45. Ellie
Ellie
"Mom?"
I choke it out because the moment I see her number on the screen, I know something is wrong.
She hasn't called me the entire time she's been in rehab. They took her phone from her on the first day, which she was understandably pissed about. She always calls from the phone at the desk, though, only during designated hours. It's three hours after cutoff.
Behind me the poker chips have gone quiet and all I hear is her breathing on the phone. "Mom, are you—"
"Ellie." It sounds like she's been crying for hours and trying to hide it. "Ellie, baby, you have to help me." Her voice hitches and she sucks in a shaky breath. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean for this to happen. He said he just wanted to talk."
"Who?" My voice raises an octave. "Mom, who's there? What's happening?"
"Help me, please, you have to help me."
"Mom, where are you?" I jump to my feet too quickly and the room wobbles. "Tell me where you are, I'll come right now, just tell me."
I hear shuffling, and a small frightened noise from my mother that cuts off, and then…
"Eleanor."
My hands go numb around my phone. Todd's real voice comes through the line, pitched lower and colder than the one he uses for the cameras.
"Todd," I speak his name through my teeth. If I could crawl through the phone and strangle him, I would.
"You've been a busy girl," he says into the crackling line. Wherever he is, wherever he's taken my mother, the signal is shit. "You and your little friends did quite a number on my reputation, didn't you?"
"Where's my mother, Todd?"
"She's right here. She's fine." He gives a pause that's obviously calculated to make me imagine all the ways that might not be true.
"For now. She came along very willingly, actually.
That's the funny thing about your mother.
She still answers when I call, like a good little bitch.
But then again, some habits break harder than others, don't they, Ellie? "
Cyrus is on the other side of his room already with his laptop open. Kade goes to join him, while Jinx sticks beside me, pressing his hand to my lower back to give me something to lean on.
"It's okay," Kade mouths to me from across the room. "Cyrus is tracing the call."
"If you want to see her again," Todd continues, "you'll come to the address I'm about to send you.
Preferably alone, but I'm not na?ve. I know you collect strays," he adds with a sneer I can hear through the fucking phone.
"Come find me, Eleanor, and we'll have that family discussion we've put off for far too long. "
"Listen, you son of a fucking—"
My phone buzzes against my ear, and a notification pops up over the call screen. It's a location pin.
"Don't keep me waiting," Todd says boredly, "I'm not as patient as your mother."
The line goes dead and I stand there for a second with the phone still pressed to my ear, frozen.
"Ellie." I suddenly remember Jinx is the only thing holding me up as he speaks. "Ellie, breathe. Look at me, Princess."
I can't.
I'm staring at the pin on my screen, the little red teardrop dropped into the middle of a green nowhere, and I'm counting. But the counting doesn't make the floor stop tilting underneath me this time.
"He has her," I whisper in a voice that doesn't sound like mine anymore. "He has my mom, he… she begged me, she was begging me, Jinx…"
"I've got it." Cyrus doesn't look up from his laptop screen, but the calm in his voice soothes my panic a little.
"I started tracking the call the second your phone lit up and he ran his mouth for just long enough.
I've got a general location from the call and I've got the pin he sent you.
Give me thirty seconds and I'll know if they're the same location. "
I nod and force myself to breathe.
Tank is by me now, too, his huge hand settling on my shoulder. I lean into him with Jinx still at my back because if I don't, I'm going to come apart on the kitchen floor and I can't do that.
Not while she's out there and she needs me.
He has her. Todd fucking has my mother after I finally wrenched her out of his grasp.
Kade is already at Cyrus's shoulder, reading over it. "Talk to me, Cy."
"The pin's here." Cyrus turns the laptop so they can see, and I crowd in too, Jinx's arm still wrapped around my waist.
A satellite image fills the screen, and Cyrus zooms in until the resolution breaks apart into pixels. There's nothing but a wide brown smear of dead grass, a treeline at the edge of the screen, and a single thread of dirt road snaking in from what has to be the highway.
"It's a field out in the literal middle of nowhere, about an hour north of the rehab place," Cyrus explains. "No structures or power grid to speak of, nothing but old barns within two miles."
"Why a fucking field?" Jinx mutters.
"Because there are no cameras in a field," Cyrus says grimly. "No witnesses or exits he doesn't control and he knows he's being tracked." He pulls up a second window that shows a map, and I watch the route line draw itself across the state. "We can be there in two hours."
"The facility." I grab the back of Cyrus's chair. "How did he check her out? She was supposed to be safe there, they were supposed to fucking watch her."
"Call them." Kade's voice cuts through mine, already in command mode. "Now, Jinx. We need to make sure Todd's not lying and she actually left the facility."
"Dude, she was on the phone," Kade protests. "You heard her."
"And he could have conferenced her in," Cyrus shoots back. "There are ways to make it nearly untraceable, and we can't discount the possibility that Marney…"
He trails off, but he doesn't need to finish the sentence for me to know what he means. We can't discount the possibility that my mother is working with Todd, luring me into a trap. A month ago, I would have punched him in the face for even suggesting it, but that was before I found that letter.
Jinx is gone before Cyrus finishes the sentence, phone already pressed to his ear. He paces out in the hall as his voice shifts into its charming register, coaxing the nightshift coordinator into giving him answers.
I press my fist against my mouth and count the cabinet handles. There are eight of them and I fucking hate eight even more than four. I count them again, hoping the number changes, knowing it won't.
"They were supposed to tell us if she tried to go anywhere," I croak.
Tank rests his hands on my shoulders, turning me gently until I'm facing him instead of the cabinets. He ducks his head so his eyes are level with mine and lifts his hands to sign. We will find her, Ellie.
I want to believe him. God, I want to.
Jinx comes back into the kitchen, and one look at his face tells me the news he has to share before he even opens his mouth.
"She's gone. She checked herself out." He can't look me in the eye.
"A few hours ago on voluntary discharge.
The night coordinator, who's a fucking dumbass who can't read instructions apparently, said there was a man with her who looked important and was going to bring her home to her husband.
Marney told them said husband was Todd fucking Waterson, and they had no legal grounds to hold her. "
"Thought I paid those fuckers enough to not give a shit about the law," Kade growls, but I barely hear it over the ringing in my ears.
Guess Todd was right about one thing.
Some habits really do break harder than others.
The kitchen tilts again. My breath is too fast and my vision is going gray around the edges. I become distantly aware that I'm gripping the counter hard enough that my knuckles have turned white. Five. I need five of something.
"Ellie," Kade says, pulling me out of my spiral as he crosses the kitchen. His good hand finds my jaw and he tips my face up to his. "Look at me, Princess," he whispers, sweeping his thumb across my cheekbone. "We're going to bring her home."
"You can't promise that," I say, shaking my head. "It's a trap, Kade, it's obviously a trap, he wants me there, and he…"
"I know." His mouth twists in that crooked, stitched-up smile. "Todd is the kind of asshole who's never had to learn what it means when you try to take something from the wrong people." He leans in, his forehead touching mine. "But he's about to."
Cyrus is already packing up his tracking equipment while Tank and Jinx load a small militia's worth of weapons into duffel bags in companionable silence.
I suck in a breath and hold it for five seconds.
Then I straighten up, wipe my face with the heel of my hand, and look at the four men who have never once willingly let me face anything alone.
"All right," I say. "Let's go get my mom."