Chapter 36
Chapter Thirty-Six
Hopper
I’ve never felt rage like this before. It’s not just simmering frustration or fleeting anger—it’s a firestorm ripping through my veins, consuming everything in its path. It presses against my skull, floods my chest, and makes it damn near impossible to think straight. Every breath feels like a fight, and I’m one second away from losing control.
Because Nysa is gone. They took her. Those fuckers took her away from me.
We’re gathered in my house—Atlas, Malerick, and the two undercover agents, Fish and Sanford. The tension in the room is suffocating, a silent indictment of how badly we screwed this up.
No one looks at me. Not because they don’t want to, but because they don’t know what to say.
Because this shouldn’t have happened.
But it did.
At least they didn’t take Maddie. That thought repeats like a fragile lifeline in my mind. I managed to grab her just in time, but the relief is fleeting, overwhelmed by the gut-wrenching fact that I couldn’t get to Nysa fast enough. That I failed her.
Atlas leans over the table, his hands braced as though he’s trying to physically hold himself back. His jaw is set so tight I wonder if he’s trying to keep it from shattering. “Letting almost everyone leave for the weekend was a bad idea,” he snaps, his glare locked on Fish. “Didn’t I say that?”
Fish doesn’t back down. He matches Atlas’s glare with one of his own, his voice rough. “We’ve got families. Most of the team had important shit to handle. And for the record? I did mention festivals are boring as hell.”
“Not the point, Fish,” Sanford cuts in, his tone measured but taut. “We need to focus on the now. Everyone’s flying back, but Seattle’s a long way out. We know what happens when we don’t act fast.”
I don’t. Not fully, anyway. But from the look in his eyes, I don’t want to.
“We should’ve seen this coming,” Malerick mutters, rubbing the back of his neck like he’s trying to physically knead the guilt away. “I . . . fuck.”
His words hang between us like a lead weight, pressing on everything.
And as much as I know he’s right, hearing it out loud makes something snap inside me. My hands clench into fists at my sides, my nails digging into my palms. It’s either that or put my fist through the wall.
“Tell me something I don’t fucking know,” I growl, my voice cutting through the room like a whip. “I don’t need a postmortem. I need a plan. How are we going to get her back—unharmed?”
Silence falls over the room, thick and suffocating. Their eyes dart around, looking for someone else to speak first.
But no one does.
Because we’re all thinking the same thing: we don’t know what the hell we’re walking into.
And I don’t give a damn.
Whatever it takes, I’m getting her back.
Mal’s gaze snaps to mine, but he doesn’t tell me to calm down. He knows better.
Sanford, the taller of the two agents, clears his throat, the sound cutting through the tension. “We thought there was a mole on the team. That’s why we stayed behind.” His voice is measured, deliberate, like he knows what he’s about to say will only make things worse. “But there isn’t.”
Atlas’s eyes narrow. “What the hell are you saying?”
Sanford exhales, running a hand down his face. “It’s not a mole. It’s the hotel.”
Malerick straightens, his jaw tightening. “Explain.”
Sanford jerks his chin toward Fish. “Tell them what you told us.”
Fish shifts uneasily, his shoulders tense. “I’ve been watching the security rotation at the hotel where most of the team’s been staying. Started noticing some weird shit—staff changes, odd tip-offs, phone calls to numbers that aren’t in the records.”
My stomach knots. I don’t need him to spell it out to know where this is heading.
“They weren’t getting information from the sheriff’s department or our agents,” Fish continues, his voice lower now, his words deliberate. “They were getting it from the hotel staff. Small towns like this are better than any state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. They’re their own network. Someone’s been paying the staff. Probably through a third party. We don’t have a name yet.”
Atlas lets out a low, humorless laugh, one that sends a chill through the room. “So they sold us out for a paycheck.”
Sanford nods. “They knew who was staying, who was leaving, when security would be at its weakest. They had everyone in town pegged, down to the last damn detail.”
And they knew exactly when to take her.
By the time we realized it, it was already too fucking late.
I shove back from the table, the legs of the chair screeching against the floor, loud enough to cut through the tense silence.
“She’s been gone for an hour,” I say, my voice rough and cracking under the weight of the words. Like saying them out loud might somehow make it hurt less. It doesn’t.
No one says anything. They don’t need to. The silence in the room speaks volumes. This is bad. They all know it. Every second we waste feels like another piece of her slipping away.
Sanford breaks the silence, his tone measured but urgent. “The first twenty-four hours are critical.”
I already know that.
I fucking know that.
Because if we don’t find her before then . . .
I don’t let myself finish the thought. I can’t.
Mal is already in motion, snatching the radio from his belt and barking out orders to the security teams scattered around town. “We need traffic cams, toll booth logs—anything that tells us which direction they took her.”
Atlas pulls out his phone, his fingers flying over the screen. “I’ve got a contact who can scrub satellite footage in real-time. We’re already pulling data from the cell towers around here.”
Not sure how he has all that. I don’t ask. Actually, I barely register their voices.
My pulse is hammering in my ears, drowning out everything else. My hands shake as I grab my truck keys from the workbench.
I can’t sit here. I can’t stand still.
I need to do something.
I need to find her.
“Hop,” Mal says, his voice cutting through the haze and stopping me in my tracks.
I whip my head toward him, barely hanging on by a thread. “What?”
“You need to keep your head clear,” he says carefully, like he’s trying not to set me off.
I laugh, dark and humorless. “My head is clear,” I grind out. “Crystal fucking clear. I know exactly what I need to do—find the bastards who took her and make them regret it.”
Atlas steps in, arms crossed, his tone firm. “We’re doing this smart. It’s not some sloppy shit pulled by the Timberbridge assholes, Hop. You storm in without thinking, you’re giving them exactly what they want.”
Fish’s radio crackles to life, and all of us freeze.
“We’re still in the air, but we think we’ve got a location,” a voice says. “An abandoned hunting lodge about an hour out of town. You might want to start working on that while we arrive. We still have another four hours in the air.”
My stomach drops.
An hour.
They’ve had her for an hour and she’s an hour away. Anything could be happening to her right now.
I spin on my heel and make a beeline for my truck.
“Let’s go,” I growl, not bothering to check if anyone’s following me.
Atlas and Mal fall into step behind me, their footsteps matching mine. Sanford, however, stays rooted, his hand coming up to stop us.
“We don’t go in blind,” he says, his voice steady but firm.
I whirl around, fury blazing through me. “They fucking took her.”
Sanford doesn’t flinch. “Which means they want something, or they have something already planned for her. If we go charging in without being prepared, we could make it worse—for her and for us.”
Atlas lets out a scoff, his tone laced with frustration. “Worse than them taking her? Worse than us sitting around while—” He stops himself, his lips pressing into a tight line. He exhales sharply. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.”
Sanford nods once, his expression unreadable. “We grab what we need—equipment, weapons, anything that gives us an advantage. Then we move. This won’t take long, but we can’t afford mistakes. One wrong move, and we lose her.”
Fish adjusts his radio, his voice cutting through the tension. “Let’s move to the base. Now.”
I don’t hesitate. I don’t stop. We’ll go to the base and I’ll follow their lead. At least they’re letting me come along.