Chapter 36
THIRTY-SIX
EMORY
Emory staggered around the side table but nicked his knee against the edge so hard the lamp nearly toppled over. He ignored the jolt of pain and hurried to the foyer with Jack close behind.
“What do you mean she’s gone? I thought you two were here. Where the hell are you?”
Mirabelle dissolved into a fit of tears again. Unable to speak, her cries faded as someone else took the phone.
“It’s Thomas. We’re about thirty minutes south of Liam’s at that commuter lot off 95. Rich Dauer has her. Two other men were with him. At least one was a Velasco guy.”
A chill spread through Emory. He stopped halfway up the stairs. Highway noise crowded the line before a heavy sigh crackled through.
“Emory, I’m so sorry. The other was Ivan.”
On rubbery legs, Emory groped for the wall and sat on a step. A flash of gold invaded his vision.
Blonde hair. Bloody face. Light breaking through the trees.
“I trailed them as long as I could,” Thomas said. “They were heading east in a silver SUV. I got the plates.”
“You’re sure it was her?”
“Yes. She’s with them. Amelia’s gone.”
“Gone,” Emory whispered in a dumbfounded little echo, still suspended in horrified disbelief. “Gone.” Louder that time, he snapped into focus and stood from the stairs. “Call Disco. Have him run the plate. Tell him to call me with anything he gets. You and Mirabelle stay there. We’re coming.”
Emory hung up and bolted down the steps. He grabbed his keys and Glock from the kitchen and cut through the foyer.
“Get the others and meet me out front,” he told Jack. “Tell Zulu to bring his gear and Corey extra mags.”
Jack sprinted up the stairs and hollered for Liam and the others.
His voice blared through the foyer but faded as Emory took the steps to the circle drive two at a time.
Liam and Pete raced out the door as Jack relayed what little he knew.
Zulu and Corey followed not long after, and the men gathered around Emory.
He felt himself drifting away, the way he had in the woods; in the golden hour when the air smelled of blood and dew. Long ago, his brother promised revenge. Emory knew how it ended, could recite it in his sleep, and said it with haunted detachment.
“Ivan has Amelia.”
Liam released a shaky breath, and Corey mouthed “Jesus Christ” to the sky. Stunned into silence, Pete gaped at Emory, and Zulu must’ve known enough because he paled and shook his head. Jack eyed Emory with the same fear that, even as boys, they reserved for Ivan alone.
“No one comes back, not a soul, until we find her,” Emory said shakily, on the cusp of coming undone. “I don’t care how long it takes.”
They split up into two cars—Liam, Emory, and Zulu with all his gear in one, and the rest in the other.
Reckless and reeling, Emory sped down the highway.
The miles melted away, but the road never ended, and Emory’s heart hammered in his chest with every silver SUV they passed.
Eventually, he spotted Thomas’s car parked on the broken patch of asphalt that passed as a commuter lot.
With a jerk of the wheel, Emory veered off the road and slammed to a stop in the lot. The other car screeched behind him, halting inches short of collision. Emory kicked open the door as Thomas hopped from his car, ashen-faced and wide-eyed as Emory bounded toward him.
“How the fuck did this happen?” he bellowed as the setting sun burned hot at his neck.
Mirabelle scrambled from the passenger seat. Mascara stained her cheeks, and her eyes were red and swollen. Like hurtling herself in front of a freight train, she threw her weight into Emory who lurched toward Thomas.
“It’s not his fault. I lied to him!” she cried and pulled a piece of paper from her pocket but struggled to unfold it. Emory snatched it from her and read.
I’m sorry. I have to go home.
Please tell Emory that I’ll miss him and to find me again when the time is right.
Thank you both for everything.
Amelia
Emory flipped over the page. Amelia smiled up at him, so tenderhearted and sweet; everything he wanted and all he really needed. The last you’ll ever see.
He closed his eyes and asked on a broken breath, “You’re sure she wrote this?”
Only the afflicted indulged in lies like that; lies to make it bearable, to sleep at night, to live with themselves.
Emory’s lie might’ve been that she didn’t want to go and Richard took her unwillingly.
But the polished manners and swooping handwriting belonged to Amelia and smothered the lie before it took hold.
Mirabelle balked at the question. If she weren’t so consumed by grief, maybe she would’ve laughed.
They all might have laughed at his expense, and good on them.
What a fitting end for a fucking fool. Call in the clowns.
It was a heartbreak riot, a story for the ages.
He brought her there to keep her safe but instead baited the hook for a beast.
“I told Thomas and Amelia that you said it was okay for us to leave. I lied,” Mirabelle said again as if honesty was the currency to buy back trust.
The note crumpled in Emory’s fist, his anger simmering toward explosion.
“You’re going to get her killed! Do you have any idea what Ivan will do to her?”
None of them truly knew. They read it in the paper and said how very tragic.
Cal Havick and his vendetta against evil couldn’t vanquish the monster, so pretty girls with dazzling smiles were ripped apart and everyone asked, “Who rapes a corpse? Who cuts out their tongue so they can no longer scream?”
