Chapter 34
Ethan
Ascream jerked me awake. Thin, shrill, bloodcurdling.
Kat and I both practically levitated off the bed, grabbing the nearest article of clothing, with Kat snagging my T-shirt, and me the bathrobe that lay on the floor.
I took the gun from my nightstand before we ran out, keeping Kat behind me.
We sprinted, barefoot, toward the relentless screams that came from Holly’s room.
I slapped the door open. Holly sat on her bedroom rug, her head in her arms.
Kat dropped down to the floor and gathered her up. “Baby, what happened? Are you hurt?”
“V-v-v-video.” Holly’s normally rosy face was colorless. “Of Dad.”
My stomach dropped. “What video, honey? From where?”
Holly held up her smartphone. It had a pink cover, featuring some cartoon princess or other. “From this.”
Kat pried Holly’s trembling fingers loose of the device. Her eyes met mine, full of dread.
“Text message,” Holly said faintly. “It had a link, and I…I clicked it.”
I hissed under my breath. “Oh God, baby. We talked about this. You should have brought it to me.”
“I know,” she whispered. “Sorry, I just…I couldn’t wait. I couldn’t stand it.”
There it was, in the messages, all caps. I HAVE SOMETHING YOU WANT, then a link. I braced myself, hoping Holly hadn’t witnessed something unspeakable.
“Is this actually your phone, honey?” I asked. “Are you sure?”
“I-I-I thought it was mine,” she faltered. “It has the same cover. I guess someone could have s-s-switched it out. I just don’t know when.”
“Can I look at it here?” I asked gently. “Do I need to take it in the other room?”
Holly shook her head. “No, look now. I want you to see it right now.”
I set the video to play. The camera first showed a beam of light coming from a high-up window, slowly panning down and showing a huge room, metal beams. A warehouse of some kind.
The camera shifted lower and focused on a man who sat hunched on the ground, next to a concrete wall.
He wore a filthy T-shirt and ragged sweatpants.
He was extremely lean, his hair long and tangled, his beard full.
My heart started to thud. The camera bounced as the person holding it snapped his fingers. “Hey, asshole! Look alive! Say hi to the camera!”
The hunched man barely tuned his head, but he glared from under his matted hair at whoever was speaking and gave him the finger.
My heart practically stopped. Shane. Thinner, hairier, dirtier than I’d ever seen him, but I knew that look. I knew those fierce eyes. It was unquestionably my brother.
The camera holder muttered something ugly, and the camera jerked as he manipulated some device. I heard a motor hum, the rattle of metal—and the chain went tight, jerking Shane up onto his feet, and then off them.
Shane grabbed the chain that held him, holding himself up so as not to be hanged. He dangled there, spinning in midair, refusing to beg or plead or even gasp.
Then, whoever held the camera lowered him to the ground. “Okay, then, if you’re so tough. Take this, you dumb fuck,” the voice behind the camera muttered.
Shane’s body arched, jerking uncontrollably as the collar administrated an electric shock. “Learn some fucking manners, ass-wipe.” The voice sounded smug.
Holly pressed her hands over her mouth. Kat glared, saying with her eyes to take the damn phone away and watch this obscenity elsewhere. But the video ended there.
“That’s all there is,” I told her. “Finished.”
My whole mind, body, soul, was all buzzing with rage, fear…and fresh hope, too. Which was the cruelest thing of all.
Shane could still be alive. He had been when that video was shot, which was months after I had last seen him. Long enough to lose all that weight, grow all that hair.
Don’t get your hopes up. That crazy emotional rollercoaster did not serve us.
I crouched down on the rug and hugged Holly. “I’m sorry you saw them hurt him, baby.”
Holly burst into tears. I met Kat’s grim gaze over her head. Then Freya and Jed burst in, dressed in bathrobes. “What the hell is going on?” Jed demanded.
Kat stepped back and let Freya gather her sobbing niece into her arms.
“Someone sent her a video of Shane,” I said.
Freya’s eyes filled with fear. She swallowed. “And was it, ah…was he—”
“Alive,” I said. “Not well, but definitely alive. At least when this was shot.”
The Drakes joined us at door, along with Mick and the rest of them, a cacophony of questions, exclamations.
“Hey, listen up,” I called out, over the din. “Everybody get out of Holly’s room. Meet me in the war room in five. We’ll watch it together on the big screen.” I turned to Kat. “Could you stay with Holly? Make her hot chocolate, or something?”
Kat wrapped an arm around Holly. “Of course.”
Freya shot her a grateful look and kissed the top of Holly’s head. “I’ll be right back with you, honey. I just have to throw on my jeans and go to this meeting.”
