36. Domenic
“Mackenzie?”I knock on the door of the women’s changing room. “Hurry the fuck up.”
“I know women take forever to get ready, but this is fucking nuts,” Tino moans.
Kirill grins. “She is making herself beautiful for us.”
I glance over my shoulder at him. “She doesn’t need to try.”
Bored of waiting around, I push into the women’s changing space. Immediately, I feel the absence of another person. I don’t know what weird, spider sense tells me Mackenzie isn’t here, but it’s blaring like an alarm.
“Mackenzie?”
I turn and push open every stall door just to be sure, and then, heart picking up speed, I check the showers.
“Mack? You in here?”
No response comes.
Fuck.
I explode out of the door, sending Kirill stumbling back, but I don’t stop as I break into a run. As if we’re one hive mind, the other two don’t question me, but follow hard on my heels.
The bright sunlight has me blinking for a moment, but I look around. Nothing. Where the fuck is she?
I walk in one direction and Tino takes the other. Kirill walks over to the fence and looks out at the meadow beyond as if he’s going to see Mackenzie frolicking in there like a lamb.
“Hey.”
Tino’s shout has me whipping my head around. He’s holding something up, and as I jog over to him, my chest tightens. It’s a phone.
“What the fuck?” Kirill stares at it, his face blanched of all color.
“Who was she talking to?” I demand.
Tino scrolls, and then he holds up the screen to me. Lola.
“Call her back,” I say.
He does, putting it on speaker.
A female voice answers.
“Mackenzie? Oh, my God. What happened? Are you okay?” Lola’s tone is high-pitched and trembling.
Shit. What did she hear?
Tino speaks into the phone.
“Lola, this is Valentino. I’m a friend of Duch—erm, Mackenzie. Can you tell us what you guys were talking about? What happened? She’s gone.”
“What do you mean gone?” Lola sounds like she’s about to cry.
“She’s disappeared. Literally stepped out, likely to talk to you, and poof. She’s gone.”
“It’s him.” She starts to cry openly now. “It has to be him.”
“Who?”
“The professor. He and she … it’s weird. Something was going on. I can’t say. I just know he has her in his sights. He was here. Threatened me. The man is obsessed.”
Not as fucking obsessed as I am, and if he’s got our Duchess, I’ll gut him like a pig. I’ll make him eat his own entrails. The pain I will put him through if he hurts one hair on her head will be horrific, and I will drag it out.
“Did you tell him where she is?” Tino asks.
“No.” Lola sniffs. “I would never. He found her mom’s car. And then he found something with the initials VF on it, though I don’t know why that’s so important. I didn’t betray her, but he will find her. It seems he already has.”
“When was he with you?” I try to keep my voice calm.
“I-I’m not sure. A few hours ago. As soon as he left, I tried calling her, but she’d not been answering. As soon as she answered I told her.”
She wasn’t answering because we were fucking her, and that has put her in danger. Yet again, we’ve caused her harm. It might not have been purposeful, but we keep fucking her life up one way or another.
If I were a good man, I’d walk away. Leave her to build a healthy and happy life without us three toxic fuckers in it. Maybe I’ll find the strength to do that, eventually, but first, I will find her and make sure that piece of crap who has her can’t hurt her.
“Wait one minute.” Kirill holds up a finger. “If he was with Lola only a few hours ago, how did he get here so fast?”
Kirill has a point.
I turn my attention back to the phone. “Do you know the exact time he was with you?”
“No, not exactly,” she replies. “Sorry. It’s all been so stressful. I think I went into shock. I’ve never been attacked like that before.”
“Lola, if he calls you again, you need to let us know immediately,” I say. “Call on this phone.”
“Of course. And please, call me if you find her.”
“There’s no if.” Tino almost growls down the phone. “We will find her.”
He hangs up, and we stare at one another.
“How, though?” I say.
“Your dad,” Tino suggests. “He has contacts. People in the police, right? High ups in politics in the state. He is our best bet right now.”
“I know you hate him,” Kirill adds. “But we need him at the moment.”
I kick at a bit of gravel, but I nod reluctantly because they’re right. We do need him.
Three hours later, and I’m feeling even worse about this entire situation. The security cameras outside the spa were messed with and weren’t working when Mack was taken. It’s a sign to me that her academic stalker is more of a threat than we’d believed.
It seems the professor had a contact in the police force, too. That contact alerted the professor when Mack’s mom’s car was pinged on a camera near the motel. It has to be how he found it. I had thought of him as a nerdy professor. It appears he’s anything but. His picture shows a strikingly handsome, older man, and the idea of him with his hands on Duchess makes me want to burn down the world.
“He’s had past accusations of stalking, but nothing stuck,” my father says as he reads through the information on Paxton the cops sent over.
“How the fuck did he get to teach?” I shake my head. “It seems lax of the college.”
“He has a lot of friends in some very high places.” My father’s crocodile smile is for once reassuring to me. His shit eating grin means he’s not too worried. “Not as many as we have, or in quite as high places as those we know, though.”
“How do we find her?” Mack’s mom is barely holding it together. She shocks me when she grabs Nataniele by his lapel and shakes him. “Get her back for me, Nataniele. Bring my daughter home.”
Tears spill down her cheeks, and my father wraps an arm around her, gently guiding her to a chair.
She puts her head in her hands. “What if it’s not him? What if it’s not the professor who’s taken her?”
A muscle next to Nataniele’s eye twitches. “Why do you say that?”
“Mackenzie’s friend, Lola, said he was with her only a few hours before she was taken. How did he get here and mess with the cameras?”
Nataniele bites his lower lip. “What are you thinking?”
“People threatened us, Nataniele. We owed money, remember? They threatened Mackenzie, too. Said they were going to do terrible things to her.”
My blood runs cold. Could this be even worse than we think?
He shakes his head. “No, they got their money. We made sure of it.”
“But maybe they decided that they wanted her anyway.” Fresh tears spill from her eyes.
“I swear to you,” I say to Lucia before my father can speak, “we will find her. No matter what it takes.”
He nods. “Yes, son, we will.”
My father gives me a look of admiration. It’s not something I’m used to.
“Let’s call in some help,” he says.
“What kind of help?” Tino asks.
“The kind that can hack police cameras and security cameras. There must be some around your friend’s place. Even though whoever did this cut the footage at the health club, there’s a lot of roads around it. Lots of places close by that are the sort of houses that will have wide ranging security. It’s an expensive area around there. Lots of tech bros have summer homes in that area of real estate. Plus, we can talk to locals. Ask if anyone was seen around the small town nearby. We can find out his phone number and hack into it. There’s a whole lot of options.”
Tino’s face lifts. He glances at me, and I nod at him. Kirill looks relieved, too.
We’re going to get her back, and when we do, she’s never leaving my sight again.