The instinct to retch nearly knocked Emory off his feet. He covered his mouth with a balled fist and stared at the expiring sun to burn away emergent tears. Mirabelle quietly cried and clutched her middle. Uncertain who to comfort, the men gathered around but didn’t pick sides.
Emory’s phone chimed with a text from Disco. Nada from the plates be there in 20.
“Nothing from the plates,” Emory announced.
Frustration coursed through him and coiled on itself with gathering pressure.
They should be moving, doing something, not standing on the side of that fucking wasteland.
Jaw clenched, his breaths shortened to ragged huffs, and his teeth ground together.
Emory hurled toward his car. His fist smashed into the window and the glass starred beneath the brutal force.
Pete wrangled him by the shoulders before Emory could deliver another hit.
“We’re gonna find her,” he said with certainty he had no right to.
Emory searched for doubt in Pete’s eyes, that fracture in faith he could point to and justify the dalliance in darkness.
“Zules,” Pete called out. “If you can trace Dauer’s cell, you can get a location, right?”
With all eyes on him, Zulu stood tall and squared his shoulders. He was so young, Emory noticed for the first time. The boy’s combat boots, camo shorts, and torn-up Motorhead t-shirt did little to give the appearance of age.
“Yeah, that part’s easy, but if his phone has been off…”
The thought hung in dead air.
“If his phone is off, what?” Corey asked. “We got nothing?”
Zulu shook his head. “Not necessarily. I could try to link devices that’ve connected to the same network as Richard’s cell. It’d help expand leads.”
With renewed promise, Emory waved Zulu to the car but didn’t wait for him to jog over. He pulled pieces of gear from the trunk—laptop, switch box, cables, and an assortment of other shit that didn’t mean a damn thing to him as long as it worked.
“I don’t care how you do it,” Emory said, “but I need you to find Richard Dauer. Can you do that?”
“Yes, sir.”
Zulu made quick work of setting up his gear.
Leaned against the car, Emory evaluated the sun skimming the horizon.
They’d lose light soon, and that meant losing time and a whole host of other precious things.
If he thought of it too long, the frenzy would begin again, so he quarantined that part of himself as Zulu pecked at the keyboard.
Liam settled next to Emory. Jack consoled Mirabelle, who sat on the ground and cradled her knees. Pete paced in front of the car, and Corey chain-smoked through a pack of Marlboros. When Disco showed up, he and Thomas agreed to take Mirabelle back to Liam’s and wait there for orders.
“Alright, his cell was pinging nearby,” Zulu said not long after Disco left. “Shit. That was hours ago.” He tapped at the keyboard and waited, fingers hovering over the keys and eyes glued to the screen. “Fuck,” he sighed into one palm.
“What’s the matter?” Corey asked.
Zulu pulled his hand from his face, but it was Emory he stared at with big brown eyes full of fright, reminiscent of how Emory used to regard Ivan as a boy. He recognized something of his younger self in Zulu—a Latino kid grown up all wrong and rising fast in the underworld.
“His phone is off,” Zulu said. “I can’t get anything from it. I could try other things, but that’ll take time.”
They didn’t have time. Emory could rail against reality and torpedo morale, but to what end?
He squatted in front of Zulu. “What’s your real name?”
“Sam.”
Emory rested a hand on his shoulder and gentled his voice. “Sam, you gotta keep trying. That’s all I need from you. Just keep trying. I know you can do it.”
“You got this, baby!” Pete shouted from behind Emory.
Zulu broke with a smile and set in with a flurry of keystrokes.
By the time the sun disappeared behind jagged hills, the night menaced with a chill, and the wind whipped around them.
The laptop’s dull iridescence illuminated Zulu’s face in a murky glow.
He continued the task, but the frequency of taps slowed, and by the way he kept shaking his head, Emory knew they were reaching a dead end.
The men knew it too. One by one, each of them slumped against the cars and faded fast as Emory paced in silence.
“Son, it’s been hours,” Liam said, quiet enough the others wouldn’t hear. “We need to regroup. Zulu can keep working. It doesn’t mean you’re giving up. I just think we need to settle for a bit and think through alternatives.”
Defeat battered Emory, and the doubts rolled in dense as fog.
For all he knew, Amelia may not even be with Richard.
He could’ve handed her off to Ivan and split.
Emory meant what he said when they left, though.
Days, weeks, months, it didn’t matter how long it took to find her.
He’d tear the world apart to get her back.
His men must’ve taken it as a hyperbolic declaration born of passion but little resolve. Liam should’ve known better, though.
“I’m not going back without her. I don’t care how long it takes. I’m not leaving her.”
Emory glanced at Zulu. The kid shook his head with a forlorn smile. Nothing. They had nothing.
“I’m sorry, Emory,” Liam said with premature condolences and a pat on the shoulder.
Emory was thankful for the night, if only for the way it obscured how he unraveled. There was no relief in the release. The loss came down swift and heavy and with indiscriminate cruelty.
Yet again, he’d deal with the loss of something he never had in the first place and wasn’t his to keep—the life he’d like to lead and the one he wanted in it.