I ran back to my bedroom to put on some clothes. A few minutes later, Freya, me, and all the Unredeemables currently in residence were gathered in the war room.
We watched the video, then watched it again, multiple times.
Someone made some coffee, and we drank it as we watched it all again, just letting it sink in.
Memorizing every frame. It was horrific to see him that way, but I couldn’t tear my eyes off those images of my brother, starved and tortured and chained… but alive. Alive.
“I can’t believe they sent that filth to Holly,” Mick kept repeating, his voice low and furious. “Fucking sadists. They could have sent it to you, or Freya, but no. Holly, for fuck’s sake.”
“That’s Nicole’s style,” Freya said. “She’s saying, gotcha! Made you jump!”
“They’ve stripped the identifying metadata,” I said. “The video is untraceable.”
“He has enough guts left to flip them off,” Amos reflected. “Good sign.”
“Depending on how old the video is,” Darius said grimly.
“The place looks familiar,” Mick said. “Let’s look at the video again. At the place. We can mine it for clues.”
I turned to him quickly. “What clues?”
“Look at that scaffolding on the wall in the big room. Those rolls look like razor wire. Some sort of business, but the place looks defunct.”
I zoomed in, enlarging the shelves. Mick was right. Razor wire, and lots of it. Maybe this was a place that had made it, or distributed it.
“Go back to the beginning, back when the camera lens is still pointed up,” Mick said. “Before we see Shane. And listen.”
We all waited…and heard the slow build to the roar of a plane taking off. “It’s near an airport.” I said slowly. “But that’s not much help. There are airports everywhere.”
“Yeah, but look up at that window,” Mick said. “It’s a ten-meter ceiling. With those distinctive arched windows, a pattern of panes missing, the clue of the razor wire, and the flight path of an airport. Those are enough data points to start a search.”
“Too easy.” It was Kat’s voice, from the door, flat and matter-of-fact. “It’s a trap. Nicole would never give you so many clues unless she wanted you to find the place. She’s playing us. Throwing dirt in our eyes.”
“Could be, but it’s still the only lead we’ve had in months, so I’ll take the dirt,” Freya said. She glanced at her husband. “And I’ve done crazier things than that to scare up more leads. Shane was chained up in that place. We have to track it down and take a look at it.”
“Don’t let her lead you around,” Kat warned. “You’ll be like kittens following a laser pointer around. Herded and controlled.”
“How’s Holly doing?” I asked her.
“She’s hanging in there,” Kat said. “I heated up some of Angela’s frozen waffles for breakfast, and she ate almost a whole one. She’s parked in front of the TV now, watching Harry Potter. It’s her comfort watch.”
Darius typed furiously on his computer. “Here’s a list of all industrial properties within a five-mile radius of the flight paths of SeaTac. I’ve filtered out buildings that appear to be currently in use. Using that criteria, I’ve got fourteen properties on the list.”
We eliminated several of them right away, but on the eighth one, we stopped, and the room grew quiet.
“It’s high enough,” Mick said. “And old enough looking.”
“Helmsworth Fencing,” Darius said, throwing the image up on the big screen. “That fits, with the razor wire.”
I stared at the dingy old buildings, trying to calm down the frantic buzz of excitement in my chest. My heart seemed to be thinking I was going to find my brother.
As if those assholes would send us an embossed invitation to rescue him.
It could never be so easy. Never. This was a baited trap. One they knew we could not resist.
Mange your fucking expectations, Masters. That was my brain talking.
I glanced at Kat. She didn’t like this. Them, dangling bait, and us jumping for it, because that was what brokenhearted people were wired up to do.
“Don’t fall for it,” she said to me softly. “You’re smarter than this.”
That stung, and I lashed back. “You’re saying if someone sent you a video like that, with one of your sisters in it, still alive, that you’d be too damn careful and smart to check it out?”
Her eyes flashed. “Fuck you.” She stalked out of the room.
An uncomfortable silence followed. I didn’t bother breaking it, just concentrated on clicking through the satellite photos that existed of Helmsworth.
I stopped on an image that showed us the windows along the side, and we all let out a sound.
This looked right. The right height. Arched windows.
The missing panes, in that particular pattern, like missing teeth.
The exact reverse pattern of what we had seen in the video.
“Helmsworth,” Freya murmured, fingers flying on her laptop.
“They specialized in barbed wire, razor wire, chain link. Went bankrupt eight years ago.”
We stared at the image on the screen. I shook my head. “Holy shit,” I whispered. “He was so close to us, all along. For months.”
“I want to see it today,” Freya said.