questions. There was a helicopter waiting, the blades already starting to warm up.
Aiden slammed the laptop shut. “They put her on the boat.”
Logan braked so fast the SUV slid as it stopped. “You have it tracked?”
“Yes.”
We all jumped out of the car and ran to the helicopter. It was loud until we got the big headphones on. The kind you saw in movies. “It’s a good thing, right? That we know where she is?”
He’d already spoken to the pilot, but Aiden’s jaw was tight. “It is.”
“So what aren’t you saying?” Brooks asked as the helicopter rose. Vertigo struck hard and fast. It wasn’t like a plane. It was entirely disorienting.
“We’re still thirty minutes away, and that’s without the boat’s speed. This isn’t a military helicopter,” Aiden said. “We can only go so fast.”
Logan dropped his head into his hands. “So we’re racing against time.”
“I hope so,” Aiden said. “Fuck, I hope so.”
Not one of us was going to give voice to our worst fear, which was that she wouldn’t be alive when we reached her.
I locked eyes with Aiden. “Could we have prevented this?”
“We’ll never know that for sure, but no, I don’t think so. They were so careful.”
Bastian finally spoke. “What happened?”
Since we had time to kill, and none of us wanted to focus on what could be happening to the woman we loved, Aiden told us everything he’d found.
“If I’d gone deeper and looked harder, maybe I could have found it sooner.
But at the same time, the only reason I made the connection with those photographers was the picture of her at the fight. ”
I hated feeling helpless. And not only because the five of us liked control. This was bigger. And it wasn’t even a fraction of what Trinity was feeling. I couldn’t imagine.
My sweet Omega thought she was going to die, and she had no way of knowing we were coming for her other than hope. Once we got her back, I didn’t know how we’d ever let her out of our sight again.
“Do we have a plan?” I asked.
“Get her,” Bastian said simply.
“I know, but we don’t know what we’re walking into. And we have to assume that they’ll be prepared for resistance. They took her off a public street on her way to meet people.”
Aiden pulled up one pant leg and revealed a holster with a gun. “Can any of you shoot?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “But I’ve only been to shooting ranges.”
He pulled out the small revolver and held it out to me, grip first. Then he reached behind himself and pulled another, larger handgun out of his waistband. “This was all I could do on short notice.”
“Something we should know about you, Aiden?” Logan asked.
A grim smile. “My family is part of an organization I no longer associate with. But I’ve been shooting guns since I was five.”
My eyebrows rose. Well… that was interesting. And it made all the cameras and kill box at his warehouse make more sense. I thought it was just because he’d made enemies as a hacker.
He looked at each one of us individually. “Are you all okay with that?”
We nodded. Aiden was pack, and we knew him now. I didn’t care what he’d done before, or about his family. If it helped get Trinity back, then thank the universe he’d been born into that life.
He looked at the pilot once and then back at us. “And if lethal force is needed?”
“Then it’s needed,” Bastian said. Then smiled the smile of a hunter. “My way will be messier.”
It had been twenty minutes, and we were over nothing but open water. Aiden checked his phone and then the displays where he’d hooked in the tracking signal. “That boat is hauling ass.”
“Where is it going?”
He shook his head. “I wish I knew. I would assume the reef they’re ‘conserving’ if they want a shot at covering this up. But…”
But they’d taken her so publicly that it might not matter.
A cover-up might not be possible. There was the security footage of them chasing her and beating her, but they wouldn’t be foolish enough to have a camera pointed where they were committing the bigger crimes.
Which was bad news for Rin. If they could make her disappear, these companies had enough money to make the consequences disappear too. “Can we go any faster?”
Aiden shook his head. “Max speed.”
Another five minutes, Aiden leaned forward after switching channels to speak to the pilot. “There’s probably not going to be a place for the helicopter to land. Not fast enough. He’ll get us as close as possible, but we’ll probably have to jump.”
“Ask him if there’s a rescue kit.”
There was one tucked behind us. It had rope. No gloves, but rope burn would be better than broken legs.
“I see it,” Brooks called. “There.”
It was a white dot in the distance, but it was visible.
Please, Trinity, be alive. Please, sweetheart.
“They put her in one of the cars,” Aiden said. “Looked like a gold sedan. Back seat. I’m going first. Bastian, you follow, then Theo.” The three most obvious weapons. “Brooks, Logan, find her while we take care of whoever’s in the welcome party.”
No arguments from any of us.
I watched the boat grow in size until I started to see the details. The boat had a crane and a magnet, just like at the port, for sinking the cars into the water. The deck was an open hole that was filled with them. And I saw people. Orange vests that stuck out like flares.
Aiden opened the door, the wind whipping inside and rocking us in our seats. He was already crouching by the door, gun in one hand and rope in the other, ready.
“Ready?”
We nodded, and I ditched the headphones.
The pilot got us closer than I thought possible, ten feet above the deck, and the men on the boat were already converging. Aiden didn’t wait before he jumped, and Bastian followed a second later.
Using the rope as a guide, I swung down onto the deck just in time to come face to face with a man running straight for me. He swung, and I ducked, turning and holding my aim long enough to shoot him in the leg.
No time. No time. No time.
Another gunshot rang out, and someone fell. Bastian picked a man up and ran toward the edge of the ship, tossing him overboard. There weren’t many people here. Many six or seven.
A bullet ricocheted off the deck next to me. I jumped for cover, aiming to return fire, but Aiden already had them down. Bastian hit another man, and the final one…
He was on his knees, and Aiden had a gun to his head.
I ran for them. Logan and Brooks were already down in the pit, looking through the cars.
“Where is she?” Aiden asked, deadly calm.
The man grinned. “You’re too late.”
“If we’re too late you wouldn’t be trying to stop us so hard. Now where is she?”
“No,” he said. “You are too late. It’s already programmed, and you can’t reach her.”
“AIDEN.” Logan yelled, pointing.
We all followed his gaze, and my stomach dropped.
Attached to the magnet, already hovering over the water, was the gold sedan.